Avvo Board Member Brad Silverberg forwarded me this post today, and it is certainly interesting. SEO – specifically Google SEO – is turning the search/content industry on its head these days, and Alex Bosworth even argues that it is destroying the web. He says:

Today, everyone searches on Google. This means that you ought to be spending a lot of time thinking specifically about how to be placed highly and broadly on Google, if you would like Google to send millions of people to your site.

Unfortunately this means you need to do Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the worst thing ever invented. It’s destroying good web application development. Here’s why:

Alex forgot to mention that Google is also destroying the Yellow Pages . . .

It’s a digital age, my friends. And, yes, Google currently owns it. You can rage against the machine, but ultimately if you do not understand and optimize for it, you will let your revenue do the walking.

Mark

Here at Avvo, we often talk about the benefits of user-generated content (“UGC”) i.e., how there is tremendous wisdom in the masses. Here is an interesting CNN article on UGC potentially run amok on a website called JuicyCampus. According to the article:

JuicyCampus’ endless threads of anonymous innuendo have been a popular Web destination on the seven college campuses where the site launched last fall, including Duke, UCLA and Loyola Marymount. It recently expanded to 50 more, and many of the postings show they’ve been viewed hundreds and even thousands of times.

But JuicyCampus has proved so poisonous there are signs of a backlash.

In campus debates over Internet freedom, students normally take the side of openness and access. This time, however, student leaders, newspaper editorials and posters on the site are fighting back — with some even asking administrators to ban JuicyCampus. It’s a kind of plea to save the students, or at least their reputations, from themselves.

Ultimately, it is only for the consumers of sites like JuicyCampus to determine whether the site is valuable. However, my bet is that sites that do not have at least some bar for the quality of their UGC will collapse under their own weight. Only time will tell, but that is why at Avvo we have published guidelines for client reviews and make sure that a human reviews every client review before it is posted. Also, if an attorney disputes a review, we will moderate the dispute to ensure that the client stands by his/her review. Such quality control is expensive, but we think it is worth it for the long-term health of the Avvo marketplace.

Mark

An attorney recently forwarded us an email from Martindale Hubbell announcing a new feature: their Peer Review Ratings Icon. Seems like MH is again taking a page from the Avvo playbook: back in September, Avvo launched the Avvo Badge, which enables attorneys to display their dynamically updating Avvo Rating anywhere online. (Two months ago, Carolyn Elefant wrote a post on Legal Blog Watch called Martindale Follows Avvo’s Lead referencing MH’s adoption of limited client reviews.)

Avvo Badge vs. Peer Review Ratings Icon Faceoff . . . I’ll let you be the judge but remember these salient points:

-It costs $50 to be “considered” for Martindale’s A/V rating. Avvo charges you nothing.
-The Peer Review Ratings Icon is available “for the low cost of $200″ annually. Avvo charges you nothing.
-Most people think A/V is the closet in high school where they used to keep the overhead projectors. Most consumers understand a 1-10 scale.

To get the Avvo Rating on your site, simply navigate to your profile, click on “Display Avvo Rating on Your Website” and cut and paste.

1. Alani Golanksi, Brooklyn, NY

2. Robert S. Bennett, Houston, TX

3. Bruce E. H. Johnson, Seattle, WA

4. Roni Deutch, North Highlands, CA

5. Sharon Chirichillo, Olympia, WA

6. Mark Vincent Kaplan, Los Angeles, CA

7. Paul Friedman, Phoenix, AZ

8. Anne Campbell Kiley, Los Angeles, CA

9. Anthony Colleluori, Woodbury, NY

10. Laura Wasser, Los Angeles, CA

1. Now that you’ve been accused of using steroids, what are you going to do next?
Probably NOT go to Disneyland.
Steroid denier, Roger Clemens pulled out of his scheduled ESPN event at Disney World in Florida. He said in a statement, “I believe my current participation could be a distraction.” Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin said in a telephone interview, “It had nothing to do with his legal situation.”

2. Sylvester Stallone jokingly said that he didn’t want to be left out when it came to testifying at the upcoming trial of Anthony Pellicano. Prosecutor Daniel Saunders issued a list of 244 potential witnesses in the Pellicano case this week. Private investigator, Anthony Pelicano has been accused of illegally wiretapping phones in search of dirt to blackmail clients. The list is littered with all sorts of juicy Hollywood players, some of who are famous, some of who are lawyers. Attorney Bert Fields, of Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker, is at the top of the list, as well as Ricardo Cestero, who represents Tom Cruise (who hired Pellicano to allegedly bug Nicole Kidman’s phone). Other Greenberg Glusker lawyers on the list are: David Moriarty, Jill Cossman, and Chuck Shephard. Divorce lawyer Dennis Wasser who has represented Cruise and Speilberg, will also be called upon. Pellicano will represent himself in trial.

3. Restrain yourself, Restaino. Back in 2005, Niagara Falls Judge Robert Restaino snapped when a cell phone rang in his court room. “Everyone is going to jail,” Restaino said. “Every single person is going to jail in this courtroom unless I get that instrument now. If anybody believes I’m kidding, ask some of the folks that have been here for a while. You are all going.” When no one owned up to the cell phone, Restaino ordered the group of 46 people into custody, and eventually jail for the afternoon. Now Restaino and his lawyer Terrence Connors are appealing the decision to New York’s high court to remove him from office.

