During law school, a practicing lawyer told me that “Law is a jealous mistress.” I found this clever until I heard it another 100+ times from lawyers who were either shooting their “free” time or shooting mine. But with a couple of years practicing under my belt, I realized that “The Law” had nothing to with our collective pain – it was the jealous clients. Law was but a residence for my client concubine – a jealous lot that never wanted to know others existed and uncannily needed my attention most when I was in the arms of another.

I came to understand the stress of a philanderer. Every time I was satisfying the needs of one client, inevitably another would call needing an emotional rescue. When it rained it poured – a juggling act often requiring 2, 3, 4 flaming swords in the air at once. It was as if there was a Batman-like light in the sky, telling all clients to call their attorney. So many times, buried in work and lack of sleep, I sat looking at a ringing phone wondering whether I should pick it up. This wonderment was often accompanied by regret that I had yet to buy that cot for my office.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the idea of my clients calling. But too much of any good thing can be tough. And making things tougher was the jealous nature of the situation. Clients that have already paid you for hundreds of hours at hundreds per hour tend to be a bit possessive. You are theirs, and when their world is on fire, they have no interest in hearing about your other dalliances. In fact, they don’t even want to know they exist.

And lawyers perpetuate this jealousy by pretending – due to firm culture or intuition – that no other client exists. You pick up the phone and whisper sweet nothings because another beau is only a phone call away. And most likely that beau has called on your jealous mistress at least once in the last couple of months. The horror.

The result is a quartering of sorts. While trying to be the “one” for multiple clients, the lawyer is often pulled in so many directions that their demise is almost assured. In an attempt to keep the client, they often end up disappointing the client and losing them in whole or part.

Take a look at my most recent Avvocating article where I offer some pointers on how to communicate and ultimately keep your clients. No need to be quartered . . . just communicative.

Mark

It’s a good day today at Avvo. Why? Well, to start off, we have an amazing team – energetic, smart and committed to innovation. I feel honored just to have a desk among them. Next, we have the best product in the business – a product that has taken us from concept to market leader in just three years. And, finally, today DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners invested $10 million in our business. How neat. You can find the press release here.

We are humbled to have this kind of support from the investment community. However, it also turns up the heat. I remember when Expedia went public, an Amazon friend (who had gone public a couple of years before) said, “Why are you smiling? Now the real work starts.” And, I can’t help but feel that way today. We raised this money in order to continue and expand our success to date. However, to pursue the grand initiatives dancing in our heads while continuing to innovate in our existing products, we are looking at a new round of significant sweat equity.

Thank you to DAG’s John Caddedeu for making this round of financing move as quickly as it did. We don’t have a big team, so for any of us to be focusing on fundraising rather than running our business has its price. John’s reasonable and efficient process allowed us to keep every hand on the wheel.

Go Avvo.

Mark

I love to see lawyers get business through Avvo Answers. Here’s a great article from the Wisconsin Law Journal speaking to the power of Avvo Answers. This excerpt really says it all:

“[Lawyer Karyn T.] Missimer says that Avvo Answers has increased the number of visits to her Web site.

‘I’m my own Web master, for now, and I use Google Analytics to keep track of the hits on my Web site,’ she says. ‘I’ve found that, when I go through periods of time without answering many questions, the hits on my Web site go down.’

In addition, she estimates she gets about one new client per month that she can directly trace to an answer to a question posted on Avvo.

Eric T. Raskopf, of Eric T. Raskopf Attorney at Law in Oconomowoc, also answers an occasional Avvo question, though not nearly as frequently as Missimer. While he cannot say that a new client has told him, ‘I hired you because you answered a question on Avvo,’ a sizeable number have said, ‘I found you on Avvo.’”

And if that’s not enough to have you answering thousands of Avvo questions per week, take a look at this Avvo Profile. The lawyer, Kimberly Ann Kralowec, has answered only two questions on Avvo (at the time of posting); but already one of her questioners turned into a client. The questioner left a review saying:

“I found Ms. Kralowec on avvo.com when she responded to a question I posted. When I needed to actually get detailed legal advice, I called her because she is in the same city where I live. She agreed to make one phone call to the other side’s lawyer for a small contingency fee, then did way more than that.”

Reading this sort of stuff is so gratifying. May we continue to build products that achieve this level of goodness – wins for both consumers and lawyers.

Mark

I had the pleasure of visiting my motherland (aka “Montana” and/or “Big Sky Country”) last week. It was a family ski vacation in the Rocky Mountains where I figured the world of social media would be held at bay by the tactile pleasures of the trees, snow and rocks.

