Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 2:56 p.m.

This should be very interesting. If Berman is correct and arbitrary information can be added to a profile in order to boost the ranking - and this seems quite possible unless the Avvo system can actually distinguish between different types of information posted to a profile (and I don't believe it can based on Avvo's description of their methodology) - Avvo will have a difficult time.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 3:22 p.m.

What a fight: a dumb website versus an ambulance-chasing lawyer. I hope both lose.

Posted by perecorp at 6/14/07 3:26 p.m.

Avvo may not be a true representation of a lawyer, but suing Avvo sure shows the true general 's***bag' nature of lawyers in general. Get over it. If there wasnt something that Berman is abviously hiding, then why even bother. GO AVVO!!!!!

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 3:48 p.m.

Yep. I'm rooting for Avvo.

This is like a restaurant suing Yelp for bad reviews.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 3:49 p.m.

Mark Britton writes this in the Avvo blog today:

"So, theoretically, a lawyer could come into the site, claim his or her profile and fill it with a bunch of silly entries in order to inflate the Avvo Rating. But, this inflation is short-lived because it will go away when we map this new and unknown data."

in what is presented as an incidental post to something posted by an attorney days ago. In fact, this is hardly an incidental post - this very issue was highlighted in John Cook's announcement just a little earlier with regard to the class action filed against Avvo today.

When this was pointed out on the Avvo blog, the entry was deleted by Avvo.

Posted by courtland at 6/14/07 3:54 p.m.

Berman would "probably" sue his own grandmother if he swallowed an olive pit off her relish tray at the family Thanksgiving dinner.

Posted by frustrated at 6/14/07 4:19 p.m.

So, what will the rating be of the lawyers Avvo uses to defend itself? Will they choose the lawyer who in their system who has the highest rating?

There's lots of hype on the internet, and maybe this will be a chance for courts to review what's legit and what's not appropriate to say when hyping a service or product.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 4:26 p.m.

Avvo is done. Interesting idea but they won't be able to recover from stepping on the accuracy landmine. Berman has already won. He will also win a settlement that will drain the Avvo's bank account. My advice to Avvo is to man-up, pull the plug and move on.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 4:45 p.m.

Consumer choice people. Nobody says you have to use AVVO. AVVO doesn't claim to be the only source one should use to make a decision. The attorney's who are suing definitely lost my business for good. If this service survives, it will be a very good resource to factor into your service provider selection process. Man, give it a chance. Sure the methodolgy can be improved. But it's better than the opaqueness offered via traditional yellow page ads. People who are complaining have no vision and are very scared. If you kill AVVO, then find a different way to help me learn who has been reprimanded by the bar or otherwise has a history of price gouging.

Posted by ezeques at 6/14/07 4:52 p.m.

A real tragedy here is AVVO will probably never have their day in court since their cost of defense will kill them first.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 6:55 p.m.

This is pretty exciting to watch unfold. I'm sure this is going to get a lot of national media attention and Berman will become famous. This pleases me because what avvo is doing is wrong on so many levels that there is nothing right about it.

First lawyers then who? I certainly don't want some rating system out there that calls me a 'danger' unless i pay 2.99 for the first minute and 1.99 for every minute thereafter to update and maintain THEIR site, while also making ad money off me.

For every advertising dollar you earn, somebody ends up paying for it.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 7:00 p.m.

So fun to watch old people (read all you lawyers out there) squirm under a silly rating site. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of the social web. Check your ego at the door (what it won't fit through?) Oh, and talk to your kids sometime, you might get a different perspective.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 7:03 p.m.

Britton is trying to play god. Alphas are born, not made.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 8:00 p.m.

"But it's better than the opaqueness offered via traditional yellow page ads. People who are complaining have no vision and are very scared."

Very well said. Completely agree.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Google PageRank isn't perfect and doesn't guarantee that 100% of the time you'll get exactly what you're looking for. Zagat ratings only reflect a few people's opinions at various moments in time. But are they better than zero information? You bet.

Go Avvo. Beat this turkey.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 8:05 p.m.

I dont think people understand that its the underlying principle of this thing that makes it so bad.

Posted by Tomasyalba at 6/14/07 8:16 p.m.

It's cool to see this coming to a head so quickly. Lawyers are licensed under rules that require them to be really careful about their advertising techniques, so that someone needing a lawyer can have some certainty they're not being misled into hiring someone. Berman's complaint (thanks for posting the pdf of it, by the way) makes clear that the avvo site runs roughshod over these consumer protections in a way the law doesn't allow. It is so funny that the complaint points out how avvo's ceo, as a licensed lawyer, may well be in flagrant violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, therefore subject to a bar association disciplinary action. Ironically, if the bar censures the avvo ceo as a lawyer, that would lower the ceo's avvo rating!

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 10:23 p.m.

