Avvo has a new Legal Community Manager, and her name is Shalini Gujavarty. Shalini and I have two things in common: She is both a lawyer and an ex-Expedian. However, Shalini and I never worked together at Expedia — she was in the supplier relations group being an account manager rather than a lawyer.

Shalini is also taking over the Avvo blog. You will still see Conrad and me posting fairly regularly; but I have been managing the blog for the last couple of months and I was doing it poorly. I was deleting comments, taking too long to get them posted, etc., etc. Hopefully Shalini will be able to give the blog the attention it needs.

Not surprisingly, I am very excited to have Shalini on the Avvo team. Here she is in her own words:

I am originally from New York and began my career as a public interest lawyer working with battered immigrant women. Since relocating to Seattle in 2000, I have worked as a business attorney – working initially in business immigration and then in drafting and reviewing employment agreements, supplier contracts and licensing agreements. As the new Legal Community Manager at Avvo, I will focus on building and developing relationships with lawyers both here in Washington and across the United States. More about me here and please email me with feedback on the site or the blog at shalini@avvo.com.

Welcome Shalini!

Mark

I’m proud to announce that Avvo is powering Washington CEO’s first annual “Top Lawyers” issue. Washington CEO is Washington’s top business magazine, and this issue (their June issue) will hit newsstands at the end of this month. You can see the WA CEO press release here.

It is gratifying to have a top-notch publication like Washington CEO partnering with us. Even though we are young, the editorial staff at WA CEO intuitively understood the value of the Avvo Rating, and all of the other great information and guidance we assemble for consumers. We share the mission of helping Washington’s businesspeople choose the right lawyer.

A big thanks to the Avvo and Washington CEO teams that helped bring this to fruition. I look forward to hearing all of your compliments and complaints later this month.

Be well.

Mark

Well, we started April by launching Avvo in Massachusetts and Florida. As things have calmed down a bit, everyone at Avvo looked at each other and said, “That was fun . . . let’s do it again!” So, to properly bookend April, we are launching today in the mighty states of Oregon and Colorado. You can find the press release here.

What do these two fine western states have in common? Well, outside of the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, very little. But our crack data team was able to assemble each state so quickly, we thought we might as well launch them together.

OR and CO lawyers: If you are tracking Avvo, this may sound repetitive. However, please send us any suggestions you have regarding our site. One of the best ways for us to improve is by listening to you - the lawyers who use the site everyday. Good, bad or neutral, our suggestion box is wide open. My email is mb@avvo.com.

Buffaloes, Ducks and Beavers . . . Oh my!

Mark

Another great day for Avvo: Today we launched “About Me,” a new tab on the Avvo Profile that allows lawyers to add pictures, video and just about anything else that suits their fancy. To see my “About Me” tab, click here.

Why the new tab? A number of lawyers told us that their personal story, which is often relevant to their practice, is not sufficiently told by the Avvo Profile’s structured fields. Trying to remedy this was tough because everyone’s personal story is different. So we decided to abondon structure and make “About Me” a free-form forum. Whether you want to promote your zest for rock-climbing, speak to your involvement in your church, or profess your love for the duckbilled platypus, “About Me” is for you.

Another request from the lawyer community has been an Avvo page for photos and videos. Many lawyers have impressive advertisements or videos relating to big cases they want to share. Others want to show photos of their offices, staff, families, cats and so on. Well, my fellow lawyers, pine no more — you can add an unlimited number of photos and videos to your “About Me” tab, and you don’t even need to upload them to the Avvo server. You can link to your videos on YouTube or anyplace else, and for photos you have the option of uploading or linking to them. It is almost too easy.

So, lawyers, be free . . . upload as much content as you like to your “About Me” tab as often as you like. Tell us (and your prospective clients) what really makes you tick. And, if you have suggestions on how to improve “About Me,” please let us know. As with all things Avvo, we will forever continue to refine this feature.

I am reminded of the old joke, “Enough about me, what do YOU think about me.”

Mark

One of the hazards of launching in new states is that we have to return, once again, to the bottom of the learning curve. I recently saw a Florida news article reporting that Avvo has Abraham Lincoln and other dead lawyers in its database. And, once again, the implication of the latest Uncle Abe sighting was that the Avvo system is somehow flawed.

