Current design criteria for geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls are generally based on factored load and resistance magnitudes, both for internal and external stability analyses, involving ultimate limit state. Serviceability limit state is generally overlooked in the design of geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls, especially those with facing systems of comparatively high flexibility, including segmental retaining wall systems. Serviceability limit design is deemed crucial for critical structures or structures where the consequences of significant deflections are high. This paper presents a study conducted on several thoroughly selected free standing walls with surcharge and bridge abutments. Lateral displacement data were collected for these structures during construction and with accurate estimation of the corresponding loads (from the successive layers and from surcharge or bridge loads). The collected data were used to assess the suitability of a number of lateral displacement models that have been previously developed for geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures. This paper presents a modification for the lateral displacement model commonly used in current practice, which has been used by practitioners merely to obtain crude estimates of lateral displacements in reinforced soil structures during construction. The modified model presented in this paper accounts for the geometry and global stiffness of reinforced soil walls with and without surcharge loads. Finally, statistical sampling was conducted to assess the sensitivity of the lateral displacement prediction to the various wall parameters. The parameters with the largest contribution to the lateral displacement and its profile shape were used to generate charts that predict the magnitude of lateral displacement within different levels of confidence.