You may recall, a while back, that I kvetched a bit here about my belief that Avvo’s rating system was less than a bona fide system. The primary focus of my argument centered on Avvo’s decision to assign numerical ratings to some lawyers even though those lawyers have never claimed their profiles. I then spent a little bit of digital space picking some examples of lawyers that I considered to be exceedingly better than their ranking and that the such ratings would actually do a disservice not only to those lawyers – seeming to “punish” them for not claiming their profile – but also to consumers trying to use Avvo to make decisions about lawyers. While admittedly not scientifically exhaustive, my research seemed to indicate that it was a rare lawyer who could get a rating at 7 or above without at least claiming their profile.
Well, I am pleased to report that Avvo has recently changed its approach and has now returned to offering only a non-numerical rating for most lawyers who have not claimed their Avvo profile. Earlier this month, Avvo has changed its approach and, according to Avvo’s General Counsel, “most unclaimed lawyer profiles are now rated either ‘No Concern’ or ‘Attention’ (the latter for those with underlying Avvo Ratings below a 5).”
If you go back to look at that prior post, you will see that Avvo’s General Counsel, Josh King, was kind enough to share that information in a new Comment on that post last week, but knowing that not everyone goes back and reads old posts to find new comments I wanted to make sure to prominently note the change here.
Also, in light of this change, I can follow through with what I said in a comment to that earlier post in an exchange with Josh where I wrote: “If Avvo only assigned numerical ratings to those who claim and participate, and limited itself to the “no concern” or “concern” approach to others, I would readily agree that it was a bona fide system in the way the rules contemplate.”
Now that they are back to that sort of approach, and consumers now can’t use numerical ratings to compare apples and oranges, I think I am left where I said I would be – readily agreeing that Avvo’s rating system is bona fide in the way the rules contemplate.