November 2007

Avvo.com: A Young Lawyer's Worst Enemy—or Best Friend?

by Laura Chuang

By now you have surely heard about the new website Avvo.com, which launched on June 5, 2007, and rates the abilities of attorneys who have been entered into its database. If you haven't taken a look at it, I suggest you do. Most Washington attorneys are listed on Avvo.com, as well as other notable attorneys across the country such as Abraham Lincoln (complete with picture) and Clarence Darrow.
  
Avvo.com boasts that it helps the average consumer find a lawyer because the website is unbiased, shows no favoritism, was "developed by legal experts for non-experts," and is easy to understand.

But is it really all it says it's cracked up to be?
 
In general the website scores attorneys on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being the best. Originally when the website was first launched, attorneys were assigned these numerical ratings based on the information Avvo.com had about the attorney. Currently, if the website does not have any further information on an attorney besides what is in public records, the website will not give a numerical ranking but rather place a note under the attorney's name such as "Attention" or "No Concern", depending upon an attorney's disciplinary record.
 
Some attorneys disagree with the website's abilities, however, and have gone so far as to file a lawsuit against Avvo.com. Steve W. Berman, a prominent Seattle attorney, filed a complaint on June 14 this summer against the site alleging numerous violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.  According to the complaint, one attorney was able to boost his Avvo.com score by listing his softball achievements. The complaint also alleges that Avvo.com assigned U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg the same level of trustworthiness (three stars out of five) as Lynne Stewart. Apparently, Stewart is currently serving a prison term for conspiracy to defraud the government.
    
The CEO of Avvo.com, Mark Britton, responded to the complaint on Avvoblog.com, stating that "[W]e at Avvo believe that disciplinary actions and sanctions are very important—and that consumers have a right to know about them. Part of what Avvo is doing is taking a great big flashlight and shining it into places that have been forever dark to consumers.... This lawsuit is an effort to censor and chill Avvo's analysis, commentary and opinion in order to protect attorneys who have disciplinary actions in their backgrounds. It seems to reflect a belief, on behalf of the lawyers bringing this lawsuit, that the First Amendment doesn't apply to the dissemination of opinions and information about them."

I was naturally curious when I first learned of the site, so I went ahead and typed my name in a day or two after it first launched. My jaw nearly dropped and my ego was hurt—how could I only be ranked a mere 5.3 out of 10? True, I have barely been practicing law for two years—but one of the things that affronted me the most was that the website dared to rank my "trustworthiness" as a paltry three stars out of five. I began to calm down as I realized the website offered absolutely no other information about me. In fact, when I looked up other persons whom I admire in the Spokane community—some great attorneys, for sure—I realized that their rankings were not as high as I would have expected either.
 
To update your Avvo.com profile an attorney has to claim it—either by credit card or email. I decided to experiment with the website for your benefit (and to satisfy my curiosity) and "claim my profile." Here is what I learned after entering my credit card information. Let's just hope that I never get charged a fee for this website.
 
Upon claiming my profile I got a rating of 5.3—an "Average" score, again. Great. I think I liked the "No Concern" rating better. In an effort to boost my score I began listing every single legal association membership and award I had ever received—even if it meant listing a measly CALI Award. After I entered everything I possibly could, I ended up with a 6.2 and a rating of "Good." I can live with that for now, I thought.

But when I started looking up other attorneys with the same score in my area I realized that many of these attorneys with the same or a similar score have several more years of experience than I do; some attorneys even had 30 years' worth more experience than I and had not even listed all of the professional associations and awards they had received over their careers. Certainly a rating system like this cannot be that accurate or helpful if I can boost my score that easily.
 
That brings us to the ethics portion of this. How ethical is it for an attorney to list all of the awards and associations he is a member of so an Avvo.com score can be boosted? Most of the associations I belong to were joined by paying a fee, and that is it. It took no legal skill on my part to join the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers—I just paid money. Is that considered misleading advertising because it brought up my Avvo.com score? And just because I was on the Dean's List in law school, should that count for much when compared with another attorney's reputation in the community and 30 years' worth of actual experience in the field? Academics are great, but just because you achieved good grades in law school does not mean you are also a good attorney.
 
Some would say that those attorneys who chose not to play the game of updating their Avvo.com profiles and boosting their scores are at fault for the scoring discrepancies. But RPC 7.2 governs advertising for attorneys in Washington, and I take particular concern with the end of Comment 1, which states: "The interest in expanding public information about legal services ought to prevail over considerations of tradition. Nevertheless, advertising by lawyers entails the risk of practices that are misleading or overreaching." Plus, it is professional misconduct under RPC 8.4(c) to "engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation."

In the end, I believe that as young lawyers we need to be cautious with the website Avvo.com. Advertising one's legal representation abilities based upon an arbitrary score can be extremely misleading to the general public. Potential clients may not be all that concerned with delving into my profile so long as my score is good—and it could be a score based partially on my ability to buy membership into several legal organizations. And if potential clients compare my score with someone who has been practicing ten times longer, it is possible such a client would view the more experienced attorney as less skilled since his career would not appear to have taken off as quickly. Of course, this works both ways, because though we may not want to admit it we have all seen attorneys with more years in practice—but also less skill.
  
Another thing that bothers me about Avvo.com is that it actually provides less information about attorneys with disciplinary sanctions than our Washington State Bar Association's website. The only thing Avvo.com does is list whether an attorney has been disciplined; yet go to www.wsba.org and look up any attorney with disciplinary sanctions and you are likely to get a fairly detailed description of what that lawyer was sanctioned for. And, if a potential client is really that concerned, the Bar's website makes it clear that he or she should contact the Bar to check an attorney's record. It seems a little deceptive that Mark Britton tries to claim such information is hidden away from potential clients; in reality, it is there for the taking—at least in Washington State, that is.
 
I will give Avvo.com some props for making some immediate changes to its site since it first launched. I appreciate that attorneys are no longer given an average "trustworthiness" score based on years of practice, but rather a "professional conduct" score that is high unless there is information to the contrary. Also, it is an improvement to the site that if an attorney has not filled in his profile and there is no other information on him, then a score is not assigned.
 
But I still question how misleading the scores on Avvo.com can be. I think that the numerical score really lends itself to some problems in objectively identifying what a good attorney is. How is a website where an attorney can boost his own score really that beneficial to a potential client? It seems to me that because the scores do not accurately reflect the spectrum of other attorneys' achievements it is not an "unbiased" and "easy to understand" system for the general population. Especially when it comes to us young lawyers, what is the point of claiming a profile on Avvo.com if you cannot immediately raise your score? Otherwise you are just going to start out with a low score and a ranking of "Average" based solely upon your number of years in practice. That does not seem fair, either.
 
For now, I still prefer the traditional attorney referral process. If an attorney I respect will recommend me for the job, then that's more than good enough for me.  

Laura Chuang can be contacted by e-mail at laura_chuang@yahoo.com. All opinions are solely her own and not those of WYLD, the WSBA or De Novo.