Avvo sued over lawyer rating system - Update 3
Hi Friends,
A class action law suit was filed today against Avvo. You can get more information from LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe's blog and/or read the complaint. Kevin has some additional commentary and resources about the case, so news.justia.com (which is in pre-alpha). The complaint and other case documents, as they are filed, can be found on our Avvo case (Browne et al v. Avvo Inc et al) tracking page . You can then get daily updates and download new filings, and even track updates for the case with a case specific RSS feed. (as you can do with any of the cases we are currently featuring).
We will add the Avvo case to those we are tracking on news.justia.com (which is in pre-alpha) once the initial complaint is in the Western Washington Federal District Court's electronic filing system. You can then get daily updates and download new filings, and even track updates for the case with a case specific RSS feed. (as you can do with any of the cases we are currently featuring). I will update this post once the documents are in our system with a link to the Avvo case page.
And while the litigation begins, the Avvo site continues to make adjustments. It looks the current Western Washington Federal District Judges are no longer Avvo rated. In fact it looks like there has been a large purge of judge ratings. Which I guess makes sense, as they are not practicing as lawyers, although I am not sure why they are even listed in the lawyer directory... shouldn't you just remove judges? or at least note on their profile they are a judge and not available for hire. You don't really want people trying to contact and hire judges, even "not rated" judges. Anyway we will see what happens.
UPDATE 1: Eric Goldman also has some interesting commentary on the Avvo case, and how it relates to the current Roomates.com case and the "additional layer of information" provided by a host site to that produced by users/visitors [ Eric Goldman's Roomates.com Blog Post | Judge Kozinski's 9th Circuit Decision].
UPDATE 2: We now have Avvo case (Browne et al v. Avvo Inc et al) in our news section. We will be checking for new documents in the case daily. You can track new documents in the Avvo case here or subscribe to an RSS feed to track new documents.
UPDATE 3: The Avvo case will be discussed on this weeks Lawyer 2 Lawyer Plaintiff John Henry Browne will join Carolyn Elefant and Denise Howell [DH's ZDNet Blog] in a discussion withBob Ambrogi and J Craig Williams. You can download the podcast of this conversation on Monday from the main Lawyer 2 Lawyer home page, or subscribe by RSS or through iTunes.
And Avvo Mark Britton's statement on the law suit can be on the Avvo blog (as well as Bob Ambrogi's LawSites, which was my original source for Mark's comments).
Peace,
Tim
:: Century City, Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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Avvo Lawyer Directoy is Live --- Looks Good
Hi Friends,
LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe called it.... Avvo is live. Nice clean graphics and fonts that look like Google Analytics (bold Arial).
The focus is on the attorney, not the law firm, and listings are free. There will be additional advertising and featured placements for law firms to purchase in the future.
Key features:From what I see, beyond the beauty of the site, Avvo has two key features.... (1) a "rating system" based on public information (how many years admitted, where you went to school, publications, disciplinary record) and (2) reviews and endorsements by attorneys and clients.
I put "ratings" in quotes because they are not accurate right now. But the ratings will be of great value in collecting data to the directory, at which point the ratings and client and attorney comments may become valuable to users of the site.
My rating is a 7.2, and that is without mention of my real resume and my law review article and a few SSRN articles from the early-90s, or some of the organizations I have been involved with, like the California State Bar's Law Practice and Technology Executive Committee (and many others, especially on the computer/tech organization side...).
I am going to add my info, trying to get my rating up to an 8, with a long term goal of 9.3 :). And adding data is exactly what Avvo wants, and exactly what I am going to do :).
On the tech side, it appears the site is using Ruby On Rails and a Mongrel Web Server.... for those who care :)
And Avvo has added the Avvo blog.
It is just the beginning... but very nice :) Good job Avvo!!!
Peace,
Tim
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Free Web Directory Links to you Web site - Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu and the Open Directory Project - Free Online Marketing for Law Firms Tool #4
Hi Friends,
Doing well in the search engines, like Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search, involves three primary components - (1) Search Engine Optimized Web site structure and page layout (see the free Justia Web sites post), (2) links to your Web site from other related Web sites (this post :) and (3) strong legal content with related key words and phrases that Web users search on (to be covered in a later post).
Two (free) places your law firm should be listed in our the Open Directory (DMOZ.org) and Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu legal Web directory.
The Open Directory is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. The listings from the Open Directory are provided under a free license and are used by Google, for their Google Directory, and hundreds of other Web sites. Getting a link in the Open Directory thus essentially gets you 100s of links to your Web site.
To find the best place to get linked, look at both the practice area and locality of the directory page, the PageRank (download the Google ToolBar or a FireFox extension [ PageRank Status (Google PageRank) | SearchStatus (Google PageRank & Alexa) ]) of the page, and the number of links on that page. What you would ideally like is a Web page that matches your firm's primary practice area, matches your city, has a PageRank of 3+ and few links. To find where to ask for a link, you have two starting point choices, the Society: Law: Services: Lawyers and Law Firms section or through the Regional directory section.
Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu is the best law school Web directory site for getting a link to your law firm. Washburn has long been at the forefront of online legal research, and their directory is well maintained and updated quickly.
Where else should you get your Web site linked? Well look for places that have legal or locality content that is related to your practice. Practice specific Web site directories and local directories. Sites with a lot of good content are also great for getting links from.
And a non-free note: How much should you pay for a link? Well that depends somewhat on the content of the Web page, the PageRank and number of links on the page, but I would place $100 per year at the upper end, with the exception of the Yahoo! directory, which is $299 per year.
And a Yahoo! directory note: I will have other posts on this blog on the Yahoo! directory and other Yahoo! marketing solutions (Yellow pages etc...) in the near future, but a quick note about Yahoo!'s Web directory placement. Choosing the correct page on Yahoo! to get linked up is non-trivial, and involves many of the same factors listed above in choosing a page to be linked in the Open Directory. But no matter what your practice is, do not submit to a Yahoo! directory listing page that is being split into multiple pages unless your Web site will show up on the first page of the split directory page. Being on page two or three of a split page is of minimal value, and probably not worth $299 per year, especially since there should be other places to purchase a Yahoo! directory link.
In summary... submit your law firm Web site to the Open Directory and Washburn Law School's Washlaw.edu. There is more information about link popularity in the Justia SEO Center.
Peace - Tim
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Welcome to the Justia Legal Marketing Blog
Hi Friends,
Welcome to Justia's Legal SEO Blog. On this blog we will comment on the Internet and legal marketing industries, as well as introduce new Justia features and services.
We would like to thank Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog for helping us set up our own Marketing Blog.
Have a great day!
Peace,
Tim
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