Yesterday, I wrote that Avvo was utterly useless. After a good night’s sleep and some more fooling around with Avvo, I realize that I was needlessly generous. It is as yet unworthy of a look or a try. It is the Segway (not seguey) of the law, a seemingly good idea that simply never measured up to its potential. Will it ever?
From yesterday’s story, you will note that my first search of my good name at Avvo showed me to have a rating of 6.5. A short time later, I’m a perfect 10. Go figure. The fact is, when a rating is based on a mathematical algorithm, it’s purely quantitative. It may be free to the user, but even so Avvo may be overcharging. It offers nothing qualitative. It never will. And when you look at the jury with your life on the line, qualitative matters a whole lot more. The rhetoric sounds great; the reality doesn’t match up. I’m betting that the good folks at Lexis/Nexis, owners of Martindale-Hubbell, are sleeping like babies tonight.
But even without a qualitative ability, it just doesn’t work. I tried searching for myself again this morning. Guess what? I wasn’t there. Go ahead and try it. Avvo tells me there is no lawyer with my name. Not in New York, Not anywhere. I figure I must be somewhere, but I can’t find me no matter how hard I try by searching.
So, I hit the support button. Where’s the telephone number? Avvo has no stinkin’ number. The only access is an email of the problem, and we all know how the lowest level of customer service responds to emails. Well, a few hours later, I received a response and my very low expectations were fully met. I received the “official” thank you, apology for my inconvenience, whatever. What I did not receive was an answer having anything whatsoever to do with my question. Wow, it’s just like calling the phone company. Now I have yet another business that wants to treat me like a blithering idiot. Hey, Avvo! I’m a 10 out of 10, baby! Don’t mess with me!
But the news isn’t all bad. Avvo has so many problems that its continued existence, if not vitality, is in serious jeopardy if it doesn’t clean up its act. As I see it right now, it has a lot of cleaning to do. Until then, think of Avvo as just another lawyer joke. Enjoy the laugh.
UPDATE: Within minutes of posting this, I was suddenly back on Avvo, searchable in the usual course. It’s like magic. Maybe there’s hope for them yet? Stay tuned.
UPDATE 2: Shortly after posting the first update, I received an email that actually came from a real person. No pat answers. I was given a phone number, and an offer to have them call me if it was more convenient for me. I was told that they went to work on my problem to fix it. Holy Cow! Maybe, just maybe, they mean to make this work for real? I still have the quantitative v. qualitative issue. I still don’t get how any mathematical formula is going to tell anyone who really goes to trial or who can cross a witness and make them cry. But perhaps they are really trying to make this happen? Stay tuned some more.
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I found you. You’re still a 10 you wild thing:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078721/
They only fixed it to make me look like a whiner. But I appreciate the Bo Derek reference. I’d rather look like Bo. But the man version.
SHG
It’s in beta. As soon as it’s final, you’ll get the rating you really deserve.
It won’t matter. You can’t go any higher than 10.
You will be disciplined for speaking against the machine.
I fear saying anything that might jeopordize my perfect 10.0, but I will note that the “trustworthiness” category is now called “Professional Conduct” and it appears you get the highest ranking on this if you have never had a bar problem. I know on the first day it was driving many lawyers crazy to see themselves with 3/5 in this category as though they could not be trusted.
Hi Scott,
I wanted to address a couple of issues you’ve raised in your posts. In particular, you bring up a good point regarding quantitative vs. qualitative. We would certainly not advocate that anyone select a lawyer based solely on the Avvo Rating, or on any rating for that matter. There are too many intangibles to take into account when making such an important decision. Ratings are just one tool people can use.
Consequently, we designed Avvo so that consumers can also get a feeling for the qualitative aspects of an attorney. Client ratings give a first-hand account from clients, and peer endorsements give the perspective from other lawyers. That said, no one should choose an attorney without first meeting with them, understanding their fees and practice areas, etc etc.
The overarching problem Avvo was created to address is that consumers are lost when it comes to choosing a lawyer. In a recent Ipsos survey (sponsored by Avvo), only 17% of consumers said it was easy to find detailed information about lawyers; only 17% said they were very confident in their ability to choose the right lawyer; and up to 25 million over the past 2 years said they considered hiring a lawyer but didn’t because they didn’t know how to choose the right one.
While Avvo is certainly not perfect, we are making more information available to consumers than they have had in the past, which we think is a good thing for both consumers and lawyers.
Hi Paul,
I appreciate your taking the time to see what lawyers are saying and to respond. I haven’t been terribly kind to Avvo so far, but I’m open to being proven wrong.
I agree with your sentiment that clients frequently have no clue how to find the right lawyer. I’m not clear.however, that Avvo provides the answer. As we both agree that a purely qualitative approach fails to provide a sound basis to select a lawyer, then Avvo ratings (which appesr to offer a complete solution) will mislead consumers rather than aid them.
Your change from “trustworthiness” to “professional conduct” was a good move, since it impugned the integrity of some lawyes without basis. But the client endorsement option smells like a ripe opportunity for disgruntled clients to smear a lawyer, may deserved or maybe not. There’s no way to vet whether the poster was in fact a client, or whether the comment is justified. Nor distinguish an unhappy client due to outcome from a justifably disgruntled client. For us criminal guys, most clients prefer not to come forward to say nice things about their lawyer, thus reminding the world forever of their criminal prosecution.
And if a lawyer gets 10 of his friend to provide peer ratings, how does that aid consumers? On the other hand, is this a tool for angry adversaries to slur each other? Again, it’s faught with pitfalls.
There are many questions, and I suspect the validity of Avvo will be challenged by many lawyers and clients. We’ll be watching.
SHG
Paul,
The practice of law is so diverse that your survey doesn’t mean a whole lot to lots of lawyers. I’m not writing wills; I’m keeping the government from putting people in boxes. My potential clientèle, if they have funds, are going to hire a lawyer. They’re not going to merely “consider” hiring a lawyer, because they have to have a lawyer.
Your numerical ratings are likely to do nothing but mislead. As an “assessment of how well a lawyer could handle your legal issue” they are, at best, worthless (I say this the highest-rated lawyer in Texas with a 100% criminal practice). They measure nothing that has anything to do with how well a lawyer will handle a particular case. Years in practice? Number of awards? Number of associations? Number of publications? Number of speaking engagements? None of it has anything to do with how well a lawyer will defend you.
It’s not that your numbers don’t reveal the quality of a lawyer; rather, it’s that numbers can’t reveal the quality of a lawyer. The qualities that make someone the right lawyer for one case (and the wrong one for another) are entirely unquantifiable.
Consumers who know more are more likely to hire me. So I appreciate the idea of making more information available to consumers. (That’s one reason I blog.) By putting the available information together in one place, you do a service to consumers.
But here’s the problem with client ratings: in my field of law, satisfied clients want to go on with their lives and have no further association with any part of the system, including their lawyers. I get several nice “thank you” letters a year, but I think it highly unlikely that a satisfied client will go to the trouble of registering with your site (including providing an email address) to praise me.
I appreciate that you’re trying to make choosing a lawyer easier. Your zero-to-ten scale helps create the illusion that choosing a lawyer can be easy. But making the right decision when one’s future is on the line is not easy, and, like anything important, probably shouldn’t be.
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What Has Avvo Done For / To You?
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What Has Avvo Done For / To You? (Updated)
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What Has Avvo Done For / To You? (Updated)
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