New York Legal Update, not ordinarily inclined toward editorials, has come out in support of the new and controversial Avvo lawyer ratings. While I can’t argue with many of the points made, particularly the absurdity of the class action against Avvo which is just plain embarrassing, its ultimate conclusion misses the mark.
Before I explain why, I should say that Paul Bloom, one of the co-founders of Avvo, posted a comment here about the qualitative vs. quantitative issue I raised when Avvo first came online. Afterward, I invited Paul to be interviewed about Avvo, thus giving him an opportunity to address the comments and criticism leveled at Avvo. No response to my invitation. To the extent that I was initially impressed by his willingness to expose himself to the scrutiny of the bar and defend Avvo’s system, it appears that the heat is too much for Avvo and they’re hiding under the kitchen table. At least for now.
So Tom Schwartz, honcho of New York Legal Update, takes the position that anything that helps clients find the right lawyer is a good thing, and that we need more, not less, mechanisms to rate lawyers. While I can’t argue with either point, it begs the question of whether Avvo ratings help or mislead. I agree whole-heartedly that connecting clients with the right lawyer is a great thing. I agree completely that many (most?) clients, particularly in my field of criminal defense, have no clue how to identify the right lawyer, or how to vet lawyers for competency, and find themselves making a horrible mistake in perhaps the most important matter in their lives by retaining the wrong lawyer. A mistake they will be forced to live with for many years.
But does Avvo solve anything? Avvo, by relying on a mathematical calculus for its ratings, inherently ignored the qualitative aspect of lawyering. I suppose that in non-litigation areas, that may work. But when you need a litigator, it omits the critical elements necessary to make an informed choice. Still, it rates the lawyers on what is arguably irrelevant bases and provides a rating. Hooray, I’m a 10! But what if a lawyer, rated a 10, has never tried a serious felony to verdict? Suddenly that 10 rings hollow. Worse yet, it may steer a client away from a lawyer with an 8.7 rating, but who has tried 50 murder cases to verdict, in favor of a lawyer with a 10 rating who has never tried a case to verdict but has written a few law review articles.
So the problem is that a client, the consumer of legal services, can be mislead by the rating, and pushed to retain an attorney who has a higher number but lacks the skills needed to serve the client. Nowhere in the Avvo ratings is this accommodated. To say, as Avvo does, that “no client should rely solely on Avvo ratings” is disingenuous. Either the ratings serve a purpose or they don’t. If Avvo ratings are intended to be but one factor in the retention decision, where’s the big disclaimer, in bold red type, that says “IN MAKING YOUR DECISION TO RETAIN A LAWYER, DO NOT RELY ON THESE RATINGS AS THEY PROVIDE NO INFORMATION ABOUT A LAWYER’S ACTUAL SKILLS!” Of course, if they had such a disclaimer, why would anybody look?
And that’s the point. Either the rating means something or it doesn’t. If it can’t account for the qualitative distinctions between lawyers, then is presumes lawyers to be fungible. That may be true for lawyers in some areas of practice, but not mine. For clients who retain happy, smiling, glad-handing criminal defense lawyers because they are “nice”, only to find themselves in prison for the rest of their natural lives, this is a hard lesson. For clients who pick a lawyer based on their Avvo rating, the lesson may be no different.
So I agree with Tom Schwartz completely that clients need a better way to decide which lawyer to retain. I just don’t buy Avvo ratings as being the answer. Unless Paul Bloom convinces me otherwise. I’m still waiting.
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Hi Scott,
I’m back 🙂 And thanks for your email last week; I’ve been meaning to get back to you but, as you can probably understand, things have been pretty hectic here the last few days.
Your post is thoughtful, and I do understand your point of view, though I don’t necessarily agree with it. As I wrote in my previous post, the Avvo Rating is just one tool that consumers can use as they go through the difficult process of choosing a lawyer. As I interpret your argument, if a rating system isn’t perfect (and I don’t claim that the Avvo Rating is perfect), and doesn’t take into account every conceivable factor that may be relevant to choosing a lawyer, then it shouldn’t exist. I fundamentally disagree with this point of view, because I think that the more information and opinions that are available to consumers, the better position they will be in to make an informed decision. If every opinion needs to be based on complete and perfect information, that suggests that consumers shouldn’t rely on…client ratings….or peer endorsements…or Martindale Hubbell AV ratings…or even your personal opinion, for that matter 🙂
I would also pose a question to you. What sources of information and/or opinion do you suggest that consumers use to make their choice? The Yellow Pages? A lawyer’s web site? This is what most consumers rely on today. The point is, there is a lack of valuable resources for consumers, and Avvo is making a contribution to filling that gap.
