Internet attorney marketing sites are proliferating and being used by more and more potential clients to find attorneys. One of the more controversial and aggressive of these is Avvo.com [it's name is short for avvocado, which is italian for attorney]. Launched in 2006, Avvo immediately faced lawsuits from attorneys distressed over Avvo's unique rating system and for it's placement of attorney profiles on the site whether the attorney wants their profile listed or not. Avvo is a national site and harvests attorneys' information from whatever information exists about that attorney on the internet. That information is categorized. Based on that information, the attorney is rated up to a perfect 10.0. Avvo has complete control over the information and decides what information to use, again, even if the attorney does not want the information on the Avvo.com site. [aside: even though Avvo claims the rating system is a sophisticated algorithm program, you can game it and receive a perfect 10.0 without a lot of effort; the rating system judges quantity of information in each category not "quality."]
Now, Avvo has placed an attorney in the cross hairs of the Florida State Bar. But this time Avvo is not being sued. It is the Florida State Bar...by the attorney, who is being represented by a Ralph Nader consumer advocacy group. The attorney who has nurtured his profile on Avvo so that it is a perfect 10.0, accomplished that in part by having current and former clients go to the site and post testimonials. That's one of the profile categories: peer and client testimonials or reviews. Actually, any one can go on the site and post a review of an attorney who is listed, again, whether the attorney solicits the review or not. Now, the Florida State Bar is threatening to discipline the attorney not just for soliciting the client testimonials but for retaining the testimonials on his profile at Avvo.com. Problem is, Avvo refuses to delete the client testimonials, claiming that it, Avvo.com, owns the profiles and the information is posted at the discretion of Avvo. The purpose, Avvo defending itself says, is to give legal consumers a place to obtain information about an attorney that is not solely controlled by the attorney. That way, so Avvo boasts, the consumer gets real information about the lawyer.
The Florida State Bar prohibits Florida attorneys from using client testimonials in their advertising. The lawsuit filed by Public Citizen on behalf of the attorney in federal district court alleges that the ban is an unconstitutional infringement of the attorney's right of free speech. I suspect Avvo.com may intercede in the lawsuit to assert its own commercial speech rights. We'll see how it comes out.
So, why am I writing about this? Well, it's an interesting battle over how technology is and will continue to impact attorneys, how potential clients find information about an attorney and how information about you as an attorney out on the internet is not completely within your control, as evidenced by the Avvo.com site. This should lead all attorneys to become informed and involved in understanding and using the internet to market themselves and advance their reputations. And, attorney regulatory agencies may have to rethink their attorney advertising rules in this new Web 2.0 environment.
How can attorneys do that? I have a few suggestions.
1) Know what information is on the internet about you: Google your name on a regular basis to see what results come up and then go to those site pages where your name appears to review the information about you. You may want to do a search with your name on other search engines as well.
2) Know what attorney marketing/client referral sites are on the internet and which ones have information about you that you have not placed there, such as Avvo.com. You can find these sites by doing a search using such search terms as: attorney referral; lawyer referral; attorney directories; attorney adversiting or attorney marketing, to name just a few.
3) Everywhere you can control the information on these sites, you should take the time to do that. Go to Avvo.com and complete your profile so you have a perfect 10.0 or at least a rating higher than 6.0, which is their base rating, if you don't have a public discipline record. If a potential client is searching for an attorney in a particular geographical area, chances are they will hit on Avvo.com at some point.
4) Attorneys must proactively market themselves on the internet through a professional website presence, by purchasing listings on the most credible, professional sites, and by using Facebook and Twitter.
You can do this internet marketing without spending a great deal of time or money once you get launched with a website, a profile created and subscribed to a few on line marketing sites, and putting out information regularly on Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can do most of this for an initial investment of $5,000 to $8,000 and an annual investment of $3,500 to $5,000.
If you want to see what the Santa Clara County Bar Association is doing to help its members with this important part of their practice of law, visit our Public Directory of Attorneys. SCCBA members can subscribe to the Directory and post a short listing or a full profile, searchable by as many practice areas as the attorney wants to list. The site receives over 4,000 new visitors a month. Attorneys with profiles are getting clients nearly weekly if not weekly. And, the cost is below most other comparable commercial sites.
Internet marketing for attorneys is simply a fact of life with which attorneys and bar associations are going to have to come to terms. My prediction on the Florida State Bar case: the attorney and Avvo.com wins.
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