Comments on: Lawyers vs. Web 2.0

By: Lawgarithms mobile edition

Lawgarithms mobile edition — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:06:30 +0000

[...] good news for Avvo, and for any site that crunches variables to assign a rating. As Mike Gunderloy observed when the suit against Avvo was filed, this includes a good deal of the Web 2.0 ecosystem. While [...]

By: Attorney business employment labor legal relations attorney legal services labor employment attorney - Maritime Worker Injury Law ? Lawyers, Attorneys, & Free Legal ... » Labor Employment Attorney

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:15:07 +0000

[...] Web Worker Daily ? Blog Archive Lawyers vs. Web 2.0 ?Lawyers vs. Web 2.0. If you?re a web worker, your online life is shot through with ratings, rankings, and peer-to-peer connections. Whether it?s setting the … [...]

By: John Feeney

John Feeney — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:15:37 +0000

As a non-lawyer, I for one am happy the issue of AVVO has come outside the Legal blogger world. I find it funny, suit based on Consumer Protection, no I don’t consider Lawyers consumers needing protection. The design effort to protect the consumer from misleading information. You mean getting the general public’s reaction or input, by which if not flattering, it must be misleading.

The system exposes two things overlooked: 1) the information collected was obtained from data bases that have not been updated or purged in years. AVVO takes the hit, the source should be exposed for lack of maintenance.
2) Customer Satisfaction – would you care to explain where a consumer can go to get satisfaction if they feel Service was less than exceptable.

Customer Satisfaction IS CUSTOMER INPUT. Now you want to control the open forum too what Customers can say or better yet what others can post/print/blog about you. As a business we subject ourselves to this, now all of sudden Lawyers are not a business or subject to different rules.

Let’s face a few ideas: Top Lawyers within a field are not going to be concerned with a web-site ranking system that by all intent purposes brings them back to the pack. Saying a Fortune 500 company made its decision on legal representation based on web-site: that company is going down. The site is geared toward the other millions of people that need legal support in a simple easy to read format. The site is geared toward the 70%+ Small/Solo firms throughout this country who’s main concern is finding NEW Business or Paying Clients.

Here’s a thought, which is why I love pirates, move the site off-shore. Put the tag line: Attorneys hate us – You Opinion matters. Focus an gathering the users of the free world. Right now the traffic is what more attorney’s, like they would help each other make a buck. AVVO should take a million of their fund money and blast the media right NOW. This is business, not law, gather the consumers like they would side with lawyers.

By: mythago

mythago — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:37:15 +0000

The broad language of the original complaint doesn’t mean much about what the result would be if the lawyers won. That said, the fact that a lawyer is running this has a lot to do with it, I’m guessing: it’s somebody in the same line of work rating his competition.

and why not include a win/loss ratio for lawyers who work in the courtroom?

It might be interesting, but it wouldn’t tell you a whole lot about how ‘good’ your lawyer is. If your lawyer is excellent at forcing the other side to come up with fat settlements, they’ll never be in trial.

By: John B

John B — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:42:12 +0000

Well, I found a grammatical error on page 3, slightly ironic since this is a lawsuit about lawyers having their reputation damaged by others. I stopped reading around page 5.

As for the meat of the problem there should probably be a bit more transparency on Avvo’s part, and why not include a win/loss ratio for lawyers who work in the courtroom? I think a lot of people would be interested to see that.

By: Wm Paul Slough

Wm Paul Slough — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:58:13 +0000

A copy of the complaint is here. If you read it, I think you'll get a better idea of what the plaintiffs' concerns are.

By: Comments left elsewhere… « Mullen on Law 2.0+

Comments left elsewhere… « Mullen on Law 2.0+ — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:43:29 +0000

[...] left elsewhere… Filed under: Avvo, Function — medeator @ 5:43 pm On the Web Worker Daily blog: Thanks for the post,–this is an area I am very concerned about and am blogging the issue of Law [...]

By: R. Mullen

R. Mullen — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:39:37 +0000

Thanks for the post,–this is an area I am very concerned about and am blogging the issue of Law 2.0, so I’d really love to hear what you think about it. You can see my thoughts at two places: Mullen on Law 2.0+ (for technical web 2.0 + law) and Illegal Patterns (for litigation issues).

I agree that web 2.0 is a reality, but web 2.0 technology is barely scratching the surface with the Avvo site. What they’ve done is impressive, but it’s really a value-added legal directory. What I’m looking for is a substantive approach of taking public data and using it to actively help clients understand and participate in the LAW, not just having a sense of who lawyers are. There’s where real change will occur.

A rating system is helpful, but does it reduce litigation (generally seen as a good thing)? Does it help consumers avoid legal pitfalls? Not really. I prefer the Nolo approach, but also find that Avvo is adding value,–it’s too early to tell yet where that value will truly be. The cool thing about web 2.0 is that it’s a lot easier to turn on whatever dime they need to in order to provide signfiicant value to the legal market.

How many Digg clones really add value? It’s not easy to do, but they’ve made a valiant effort and I’m sure we’ll see many more of the same in the next year as techies figure out what to do and how to do it.