Wednesday night was my wife’s and my “date night” where we got a babysitter dined alone at one of our favorite Big Sky eateries, Bucks T-4. Long ago Bucks T-4 was a roadside bar that was known for its burgers, beers and raging parties. Today, it is a gourmet restaurant serving “Duck Two Ways” and “Pheasant – Hunter’s Style.” My how much Montana has changed in the last 30 years – but I digress.

At the end of this enjoyable meal of local Montana fare, I got the check and surveyed the damage. Right under the total, there was the following paragraph, “Did you enjoy your meal? Please review us at TripAdvisor.com or Yelp.com. Let others know about our great food and service.”

Wow.

I go all over the country prosthelytizing about how social media is permeating every element of local search – a category encompassing restaurants, lawyers and anything else you buy at a local level. But this simple restaurant receipt in the oxygen-depleted mountains of Montana says it all: Every – and I mean every – business is being touched by social media. You can ignore it at your peril, or you can learn to harness it like Bucks T-4 and many other web-savvy businesses. The reality is that client ratings and other user-generated content are in their infancy and to ignore them today is to cede your client base tomorrow. While it sounds dramatic, it is also reality.

The good news is that Avvo is here to help. This Thursday, I will be holding a seminar on social media marketing and blogging. You can register here. We already have 50+ people signed up and I would love to see you there. It’s a new world out there; but it can be your world.

Be Rated!

Mark

The National Law Journal published an interesting article in its December 14th issue, entitled “Is It Worth It.” The secondary caption sets up the article by saying, “A J.D. used to mean a first-class seat on the gravy train. Now? Not so much. Critics say law schools have a duty to warn.” Although a well-written, this article is only a wave in the sea of “end of lawyer glamour” articles that came out in 2009 (and will surely continue into 2010). We have even seen the New York Times jump on the bandwagon (“No Longer Their Golden Ticket”), although they made sure to tie-in the commercial appeal of ABC’s new lawyer show “The Deep End.”

For me, this feels like Groundhog Day. I came out of law school in 1992 when the market was horrible, simply horrible. New York law firms were laying off lawyers by the hundreds (I was in DC where, well, New York “woes” tend to run downhill) and over 50% of my fellow students joined me in taking the bar exam without a job. Every article I read about lawyers during this time spoke to how the Golden Days of the legal profession had come to an end and people like me were suckers for sinking the price of a small house into my legal education. It was all so depressing. I was debt-laden and possibly headed for the golden headset at the Burger King drive-through.

So, when I read any of these “End of Days” articles, it digs up all sorts of complex feelings; so allow me to get a couple of them on paper:

To start, the idea that law schools have a “duty to warn” is ludicrous. People going into law school are big kids; and, if all they are focused on is the money, I can’t think of a better money-related lesson than to not get the anticipated return on their law school investment. Law school has seldom been a “golden ticket” or guaranteed “first-class seat on the gravy train.” If you don’t understand that your early legal career will be determined by, among many other things, supply and demand, your class rank and how much you hustle, then I can’t feel sorry for you. Nothing, and I mean nothing, in life is guaranteed and to hold your legal income to a different standard is silly.

That being said, I don’t see law schools as an innocent bystander in all of this. If they have a duty, it is to give lawyers more tools in the event that that their legal income is less than expected. One area that law schools and bar associations fall woefully short is in helping lawyers become better businesspeople. Marketing for them is a still a dirty word and, even though a supermajority of lawyers will one day run their own legal businesses, there is nary a mention of these concepts in the law school curriculum or ongoing legal education. “We teach lawyers about the law” is common retort; but that is like teaching someone to eat, but failing to let them know that there are these cool things called forks and spoons.

During these difficult times, we encounter at Avvo lawyers that have no idea how to start building a legal practice. They have no clients, no money and no business understanding to help propel them to a higher station. Maybe they are just out of law school, maybe they were just dumped from their firm, maybe they are reentering the work force after a long absence. They can only eat with their hands, and as a consequence they cannot get a date with any potential client. I hope that in my life time I see classes in each law school year focused on the *business* of law. I hope that I see more state and local bars giving CLE credit for marketing- and business-related courses. I hope I see short-sighted state regulation of attorney marketing fade into the sunset. We can only hope.

Successful lawyers are successful businesspeople. Pass it on.

Mark

What a better way to start 2010 than launching nine new states!

I am proud to announce that Avvo has added Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont. The title of this post has an asterisk (*) because we have launched these states in a new way – enabling lawyers to create a profile rather than claim an existing one.

We are launching in this way, quite simply, because so many lawyers in these states have asked to have an Avvo profile. Moreover, people have asked thousands of questions in Avvo Answers in these states and, without a lawyer directory, few are able to help. And, while we might not be ready for a full-blown release in every state, we are happy (if not obligated) to get the Avvo tools in the hands of those that want and need them.

