Avvo Update: We’ve Fallen and We Can’t Get Up
Simple Justice:
For a while, it appeared that Avvo was doing so well. It made efforts to address many of the criticisms levied its way, particularly the taint faced by younger lawyers who were made to look either incompetent or questionable because they couldn’t produce the types of credentials that only come with time. It beat the old-timer, Martindale-Hubbell, to the internet punch big time. Avvo was definitely on the road. Or so I thought.
Yesterday, Avvo sent out notice of yet another paradigm shift in its business plan. I described the last one, Avvo Answers, as:
These are answers by lawyers to questions asked by potential clients. This is awful. Beyond the fact that the questions don’t provide sufficient information to formulate a meaningful answer, it is dangerous, seriously dangerous, to provide generic, sometimes erroneous, answers about complex legal issues. The lawyers who contribute to this feature get the benefit of self-promotion, but do so at the expense accuracy and credibility.
And some of my best lawyer friends decided to play this game. From what I hear, it hasn’t panned out too well for them. The people who want free legal advice don’t want to pay good money to retain counsel. Duh.
But Avvo’s raison d’être was to provide a public service, to let the legal services consumer have a place where they could find legitimate information about lawyers in order to make a reasoned decision. This, apparently, has not proven a sufficient business plan, meaning that Avvo needs a new plan. Here it is:
We are about to take our first step towards offering advertising opportunities for attorneys on Avvo. At the end of this week, if you visit designated pages on the site, such as the attorney search results or profile pages, you’ll see featured attorney listings like the one below.
Over the next…