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Modern society is rife with rating systems, of course. Movies are rated for violence and nudity. Google assigns a PageRank score to every Web site it indexes. Standard & Poor's provides ratings of the creditworthiness of bond issuers.
But rating attorneys is a far trickier and more subjective task: Should one additional published article boost a score? If so, by how much? Is Yale University's law school more prestigious than Stanford University's? Should a partner at a law firm be given credit for work largely done by unacknowledged junior associates? And what if a counselor's sage advice saves a company billions of dollars--and is never publicly acknowledged?
One way around that problem is to veer in a more democratic direction and rely primarily on customer-generated ratings, which sites like Yelp use for restaurant scores and Digg does, in a different way, for news articles.
Bar associations in many states, including California, offer online lawyer searches that can say whether an attorney has been disciplined. But they don't include third-party ratings.
LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's site, Lawyers.com, relies on the relatively safe procedure of collecting peer review rankings. Health Grades ranks physicians based on patient feedback, and DrScore.com claims to do the same.
Avvo's Britton thinks Lawyers.com and similar sites are not as useful. "We essentially turn the concept of a legal directory on its head," he said. "There is no established brand in legal. If you need a book online, there's Amazon. If you need travel, there's Expedia."
But neither Amazon nor Expedia started out by trying to build a massive database of scores of the professional accomplishments of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Some other excerpts from News.com's testing:
• You might expect attorneys that Law.com highlights at the top of its "40 under 40" list to receive top marks. But of the lawyers who had scores on Avvo, the average score was a disappointing 6.85.
• Superlawyers David Boies (once named by Time magazine as "Lawyer of the Year") received a 6.5, and Larry Sonsini (Silicon Valley's favorite lawyer, according to BusinessWeek) was rated just an 8.2. And then there's John J. Conroy, chairman of the executive committee of the largest U.S. law firm, Baker and McKenzie (6.5).
• Former Attorney General John Ashcroft gets a 5.3 overall rating, and former presidential candidate Bob Dole gets just a 5.6. Onetime Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is erroneously listed twice; one profile has a score of 6.1 and the other a 6.5.
• Bobby Keith Moser, a former Little Rock attorney, was sentenced in May 2005 to 15 years in prison for tax evasion. He receives an Avvo score of 5.8, which the company says is average. The site also says: "We have not found any disciplinary sanctions for this lawyer."
See more CNET content tagged:
lawyer, attorney, Sen., general counsel, attorney general
I could have used this in the last 5 years. I was raked over the coals by 2 attorneys - both of them hired by me, both incompetent, one even disbarred during my case, the other greedy and tried to steal my settlement. Had AVVO been in place, I might have gotten a better deal (and won my case, which I eventually settled for next to nothing, and lost money overall, considering the retainers and fees).
Good work, AVVO - get 'em!
Yeah, from Abe Lincoln.
Reread the article. This site is ripe with inaccuracies and it's rating
system appears to be run by a random number generator. Good
idea, but *horrible* execution.
In french: grotesque
Firstly, about 2/3 of the firm is not even listed on the site. This includes lawyers who have been practicing for 15-25 years and are well-established in NJ and NY - and by "well-established," I mean prominent in the NJ bar, published, award-winning, etc.
Secondly, (using my father as an example) he has passed the bar in NY and NJ, but primarily practices in NJ. Yet, he is only listed as practicing in NY.
Thirdly, the address of the firm is not at all correct. The address listed has not been used by them for over 18 months.
I would not recommend this site to people looking for attorneys, as it is clearly inaccurate. Any information on there should be taken with a grain of salt. Findlaw.com is a much better alternative. While it does not rate performance and does give greater priority to firms who pay to advertise, at least the contact information is accurate.
I'm the VP of Products and Marketing at Avvo, and wanted to address some of your concerns. The reason the partners you referred to are not listed is because we launched in 10 states, including New York, but not New Jersey. We are working hard to add states as quickly as we can, and hopefully will have New Jersey in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, any of the partners who are listed can claim their profiles for free and update them with as much information as they wish.
As for the incorrect address, that is the address provided by them to the New York bar; however, once they've claimed their profile they can update that too.
Thanks for checking out the site.
Paul
Although this site seems like a good idea, if I, a good friend or family member asked me for a referral to a lawyer, I would ask my lawyer friends first, or ask people who have employed lawyers if they were happy with the service they
received. I would avoid a site that uses an algorithm to rate a lawyer's efficiency like the plague, especially one so full of errors!
