3 Articles; 2 Thoughts; But Only 1 Avvo
I want to quickly highlight three articles that have been published about Avvo of late, one by Adam Liptak at the New York Times (“On Second Thought, Let’s Just Rate All the Lawyers“)* and two by Carolyn Elefant one on Law.com (“Avvo Files Motion to Dismiss“) and the other on her own blog, My Shingle (“A Tale of Two Lawyer Ratings Systems.)”
These articles echo at least two thoughts that have “crossed my mind” since we became the target of a proposed class action lawsuit.
The first is the fairly simple observation that Avvo’s fate should be decided in the court of consumer opinion, not a Federal courtroom. As Adam says in his article, “But just because the site is a work in progress does not mean it should be suffocated in its infancy by thin-skinned lawyers. As it refines its methods and gathers more information, including critiques of lawyers by their clients, Avvo could well provide an important and valuable service.” Carolyn adds some similar commentary to her post “Avvo Files Motion to Dismiss” by saying, “Avvo is representative of a trend that we are going to see as we move into the Internet Age. With so much information online about lawyers and other service providers, it’s only natural that some companies will try to aggregate and simplify it. Whether that is useful or not depends on what consumers need and want – and I don’t purport to know the answer to that.”
The second thought is that, with all of the scrutiny that Avvo’s rating has already received, why have the plaintiffs in the proposed class action not taken similar issue with other attorney rating systems many of which have been around for years? Carolyn’s post, “A Tale of Two Lawyer Ratings Systems” hit this head-on when she begins with a long description of a rating service that sounds like Avvo, but ultimately is not (it’s Martindale Hubbell). And after some commentary, she concludes, “So, one of these ratings systems is sued, while the other is not. And if you’re wondering about the reasons for the differential treatment, I can think of at least one: consider the ratings of the class action’s lead plaintiff by [Martindale Hubbell] and [Avvo].” [Editorial note: Martindale Hubbell rates this lead plaintiff, John Henry Browne, "AV" (it's highest rating) and Avvo currently rates him 5.5 or "Average."] Adam Liptak takes a more aggressive tone by saying, “Legal publications these days are full of lists of supposedly stellar lawyers, which are a nice way to generate advertising and good feelings but perform no particular service. Avvo’s rankings at least take account of lawyers’ shortcomings.”
Now, I take some issue with Adam on this point because I do believe that other rating services help indicate to the consumer which attorneys have built up a respectable-enough body of work so that these services take note. That is why we take them into account in calculating the Avvo Rating. However, I do agree that the reason we are being singled out is because we alert the consumer to misconduct in a lawyer’s background.
That brings me back to the title of this article: Three articles, leading to two thoughts, which lead to the ultimate conclusion that there is only one true Avvo. :-)
Mark
* This article requires a NYT subscription for access. You can get a 14-day free trial subscription, or maybe try Googling for it. Possibly someone has reposted it for free.
