Avvo

Avvo is a free website that helps consumers handle their legal matters. To do this, Avvo rates and profiles every lawyer and also offers client reviews, lawyer disciplinary histories and peer endorsements. Avvo also helps consumers understand their often complex and confusing legal situations by offering a question and answer forum called “Avvo Answers” and other interesting information regarding various legal topics.

Avvo

Type of business	Legal Search
Founded	2006
Headquarters	Seattle
URL	www.avvo.com

Features

Lawyer Search: Avvo allows users to input a geographic location and/or legal subject. Avvo then searches its database for lawyers that have the best chance of getting the user the help they need. These search results are driven by the Avvo Rating, client ratings and other factors.

Avvo Answers: Avvo allows users to ask real attorneys specific legal questions – anonymously if desired. They can receive a personalized answer to their question, with a link to the attorney’s background information. Attorneys also receive points for the quantity and quality of answers they offer in Avvo Answers.

Avvo Rating: The Avvo Rating is “Avvo’s attempt to evaluate a lawyer’s background.” It is based on information that Avvo has collected about the lawyer from public records, the attorney’s website, the attorney himself, peer endorsements, etc. The rating is calculated using a mathematical model that considers the information shown in a lawyer's profile, including the lawyer's years in practice, disciplinary history, professional achievements and industry recognition.

Client Ratings: Current and former clients of a lawyer can register with Avvo and leave ratings and comments regarding the quality of the lawyers work. This allows a lawyer’s prospective clients to get a first-hand account of what it may be like to have the lawyer handle their legal matter.

Peer Endorsements: Attorneys can “endorse” another attorney. These endorsements essentially say that, in one lawyer’s opinion, the other lawyer is a good one. These endorsements allow prospective clients to understand the lawyers standing in the legal community, as well as the company he or she keeps and possibly additional resources the attorney can call on in any given case.

Track Record: Attorneys can post any case on which they have worked in the past. This allows potential clients to see some of the lawyer’s work and determine whether the lawyer has case experience in the area they are researching.

The Avvo Controversy

On June 14, 2007, nine days after Avvo’s inaugural launch, Avvo was sued by two attorneys that did not like their Avvo Ratings. These attorneys attempted to assemble a nationwide class action of attorneys that were potentially injured by the Avvo website. Interestingly, these attorneys sued on behalf of consumers (rather than the allegedly injured lawyers), arguing that that the website was so corrupt that it violated the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

On December 18, 2007, a federal judge threw out the class action case on First Amendment grounds. The judge wrote in his opinion, "Defendants assert that the opinions expressed through the rating system (i.e., that attorney X is a 3.5 and/or that an attorney with a higher rating is better able to handle a particular case than an attorney with a lower rating), are absolutely protected by the First Amendment and cannot serve as the basis for liability under state law. The court agrees."

The class action lawsuit against Avvo generated substantial press, largely due to many of the allegations made by the plaintiffs regarding the Avvo website. After the lawsuit was dismissed, however, both the Wall Street Journal and Seattle Times wrote editorials supporting the site.

The site continues to earn the ire of many legal observers for the apparently random assignment of ratings to lawyers. Many attorneys who regularly sue their own clients over bills and have a well-deserved terrible reputation within the legal community are as "superb" while many attorneys who are in fact superb are ranked as "good" (or worse).

History

Avvo is short for “avvocato” which means lawyer in Italian. Avvo’s origins reportedly start in Italy, where Avvo co-founder Mark Britton, the former top lawyer at Expedia.com, was teaching finance for a year. During this time he noticed that, even though he was gone for a year, with the Atlantic Ocean in between, he was still repeatedly contacted by friends, family, and acquaintances - all seeking his advice on their legal issues. It was clear that there was an unfulfilled need for information and guidance for consumers, so upon returning to the U.S., Mark partnered with Paul Bloom, a veteran of Microsoft’s Consumer Division, and Sendi Widjaja, one of Expedia’s top development managers, to build the Avvo we know today.

The Avvo website launched on June 5th, 2007 with $13 million in venture backing from Silicon Valley’s Benchmark Capital and Seattle’s Ignition Partners. Avvo is also backed by a strong group of advisers including Lou Andreozzi (CEO of Inference Data and former CEO of LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell), Deborah Rhode (Stanford Law Professor and leading academic on legal ethics), Robert Hirshon (COO of the law firm Stoel Rives and former President of the American Bar Association), Richard Barton (CEO of Zillow and former CEO of Expedia) and Brad Silverberg (Ignition Partner and former manager of Microsoft Windows).

External links

• Avvo
• Browne et al v. Avvo Inc et al (W.D. Wash. 2007) decision, legal briefs and other court documents & filings