4. John McCain has hired high-profile lawyer Robert S. Bennett (who represented Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinski investigation) to help him out of a jam. It is suggested that McCain is linked romantically with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman. McCain today said the story is “not true” and that Iseman is simply a friend.

5. Gene Simmons’ lawyer Barry Mallen has started sending out cease and desist letters regarding

When we launched Avvo last June, I think it’s fair to say that we were greeted with a mixed reaction from the legal community. Even some solo practitioners — for whom Avvo’s free online profiles seemed a perfect fit took issue with the new approach we were bringing to the industry.

How things change in just a few short months.

Today we are proud to announce that Davis Wright Tremaine, one of the top law firms in Seattle, has claimed the Avvo Profiles of all 225 lawyers in their Seattle and Bellevue offices. As much as this is an endorsement of Avvo, I think it also signals a recognition within the legal industry that the Internet is changing the way firms must conduct their business. A listing in Martindale Hubbell or the Yellow Pages just won’t cut it anymore even for large law firms that rely largely on referrals for new clients.

Davis Wright Tremaine claimed their profiles using our Firm Claim feature, which makes it easy for an individual within a firm to claim and if they choose to, maintain — the Avvo Profiles for every lawyer in the firm. While Davis Wright Tremaine is the largest firm to date to utilize Firm Claim, 17 firms have done so to date and more are in process (see a partial list below).

For more information on Firm Claim, check our the Firm Claim page or email us at customercare@avvo.com

Finally, many thanks to the forward-looking attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine, and to Mark Usellis, their Director of Marketing and Business Development, for demonstrating their support of Avvo and consumers.

Partial List of Firms Utilizing Firm Claim
Davis Wright Tremaine
Ryan, Swanson & Cleveland
Stanislaw Ashbaugh
Savitt & Bruce
Wallin & Klarich
TroyGould
Wisselman, Harounian & Associates
Ziff, Weiermiller, Hayden & Mustico
HoganWillig
Amer Cunningham
Adduci, Mastriani, & Schaumberg
Lipman & Wolf

Does a picture in Avvo increase the likelihood that consumers will click through to a profile from an Avvo search results page? A review of a week’s worth of data on the search results page for Seattle Criminal Defense Lawyers suggests uploading a picture matters. A lot.

As I’m writing this, the page above lists 7 lawyers with pictures, 3 without. All of them have claimed their profile and the Avvo Ratings range between 9.6 and 10.0. Those profiles with pictures were 10 times more likely to be clicked on than those without.

Unfortunately less than 1 in 4 attorneys who claim their profile add a picture. So get those pictures uploaded.

1. Alani Golanksi, Brooklyn, NY

2. Laura Wasser Los Angeles, CA
3. Roni Deutch North Highlands, CA

4. Moses Lebovits Los Angeles, CA (Moses Lebovits is representing John Ritter’s family in the medical malpractice lawsuit against Provide St. Joseph Medical Center.)
5. Melissa Schmelzer Palo Alto, CA
6. Elizabeth Powell Tacoma, WA

7. Ronald Coleman New York, NY (Last week, New York Lawyer, Ron Coleman posted in his blog Likelihood of Success about his questionably perfect Avvo Rating.)

8. Brian Passante Macon, GA

9. Don Heyrich Seattle, WA

10. Sharon Chirichillo Olympia, WA

While I was in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting the founders of Fastcase, Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal. They have impressively built a formidable competitor to Lexis/Nexis on a shoestring budget. I tip my hat to their entrepreneurial spirit.

Consistent with my “Digital, Everywhere, Free” mantra, Fastcase has now launched the Public Library of Law. Ed Walters sent out the following announcement email yesterday:

One of the joys of disruptive technology is that it occasionally allows you to disrupt things. In that spirit, I’m pleased to introduce the Public Library of Law, which debuts today at www.plol.org. PLoL is the world’s largest free law library, with more than 7,100 miles of text in the cases alone.

PLoL works hand in hand with our (much larger) subscription library at Fastcase, which features power research tools as good or better than any in the world. PLoL has its virtues as well — it is ad supported and easy to use, and should be a great starting place to find law on the Web. It’s designed to be an easy way to look up cases or to do basic research, and I hope you’ll take a minute to check it out.

True, Justia has been generously been offering federal case law for free for some time; but PLoL really opens things up by also offering cases from all 50 states (back to 1997), federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states, etc.

It will be interesting to watch PLoL develop . . .

Mark

Lawyer and blogger Ron Coleman suggested in a post today that we need to tweak the Avvo Rating algorithm because his Avvo Rating is too HIGH! Wow, I didn’t see that one coming. As I mention on Ron’s blog, we get a lot of calls (and sometimes lawsuits) from lawyers questioning the soundness of the Avvo Rating because, well, their Avvo Rating is too low. But NO ONE has ever called to say that their Avvo Rating is too high; and hence the title of this post.

To support the idea that his Rating is too high, Ron says:

Avvo needs to be tweaked . . . [b]ecause I know what the real, true, elite in the profession looks like. The people who are utterly focused, utterly relentless, utterly perfect. Epitomes of preparation, patience and perspicacity. And I’m not they.”

What’s interesting is that I look at Ron’s Avvo Profile and he has an impressive resume. Maybe Ron just needs some love. Here’s the link to contact him through Avvo. Maybe you could just drop him a note and let him know that you think he’s “Superb.”

Mark