As far as the low rating for these "magna *** laude" Haarvard/Stanford grads... don't mean a thing. Means they tested well or made lots of friends alogn the way. How did they do on the bar? Did they pass the first time? All it takes is one "glamour case" and they are in.
We?ve saved consumers hours of research by aggregating information on every attorney licensed in the states we currently cover. And much of that information would be very difficult ? if not impossible ? for consumers to find without Avvo. As you?ve pointed out, we have more information on some attorneys than others and since the Avvo Rating is based upon what we know about an attorney, lack of information does affect the rating.
One of the fun things about our site is that, because we pull from the state public records, we do have retired or expired lawyers in our database. Because these lawyers will not be much help to consumers, Avvo does not rate them and they will not show up in our search results. However, if someone wants to see Abraham Lincoln?s bar records, why not show it to them?
That said, we will continue to improve. We?re working hard to constantly add more information and, now that we?re live, lawyers and consumers can help by adding their own content. In just the few hours since launch, hundreds of attorneys have claimed their profiles and provided consumers valuable information regarding their body of work.
We worked with hundreds of attorneys and thousands of consumers in developing this site and it is clear that we?re delivering a valuable service even with this initial beta version. I hope you?ll keep an eye on us as we continue to develop our site.
Mark Britton, CEO, Avvo
I agree as to the need for someone to get a credability and trust score before hiring an attorney.
Your doctor, religious practitioner, and your lawyer are the three most important people in your life, outside family.
Since many politions come from the legal profession, we will have another guage to use in that arena also.
Meanwhile, let us laugh at the funniest, and use the feedback tools to correct and fine tune this new compass for the legal industry.
I am already picturing a subset of the SEO industy to help lawyers improve their scores.
My crystal ball says that this site will sink without a trace. Clients have real money and real problems, and I doubt they will be taken in my anonymous, black-box "ratings." For the VC community, I suppose it's worth a roll of the dice. After all, they expect most of their investments to lose money.
I note that my own rating is a flattering 6.5, despite the utter absence of any descriptive information about me other than my name and the date of my first admission to the bar.
Bottom line is that is gives a consumer like me a place to start. I have some friends that are lawyers, but beyond that, how am I going to start to find a lawyer if they can't help me? What if I didn't have any friends in the legal community... then what?!?!?
There is no way I am going to base my hiring of a legal advisor off of a score, but it gives me insight into who they are, what they focus on and if they've had any problems in the past.
As for the site, it's easy to use, very clean and I was able to navigate through some searches without much trouble. I went to another site after reading this article (lawyer.com) and my eyes went cross-eyed with that UI.
Funny about Lincoln and the others.
Judging lawyers by awards and articles and such is like judging doctors that way. All that counts is if your doctor can cure you, not how famous he is. All that counts is if a lawyer can get your money and your life back. David Boies has won big cases, but he's also lost big cases.
What about a small time lawyer who gets quick results and has a very high success rating because he knows the system and can talk to the people - and can get a settlement without even going to court? Maybe not the news-making settlement, but those are mostly bogus. The award is whittled down or reversed, and then fees and taxes take most of it so they get ten cents on the dollar. Especially because you are taxed on what you get Before you pay the lawyer.
Some people have gotten a "million dollar award" in the papers, and ended up with enough to buy a motorcycle - and we're not talking a Goldwing. But you never see that in the news
Maybe he doesn't get awards, but I'd rather have him for an attorney than be dragged through courtroom hell for ten years with someone who has a big rep.
I often consult your site (inaccurate though it may be) to check on items I am considering buying. However I'd be a fool to take only that one opinion. Anyone who make an important decision based on the advice of a single website deserves what they get.
If I was looking for a lawyer to defend me in a murder case, the fact that they have published articles or have sat on the Supream court is not really what I would look for. With all deference to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, give me an unknown who is in court every day and wins cases, that's the gal I want.
liamlaw.com
How do you come up with a system that takes a purely subjective matter and devise a ratings scheme that is applied to professionals? Clearly they have no clue unless all of us here would be willing to hire this guy before Scheck if our lives were in the balance.
The answer, of course, is you cannot. This thing will unnecessarily taint the careers of many superb attorneys while many hacks who garner higher scores will come up at the top of the listings - those most clicked on.