“Hold on,” you say! “I see thousands of profiles and ratings in the new states.” And you are correct. But Avvo didn’t put them there, at least not as part of launching these states. Those profiles are there because the lawyer already had an Avvo profile in another state (and we merged them together) or the lawyer has moved quickly and already claimed his or her Avvo profile in one of our new states.

If you do not have an Avvo profile in any state we cover, it is easy to create an Avvo profile by simply following this link. Not only is an Avvo profile FREE, it enables you to take full advantage of everything Avvo has to offer, including answering questions of potential clients and submitting Legal Guides to be viewed by thousands of potential clients.

It will be fun to watch these states grow from the ground up. From the seedling stage, here’s a peek at the lawyers already enjoying the benefits of Avvo (and, currently, the elbow-room) in each of our new states:

Alabama Lawyers

Alaska Lawyers

Hawaii Lawyers

Idaho Lawyers

Mississippi Lawyers

North Dakota Lawyers

Rhode Island Lawyers

Utah Lawyers

Vermont Lawyers

Stay tuned for new Avvo states coming your way soon!

Mark

Well, the end of 2009 is finally upon us. What a crazy, wonderful and busy year it has been for Avvo. A few highlights before we pack things up and head into 2010:

2009 was the year where Avvo’s “win-win” for consumers and lawyers really kicked-in. On the consumer side, we helped millions make better legal choices, whether it was getting them free legal advice in our legal guides and Avvo Answers or helping them choose the right lawyer in our industry-leading lawyer directory. Nothing was more gratifying than the letters and emails we received from everyday people telling us how Avvo helped them during an emotional time. Getting consumers the information and guidance they need to make informed legal decisions shouldn’t be so rare; but sadly it is, and on that front Avvo is happy to be the vanguard of today and the stalwart of tomorrow.

For lawyers, put simply, we delivered them a dump truck full of business in 2009. With Avvo becoming one the of most-trafficked legal directories this year and, in so doing, driving 150,000+ contacts for lawyers each month, we created a fire hose of demand for great lawyers. I often quote the noble words of Harold Goldner, a Pennsylvania Employment lawyer and Twitteraholic. Harold tweeted earlier this year, “I’m not yet convinced of what my LinkedIn profile can do. Twitter drives traffic to my blawg. Avvo generates business.” Amen brother. As we hear more and more lawyers echo Harold’s sentiments, it only reinforces our core theorem: I + G = B, where “I” and “G” are more Information and Guidance for consumers, and “B” is more Business for great lawyers.

Avvo also grew a lot this year in both product and personnel. For product growth, we added enough new lawyers to our directory in 2009 to bring our coverage to 90% (i.e., we now rate and profile 90% of the practicing lawyers in the United States). That nicely reinforces our position as the World’s Largest Legal Directory (someone call the Guinness folks!). We also saw Avvo Answers participation for both consumers and lawyers skyrocket. Avvo Answers is now getting around 20,000 questions per month supported by a very high answer rate from lawyers. It’s simply fantastic to have such viral growth without having to spend millions of dollars on low-ROI television campaigns. As I often say, our customers are our best advertisers. Finally, we launched Avvo Pro which is a great product for those lawyers who want to turbo-charge their Avvo Profile. You only need to see all of the “Pro” badges in our directory to understand the growth in (and power of) Avvo Pro.

As for growth in personnel, our advertising sales hit warp speed over the summer, which caught us a bit off guard. We had been so focused on delivering the “free” Avvo that we had to shift gears and get a team in place to manage the “paid” Avvo. This led to us to hiring eight new sales people at the same time we were moving into new space. While it took some operational scrambling, we are now all snug as a bug in a rug in the new Avvo offices, and things are humming along quite nicely. Rapid personnel growth is always a challenge, but the team handled it with aplomb and we are now set up to attack 2010 with deliberate abandon.

Even as I write all of this, I really don’t want 2009 to end . . . until I start to think about 2010. I could say something poetic like, “I feel like we are just getting started,” but the reality is we did just get started. We launched in June 2007, and already we have established a better way for lawyers and consumers to tango. Could 2010 be as productive? Could we continue to get consumers more help and lawyers more business? Could Avvo’s growth curve continue to be so steep? Could we introduce a new dance?

Yes, yes, yes and yes. See you in 2010.

