Avvo

If you know about Avvo, you know that it is a ratings website for lawyers that rewards smart, experienced, and ethical attorneys with a high ranking for consumers to consider while looking for legal advice. If you’re not familiar with Avvo, pay attention, because the influential web startup is bound to have a major impact on how lawyers interact online, as the Internet becomes an even more essential part of everyday life. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend Avvo’s Avvocating conference in Orlando, which was packed with information sessions on the best practices of web marketing, the importance of Google local search, and the ethical questions that lawyers face online.

Over the past year, there has been a lot of discussion about Avvo’s impact on the legal profession. Critics have said that Avvo’s rating system appears arbitrary and fluctuates for no reason. Others, like Jay Fleishman, have praised the web startup for its great web presence and growing community. I’m an unabashed fan of Avvo, both for its innovative platform and its clever discussion of web and legal issues on the Avvo Blog and NakedLaw. For these reasons, among others, I’m growing more and more excited for next week’s Avvocating conference in Orlando, Florida.

Before massive layoffs at the country’s major law firms, before major cuts to the funding of free legal aid clinics, and before before the meteoric rise of Google, consumers relied on lawyer referrals for legal representation. Once search engines took over, however, and we grew used to accessing the world from our desktops, consumers turned to the web. So we’ve compiled some information about the four major legal raters, their differences, and their main qualities.

If I were a lawyer who had been sanctioned for unethical behavior, I’d probably try to avoid attracting attention to myself. But Florida attorney Joe Davis is taking a different approach, and has formally sued Avvo, the social media and information website for lawyers and consumers, for revealing that he had been sanctioned for professional misconduct. Needless to say, Avvo is not backing down since increasing transparency in the legal process is exactly what the pioneering website has set out to do.

On Wednesday, GJEL Managing Partner Andy Gillin hosted a personal injury 101 webinar for Avvo on the first steps drivers should take after a car accident. In addition to discussing the five most important actions to take, Andy talked about the situations in which drivers should hire a lawyer and when they would be better off representing themselves. The webinar concluded with some fantastic questions from the audience on subjects like detecting when the other driver is simply looking for a pay day, legal complications that arise from not wearing a seat belt, and the impact having just one beer before driving can have on the lawsuit. Click through for the whole segment.

The fine folks over at the Avvo Blog are running a guest post I wrote recently about the thin line separating acceptable use of social media and the tendency among some lawyers to go overboard, and appear overbearing online. Though an impressive portion of the legal community has joined the online space through blogs and social media, many remain reluctant, fearing that the new forum could damage the legal profession, the way it has journalism, music, and film. Fortunately, lawyers can avoid this fate by following a few key guidelines.

Our friends over at Avvo, the social networking site for lawyers and non-lawyers in need of advice, launched a new blog today with the purpose of “exposing the law for non-lawyers in an engaging and informative way, so that people are thinking about, and can understand, the law even when they’re not in legal trouble.”

I’ve made it no secret in the past that I’m a big fan of the services Avvo provides, both for lawyers and non-lawyers. But I’m particularly excited about this new blog, dubbed NakedLaw, because it jives with my goal for the GJEL blog.

Last week, Avvo, the social media directory of attorney profiles that prospective clients can use to find the right fit, bought itself “a new suit.” Avvo CEO Mark Britton said the change was necessary, just like when he would periodically realize as an associate that it was time for some new clothes. “Maybe styles had changed a bit; maybe it was losing its shape; maybe I slept in it one too many times,” he wrote on the site’s blog. “Whatever the case, I would simply look at my aging suit and think, ‘Time for a new one.'”