Well, in its December issue the ABA Journal published a list of the Top 100 Blawgs in the United States. Maybe they should have said the allegedly Top 100 Blawgs because, quite notably, the Avvo Blog is missing. I am not flabbergasted, however, as this omission can only mean one thing: This Top 100 list is CORRUPT.

Now listen ABA, don’t claim that your list is merely opinion. You are offering a list that can only be characterized as objective, and as a consequence millions of consumers who rely on it are being misled and injured.

You can expect my class action lawsuit (on behalf of the injured consumers, of course) within a matter of days.

Sincerely,

Mark S. Britton
CEO, Avvo and aggrieved frequent contributor to the Avvo Blog

* Please accept this post as satire which I hope is still protected by the First Amendment. Here is something just as silly (but is unfortunately not satire).

In her post “Martindale follows Avvo’s lead“, Carolyn Elefant writes about Martindale’s new client review feature. It’s hard to say whether or not Martindale was influenced directly by Avvo’s client ratings, though it’s flattering to think we had some impact.

What is clear is that this is yet another indication of the impact the Internet is having on industry after industry. What started out merely as the ability for anyone to express an opinion about a service or product, is evolving into an expectation that these opinions are available. If they aren’t, then consumers will go elsewhere to get their information. And while Martindale’s feature seems to me somewhere between a “testimonial” and a client review — according to Elephant’s blog, law firms can “hand-pick” clients to participate — this is certainly a sign that consumers of legal services are demanding more transparency than they have seen in the past.

As we note in the Avvo 3-Step Guide to Choosing a Lawyer, there are a number of things consumers need to keep in mind when choosing a lawyer – specific experience, communication skills, good standing with the bar, etc. When it comes to finding those lawyers, however, we also note that there is more than one way to narrow down the field.

One way is to use Avvo, of course. However, some consumers want or need more in-person guidance, and this is where bar association lawyer referral service (“LRS”) programs come in.

Typically run by local bar associations (for example, here in Seattle LRS is provided by the King County Bar Association), LRS are particularly useful for those who aren’t sure exactly what legal issues they might be facing.

A typical bar-sponsored service will be staffed with experts who can take a consumer’s call, help him or her figure out the legal issues involved, and then provide a referral to a local attorney specializing in the area. Although there may not be a choice of attorneys, the vetting and screening process done by the LRS means consumers get a timely referral to someone who is in good standing with the bar and has experience in the legal area in question.

Like most legal services, those provided via LRS are not free, although the vast majority require that participating attorneys provide the initial 30-60 minute consultation for free or a nominal fee.

We’ll have more to say about lawyer referral services in the future, but for now, if you are looking for LRS in your area, the American Bar Association maintains a comprehensive list of such programs.

I’m glad to report that few people spent time between turkey and cranberry sauce to look for a lawyer – traffic to Avvo was down over the break.
1. Ann Kiley Los Angeles, CA
2. Roni Deutch North Highlands, CA

3. Janet McTigue Georgetown, TX. The democrat candidate for Williamson County Attorney in Austin TX, has become embroiled in a very public spat with a local daily newspaper that questioned her legal credentials. An article in the Austin American-Statesman states that she has been “licensed to practice law in any state for only about two years” and further raises the question about her potentially practicing law without a license in California. It seems that a few readers familiar with Avvo checked up on her creds on our site (which covers both Texas and California), which shows her as being accepted to the Texas bar in 1990, but never in California. Read more in the Austin Chronicle.
4. Mark Britton Seattle, WA

5. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Washington, DC
6. Briteney Mercer Seattle, WA

7. John Henry Browne Seattle, WA
8. Mark Filip Chicago, IL. Mr. Filip was recently appointed Deputy AG under Mukasey .
9. Mark Vincent Kaplan Los Angeles, CA
10. Elizabeth Powell Tacoma, WA

What constitutional law junkie can’t get excited about the Supreme Court taking up for only the second time (and first time since 1939) a Second Amendment case? At issue in the case, D.C. v. Heller, is Washington D.C.’s 31-year old handgun ban, which the D.C. Circuit Court found unconsitutional.

Representing the District of Columbia are Thomas Goldstein and Christopher Egleson of Aiken Gump and Walter Dellinger, Matthew Shors, Mark Davies and Geoffrey Wyatt of O’Melveny & Myers. A whole bunch of the folks in the District’s AG office are also on the brief: Todd Kim, Linda Singer, Alan Morrison, Edward Schwab, Donna Murasky and Lutz Prager.

Representing Dick Heller, the D.C resident challenging the ban, are Alan Gura, Robert Levy and Clark Neily of Gura & Possessky.

People have asked me why/how I have started showing up on Avvo’s “Top 10 Lawyers Viewed Last Week” list . You would think that I would have been high on the list at launch and then simply faded into the Avvo background over time. Oddly, the reverse has been the case.

Possibly one of the reasons for this is that, for roughly the past month, I have been including a footer at the bottom of every email I send that says, “See my Avvo Profile!” with a link to my profile. I send out dozens of emails a day, and I am guessing that a lot of people are clicking on my profile simply out of curiosity. Surely they are not looking for me to represent them . . .

