Let me state right off the bat that I am Avvo rated 10.0, so what I am about to say cannot be attributed to sour grapes.
Avvo is so rife with problems that I am not aware of any lawyers who take it seriously. If it has no information on you (because, let's say, you do not have a website), it still rates you based (apparently) only on your years of experience and your sanctions by the bar. The fairer thing to do would be to not rate that person at all. Also, when it firs started it had a category called "trustworthiness" and it ranked people from 0 to 5 and it appeared it gave most people a 3. Well a 3 out of 5 implies you are not trustworthy. It has since changed this to professional conduct and it appears everyone without bar issues gets a 5.

Anyway, I think if you read the complaint in this case (and I have), you will see there are issues unique to this situation that might allow a judge to rule against Avvo here without ruling against a Yelp or a Yahoo.

I am a small business and startup attorney and I particularly understand your concerns as a VC about attacking this kind of effort.

As for Yahoo and Yelp and other consumer ratings sites...there is a world of difference between something like a restaurant, where it is easy for people to walk up and try and judge the product for themselves without spending too much money, and professional services such as heart surgery or lawyers who draft patent applications or provide expert assistance with your IPO.

Also, note that this is not consumers rating lawyers...Avvo is claiming to be an expert about experts. They are only as good as their data, which is exclusively mined, and is awful: garbage in, garbage out.

In widely publicized media coverage, some sitting Supreme Court justices are rated 3.5 while several dead lawyers are in the system and some in the dead category were rated 7.0. Several lawyers have more than one entry and the ratings are different--how does that happen? Several lawyers have figured out that adding awards and publications are more important to ranking than years of experience or number of clients served. Marketing is the most important way to enhance your score: if you have a website or do a lot of public speaking your score goes up, while if you are just an excellent busy lawyer you are penalized.

Another serious flaw is the use of information about complaints and 'grievances' in the Avvo ranking system. There is no standard definition or treatment for complaints or attorney grievances among the state bars which regulate the practice of law. Some states count all complaints and make that statistic public, other states only make reprimands or suspensions (very serious) public. Any client, member of the public, or even a competing attorney can file a complaint. Around 90% of complaints filed do not merit investigation as unreasonable or not presenting an issue.

Criminal law attorneys and attorneys representing the mentally ill (both very worthwhile societal functions) suffer a very high complaint rate because of their clientele and they are going to have a much higher percentage of complaints than other attorneys. So their Avvo rating will be very low.

Avvo takes none of this into account, and none of it is prominently disclosed to the general public they seek to attract to their site. The ranking system is deeply flawed and biased and unfairly penalizes attorneys for their marketing choices and their state system.

Would you pick a dentist or primary physician based on his speaking engagements and website?

So yes, the complaint does have merit.

The complaint does have merit, in my opinion. I'm the office manager for a small law firm, and when I came across AVVO, I discovered that my boss's profile information is incorrect. I was happy to see that we could make corrections to his profile at no charge, so I proceeded to attempt to do so. Oh wait, you have to give a credit card number to "verify your identity." They claim they will never charge the card, but who wants their credit card information in some database, just sitting there waiting to be hacked? There other other, much better ways to verify an attorney's identity and better yet, review the accuracy of information submitted. The problem is not just that AVVO's "secret" rating system is flawed, it is that the people who it claims to be serving, consumers who need help from an attorney, aren't getting good information upon which to base a decision. In addition, the site is so full of disclaimers that, by its own admission, it is an extremely poor tool for the consumer.

If it was just a crappy site, it wouldn't be such a big deal. We are generally happy to have our name out there for consideration by potential clients; however, the combination of bad information and the inability to correct it without giving them a credit card is tantamount to extortion.

My guess is that if the site-runners aren't concerned about the accuracy of the basic information they publish about the attorneys listed, they aren't going to be bothered about the accuracy of the ratings or comments submitted by alleged clients, either.

It's flawed all the way around, and it isn't a question of the right to free speech. If I published inaccurate information about you and then told you that you had to give me your credit card information in order for me to change that information in my publication, I bet you would be upset, too.