Mark

As we wrap up 2009 with all sorts of “best of” lists, it’s worth reminding all of our lawyer readers to update their Avvo Profiles during the less-hectic holiday season (unless you are working on the Senate health care bill). This is for a couple of reasons:

First, per usual, we will be conducting our “end of the year” Avvo Rating updates. While we update individual Avvo Ratings throughout the year, we typically reserve the end of the year for our biggest global tweaks to our scoring algorithm. These changes are largely the result of feedback from our consumer- and lawyer-users throughout the year. We also find ways to refine our mathematical models to ensure the Avvo Rating is as accurate as possible.

Second, the biggest ratings changes due to “aging” in a lawyer’s Avvo Profile typically happen on January 1. As you may recall, the value of many elements of an Avvo Profile erodes over time, so a 20-year-old award, sanction, etc., is less interesting to the Avvo Rating algorithm than something that occurred, say, last year. If we don’t know the month of an element, the aging change occurs at the first of the year.

Net/net, some lawyers will see changes to their ratings; and the more robust and up-to-date a lawyer’s profile is the less chance that any of these factors will have a negative impact on their rating. We expect to push through all changes by the end of January 2010 (btw, that feels so odd to write . . . weren’t we panicking about Y2K just a couple of years ago?).

And, if this post doesn’t give you your daily dose of Avvo, I did a recent podcast with Adrian Dayton’s posse where I talk a lot about Avvo and its different ratings. You can listen to it here. Thank you to Adrian and all of the participants on the call – it was a lot of fun.

Thanks,

Mark

p.s. I used Cliff Tuttle’s Avvo Profile because, interestingly, when you Google “Avvo Profile” Cliff’s profile is the first result. We are doing something wrong (or Cliff is doing something very right) in ranking for this term.

I am happy to announce that Bob Ambrogi will be keynoting next month’s Avvocating conference. Everyone at Avvo is very excited about this. As we discussed in our recent “Favorite Legal Blogs of 2009” post, Bob is one of the legal industry’s most insightful commentators. Bob’s speech will be entitled, “Empowerment Through Social Media” and will cover the following:

- How social media has developed for both lawyers and consumers
- Why social media is a good thing for lawyers, including empowering them to be better marketers and run their practice more efficiently
- Why social media is empowering for consumers as well, and why that is important for lawyers to understand

Bob’s speech looks like the perfect addition to an already great line-up of speakers from LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing, University of Washington, Avvo, etc. If you have not already signed-up, you can do it online by visiting our Avvocating page.

Here is Bob’s official bio for a little more flavor on his background:

Robert J. Ambrogi, Esq.
Rockport, Mass.

Bob has been writing and speaking about lawyers and the Internet for more than 15 years. He is author of two books, The Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web, now in its second edition, and The Internet Guide for Massachusetts Lawyers. Since 1993, his syndicated column about the Internet has appeared in legal periodicals throughout the U.S., and Law Technology News has published his award-winning Web Watch column since 1999. He founded the first Internet newsletter for lawyers, legal.online, in 1994. He continues to track new and intriguing Web sites for legal professionals through his blog LawSites. He also writes the blog Media Law, and co-authors Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch. Since August 2005, he has co-hosted a weekly legal-affairs podcast, Lawyer2Lawyer, available through the Legal Talk Network or on iTunes.

A practicing lawyer and mediator, Bob also provides editorial, media and Web consulting to law firms and law-related companies. Formerly, he was with American Lawyer Media in New York, where he was editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division, responsible for the division’s Web sites and other print and electronic publications. Earlier, as director of the ALM News Service, he founded a daily newswire reporting legal news and cases from all 50 U.S. states. Before joining ALM, Bob was with Boston-based Lawyers Weekly Publications, where he was founding editor of the national newspaper Lawyers USA and editor-in-chief of the company’s flagship newspaper, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. A 1980 graduate of Boston College Law School, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, a trustee of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation and an active member of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

I look forward to seeing all of you at Avvocating on January 21st and 22nd.

Mark

I get a number of legal “alerts” from different firms, and this recent one from Perkins Coie caught my eye. It’s title, “New Facebook Promotions Guidelines Now in Effect” is simple enough; but, when you read it, it summarizes Facebook’s new guidelines with the respect and diligence typically reserved for federal rulemaking.

This is simply another testament to how central to commerce Facebook and other Web 2.0 companies (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) have become over the last couple of years. A blue-chip law firm like Perkins Coie (who is Avvo’s counsel btw) understands that Facebook’s rules impact their clients’ businesses – and they smartly want to be the first to alert their clients just as they would with an important change in federal regulation. I look forward to the day when Perkins is reporting on Avvo policy changes. :-)

Not surprisingly, this reminds me that Facebook will be speaking at our Avvocating Conference next month. It gives you the chance to speak to the giants of the Web face-to-face. It is going to be great.

Be Web-savvy.

Mark