In September, we released the Avvo Badge, which allows a lawyer to easily display his or her Avvo Rating on their own website for free. To display the Badge, simply visit your Avvo Profile, click on “edit your profile” and you will see the Badge right under the orange “edit your profile” box. Click on “Display this Avvo Rating on Your Website” and we will walk you through the steps for getting the Badge on your site.

It has been gratifying to watch the different Avvo Badges propagate through the World Wide Web. I have blogged previously about the different Badges popping up. Still, leave it to Seattle’s Stanislaw Ashbaugh to turn the Avvo Badge into a firm-wide opportunity.

Stanislaw Ashbaugh is an entrepreneurial, midsized firm with the great motto “Law as Results.” This motto reflects their philosophy that talk is cheap and results they deliver for clients are all that matter. Acting on this philosophy (rather than just talking about it), every Stanislaw Ashbaugh lawyer has claimed his or her Avvo Profile and put the Avvo Badge on each lawyer’s profile within the Stanislaw Ashbaugh website. Here is a great shot of David Ashbaugh’s (one of the firm’s founders) profile with the Avvo Badge.

In the words of Joe Campos, the Stanislaw Ashbaugh partner spearheading their marketing efforts, “We’re a different firm and we believe that the more light that is shown on our firm, the more successful we will continue to be. That is the whole idea behind “Law as Results.” Wow. How great.

To be clear, Avvo is not paying Stanislaw Ashbaugh in any way or vice versa. There is no agreement regarding publicity, marketing or anything else between the two of us. This is a simple story of an entrepreneurial law firm embracing the idea of consumers having more information, rather than less. I am impressed and humbled all at the same time.

Stanislaw Ashbaugh, I take my hat off to every one of you. Keep up the great work. May your commitment to results and transparency continue your firm’s success. Thank you for supporting Avvo and joining us in bringing true innovation to the legal marketplace.

Law as Results . . .

Mark

The title of this post speaks to three significant trends in information sharing that I often speak to both inside and outside Avvo. I wanted to highlight these trends because I see them accelerating to usher in a new digital era in the legal marketplace and beyond.

The first trend is the digitization movement. Today, information is being created in or converted to digital form at an unprecedented rate. Public records have been a big part of this movement, with libraries, courts and the National Archives, just to name a few, aggressively converting their paper records to digital form. We especially see this trend in the state bars, with whom we interact quite regularly. Those states that do not offer attorney licensing records in digital form today typically promise that they will be available in a matter of months. You can see part of this evolution in articles.

The second trend in information sharing is a rising consumer expectation to receive and process information in digital form. If someone wants to find the highest rated law schools in the country, they don’t want to take a trip down to the public library; they want to “google” for whatever reputable data points they can find from their desktop (the fact that “google” is now a verb in the American lexicon only reinforces this point). This expectation is driven by, but also drives, the aforementioned digitization movement: As more information comes online, consumers become more accustomed to finding everything they need via the Internet and its Worldwide Web of information. At the same time, organizations are lured into meeting this expectation in order to remain competitive, relevant and/or responsive.

The third trend is a growing belief that information should be free. Whether you like the idea or not, credit again goes to Google on this one. By introducing a galactically successful free website that makes its money from advertisers rather than the consumers of its information, Google sparked a belief (if not a whole new religion) that information should be free. And the legal marketplace is not immune from this trend. Yes, Avvo is doing its part by offering free ratings and profiles for every lawyer, but take a look at this recent announcement by Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. In short, they are releasing a free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be usable by anyone for any purpose. Wow. Blogger Bob Ambrogi has excellent summary of the announcement.

Digital. Everywhere. Free. It’s a brave new world. Are your ready for it?

Mark

The Nixon Peabody firm has appointed a “Chief Sustainability Officer.” The newly-minted “CSO” is a partner (Carolyn Kaplan) who will spend a quarter of her time, if not tilting at windmills, at least advocating their use as an alternative source of energy.