I officially have dead lawyer fatigue. Not enough to remove dead lawyers from the Avvo database, mind you; but rather, just enough to take the time to offer these four simple facts in an attempt to rejuvenate myself:

Fact #1:
Avvo has EVERY deceased lawyer in its database in the states we currently cover.

Fact #2:
Consumers will NOT see a dead lawyer in their search results or anywhere else on the site UNLESS they search for the dead lawyer by name.*

Fact #3:
Having dead lawyers in our system is NOT a flaw in our system.

Fact #4:
Having dead lawyers in our system is REALLY cool.

*Click here to see Avvo’s disclosure on the site in this regard. The disclosure is also on every dead lawyers profile page.

Oddly I feel better already; but allow me to offer some additional color around these facts:

Avvo is building one of the largest lawyer databases in the country. Our power is in the breadth and depth of our database, including the fact that our database includes EVERY person that has ever been licensed as a lawyer in a given state, whether that person is dead or alive. That is cool.

Why is it cool? Because whatever your research assignment may be regarding licensed lawyers, you can find it on Avvo. Wondering whether your disbarred lawyer has been reinstated? Check Avvo. Wondering why your uncle stopped practicing law in 1975? Check Avvo. Wondering when Richard Nixon was licensed to practice law? Check Avvo.

At Avvo, it is not our mission to judge what information should be available to consumers. To the contrary, it is our mission to offer as much information and guidance to consumers as possible. Dead lawyers means a darn big database, and we at Avvo are very proud of it.

One closing note here: If a bar does not tell us someone is dead, there is really no way for us to know that the lawyer is truly dead. Sadly, a start-up budget does not contemplate a forensics team. Still, on occasion, we will get a call or email informing us that a dead attorney still has an Avvo Rating. Our general response is that they (or, even better, the lawyer’s family) should let the bar know so that the bar can update their records. Prudently, in my opinion, Avvo relies on the bars to tell us who is in fact dead or alive.

Hopefully this will lay to rest (every pun intended) any confusion about Avvo displaying dead lawyers.

Mark

Sometime in the summer of 2006, I got a mysterious message from one Ken Moscaret. He said, “Hey Mark, my name is Ken Moscaret. I am a lawyer, fee expert, and I am pretty sure I know what you guys are up to. I suspect it is a Zillow-like model for lawyers, where you bring a lot of information together regarding lawyers. I think it is a great idea and I would like to chat with you about some of my own.”

While I may not recall the message exactly, I do recall that it made me smile because (a) we were still in stealth mode, and (b) this guy certainly knew what he was talking about. So, I looked him up on the Internet and found this blurb:

Ken Moscaret, Esq., is a leading expert witness on attorney’s fees and litigation management, whose clients include big corporations, public entities, and Top 250 U.S. law firms. Mr. Moscaret testified as an expert witness in federal court in 2008 regarding $700 million in attorney’s fees in the Enron securities class action litigation in Houston.

Impressive. I decided to give him a call.

After becoming painfully acquainted with each other’s voicemail, Ken and I finally shared a long phone call where Ken offered a number of interesting ideas regarding new business models in the legal industry and where we might take Avvo. We continued to keep in touch over the next year and a half, with Ken consistently offering interesting ideas about opportunities in the legal marketplace.

Well, one of those ideas is now reality in form of a new blog penned by Ken called myLawCoach. Flatteringly, Ken talks about myLawCoach as a consumer-centric, informational resource that picks up where Avvo leaves off. In other words, once you have researched your issue and selected your lawyer, myLawCoach helps you manage your relationship with the lawyer. The site is set up as a number of question and answer, plain-English tutorials. Topics include things like attorney billing rules, costs of different phases of a case and explanations of different parts of the legal process.

Now, I tip my hat to any site with a sincere mission of helping consumers better understand the legal industry. However, Ken’s idea of holding their hand through the litigation process is truly unique. Yes, it will take Ken some time to build up enough guides to cover a broad swath of the almost-infinite number of issues that can arise in litigation, but he is off to a great start. Currently, many of the guides are cost focused – but, hey, that’s the guy’s greatest area of expertise, and geez I found cost issues to be perplexing even as a General Counsel.

So, Ken, kudos to you and myLawCoach. Congratulations on launching this novel site, and I wish you luck on continuing to build it out.