Looking forward to continuing the conversation.
Hey Paul, welcome back. I think we agree about many things, particularly that it is quite difficult for some, and impossible for most, to find the right lawyer. So we are both in agreement that there is a need. The next question is whether Avvo fills that need, and therein lies the more interesting discussion.
So, are you willing to let me
cross examineinterview you? I may have my doubts, but I’m open to being persuaded. And contrary to anything Mark Bennett says, I am not necessarily easy.SHG
Hey Scott,
Would love to chat with you, though it will need to be next week. Hope that’s ok.
I noticed one sentence in your post that I’d like to comment on:
“Still, it rates the lawyers on what is arguably irrelevant bases and provides a rating.”
What’s curious about this statement is that many of the factors considered by the Avvo Rating are the exact things that many lawyers promote on their own web sites, presumably because they think they are relevant to potential clients.
[Message Truncated]
Hey Paul,
Sorry that I had to delete my resume. Much as I enjoy seeing, it would turn the blawg into advertising in violation of New York’s lawyer advertising rules.
Turning to your point, ethical lawyers promote what they are permitted to promote. But to say that Avvo ratings are the exact same things is untrue. We lay out the fact. Avvo recharacterizes them (i.e., trustworthiness, recognition), and quantifies them.
Avvo then goes another step farther by arriving a numerical value, the Rating, which purports to allow all lawyers to be compared head to head by a single number between 1 and 10. While I’m happy to borrow Avvo’s assessment of me (snce it’s works to my benefit), as well as Martindale-Hubbell’s (also in my favor) for my own advertising, I do not create the Greenfield Ratings and start giving numbers to other lawyers. The whole thing is apples and oranges, so my guess is you’re better off going down the road of how Avvo Ratings assist the public in finding competent counsel.
I look forward to speaking with you about all this soon.
SHG
Scott should be commended for hosting this great conversation about the Avvo class action suit. I enjoy the stimulation the issues raised by the Avvo system and the suit have inspired. I’ll add some points.
Certainly lawyering involves qualitative aspects. But I still don’t understand how lawyering is any different from any other product or service that receives numerical rankings. All products and services have qualitative and quantitative aspects, and yet no one has problems with other services being numerically ranked. Lawyers like to think they are so special, different, and unlike any other service, but I reject this.
How do most people choose their lawyer – probably from recommendations from friends. Consider the following: You are looking for a lawyer. You receive a recommendation from one friend, and you have access to Avvo’s ranking for that attorney. On what basis are you prepared to say that your friend’s qualitative assessment is more accurate or provides you with a better basis to select an attorney than Avvo’s ranking? How do you know that your friend’s “data” is any better than Avvo’s? Isn’t it possible that your friend’s data is lacking? And how do you know your friend’s qualitative “calculation” is accurate? What algorithm did your friend use? Is that the right one to select a lawyer? Is it the right one to select a lawyer for you? I think such questions point out that concluding that a qualitative assessment of a lawyer is necessarily better than a quantitative assessment is not a valid conclusion to reach. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if you could have both your friend’s recommendation and Avvo’s ranking?
Also consider the following: Let’s suppose there is not one numerical ranking system for lawyers. Instead, let’s assume that there are 10 such systems, and they all use different mathematical models to compute their ranking. And let’s say that under the 10 systems, a lawyer’s average ranking is a 9.2. Now are you prepared to say that this purely numerical, quantitative assessment has no meaning?
One last point. Lawyers may find it objectionable in others giving them a numerical ranking. But it appears that lawyers are not so objectionable in giving themselves a numerical ranking. What do I mean? Lawyers in private practice charge a fee for their services – a price – a numerical quantity. And don’t lawyers base their fee on their own assessment of what their services are worth in comparison to other lawyers? If a lawyer thinks that he/she is more qualified, more experienced, or just simply better in some indefinable qualitative way, he/she charges a higher fee than his competitors doesn’t he/she? So isn’t a lawyer’s price his own quantitative assessment of his ranking? I think it is.
I’d love to write more about this, but I am running out of characters. I hope the conversation continues.
My company, Ratingz Inc, has operated the LawyerRatingz.com website since 2005. We have extensive experience with rating and review websites; our company president, John Swapceinski, launched RateMyProfessors.com in 1999, and the site now has more than 6 million reviews. Many of your readers probably used RateMyProfessors.com while in college.
