Avvo lawyer-rating site slapped with class action
A lawyer-rating site that inexplicably gave convicted felons higher numeric scores than law school deans is, in a move that was entirely predictable, being sued.
Abe Lincoln's Avvo.com profile
Avvo.com, which launched on June 5, compiles data from state bar associations and tries to compute a numeric score between 1 and 10 for nearly every attorney in the country. It's received $14 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners, co-founded by Microsoft alum and Avvo board member Brad Silverberg.
But the scores have proved to be somewhat arbitrary. Our review of the site noted that Avvo execs or board members received higher scores than Supreme Court justices. In addition, Avvo includes active profiles of attorneys who have been dead for more than a century, including Clarence Darrow and Abraham Lincoln.
Steve W. Berman, a managing partner at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in Seattle, received a handsome 9.2 rating. But, sensing a promising financial opportunity, Berman decided to file a class-action lawsuit (on behalf of wrongly-scored attorneys) against Avvo anyway. Whether it actually becomes a class action is up to a federal judge.
Hagens Berman has a history of filing class action lawsuits against technology companies. It's gone after Apple for its iPod (allegedly too loud), eBay (allegedly a monopoly), Expedia (allegedly too expensive), and Apple, again, for the iPod Nano (allegedly too scratch-prone).
Berman sent out a press release saying: "When the site launched, they had a very slick media campaign that led consumers to believe the site would give them accurate and insightful information about attorneys. In reality, we believe the site's rating methodology is prone to error and wide open to manipulation."
For its part, Avvo CEO Mark Britton replied: "We are just serving the consumer here, and we are trying to get consumers more information than they ever had before. Before Avvo was launched, everybody was pretty much going to the yellow pages and search engines, which are not the most efficient places for people to find a lawyer. By providing that information and guidance, it just helps consumers get the legal help they need."
Avvo currently gives Berman a 5 of 5 stars in professional conduct. But it's worth noting his complaint against the company cited examples of odd Avvo scores that we published in our News.com article -- and didn't cite us. Perhaps Avvo should include a new category of "adequate legal footnotes."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
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I'm entertaining the prospect of a class-action suit against class-action lawyers in the US (because they keep 98% of the cash they supposedly win for the class they pretend to represent.) But could I find a lawyer noble enough, honest enough, to do it? There's the rub.
Frankly, the differences between convicted felons and most lawyers in today's society is such that they are both alike in most ways. There are pitifully few good lawyers.
And remember... judges are lawyers. There are pitifully few good judges.
"most lawyers" - Let's play the word game. You said "most" meaning "the majority." Assuming I cut you as much slack as possible, you've likened at least 50.001% of lawyers in this country to "convicted felons." Not people that speed on the highway, or people that jaywalk, but convicted felons - rapists, murderers, burglars, and arsonists. How so. What exactly do "most lawyers" do that make them so despicable? And are you referring to tax attorneys, attorneys that represent unions, attorneys that represent the homeless (always pro bono), attorneys that try to get to the bottom of things like the firings in the justice department, attorneys that represent people in traffic violations? Which attorneys exactly are like convicted felons?
Name one GD fact you base this on. I work at a law firm and while I may not like every lawyer there (there are about 100), for the most part they are all decent human beings that love their families and kids and do everything they can to help their clients. Do you know any lawyers? How many? Enough to say that over 50% are as bad as convicted felons?
F you. When I was a software engineer I knew a lot less decent people than I know at the firm I work at - people that did the bare minimum, criticized management all the time without ever providing a solution to anything they complained about, and thought of everyone else as being completely beneath them. Certainly not the majority, not even a large percentage, but more than the number of lawyers I know that I think are bad eggs.
Please reply and enlighten all of us as to your vast experience with lawyers and how exactly they are like convicted felons.
So you want to make the markets go up and don't want this fairness thing.
I suppose this is so you can goood up so more millionares and bring back your people.
No chance your not very clever judging by your actions and i'll just absorb all your new millionares.
They'll be !mine
And IBM is edging closer to me and i know Japan won't be far behind.
!Oh year
Ummmmmmm! what happens next hey mr murdoc
Well i'll tell you one thing now that i have accomadation and have wipped your doctors arss and have a mr Brown on the way plus have sused all this world out accept a black area in China to which i have no desire to know.
I will be working on taking that unfair sick pay out the picture and doing some more work.
!oh year mr murdok like you can't imagine with that yellow triangle with that bully eye.
!oh year you know i don't tell lies
All hail the all knowing eye of our neighbours.
Go go earth and stars battle machine thing with loads of power men.
Oh Year the US works no matter what the politics shame about this Blair thing.
(I scarcely doubt you know). Lets break it down:
wildchild-your post seems to be a little off the deep end
plasma-you seem to be a little hot headed and disconnected
gyro-direction and flow don't seem to mean anything to you.
If I recall, you have posted several comments like this and it
would be much appreciated if you stop. This is a forum for if
not inteligent then at least coherent discussion.
- Makes sense to me
- by BrandonEubanks June 17, 2007 8:00 PM PDT
- As much as I enjoy watching stuff like this unfold for the lunacy, I
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(14 Comments)have to say that on the surface this makes sense because there is a
real potential for damage to lawyers and their enterprise due to an
arbitrary rating system. Perhaps they are hinging on a few isolated
incidents but, if this is a systematic problem then the company
should be held liable.