And So It Begins . . . Avvo Launches Its Beta . . .
Sitting here at my computer writing the inaugural post of the Avvo Blog is an interesting endeavor. After keeping Avvo (www.avvo.com) in “stealth” mode for over a year, there is so much I want to share that I’m not sure where to begin.
So, let me start by introducing myself. I’m Mark Britton, the CEO and President of Avvo. You can read my bio here, but the short story it is that I have been involved in the legal and e-commerce industries for some time. I’m a 15 year lawyer, and since the first time I committed the then-perceived heresy of emailing legal documents rather than overnighting hard copies around the country (circa 1997), I have been obsessed with the idea of how technology especially the Internet can make the legal marketplace more efficient.
With that as a backdrop, I am very happy to introduce Avvo’s beta website a service that takes a giant step toward making the legal marketplace a more efficient place for everyone. For consumers, Avvo’s mission is to give them the information and guidance they need to choose the right lawyer for free. Sounds pretty simple right? Well, the problem is that it’s not. The reality is that, when it comes to evaluating and selecting lawyers, consumers have no idea where to begin. A recent IPSOS survey showed that, over the last two years, 25 million consumers did not hire a lawyer because, even though they thought they needed one, they had no idea how to choose the right one. 25 MILLION a tragic number when you think that these are 25 million Americans that did not get the legal help they needed.
To combat statistics such as these, we have purposefully tried to create a site that does not confuse consumers, but rather keeps them on task of choosing the right lawyer. As you will see, the site is clean, uncluttered and in plain-English. We also offer unique information and guidance that comes in the form of our Avvo Rating, which is our assessment of how well a lawyer can represent you, as well as disciplinary histories, client ratings and peer ratings for every lawyer in the states that we currently cover.* We also have our 3-Step Guide to Choosing a Lawyer, which walks the less-experienced consumer through each step of the lawyer selection process.
For lawyers, Avvo gives them a free profile to set themselves apart and show prospective clients that they are the right lawyer. Lawyers can update their profiles with as much information as they want, as often as they want. Put simply, Avvo lets the truly great lawyers shine. We’ve all heard the lawyer jokes and, in my experience, these jokes are the result of a couple of bad apples spoiling the whole bunch. Why shouldn’t there be a place where the great lawyers can show their incredible bodies of work and how that work solves our problems rather than creates them every day. Well, Avvo is that place and I am proud to have had a hand in building it.
An unsung hero of Avvo’s service is our technology. If it does what it’s supposed to do, you shouldn’t even know it’s there. However, you might have noticed that we are launching Avvo in its “beta” form, and in plain-English that means that we are still working out the kinks (known in tech parlance as “bugs”). Our challenge in bringing together information for over 650,000 attorneys in one easily searchable place is that it is not humanly possible for us to test every page and process in our system. Every day we find a new bug or two and, even though we put our heel to them as quickly as we can, there will always be ones that we miss. So, if you find a bug, please report it to us and, in the meantime, we appreciate your patience.
Another reason that Avvo’s “beta” moniker makes sense is that our search technology and processes continue to collect information on roughly 3500 new attorneys every day. So, with each day that Avvo is up and running, our entire system continues to gain breadth and depth. Still, we will never be able to find all of the information for every lawyer, so if you are a lawyer and find that your profile is missing information, please claim your profile and update it with anything we are missing. Ultimately, Avvo is a community and the more that the community participates, the better.
And finally, even though Avvo is the product of input from hundreds of lawyers, thousands of consumers and some of the best legal minds in the business, we would still like input from you. So, whatever you think about Avvo, good or bad, I would like to hear from you. Feel free to post a response to this post.
And so it begins . . . Avvo – Ratings. Guidance. The Right Lawyer.
I look forward to chatting with you in the future.
*Avvo is launching in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington
June 5th, 2007 at 8:49 am
congratulations guys — the site looks great
June 5th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I have read the article about you site in the Seattle P.I. browsed through your site, and claimed my profile. I think what you are trying to accomplish is a worthy goal but I am curious about how the rankings are determined. Especially at such an early start with little or no client or peer input. For example what is the difference between a 6.3 and 6.8 ranking? Arn’t you in one sense endorsing the person with the higher ranking. This is troubling to me. There are some very good attorneys whom you have ranked fairly low merely because of a disciplinary actions, there are others whom I wouldn’t pay to represent my worst enemy who are ranked fairly high How is it you are coming up with these numbers? Again, I don’t object to what you are doing, I just want to understand it.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I have a serious problem with the fact that you claim you can claim one’s own profile for free, yet require people to use a credit card. I realize you need to verify their identity in some way, but I personally don’t feel comfortable providing said info to a company which has already admitted it will sell some personal information to third parties. Additionally, I searched lawyers whom I know have had disciplinary actions against them, and said actions did not even show up on their profile, so I feel the accuracy of this site is quite questionable.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
From a usability perspective, it is unclear that a user can click on the small green “talk” bubble to view a lawyer’s welcome message.
