In Search Of A Perfect 10
Online rating system for lawyers rankles some, motivates others
By DOUGLAS S. MALAN
A controversial web site that rates lawyers now includes profiles of more than 23,000 Connecticut attorneys. For those who wish to actively participate in additional online marketing, the opportunity is free and available.
For those repulsed by the notion of a consumer-focused site that assesses lawyers as if they were videos or restaurants, well, tough luck.
Seattle-based Avvo Corp. was launched in 2006 and earlier this month entered the Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland markets. Its web site ranks lawyers on a scale of one to 10, using professional history and peer and public feedback. The web site now covers 18 states and the District of Columbia. The company says that takes in about 80 percent of the nation's attorneys.
Avvo has expanded into nine additional markets since December, when a federal judge in Seattle granted the company's motion to dismiss a class action lawsuit (John Henry Browne, et al. v. Avvo Inc., et al) filed by lawyers rankled by the ratings system.
Seattle attorney Steve W. Berman, who represented the plaintiffs in Browne, called the rankings "unreliable and meaningless, misleading to a consumer trying to find a lawyer."
In Westport, Conn., Patrick W. Begos of Begos, Horgan & Brown isn't so sure. Perform a search of all lawyers in the state and Begos is at the top of the list. His Avvo page includes a detailed profile, a color headshot, an endorsement from a peer and three client reviews, among other things.
His numeric ranking is 9.9 out 10, which equates to "superb" in the Avvo system.
"I figured [the profile] was going to be out there, so I should make it as good as I could," he said. "It was basically a couple of hours of work at the most on my part to end up with a pretty decent marketing piece. It seems like a no-lose situation."
Martindale-Hubbell's Peer Review Ratings is the industry standard by which lawyers are ranked, but Begos said Avvo is "more consumer-friendly" and "at least gives [consumers] some sort of comparison."
Useful Information
The second name on the list is Waterbury attorney Michael D. Fox of LipskyFox Secola. The fifth-year attorney checks in at 8.8, which Avvo considers "excellent."
Fox has not been as active in enhancing his profile, but he believes Avvo is a "very professional" site with a format that has "a lot of thought behind it" and useful information.
From information he's gathered from lawyers around the country, "the general consensus seems to be that these [web sites] are going to be the tools of the future, irrespective of whether you like them, so learn to use them," Fox said. "Maybe it's the next evolution in attorney advertising."
Notable Connecticut attorneys such as William Dow, William Gallagher, Stewart Casper and Austin Wolf all received a perfect 10 ranking with seemingly no effort placed in maintaining their profiles.
Attorneys can log on to the web site and "claim" their profiles by filling out a short form that requires a credit card number that never gets charged but is used to verify the user's identity, the web site states. Doing so allows them to add an endless amount of information to their profiles.
They can also endorse other lawyers and participate in Avvo Answers, which is a free forum in which the public posts questions and lawyers offer responses, which include their photo and link to their profile. Disclaimers explain no attorney-client relationship is established through interactions online.
"The endorsements, client reviews and Avvo Answers are giving solo practitioners and small law firms the ability to showcase what they do," said CEO Mark Britton.
Yellow Pages Alternative
Britton, who was general counsel for travel web site Expedia for several years, decided to launch Avvo with private funding after continuously fielding questions from friends and family about how to choose a lawyer.
Most people still search for lawyers in the Yellow Pages, which did $1.3 billion in lawyer advertising last year, he said. At Expedia, Britton experienced first-hand the frustrations of trying to locate reliable counsel for a lawsuit the company faced in Biloxi, Miss.
"People should not be choosing their lawyer based on who has the largest Yellow Pages ad," Britton said. "When it came to legal situations, [friends and family] had no idea where to turn. That was the blinding light for me."
He assembled a team of 12 data managers, led by two veteran lawyers, to oversee the tidal wave of information that comes in. Britton starts by requesting from each state a list of all registered attorneys and all accompanying public information, such as law firm contact information. That data automatically is loaded to the Avvo site, so even lawyers who don't know the World Wide Web from a spider web get an online presence.
Then, Avvo uses a software program called a web crawler that methodically scours the Internet for additional information about lawyers from their personal or professional web sites. That information is then combined with the initial public information to enhance the profile, all done without a lawyer's active participation. "We are building one of the largest databases of lawyer résumés in the country," Britton said.
By The Numbers
The ranking system and profiles are filled with safeguards and different features.
Some lawyers have so little information available about them that they don't have a numerical ranking.
Then they can fall into the three lowest categories on the site: "extreme caution," "strong caution," and "caution." Because disciplinary histories are part of the public information portion of the profile, several hundred lawyers in the state with otherwise inactive profiles are flagged as dangerous to the public.
Lawyers with inactive profiles and no disciplinary history are in the "no concern" category but do not have numerical rankings.
No one can add to the profiles except for Avvo employees, the profiled lawyer or someone to whom the lawyer delegates the task by providing password information.
All client reviews are monitored by Avvo's data team. Clients who leave feedback must register with an e-mail address. As long as reviews do not include personal attacks, swear words or insults, the review is posted, Britton said.
If a lawyer challenges the review, Avvo contacts the reviewer about the dispute. If the reviewer does not respond to the e-mail, Avvo removes the review. If the reviewer stands by his or her opinion, the review remains online.
The lawyer also has the option of posting official rebuttals to negative reviews. But Britton said "our client reviews are 80 percent positive."
The formula for the numerical ranking is based on a lawyer's résumé, including schools attended, professional association affiliations and awards won. Attorneys also have the ability to post information about recent cases and by the end of the month, Britton said, they will be able to upload legal articles they have written.
Right now, there are 1.15 million lawyers on the site. "The more information we know about a lawyer, the more we can recommend you to potential clients," Britton said.•
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