I'm not an attorney, but I can say this with great certainty: Avvo, you are now officially screwed. I tried to warn those at Ignition to get out while they were able. Berman is now going after them as well and the results will not be pretty. There apparently were prior friendships amongst some at Ignition and the Avvo founders. This still will not prevent them from leaning heavily on dissolving this thing even if Britton chooses to attempt to forge on - something he probably will errantly do to the short death given what we have seen.

This guy clearly went ahead with little thought to his own ilk and common sense, instead choosing to attempt to line his pockets by implementing one of the most misguided, disturbing, and inherently unworkable web offerings I have ever seen. Once again, you will never be able to implement an effective means of subjectively quantifying professionals such as attorneys.

Thank goodness we have individuals out there like Berman who have the ability and desire to weed out the shysters in all fields. Does anyone really think a heavy-hitter of his caliber would take them on unless he knew it was a dunk? How could they not have seen the obvious and inherent flaws in this thing? Answer - they simply did not care in their bizarre and cloyingly coersive chase for ad money. By the way, people are indeed being charged $1 on their credit cards based on other items I have read. Nice.

I'm still convinced that JGO must have something to do with this one as well given how badly it reeks.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 10:49 p.m.

I just found out there is an executive at avvo from classmates.com, the number 1 ranked (ha!) most annoying and intrusive web site on the planet. Its all starting to make sense now....

Posted by unregistered user at 6/14/07 11:35 p.m.

Give me a break. This lawsuit is just another useless waste of time and money, something lawyers are so darn good at. I highly highly highly doubt there would be this kind of reaction if Avvo was reviewing something other than litigation hungry lawyers. So they have a rating system that not everybody likes, welcome to the world of the internet. I work in an industry that gets rated by a certain popular website and sure, do I sometimes think the ratings aren't a perfect reflection of reality? Of course. But consumers should have the OPTION of looking at the information and then deciding for themselves if they want to believe it or not. Taking away that right is just ridiculous. Lawyers are just getting all worked up because this site names names and some can't take the heat. This kind of service isn't going away, it's expanding like wildfire and people need to get comfortable with transparency or get out of the game. I sure hope Avvo takes those whiney lawyers down. This just shows what an obnoxious lawsuit hungry bunch they all are.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/15/07 12:29 p.m.

Re: "Once again, you will never be able to implement an effective means of subjectively quantifying professionals such as attorneys."

This seems like a really bogus argument to me. There is indeed a way to quantify professionals (and it is done all the time in hiring decisions by employers based on education, years of experience, projects that you have worked on, speaking engagements, professional accomplishments, etc.). Furthermore, there is nothing empirically wrong with rating people, and it is NOT against the law (if there were, there would never be any performance reviews or merit increases / raises for employees). Moreover, there are services that actually already quantify professionals in the legal profession itself through the US News & World Report ranking of law schools (based on such "objective criteria" as the number of volumes in the library, the teaching caliber of the faculty, students' LSAT scores and GPAs, etc).

If I were AVVO, I would have baked things like the US News & World Report law schools data into the algorithm to further obfuscate how the service works and would have also included information on what cases the attorneys have tried, how many cases they have won, etc. But the fact of the matter is that this is a Beta product, and AVVO did not get to that point.

In my mind, these "objective criteria" used by US News & World Report are no better or worse than AVVO's criteria for AVVO's target market (consumer-facing legal services like immigration, personal injury, etc). AVVO's algorithm hopefully will evolve over time (if it can survive this frivolous lawsuit by Hagens Berman).

Which brings me to my last point, in my humble opinion, Hagens Berman is dirty (just like its co-counsel in many cases, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Shulman – where many of its partners are from - is dirty). To that end, Milberg Weiss was indicted for fraud last year. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/us/18cnd-legal.html?ex=1182052800&en=24c8f53478da9226&ei=5070 for more info on the Milberg Weiss charge of bribery and fraud and http://slw.issproxy.com/people/ for more info on how 4 former Milberg Weiss attorneys (at least 1 of which is a managing partner) are now at Hagens Berman.

Based on all of this, I personally feel that Steve Berman and his firm, Hagens Berman, typify everything that is wrong with our legal system. This is yet another attempt to hurt the American people on the guise of "protecting the consumer". If you don't believe me, research the PSLRA (Private Securities Litigation Reform Act) and the cases that Hagens Berman has used to generate millions of dollars in revenue at the expense of publicly-traded companies and, in turn, their shareholders (i.e. average American consumer) who have to foot the huge litigation defense costs.

Hang on and fight the good fight, AVVO!!! I am rooting for you AVVO!!!

Posted by unregistered user at 6/15/07 1:45 p.m.

