I listened yesterday to the latest edition of This Week in Law, or TWiL, which was titled Rate-A-Lawyer. Some of my Between Lawyers friends, Denise Howell, Ernie Svenson, and Dennis Kennedy, along with attorney Mazyar Hedayat, sat down with Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo, a new attorney ratings service you may have read about in the news.
I thought the podcast was great, and urge all of you to listen to it -- but I think the gang let Mark off easy on a couple of things. I have taken a look at Avvo, and I think the concept is great -- a easy-to-use tool that helps consumers and others find attorneys. However, there's one thing about the site that I have trouble with, and another thing that I don't think the people behind Avvo have taken seriously enough.
On Avvo, each lawyer has a rating that's based upon a "mathematical model" that considers the information in a lawyer's profile. The formula is not available to us, and I can accept that. But based upon a number of the profiles I have reviewed, I'm wondering whether there's a flaw in the ratings process.
For example, I checked out the listing of all Dallas lawyers. The first fifty or so lawyers in the list are rated 10.0, or "Superb." In looking through many of these profiles, I found that most of them contained very little information, except under the "Recognition" tab. On that tab, you can find Awards, Associations, Publications, and Speaking Engagements -- and most all of these 10.0 lawyers were listed as "Texas Super Lawyers," which in Texas, as in most states, is more of a marketing tool than anything else.
In fact, when looking at the elements of an attorney's profile -- Experience, Recognition, Client Ratings, and Peer Endorsements -- I would weight the Recognition area probably the lowest when searching for a qualified lawyer. Yet more than 50 Dallas attorneys are listed as "10.0 Superb," seemingly only on the basis of the awards they've won and positions they've held. I do believe that these things deserve to be included in a lawyer's rating -- I'm just not sure they are weighted appropriately.
I also hope Avvo takes seriously the concern Dennis raised during the podcast that state bar regulators may become interested in Avvo and whether it runs afoul of lawyer advertising rules. As Dennis pointed out, some state bars have reacted negatively to new technologies, and using the Internet for advertising a lawyer's practice. Hopefully Avvo will not come under close scrutiny from the various state bars.
If you're not already listening to This Week in Law, you should. Denise and her gang of commentators consistently come up with some great topics to discuss.