O'Reilly Shaw Lawyers, Brisbane, QLD

About a year and half ago I left a negative review for one of the O’Reilly Shaw principal Lawyers on Google. This was as a result of almost 18 months of excruciating experience with this firm. I will not repeat what I had to go through suffice to say that the period of dealing with this firm is one that I do not wish on my worst enemies. After 18 months of hundred emails, thousands of pages of documents, affidavits, subpoenas, barrister costs and tens of thousands of dollars of fees and expenses (close to $150,000), she managed to achieve almost none of the claims that she made when the whole nightmare started. This was a simple case that could have been resolved amicably, less costly and without so much animosity that was created by that solicitor. My review remained on Google for almost a year during which it received many thumbs up (likes) from readers. About 4 weeks ago I noticed that my review suddenly disappeared from Google. I am not sure how they managed to do it, but I am sure there are ways and means of doing that if you are a law firm and only want marketing department sounding positive reviews about your company. So, they obviously like only positive reviews and they use any means to remove negative reviews left on social media about them. Mine might have been just one of those that was shut down. Who knows, there were many thumbs up to my review and maybe some of those people also had a negative opinion of this firm or that particular lawyer. I do object though to my legitimate review being removed just so that this firm can improve their score unfairly. Allowing free expression of opinion about business is an essential way a business can have their credibility examined. It defeats the objective of having a review system if businesses are allowed to select which one of the reviews they want to keep and which one they want deleted. To delete honest but negative reviews in order to increase the companies rating is dishonest and shows a poor level of credibility. This firm does not have a credibility in my opinion. Most of their positive reviews sound like something that a marketing department would write to describe the business. O’Reilly Shaw Lawyers can be assured that I will persist in expressing my opinion about my dealings with that lawyer on Google and if necessary, using different social media sites. But at this stage I will leave it just to Google.