It is perfectly good idea.. companies like yelp, angies list, insiderpages are just duping people with reviews they get by paying money..people just don't get that most of the reviews are there because people paid money..with avvo funding of 13 million if you just count $5 per review..they can have 1 million reviews in $5 million..and then they will start boasting they have lots of reviews..(fyi, currently yelp has 1 million reviews..and all the so called consumer advocate bloggers think it is a lot)..i think not only company but also Benchmark (VC funds) should be sued for promoting such fraudulent things..obviously if there are hundreds of thousands of paid reviews then other small percentage of real reviews will also be there..but often they don't make a difference..I am with the lawyer here..Next get Angies List which completely cheats people and even charges consumers ...User generated content should be absolutely transperant ..

Posted by unregistered user at 6/15/07 4:11 p.m.

I don't see how this is any different than epininons or other web sites that rank products and services.
I heard John Henry Browne on KVI this morning and he was totally unconvincing. To paraphrase his argument: "a bunch of geeks shouldn't be allowed to do this, we are just too important to be rated this way. And my rating isn't so great so I think I'll sue them"
Cry baby. I wouldn't hire an attorney with such thin skin.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/15/07 7:49 p.m.

There's a reason many of Berman's colleagues privately refer to him as "Berman the Vermin". He's been a bottom feeder from day one of his career (according to those that have known him for the last 15+ years). He loves to file high profile suits where there's deep pockets. Our silly system makes it cheaper to pay him off than fight in most cases.

I hope Avvo has the greatest success. All the free publicity sure can't hurt thanks to the vermin.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/18/07 10:15 a.m.

"All the free publicity sure can't hurt"

Hope you dont do PR for a living. A bad reputation can kill a business. If people dont trust you, they wont do business with you.

Posted by Arborlaw at 6/18/07 11:07 a.m.

Seriously, would you select someone to do your root canal or open heart surgery based on their marketing skills? Website/public speaking are the most weighted items that can raise a lawyer's Avvo rating above 'average'. The Avvo rating is not based on client satisfaction, its bumped up by how much time an attorney spends on the road with Powerpoint. (I'd argue that that is an *inverse relationship* to attorney excellence, rather than an indicator--good lawyers are too busy.)

As far as the First Amendment goes...there are lots of places where free speech doesn't apply. You can't slander or libel someone and many lawyers think that is just what Avvo is doing, by relying on bad data and presenting it as "facts and statistics."

It's been widely publicized in the WSJ and elsewhere that some sitting Supreme Court justices ranked 3.5 on Avvo, while there are dead lawyers ranking 7.0, and suspended lawyers who rank over 8.0. Some lawyers are missing from the system and others have more than one profile with different ranking numbers. All of Avvo's data is mined. Garbage in, garbage out.

As someone thoughtfully pointed out above, professionals like doctors and lawyers are restricted in what they can say to the public in advertising. Each of the 50 states has different professional rules for lawyers. It's not apples-to-apples, as Avvo makes it seem by having a unitary ranking system on their site. Some states do not allow lawyers to have websites at all, others require pre-approval by the state board in writing and advertising is strictly limited.

Another stat that goes into the flawed Avvo rating is data mined about complaints and grievances. Anyone can file a complaint against an attorney -- not just clients, but also a member of the general public, for any reason, or even a competing attorney. Some states make the stats on all complaints public. Other states only make suspensions and reprimands public. Around 90% of complaints filed do not merit investigation as not presenting an issue.

Criminal law attorneys, and attorneys representing the mentally ill (both very worthwhile societal functions) suffer a very high complaint rate because of their clientele and they are going to have a much higher percentage of complaints than other attorneys. So their Avvo rating will be very low, even if they get innocent clients exonerated by DNA evidence off of death row.

Avvo takes none of this into account. None of the discrepancies or bad data are prominently disclosed to the general public they seek to attract to their site. The ranking system is deeply flawed and biased and unfairly penalizes attorneys for their marketing choices and the state system they happen to be in.

As for Yahoo and Yelp and other consumer ratings sites...there is no danger to them. There is a world of difference between something like a restaurant, where it is easy for consumers to walk up and try and judge the product for themselves without spending too much money, and professional services such as heart surgery or the drafting of patent applications or expert assistance in launching an IPO. Avvo is claiming to be an expert about experts...they propose to funnel people to "the right lawyer" (their wording) based on crummy data.

You may not like the attorney...but there is merit in the complaint.

Posted by unregistered user at 7/10/07 2:09 p.m.

Only a lawyer would think picking a lawyer (in no less a "life-defining moment") is more important than that trivial matter of eating. Geez, last I checked if I didnt eat soon I will die.

A lawsuit will NEVER define me because I anticipate in this society with all these lawyers being the subject of no less than 3-5 in my lifetime, including the time I was sued by a JUDGE when I had the unfortunate luck of causing an auto accident and damaging her new Mercedes (btw, both cars drove away, no one required any medical attention, my insurance offered approximately $3k for damages and she wanted maybe $5k, when neither side budged, I was served).

Go AVVO. Free speech should never be silenced.