If the person who created your firm’s Google profile left tomorrow, could anyone else at the firm still edit it? Picture a three-lawyer practice near Borough Hall whose hours stay wrong for weeks because each person assumed a colleague held the login. The case is hypothetical, but the mechanism is easy to recognize: nobody was named to own the profile.
The short answer: the firm should hold the owner role on its Google Business Profile (GBP), with a partner as one of the owners. An assistant can run the weekly routine, and an agency can work as a manager for audits, reporting and competitor checks. The setup to avoid is a profile that only an outside party, or one lawyer’s personal account, can control. This is part of our complete guide to local SEO in New York City.
Start with ownership: a firm login and two owners
The owner role should sit with the firm, never with one person’s private inbox. In the profile settings you can add people as owners or managers, and the difference matters: owners control who else gets access, managers do the work.
A workable setup has three parts. Use a Google account tied to a mailbox that several people can read, such as the office or intake address. Add a partner as a second owner. If an agency is involved, give it the manager role and keep the owner role in-house.
The mailbox matters more than it looks. Google’s help documentation, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 23 September 2026, says the owner is notified of certain suggested edits and has four days to accept or refuse them, and that Google can publish a change supported by public information. A notification nobody reads is a decision made by default.
What only a lawyer should approve before it goes live
Anything that describes what the firm does needs a lawyer’s sign-off, whoever types it. The partner does not have to touch the profile weekly, but these fields should not change without approval:
- Categories: the primary category and any practice-specific ones, because they tell Google what the firm is.
- Services: the practice areas listed, since a listed area reads as an offer to take that work.
- Business description: up to 750 characters, with no promises about outcomes and no case results.
- Appointment link and hours: including by-appointment hours, so a caller is not sent to a locked door.
- Office details: floor, suite, entrance, and how a client reaches the building by subway or on foot.
Rules on lawyer advertising differ by state and are outside what this article can confirm. Have the firm’s ethics counsel or the relevant bar guidance reviewed before publishing any claim.
A weekly routine an assistant can run in short blocks
A short, repeatable checklist keeps the profile accurate without taking a lawyer’s time. Here is a routine that fits an office manager or legal assistant:
- Open the profile and compare name, address, phone, hours and website with the firm’s own records.
- Look for suggested edits and answer them inside the four-day window.
- Read new reviews and prepare a reply from the firm’s standard wording.
- Pass any review that touches a client matter to the partner before anything is sent.
- Add or refresh photos of the entrance, the waiting area and the building signage, with no clients and no documents in frame.
- Update special hours ahead of holidays and planned closures.
- Record what changed in a shared sheet: date, field, and who made the change.
Review replies deserve one extra rule. A reply can reveal that a reviewer was a client, so the standard wording should confirm nothing about any matter. Whether to reply at all is a question for the firm’s ethics counsel.
For the checking itself, the LocalEdge Lite and Solo plans are one option. Lite gives a GBP Score from 0 to 100 across more than 15 criteria and AVI drafts of review replies that a person reviews before sending. Guardian, an optional add-on, checks the profile every hour through the Google API and alerts within the hour, showing the field, the old value, the new value and a Fix Now button.
When an agency earns its place, and when it adds risk
An agency makes sense when no one at the firm can run the routine, or when the firm wants reporting and a view of competitors across Brooklyn neighborhoods. In that case the partner stays an owner and the agency works as a manager.
For the neighborhood view, a heatmap scan across Brooklyn neighborhoods shows where the firm appears for a practice keyword. Solo plans scan a grid up to 21×21 points with 5 keywords per scan. An agency handling several firms can use the agency plan with per-client permissions, which offers sub-accounts and collaborators, plus PDF reports with Score, Keywords, Heatmap, Competitors and Guardian sections.
The risks are specific to a law firm. Ask any agency for four things in writing:
- The manager role only, with the owner role kept by the firm.
- Partner approval of every practice-area claim and description before publishing.
- Draft-only handling of review replies, with the firm sending them.
- A monthly change log listing each field edited.
Decision table: partner, assistant or agency, task by task
The table assigns each task to the person best placed to hold it, and names the main risk of each role.
| Task | Partner | Assistant | Agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner role and account recovery | Holds it, with a second owner | Reads the notifications mailbox | Manager role only |
| Practice areas, categories, description | Approves every change | Types approved text | Proposes drafts for approval |
| Hours, photos, suggested edits | Not needed weekly | Runs the weekly routine | Can run it when no one on staff can |
| Review replies | Approves anything touching a client matter | Drafts and sends neutral replies | Drafts only |
| Reporting and competitor view | Reads a monthly summary | Collects the figures | Produces the report |
| Main risk | Everything depends on one busy person | Edits made without approval | An outside party controls access |
Read the table against your own firm. These starting points follow from it, as suggestions and not rules:
- One lawyer and no staff: the lawyer holds the owner role and runs a short routine, with an agency only if the routine keeps slipping.
- A small firm with an office manager: a partner as owner, the office manager on the routine, and a partner check each quarter.
- Several practice groups: each group lead approves the services text for their area, and the assistant enters it.
- No time and no staff: an agency as manager, a partner as owner, and the monthly change log.
Which of the three roles is empty at your firm right now? You can see where the profile stands with a free GBP Score check on LocalEdge Lite.