While I wouldn’t expect to see many more CSOs popping up, we do see quite a few law firm CEOs and COOs. While these are familiar roles in business, they are a bit of a departure for law firms, which have traditionally been run by managing partners (moonlighting on top of their legal jobs) or, in larger firms, lawyers stepping away from billing clients to run the enterprise full-time. Indeed, Avvo Advisory Board member Robert Hirshon serves as COO for the Stoel Rives law firm.

While the National Law Journal (subscription req’d) recently ran a piece on how law firm “CEOs” should be compensated (consensus: more like other senior rainmaking partners; less like the leaders of, say, Goldman Sachs), what about firms that have looked beyond their own ranks to find seasoned business professionals to run their operations? While non-lawyer law firm CEOs may be rare-to-non-existant, there seems to be an increasing awareness of the value of having someone with deep operational/finance expertise fill the COO role.

At last month’s ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies conference, I met a number of non-lawyer COOs, all of whom seemed vested with considerable authority in the management of their firms’ operations. It hardly seems surprising that firms would conclude that their daily operations may be better guided by someone who has actually run a business, division or association. While at the conference, I was regaled with numerous stories of new COOs inheriting antiquated or unkempt business systems that had been run by attorneys with the best of intentions but little operational experience. But my anecdotal experience aside, I expect it is still more the exception than the rule for non-lawyers to fill senior law firm operations roles. We’d love to hear more examples, as well as learn more about how non-lawyers are navigating their law firm heirarchies and how their initiatives may differ from those a lawyer COO would pursue. Post a comment or send e-mail to josh@avvo.com.

I thought I’d do a recap of all of 2007 to highlight those top 20 lawyers who have had the most unique user visits to their profile since we launched on June 5th.

1. Laura Wasser Los Angeles, CA
2. Mark Vincent Kaplan Los Angeles, CA
3. John Henry Browne Seattle, WA
4. Roni Deutch North Highlands, CA

5. Briteney Mercer Seattle, WA

6. Anne Kiley Los Angeles, CA
7. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Washington, DC
8. Mark Britton Seattle, WA

9. Michael Clark Houston, TX

10. Donald Heyrich Seattle, WA

11. Robert Bennett Houston, TX

12. Sorrell Trope Los Angeles, CA
13. Blair Berk Los Angeles, CA
14. Elizabeth Powell Tacoma, WA

15. Paul Clement Washington, DC
16. Linda Callahan Seattle, WA

17. Sharon Chirichillo Olympia, WA

18. Shawn Holley Santa Monica, CA
19. Steve Berman Seattle, WA

20. Richard Ackerman Temecula, CA

1. Mark Vincent Kaplan Los Angeles, CA
2. Alan Morrison Washington, DC
3. Laura Wasser Los Angeles, CA
4. Sorrell Trope Los Angeles, CA
5. Jay Gardner Chicago, IL. This attorney joined the Lawyer Hall of Shame last week for getting caught red handed by US Marine Sargent Michael McNulty in the act of keying McNulty’s car as a protest against the war. Kudos to the serviceman who showed restraint and merely called police.
6. Craig Kennedy Vancouver, WA

7. Roni Deutch North Highlands, CA

8. Blair Berk Los Angeles, CA
9. John Durham Cuthbert, GA. It is this deputy US attorney’s unhappy job to lead the probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes.
10. Lawrence Rogak Oceanside, NY

In the December 24th edition of the Wall Street Journal and the December 28th edition of the Seattle Times, the editorial staff of each paper take their turns praising Avvo. Wow, and I didn’t even have either of those on my Santa Wish List. You can read each of the editorials here:

What is interesting is the ruckus that these editorials have caused in the legal blogosphere. Take a look at Kevin O’Keefe’s blog post “Avvo Bashing Foolishness” for a taste. Thanks to Kevin and others for continuing to be a rational voice in all of this.

Thanks also to the Wall Street Journal and Seattle Times Editorial staffs for their support. Having these top-notch publications go to bat for us is truly gratifying.

Happy New Year.

Mark