Newsflash - Avvo Rating Still Free!
A note to my fellow lawyers: While others may charge you $50 for a rating, the Avvo Rating is still free. Please accept this blog post as an invitation to do the following with your Avvo Rating at any time (and for free): Look at it, hug it, show it to your clients, taunt your coworkers with it, display it in your marketing materials, link to it on your website, email it to your Mother, or issue a press release about it. If I left anything out, I am inviting you to do that too for free.
OK, so why the newsflash? Well, I’m poking a bit of fun at Martindale Hubbell who, according to the blog Arbitrary and Capricious, is now charging $50 to rate lawyers. Martindale has been around for a long time, so they probably know something that I don’t in making this decision. However, even with much brain wracking, I cannot figure it out. They have one of the oldest rating systems that is respected by lawyers (we even consider it in the Avvo Rating); and as a Martindale executive my worry would be that such a “pay to play” model would only undermine that respect. A risky proposition when Martindale is reportedly losing some of their bigger customers.
Am I missing something? Only time will tell.
Oh - did I mention that the Avvo Rating is free?
Freely yours,
UPDATE: See Kevin O’Keefe’s take: Martindale-Hubbell continues slide: Starts charging lawyers for ‘Coveted Rating’ service.
October 16th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Though the slog among attorney rating systems is only just beginning, Avvo is in a slide of its own. You’ve fallen out of your own list of top Seattle Web 2.0 startups, http://avvoblog.com/category/avvo-geeks, and the Alexa data (which your list is based on) illustrates the slow decline:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.avvo.com
Alexa data has always struck me as being somewhat suspect, but if in fact it does indicate a declining interest in Avvo’s services this will have to be turned around one way or another if attorneys are going to have a reason for maintaining profiles.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
How do I sign up for your free service? Also, we had a Martindale-Hubbell internet account. We paid an excessive amount and received a few calls over the years. We paid all our fees and they kept charging up for one month which was paid. We have written letters and called on numerous occasions advising that the bill was paid. They assured us that they would fix the problem, but we still receive bills years later. The situation makes me wonder what mess their billing and how effective they are after all these years. I find their network to be of little value for the cost.
Shane O. Bengoechea
January 14th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I am in Boise, Idaho in reply to your request for the state of my practice.