Avvo Launches Avvo Answers and Track Record Woohoo!
It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of two new Avvo features: Avvo Answers and Track Record. Both of these features deliver on Avvo’s promise to provide free information and guidance to consumers to help them choose the right lawyer, while also enabling lawyers to set themselves apart from other attorneys and attract new clients. Allow me to say a word or two about each of these new features.
In its simplest form, Avvo Answers is a free legal questions-and-answers forum that allows consumers to ask specific legal questions and lawyers to answer them. I call Avvo Answers our “hat trick” (think hockey rather than magic . . .) because it offers consumers personalized answers to their specific legal questions, while at the same time allowing lawyers to both help consumers and demonstrate their legal expertise to potential clients. Three victories for the legal marketplace that are pretty cool.
Possibly even cooler is that, with Avvo Answers, Avvo is the only website where consumers can see not only the answer to their question, but also how the Avvo community rates each answer. Users can also assess the qualifications of every lawyer answering questions through the lawyer’s Avvo Profile, which includes the lawyer’s Avvo Rating, client ratings, peer endorsements, disciplinary history, etc., etc.
One neat thing about Avvo Answers is that non-lawyers can also answer questions. This allows consumers to share their own experiences with others struggling with similar issues. If someone comes to Avvo and asks, “I am getting ready to file for divorce and am not sure what to do,” a consumer that has been through their own divorce may be able to offer some unique advice and support that helps the questioner through his or her ordeal. Each answer identifies whether it was provided by a lawyer or non-lawyer.
See the hundreds thousand of legal questions that have already been asked and answered
In the middle of the night roughly four months ago, one of our developers, Justin Chan emailed me with his epiphany that is now Track Record. One of the things I love about working at Avvo is that all of our employers are constantly thinking about how we can improve legal marketplace.
Avvo’s Track Record provides a free and easy way for lawyers to showcase their best work through cases and other matters posted to their Avvo profiles. Consumers tell us they want to know the experience a lawyer has with cases like theirs, and lawyers tell us that they would like a place in Avvo to list their cases and transactional work. Track record delivers on this but takes it a step further in that it enables any lawyer who worked on a case to identify co-counsel or opposing counsel of the same case, providing both sides equal opportunity to express their own perspectives of the case. Over time, as more connections are built between lawyers and cases, Avvo users will be able to view an individual lawyer’s experience working with and against other lawyers.
A great examples of a lawyer already utilizing Avvo’s Track Record feature.
You won’t see that on Martindale Hubbell . . . at least not for another six months. 
Feedback
Once again, any feedback you have on Avvo Answers or Track Record, please send it my way. You can comment on this post or email me via my Avvo Profile (the email link is in the upper right hand corner of my profile). You talk, we listen. It has been our promise from the beginning.
Send us your questions, your answers and your huddled cases longing to be free . . .
Onward!