Is this where we are at? Ranking lawyers like a new album so that some goofs can try to get Google money? Given how well this thing seems to work, I would advise all to call a friend or flip the Yellow Pages as you will undoubtedly do better.
Avvo is attempting to avoid some of the errors of other sites, most of whom are the stepchildren of seriously deep pocketed legal information providers who didn't devote the energy and resources to development of comprehensive resources.
The big players already have huge databases on lawyers, but none has come up with a reasonable presentation of that information for the average consumer. Public information is only really useful when aggregated and interpreted, so let's see how Avvo does before slamming them too hard.
Consumers are used to tuning out Google ads by now,--at least until they need something, so the model is tired, but not yet dead. Eventually everyone will move on to another income-producing model, but until then, going with the flow ain't so bad. Anyway, which came first,-- the TV show or the commercial? Was U2's first album their best? I've been a U2 fan for 25 years and personally have clocked the most hours on Achtung Baby. Yet, one doesn't get to one without the other.
I blog about "Law 2.0" services from the perspective of the intersection between law and technology ("Mullen on Law 2.0") and from that vantage point, I see some neat things coming. Avvo is using Ajax in interesting and helpful ways, the user interface is very-user friendly and I suspect the back end is supported by the latest programming innovations as well.
As a lawyer, OF COURSE, I have misgivings, but I think that a little pain in the industry is long overdue. Law is a service industry and to argue that it doesn't already have ratings is simply not correct. I'd love to see a poll of lawyers asking whether they have a clue about the foundation for Martindale Hubbell's ratings. At the end of the day, consumers need to be given as many tools to sort out their legal issues as possible. Nolo offers a great service, let's give Avvo a chance to do the same in a different way.
Do I care about my Avvo rating? No, but then again, I don't know what it is. And, I probably won't look (once they get Michigan up and running), so that I can stay as objective as possible. There's great blogging material there, so my personal experience there as a lawyer shouldn't matter.
The problem is that ratings in the legal world are generally tools used to exclude, not include. Every lawyer has faced the stress of knowing that GPA and LSAT scores mean almost nothing on the street and that "Ivy League" is a term used to strangle the careers of aspiring corporate lawyers who attend non-Ivy schools. Lawyers love special clubs, and so one more ratings system is hardly going to break the bank. My hope is that sites like Avvo will encourage all lawyers to not just think outside of the box, but to build tools that encourage competence in our clients.
- Britton is an attorney - should know better
- by fractyl January 4, 2008 6:19 AM PST
- What I find amazing and interesting is that Britton himself is an attorney currently licensed in Washington. He has included Pennsylvania in his rankings. In this lawyer's opinion, the ranking itself violates the Rules of Professional Responsibility in the state of Pennsylvania as it realtes to advertising and his site invites lawyers to "claim their profile" and add information to the site whcih can effect the rratings and lawyers are not permitted to lead clients to believe that they are superior to another attorney my making claism that cannot be substantiated. Mr. Britton thereby colludes with every attorney who "calims the profile". If an attorney cannot abide by the Professional Rules, would you really want to hire that attorney? OF couorse not and as such, Mr. Britton may be able to subject to the PEnnsylvania Disciplinary Board. In my opinion, anyone who finds a lawyer on the site who has "claimed their profile", it is my opinion that they should be avoided like the plague. And, as for other lawyers, it is clear that the algorithm is not worth that what you would use after sitting on a toilet. They are clearly driven by greed and not by ethics.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(23 Comments)Coincidentally, I found at least 25 laywers who had inaccurate information. Indeed, my own profile had information and I had fought with them to remove me. The reponses I received seemed to be more interested in gettng me to fix their errors which quite frankly is not my concern, but theirs. First Amendment speech protects truth which clearly is not what is being presented on this site.
In addition, they have taken it upon themselves to act as my agent without my authorization and have refused to cease doing so forcing me to shop lawyers and sue. This is accomplished by their inviting visitors to sned me an e-mail which is accomplished by the user using the avvo mail client system and then avvo sends me an e-mail, thereby acting as my agent. This amounts to nothing more than clear tortious intereference with my business. If also makes it appear as though I have a relationship with these greed mongers which I would not.
Finally, they are advetising on the site that they soon will be offering targeted advertising for attorneys. As such, it appears that what avvo really seeks to do is "dupe" the user. The user will search a particular attorney. They will then provide ads for competition for the attorney. Avvo is not good for attorneys or users and it is clear that they seek to obtain pecuniary gain at the peril of users and attorneys alike.