Mark

p.s. Once you have read every one of Ken’s myLawCoach posts, check out his eloquent prose in this article published in the Daily Journal this week. While I would have written this post even without this article, it only reinforces for me how much Ken and I see eye to eye.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Avvo has expanded into the mighty states of Florida and Massachusetts. Here is the press release.

I have been eagerly awaiting congratulatory phone calls from both Ted Kennedy and Jeb Bush (heck, they might even be on spring break together right now). Maybe they are waiting until they have a little more time to chat after dinner.

In their absence, I want to thank Bob Ambrogi and Kevin O’Keefe for their supportive posts regarding Avvo and our launches. It means a lot to us to have these blogging heavyweights appreciate what we are doing.

MA and FL lawyers: As I said when we initially launched last June, please send us any suggestions you have regarding our site. One of the best ways for us to improve is by listening to you - the lawyers who use the site everyday. Good, bad or neutral, our suggestion box is wide open. You talk – we listen. That has been our promise from day one. My email is mb@avvo.com.

Bringing red and blue states together . . .

Mark Britton
CEO, Avvo

It has to be a subsection of Murphy’s law that Avvo’s biggest state controversy to date is resolved when our general counsel (who has been driving the whole thing) is on vacation. Josh, I hope you are enjoying the beach while I field your press calls.

Anyway, the big news is that New Jersey has graciously turned over to us the attorney records that we have been seeking for some time. There is not much to say here other than “thank you” to the New Jersey Supreme Court. As it turns out, as I hoped for here, we truly are of like mind in helping consumers get the information and guidance they need to choose the right lawyer.

Notwithstanding the resolution of this matter, you will see that I still posted Josh’s latest installment. It would be wrong for all of our readers to miss the middle part of our New Jersey odyssey. Also, here is the AP’s coverage of the story.

Onward!

Mark

Attorney Fred Korkosz of Albany, New York, offered some interesting comments yesterday to my post entitled, “Defending Avvo’s Right to Provide Information and Guidance to Consumers.” The problem is that my post is 9 months old and Frank’s comments were buried under 56 others. So, I wanted to republish Frank’s thoughts here, both to give them a better forum and to publicly thank Frank for his support.

I am an attorney who actually received a fairly high rating from AVVO. I think some points need to be considered.

1. Public disciplinary records of attorneys are just that; public. The fact that AVVO has data mined this information and organized it in an easy-to-access manner should offend no one. It simply makes it easier for potential clients to do the research that they should do but otherwise might not. Not all disciplinary actions necessarily reflect on how attorneys will represent their clients; but the information should be available and considred by potential clients.

2. Since the amount of control that may be exercised by attorneys over their listings is limited, the concerns about advertising are somewhat less compelling than they would be if attorneys could anonymously make postings that boost their ratings.

3. It is true that no ratings systems is a perfect way to evaluate how an attorney will perform. However the existing ratings systems (i.e. Martindale-Hubbel, which has provided AV ratings for a few years) are not necessarily any better than AVVOs system; although the MH system does not really provide for the negative information that AVVO does, it is also voluntary on the attorneys’ part to participate. I do not know how some of the “best attorneys” publications operate, in particular, whether or not they are revenue based. It appears that AVVO is seeking to base some of its ratings on public performance records. That, of course can be difficult; some attorneys, for example, assigned criminal defense attorneys and some immigration attorneys may only appear in reported cases that were hopeless to begin with; if they were sucsessful, the case may never have made it up to the level where a decision was reported. I can certainly appreciate the sentiments of attorneys who may be in that situation, but I believe that the AVVO system is better than boards that allow anonymous postings about attorneys as the only indication of performance; those can be skewed by attorneys themselves building themselves up, a few disgruntled and irrational clients (who typically would be the most inclined to make posts!), and possibly even competitors.

-Fred Korkosz

Well said. Thanks again Frank!

Mark

Always being up for a good chuckle, I had to share what has to be the quote of the month.

I was just chatting with a friend who is a partner in a large law firm. On a merger deal this summer (he was representing the buyer), a partner from Skadden angrily told him that he was a “pathetic little mouthpiece doing the work of the devil.”

Beautiful.

Only in heated transactions (or everyday litigation) does such poetry arise. If anyone has any similarly eloquent, lawyer-generated prose, please send it along.

Mark