My take away here is that promoting your Avvo Profile works. Reinforcing my hypothesis is Roni Deutsch , who started showing up on our Top 10 list around the same time that she started linking to her Avvo profile in press releases about her practice. There are also a number of attorneys who are putting on their own websites their Avvo Rating and a link to their Avvo Profile.

Whether these tactics increase your Avvo profile traffic or even get you some free ink in the Avvo Top 10 list, they are all great marketing tactics that we at Avvo are obviously very excited about. Keep up the great work fellow Avvo lawyers – I hope that every one of you promotes your Avvo profile enough to knock me off the Top 10 list next week and beyond.

Mark
See my Avvo Profile!
http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/98104-wa-mark-britton-28995.html

1. Jerold Barringer – Nokomis, IL. Interest in this lawyer’s profile was spawned by a link to our site from a blistering article on the Tax Update Blog from Roth and Company.
2. Barak Romanek – Arlington, VA

3. Anne Kiley – Los Angeles, CA
4. Briteney Mercer – Seattle, WA

5. John Henry Browne – Seattle, WA
6. Mark Kaplan – Los Angeles, CA
7. Josh King – Seattle, WA

8. Roni Deutch North Highlands, CA

9. Laura Wasser – Los Angeles, CA
10. Mark Britton Seattle, WA

Celebrities Gone Wild – at Avvo we get lots of users looking up the lawyer details of the Britney/Kevin marriage breakup (Laura Wasser, Mark Kaplan, Anne Kiley).

This week the news has been replete with celebrities and the law.

1. I Feel (not so) Good – James Brown Enterprises has been shortchanged by $7 million according to the estate’s attorney, Louis Levenson.

2. Pour on the Juice - OJ Simpson’s (former) co-defendants have turned on him contradicting his implausible testimony that he didn’t know they were armed.

3. White collar Celebrities – Tyco’s CEO-cum-felon Dennis Kozlowski and former Enron Chairman Ken Lay were both in the news. Kozlowski’s conviction was upheld by the New York appellate division and Houston Judge, Ewing Werlein ruled that the feds could continue to go after the $13 million they are seeking from Lay’s estate. Samuel Buffone, the attorney for the estate insists that “once all the facts are known, the court will determine that the government has no valid claim.”

4. Pacman - Tennessee Titan’s cornerback, Adam Jones takes a plea deal in the triple shooting outside a Las Vegas strip club. Jones’ attorney, Manny Arora encouraged Jones to take the deal in order to get him back into the NFL as quickly as possible.

5. Bonds used Steriods?????? A San Francisco grand jury, suspects Bonds may not have been telling the truth when he insisted that he didn’t know that he was taking steroids in 2001.

6. Who wants a job in the AG’s Office? Mark Filip does. Mukasey appointed the 41 year old judge as his Deputy AG.

Another vexing topic for the marketing folks at last week’s “Law Firm Marketing Strategies” conference was the wildly different and sometimes numbingly specific attorney advertising rules between states.

Advertising (or “commercial speech”) is protected by the 1st Amendment unless it is false or misleading. Inside that “false and misleading” lies the panopoly of attorney advertising regulation, running the gamut from the sensible (no guaranteeing a particular outsome) to the bizarre (no ambient noise in attorney TV spots unless it is classical music).

Besides the impact on interstate practice, the more specific state rules can be troublesome even for attorneys with a local practice, as the rules are tweaked often and don’t possess the flexibility to keep up with rapidly evolving methods of marketing.

At the end of the day, much of the regulation in this area seems to be a matter of trying to fit “taste” regulation into the narrower confines of false and misleading advertising. It’s a nice sentiment to try and preserve the dignity of the profession. However, it’s unconstitutional when overreaching, and probably pointless to boot: Tastes and standards change, and you can no more mandate a return to wearing dresses and fedoras than you can draw a box around what society finds acceptable in advertising messages.

Of course, communities can be remarkably self-policing if they think the envelope has been pushed too far. In the case of the Chicago billboard depicted above, community outrage – not bar regulation or enforcement – led to the billboard being pulled after less than a week.

Last week, I attended a conference in Washington D.C. sponsored by the ABA’s Law Practice Management section on “Law Firm Marketing Strategies.” Although conference attendees ran the gamut from solos to marketing directors for large New York firms, the general consensus seemed to be that the concept of law firm marketing has a long way to go.

Indeed it does. To the extent any of the firms presenting had a formalized marketing plan, complete with analysis of the return being generated by marketing spend, these efforts are certainly in their earliest stages. Even amongst the most forward-looking of these firms, there remained a strongly conservative streak, with outmoded and expensive forms of marketing being retained because of lawyer familiarity with them, despite the lack of any corresponding payback.

Nonetheless, it was fascinating to hear some of the marketing tactics attorneys particularly small firm and solo practitioners are using to grow their practices. One recurring theme is publishing: