It’s been fun watching lawyers claim their profiles at Avvo.com. Our research shows that lawyers like to have their photos in advertisements, just take a look at the yellow pages. One feature that we designed, which we hoped would be a fun activity for lawyers, is the opportunity to load their photo on to Avvo.com. I’ve been impressed with how quickly lawyers are updating their profile and uploading photos. By the time you view this search result, all the lawyers may have uploaded their photos. Since this morning, I have seen this search result almost completely filled up with lawyers’ photos. It’s like looking at a bingo sheet and seeing the grey thumbnails fill up with bright, colorful photos. It’s an interesting marketing opportunity for lawyers to differentiate from one another…for now. A lawyer can really standout in our search results if she has a photo. However, in time, if every lawyer has a photo, maybe the next differentiator will be photo composition, or photo background color, or subject matter.

Hello again everyone. I won’t be able to write everyday, but there is so much going on that I wanted to post some thoughts during the second day of Avvo’s public life.

I want to start by thanking all of the lawyers that claimed their Avvo profiles at the end of today over 1000 lawyers have claimed their profiles and provided consumers valuable information regarding their impressive bodies of work. We also received peer endorsements and client ratings each numbering in the hundreds. What a great start.

I also want to thank everyone who responded to my inaugural post. Good or bad, it is all helpful feedback as we continue to refine our beta. In this regard, I wanted to highlight two changes that we are making to our site in response to your requests:

First, many of you have said that the “Trustworthiness” subrating is not appropriate because it speaks to your character, not your body of work. I agree, and over the next day or so we are changing this to “Professional Conduct” with this sub-rating relying more heavily on an attorney’s discipline history. If you don’t have any professional misconduct, you should default to 5 circles. We picked “Trustworthiness” because it was a word that consumers easily understood; but this is an instance where, in an attempt to make something consumer-friendly, we missed the mark.

Second, while we have tried to be clear that the Avvo Rating is based on the information we know about a lawyer, some of the press and comments we have received tell me that we have not been successful here. In response to this, we are adding disclosure under the Avvo Rating which tells the consumer what the information sources are for the rating e.g., is it just public records or is it public records and other information, etc.

In addition to these changes, let me make one observation. We have received a number of emails from lawyers saying their scores are too low. For those lawyers and others, please keep in mind that the Avvo Rating IS NOT FIXED. To the contrary, it relies almost exclusively on the information that is in your Avvo profile e.g., your work experience, professional achievements, disciplinary sanctions, etc. If you feel your rating is too low, claim your profile, upload your body of work which for most attorneys is quite impressive – and there is a good chance your rating will go up.

That’s all for now as I’m sure that we will continue to talk about the Avvo Rating for some time as lawyers and consumers continue to get their arms around it. Thank you everyone for making our launch so successful. I realize there were/are some bumps – and there will be more as we continue to test our beta. We will get all the kinks worked out over time. Please keep the comments coming so that we can succeed in that effort.

Mark

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