In general I would agree that an Internet review site should not be the sole source of information when choosing a lawyer, or any other service provider. But based on our experience, the reviews can provide useful information, especially over time as large numbers of reviews are posted. (I think the comments are generally much more valuable than the numeric rating, but that’s just my opinion as a user of review sites.)
It’s entirely consistent and reasonable that review sites offer SOME VALUE without claiming to be the sole criteria for selecting a lawyer.
Bob,
I went to your site to take a look. You’ll see it, as your stats will have doubled. Sorry, couldn’t resist that.
Your website may be exactly what we need to prove the point in the Avvo discussion. I randomly took a look at one NY lawyer’s ratings. It consisted of 2 ratings, one from an obviously disgruntled client who wrote “what a stupid fat **** ” and the other from the lawyer’s mother, “This brilliant young lady is at the top of her profession. Very competent, qualified and pleasant.”
The first rater gave the lawyer all 1’s, and the second all 5’s. Somehow, this translated into a rating of 3 and a non-smiling smiley face.
If ever there was an argument against the terrible waste of bandwith, this is it. Sorry, but your site is the poster child for why this doesn’t work.
SHG
If I may be permitted to carry on this discussion…
Whenever review sites are criticized, the ciritcs point out some obviously bad reviews. I freely admit that many of the reviews posted on oour sites are ‘garbage.’ But that’s probably true of the Internet as a whole.
We believe that people are pretty good junk filters. Nobody will pay much attention to the reviews you quoted.
Our goal is to provide a forum where people CAN post reasonable reviews and share information. And our experience with previous sites shows us that this does occur as the volume of ratings increases. Perhaps at this point we will have to agree to disagree, but I urge you to check back in a year, or look at some of our more established sites.
Regards,
– Bob Nicholson
Allow borderlines personalities such as LG to post and continue to abuse their children by putting them on TV. Their children failing out of school, but LG continues to post about lawyers, judges, social workers and her former JOHN.
You continue to allow one person to continue to post from various computers. Her initials are LG; she has posted on all judges and lawyers, and social workers, and psychologists. With her input, the ratings are just not valid. She is being sued for a lot of money; and to avoid payment she posts. This is not what lawyerratingz is supposed to be about so your company is a sham. LG sated that one former attorney should date another former attorney, that both attorneys had mental illness, when she is the only one with that unfortunate disease that is untreated.
Two owners described below should be sued. They take off some ratings for their friends. They Leave other multiple ratings for their friends. Horrible screeners, favoritism, corruption, owners make a fortune off helping abusers ruin others.
[Editorial Note: Comment edited due to multiple rants by same people using different names. Take your fight somewhere else. This wasn’t about ratingz or you. I’ve left your other comments alone, but learn when to stop. This is not the place to air your beef and, frankly, it’s boring and you sound like a lunatic. Any more posts and you will be blocked.]
Why don’t you look at lawyerratingz.com and rip off.com for your name and what I think of the Editor’s comment. It most certainly was about ratingz. You allowed Bob N. founder of LAWYERRATINGZ to obtain publicity from your site and post what he is stating is an honest site; this is not true; so why can’t others post a different opinion that Lawyerratingz is corrupt, since you are allowing Lawyerratingz and Avco to publish good things about themselves on your site??? And you sir, sound like an individual not interested in obtaining views of others. And I would not voice my opinion again so do not bother blocking. I will just file my RIPOFF report and put in the ratingz about you, your unwillingness to accept the opinions of others about these rating sites, and see how you like it. You are obviously just looking for publicity for your business and your site, like the others, is a sham as well. B. Nicholson removes certain ratings that do not please him at whim and obviously you do as well. AVCO is another ratings site, but is somewhat more reasonable than LAWYERRATINGZ and RIPOFF. When the sites have rules for posts, they should be published and the same rules should apply to ALL AND EVERYONE WHO POSTS.
This is now your fourth post attacking lawyerratingz. The first two were posted, and left alone, even though they lacked any substantive basis about why you are attacking. I have no idea whether lawyerratingz is a scam or not. Frankly, it doesn’t seem to matter since the website is so inconsequential. But that said, you don’t get the right to post as much, as often, as virulent as you like wherever you like.
If you want to slam lawyerratingz all day long, that’s fine. Just do it in your own house, not mine. And if you want to pay me back by writing something bad about me, knock yourself out. But be aware that it marks you as the lunatic, not Bob Nicholson or lawyerratingz. So you just shot your credibility and you, not Nicholson, look like the nutjob. Somehow, I doubt that was what you were aiming for.
Post deleted. Sorry Dan, but you don’t get to advertise your business’ services on my blawg.
