New Martindale Ratings – Imitation is the Best Form of Flattery
At the end of last week, Martindale announced that they had revamped their age-old “AV®” rating system . According to Martindale’s Ralph Calistri, “The needs of people, both lawyers and consumers, who evaluate legal services, have evolved, and the demand for more comprehensive and detailed lawyer ratings has emerged.”
What Ralph didn’t mention is that Martindale’s new ratings look just like Avvo’s. Well, not exactly, which I will discuss in a moment; but Martindale has decided that it is a good time to offer these very Avvo-like elements to its ratings:
• Ratings based on a 40-point scale, from 1.0 to 5.0. Avvo rates on a 90 point scale from 1.0 to 10.0.
• Subratings based on “Legal Knowledge,” “Analytical Capabilities,” etc. Avvo does the same, citing a lawyer’s experience, industry recognition and professional conduct.
• Discloses whether lawyer “Meets Very High Criteria of General Ethical Standards.” Avvo discloses all disciplinary history (and sometimes gets sued because of it).
I think this is a very big and welcome step forward for Martindale. They have had a closed, “old-boys” rating system for so long that more transparency is always better. And, the fact that they are trying to follow Avvo so closely is admirable; however, is it too much for me to ask for a bit more?
My biggest criticism of the new Martindale rating system is that it is still not transparent enough. First, while they say they will rate lawyers as low as 1.0, they also say that lawyers who are currently in their lowest category (“C/V”) will start at a 2.9 rating. Huh? So, in reality, the new Martindale rating system only goes from 2.9 to 5.0. Better than their former three-point scale, but not by much.
Second, while Martindale has started talking about “ethical standards,” they are not disclosing the elements of any lawyer discipline; and misconduct does not appear to affect the Martindale rating. For their rating to be truly legitimate, Martindale needs to detail discipline and have it affect the rating.
Third, it appears that Martindale is still only rating those lawyers that pay them money. Can Martindale really offer legitimate ratings if they are only displaying paying lawyers? No wonder the scale starts at 2.9. Who is going to pay to be a 1.0? This is consistent with Martindale’s Avvo-like move of last year where they started displaying client reviews in their directory. The rub was that they let the lawyer *hand-pick* whether reviews were displayed, thus gutting the objective value of their client reviews.
Finally, Martindale announced that they will roll-out their new rating system over the next 10 years. That seems like *ahem* a long time. Ten years ago, Google was an edgy alternative to Alta Vista, “The West Wing” debuted on television and Boris Yeltsin was still the President of Russia. Ten Years? Really?
Dear Martindale, as a 17-year lawyer, I respect so much of what you do. We even include the Martindale ratings as a factor in the Avvo Rating. But the transparency of Web 2.0 is here and wading in up to your ankles over a ten year period is not going to get you far. Now is the time to get into the deep-end – won’t you join us?
Mark
September 14th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Mark,
Thanks for your thoughts on the changes to our Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings. I am excited about these changes, which are a result of many discussions with the market.
I just wanted to take a few minutes to clarify a few things you mentioned.
As you know AV and BV is pretty well understood by the legal market; we hope the addition of a numeric makes the ratings more understandable and familiar to the general consumer like me. Of course, numeric ratings weren’t created by either of our companies, having been around in other services for years. Leveraging this into the legal sphere is a great opportunity.
Our General Ethical Standards rating has always been the core component of our ratings program, along with Legal Ability. We find that peers take their profession extremely seriously and have often rated lawyers as unethical, even before any disciplinary actions were in place. If we are informed of a disciplinary action, we take immediate steps to investigate, and if the action is warranted, we will drop their rating. Is it our job to showcase the actual disciplinary action? You could argue the case on both sides, and, at the end of the day, a user needs to know who the right lawyer is to hire or refer work to, and the rating is one of many key criteria we provide to inform that decision.
For existing CV rated lawyers, we have transitioned them to Rated 2.9. All lawyers will be reviewed on the 1.0-5.0 scale in the changed program, including all existing AV, BV and CV.
Pay for play? No way. We rate all lawyers on our database, subscribers and non-subscribers. They can use their rating in their own marketing purposes, even if they choose not pay to display their rating on our sites. They do not pay to be rated.
Sure, 10 years is a long time. Our ratings process is 100 percent reliant on the participation of the legal community, and even with a million lawyers in our database, it will take time for every lawyer in our system to be reviewed in the changed program. Over the next few years as we transition, we will be continuing the conversations with the legal community to learn from them and improve the program as needed.
Finally, thanks again for your feedback. We look forward to the continued dialogue in our shared objectives in supporting our users to find the right lawyer to meet their needs.
Eslin
Director, Product Management, Client and Peer Review Ratings
September 14th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Mark, thanks for providing this forum. I’m sure the dialogue is just beginning. Eslin, when one clicks on your name at the top of your comment, one is linked to a LexisNexis website and not to a blog, Twitter account, or anything unique to you. Is that a reflection of some corporate reserve about adopting a Web 2.0-type of transparency, or am I reading too much into that choice?
September 15th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
William, thanks for your feedback. Here’s my personal profile: http://twitter.com/eslinj. In my rush to reply, just neglected to update, my bad. In addition, love to hear your thoughts about the actual content in my comments above, too. Thanks again.
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:13 am
Martindale does not require the attorney to advertise to be rated. However, you DO have to ask them to re-rate you if you aren’t part of their advertising.
Martindale’s rating system IS different. It sends out emails to lawyers in the community if they know the email address. This is good in that it gets your rating requests to a large number of lawyers in your community at once – something Avvo doesn’t do.
One problem with Martindale, for a subset of attorneys, is that the automatic mailings go out to the attorney’s community only. Those of us that work in sub-specialties on a state-wide level are well known only to the attorneys in that subspecialty, so Martindale can’t ask those attorneys for reviews unless the attorney tells Martindale about those people to ask for a rating. Martindale also gives an advantage to big firm attorneys, who seem to rate each other more highly than small firm attorneys. Greater numbers win.
Avvo’s fault is that it relies very heavily on other attorneys’ reviews to raise your ratings – and I don’t think Avvo intended marketing ability to indicate a great attorney, but that is the way it seems to me. It’s a similar problem to Martindale, that of friends rating friends, but at least Martindale doesn’t let “baby attorneys” get top ratings.
In my opinion, a “baby attorney” is NEVER a 10.0 – I don’t care who he is. When I see a 6 year attorney from some middling law school rated a 10, and a 35 year attorney from Stanford/Harvard who I know is the best in the business, I take the Avvo ratings system a little less seriously. Martindale has it right on valuing experience – you can only reach CV at 5 years, BV at 10 years and AV at 20 years. I also like that no rating is given by Martindale if the attorney doesn’t rate a V for very ethical – those people shouldn’t even be on the map. “Ethical” comprises more than “no discipline” and Avvo doesn’t recognize that in its rating system.
I’ll use both rating systems – but I want Martindale to update their email addresses, and send snail mail to my subspecialty group, so a complete rating can be done.
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:16 am
One more thing I must clarify – Martindale doesn’t charge you to be rated, BUT it DOES charge you $59 to DISPLAY your rating. What’s the point of being rated if it isn’t displayed?