From the perspective of a listed lawyer, the site would be more valuable if at least part of the welcome message was displayed automatically or, at the least, if the purpose of the “talk” bubble were more obvious.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Congrats! This looks like it will be a useful site for choosing a lawyer, and it looks more professional than lawyerratingz.com does. It looks like you guys have a lot more lawyers listed too.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I checked out your site. Are you going to do much marketing so the laypeople know you are out there? Why the credit card? It might be more productive for you to find another way to verify that the lawyer is who the lawyer said they were.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
If the web site is as successful as your PR campaign you guys are going to be mega-zillionaires! This morning our IT guy showed it to me, a legal list serve sent me a message about it, a non-lawyer friend asked me about it and at lunch I saw the front page story in the Seattle paper…who do y’all know and how much does that kind of coverage cost? I don’t care much for these rating systems…but, I doubt many lawyers are going to ignore the site. Good luck.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Hi, I’m one of the developers, and I can respond to some of your comments. Regarding the credit card, we’re definitely looking at other ways to verify that you’re really the lawyer.. stay tuned for future versions! It’s just that because of resource constraints, we just felt that the best initial way to protect a lawyer’s information was to require the credit card. We use it to verify identity. Nothing else — promise.
Also, regarding Lesley’s comments about accuracy — we take those seriously too. Lesley, please feel free to submit what you think might be inaccurate or missing data using the web form, and we’ll get to it when time permits.
June 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Congratulations Mark, Welcome to the World Wide Web of Law. Wish you and your team much success. Frank Edens, CEO, USLegal, Inc.
June 5th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Guys,
Even though we are in the healthcare space (medbillmanager.com and findyourdoc.com) i am quite impressed with your launch, forethought, and consumer-friendly approach. Regardless of any initial feedback… the fact that you are getting feedback is fantastic! Also, there is no “perfect” data set that exists nor has been created, so from what i can see… you’ve got a great start. All of this is coming from the voice of someone who is doing a similar thing in healthcare. I’m sure we’ll end up learning from each other over time and i wish you and your team a wonderful beta launch.
christopher
co-founder/ceo
MedBillManager & FindYourDoc
June 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I have found this to be useful and accurate as clients frequently ask about an attorney reference and I have had no basis for a recommendation. You have a first rate team and have created a site easy to use and easy to understand! Best Wishes to this needed service.
Warren Stickney
CEO
Stickney Research
June 5th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
[...] announced by legal blogger Kevin O’Keefe in this piece and on the official Avvo Blog by CEO Mark Britton, with whom we spoke a month ago, after months of anticipation and a reported [...]
June 5th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Good luck with your launch. I believe it will provide a useful tool to consumers. I did have some reluctance to register when you asked for credit card information. I agree with other comments that a different security tool should be found if you truly want attorneys to register and update their profiles. Since attorneys are in a business that has a tendency to make someone mad, I am curious how one rebuts a negative comment from a disgruntled opponent, and what impact does it have on your rating system.
June 6th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Congrats and thanks for the 10.0. Makes my momma mighty proud.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:56 am
I’d like to second what Frank Edens said…
Congratulations Mark, Welcome to the World Wide Web of Law. Wish you and your team much success.
Dmitry Shubov
Founder
LegalMatch
June 6th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Wow. Really lame. You tell the public someone has been “rated” without really knowing squat about them or their practices.
You might be a commercial success, and perhaps making a buck is all that counts, but as a real rating system for consumers it is a failure.
Even if you get feedback on some lawyers, it will be easy to game the system, so that you can praise yourself or one’s friends, or libel those you don’t like. Just great. A system built to be abused.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:52 am
I looked up a Seattle lawyer just for fun. I knew that he had been disbarred some time ago. You had him rated as GOOD.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
It is very curious that the only way Avvo can conceive of verifying an attorney’s identity is by means of a credit check. There is not a state or federal bar that feels the need to run a credit check in order to ensure that attorneys appearing before their courts or seeking licensure in their bars are who they say they are.
The very act of running a credit report on someone affects their credit score, so your presumed identification method adversely affects those whom you wish to rate.
Your service stands to be detrimental to attorneys who are rated less favorably, solely because the information in the profile is incorrect or incomplete. And the only way you provide to remedy this situation is to degrade one’s credit score and store their credit card information.
This is unacceptable and silly, seeing as how there are any number of ways to verify one’s identity besides running a credit check on someone. Because your business practices have the potential to directly harm the practices of affected lawyers, Avvo and its corporate counsel should carefully consider whether this current business model is one that is wise to continue.