I enrolled my profile on the AVVO site and was under the bonafide belief that AVVO would have done extensive research prior to rating me on their site. I was shocked and surprised to notice that when I enrolled, I was given 5.9 points (Average) only. I have excellent credentials including admissions to 3 bars. Additionally, I have a Masters Degree in Law from the University of Georgia and not many candidates on the AVVO site have these credentials. I have handled complex trials which include defending an individual whose name and date of birth was matching with a terrorist. However, when I spoke to the AVVO staff they were not very helpful and told me that your experience prior to being admitted in New York and Connecticut would not be considered. Furthermore, he informed me that my DEGREE FROM A FOREIGN NATION HAD NO VALUE. Thereafter, he asked me to change some info. regarding my experience and memberships in Assocations. I did everything possible including answering questions based upon my solid experience in handling complex immigration matters. I was shocked and surprised when I did not see any changes. Thereafter, the only way for me to get the ratings better was to ask my peers to write about me. Two of my peers wrote about me and my score WENT UP ONLY BY 3 POINTS. Furthermore, it is an AVVO rule that the person rating you has to REGISTER ON AVVO.
I have noticed lawyers with my experience on the AVVO site who do not have a Masters Degree and also are not admitted to more than one bar. However, they have better ratings than me.
In essence, I strongly feel that the AVVO staff does not take constructive criticism seriously. Furthermore, it is DISCRIMINATION when an attorney with advanced credentials, has solid trial credentials, has appeared on television shows and has been admitted to 3 bars is given a very low score and another attorney who is not even close is rated at 7.7 etc. I request any sane lawyer to look me up on the web and do justice especially because the current AVVO staff is inconsiderate and is not reporting matters to the top management. I hope that after reading my post the management will respond and do justice to inadvertant errors which are occuring on the AVVO site. Additionally, if AVVO does not give credit to foreign credentials, it should have been clarified on their site. Non clarification of such issues, not giving credit to experience of a foreign attorney clearly constitute DISCRIMINATION by AVVO.
In essence, I hope that justice will be done by AVVO to honest and hardworking attorneys.
Naresh M. Gehi, Esq.
Crying discrimination frankly makes you sound awfully whiny, and if I were a potential client, this would put me off. After all, if an attorney can’t even take care of his own issues, how can a client trust him to take of his?
The law is a profession for fighters, not whiners. If you have a problem, deal with it.
Discrimination is a legal word and depends on how you interpret it. Furthermore, you are indirectly trying to support the contention that one should not get any credit for foreign credentials. In essence, everyone in our nation should believe in equality before law and equal protection of the laws.
Naresh, you’re not hearing this. You’re a lawyer, so stop whining and deal with it. If you can’t figure out some better way than to whine about it, then you don’t deserve the rating you have. More whining isn’t going to make you look better. So don’t whine that I’m “indirectly supporting” anything. I’m directly telling you to stop your whining.
This means that we should give permission to AVVO to whatever they want to do against anyone on their site. It is apparent that you are an ardent supporter of AVVO and are trying to cover them for all their mistakes. Please learn to do justice not only to me but to Judges and other lawyers whose have received improper ratings from AVVO. Furthermore, by the word discrimiation I CLEARLY mean unfair (the english dictionary defines discrimination as something which is unfair) and I mean nothing more than that. You seem to be taking the word discrimination ( unfair) in the wrong sense.
No, this means stop whining.
No, this means stop favoring AVVO directly or indirectly.
naresh
AVVO is under no obligation to tailor their rating system to the criteria YOU consider important. If users find their site valuable, they will succeed, and if not they will fail. Like any business, they will attempt to tune their service to meet the needs of the majority of their users.
Dear Bob:
I respectfully state that AVVO should make it clear in their policy that there would be no credit given to Masters Degree Holders, experience and admissions in other states of the United States. This willl help a lot of attorneys to decide whether they want to be listed on AVVO or not. In essence, clarification of the AVVO policies will avoid a lot of confusion and can help in the smooth functioning of the program. Furthermore, AVVO has to be EQUALLY FAIR in rating every attorney and a Judge on their website in order to serve the best interest of the consumers.
Naresh
Enough already. You’re boring and whiny. Go away.
Let’s talk about another problem with Avvo.
A v v o looks like A w o when not spaced:
Avvo Awo
Sure, you can tell the difference when I type them side by side, but not when it’s just stuck in the middle of a sentence.
How come no one is commenting about this?
Wait…
Maybe it’s supposed to be A W O ?!?!
Which is it?