You have had enough foresight, apparently, not to rate the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court–congratulations, yet you either haven’t taken the time, or are simply unaware of the many other judges and justices throughout the country that are currently rated on your system. I seriously doubt whether Ms. Rhode or Mr. Hirshon, who sit on your legal advisory board, would advocate or approve of the policy of disparaging the reputations of judges and justices with the very public they both serve and will adjudge.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Any plans for an API for other sites (for instance local news) to tap into your data and send traffic back your way?
June 6th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Congratulations on your launch!
As someone who has launched 2 companies in the last 6 months, I know how hard finding the right legal representation is. Even a little bit of guidance in this area now (and more later as your community develops) will be immensely helpful and appreciated.
Just like the rest of the world, lawyers will now need to learn how to manage their online reputation and in the process become more accountable to the clients they serve.
June 6th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
The uproar in reaction to this launch has been interesting. Welcome to the world of accessible public information, lawyers! How is this any different from Citysearch, where a chiropractor for example can be rated highly by happy clients, bashed by unhappy clients, review himself if he feels like it, and bash the competition if he feels like it?! People have a right to be informed with as much data as possible, and then they need to use their judgment to make the best purchasing decision. Does anyone know how Citsearch comes up with their star ratings? No. But as a consumer you can either trust that it’s valid, or not. If Avvo can work out the kinks and gain consumer’s trust about the ratings system, this will be a great service. And lawyers are just going to have to figure out how to make the best of it, just like the chiropractor.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
What have you done to cover your exposure for libel by attorneys upset with a “client’s” negative comment?
How about adding a feature to allow an individual to rate their legal adversary’s attorney…or an attorney to rate their opponent…parents to rate their kids who made it through law school?
June 6th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
“Just like the rest of the world, lawyers will now need to learn how to manage their online reputation”
“And lawyers are just going to have to figure out how to make the best of it”
But many do already . . . through their own Web sites or elsewhere. They have no special obligation to maintain information on every legal services Web site that springs up, which could become unmanageable and time consuming. Moreover, in the case of law firms with more than a handful of attorneys this responsibility lays not with the attorney but the firm administrator or marketing director (and it is highly unlikely this individual is going to load up and maintain profile information for 20 or 30 or more individuals).
The onus here is not on attorneys nearly so much as Avvo, whose system is highly dependent on the quality of the information it does receive, a good deal of information it doesn’t receive, and a highly suspect rating methodology.
Until these issues are addressed – and this could be a tall order – Avvo has no idea themselves how valid their results are and consumers are quite likely receiving misleading information regarding the relative merit of attorneys.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Mark – congratulations on a sweet launch — the site looks awesome and it seems to be perfectly optimized for search engines, so kudos on that — you should start seeing some sweet traffic from that over the next 60-90 days.
Please keep your blogs posts coming fast & furious — share what’s working, what’s not functioning as expected, and what the top complaints are (from lawyers, users, etc.) — think the openness will only build on the great press you’ve been receiving.
Onward!
June 6th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
The status & discipline information for Washington lawyers is over 7 months old. When and how often to you plan to update it?
June 6th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Thanks for the site. As for a consumer that is just now trying to find a lawyer I am looking at anything to help me find the right one. Although I understand some of the concerns by other lawyers, I fully take responsibility to use the information I find here not as the gospel but as a tool to help me find the right representation. All ratings have their positives and negatives…and they can be made to look which ever way the statisticians want them to look. They are also as good as the information that feeds them. I would like to make a request though, you improve on the search features on the site and let us find the field a lawyer is in by a term or word…for example…I’m trying to find a lawyer that is knowledgeable with ERISA but as a layperson, don’t know how to narrow down the field let alone where to start…
June 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
18 months and what a polished result!
You guys are going to have your work cut out for you, but that’s the price of setting the bar as high as you did. There’s no reason to set it lower and the public are going to be pleased. I’ll blog about it as often as I can. It’s all good.
Now comes the hard part of making Avvo operatic.
Sanjaya doesn’t look too busy,–now wouldn’t THAT be fun?!
BTW, I’m expecting to see SOMEONE in a kilt on the front page in the near future!!
June 6th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
It only takes a little bit of research to find out that the “public service” information you have presented on your web site is irresponsible and rife with errors in data and judgement and will affect the lives and reputations of so many people and families.
As a result, I can only imagine the law suits that will certainly come your way as a result of your short-sided greed.
Shame on you.
June 10th, 2007 at 9:55 am
When will you start to list Canadian Lawyers?
July 27th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I would like to see the credentials or mistakes about these lawyers before I hire them. YOur, Barbara B.,P Pate, bpate1@bellsouth.net Thank you