aba journal february 2010 issue features joel rothman

8/14/2019 ABA Journal February 2010 issue features Joel Rothman

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T H E L A W Y E R S M A G A Z I N E

WHEN CLIENTS RATE THEIR LAWYERS TAKING A TECH HIATUS

HELPING GLBT LAWYERS FEEL WELCOME WIND FARMS BLOW ILL WILL

Wired!Wired!INNOVATION.

COMPETITION.

LOWER-COST

ALTERNATIVES.

The battle foryour legal research

dollars heats up.

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0


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photograph by credit

A

AMONG SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAplaintiffs lawyers, Paul Kiesel issomething of a go-to guy. Twentyyears ago he set up an informationdatabase for fellow plaintiffs law-yers to discuss arbitrators and me-diators, and among the defense barhe is known as an adversary whohonors his word. Hes also held

board posts with the Los Angelesand California plaintiffs bars, andhe chairs the Los Angeles CountyBar Associations litigation section.

So when Avvo, an online attor-ney ratings site, gave him one outof five stars for industry recog-nition, the Beverly Hills lawyerwas puzzled.

What struck me was, Wherewas this information coming fromand how reliable is it? Kieselsays. The site also includes client

Firms fret about clients

rating their workratings and peer endorsement.Kiesels page had one of each,both of which were positive.

To Kiesel, Avvo ratings are sub-jective, and he wonders whethertheyll really help consumers makeeducated choices about lawyers.But he also senses that, regardlessof what attorneys or legal regulatory

agencies think about the sites, theonline aspect makes them near im-possible to stop.

To a certain extent they offer alegitimate look for clients at how aparticular lawyer is perceived bythe community in a way that didntexist before, Kiesel says. If itscredible, then its valuable. If itssubject to manipulation, then itbecomes particularly dangerous.

Attorneys dont control com-ments on their profiles, which is

the beauty of it, says Mark Britton,the Seattle lawyer who foundedAvvo. If we allowed that, everysingle lawyer who didnt like aclient review would take it down.And every single consumer wouldfigure out that theyd never seeunbiased information.

Kiesel is not alone in his con-

cerns. Controlling the public imageis the name of the game for allkinds of businesses, and especiallyprofessional services like law firms.But rising interest in and availabili-ty of law firm ratings through theInternet could be game-changing,affecting everything from marketstrategies to state ethics rules onadvertising. (See CommentConundrum, page 52.)

Its a question of who controls theimagethe lawyer and law firm or

photograph by thomas broening Reprinted with permission ABA JOURNAL

by Stephanie Francis Ward

gradeanxiety


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Reprinted with permission ABA JOURNAL

The RatersAssociation of Corporate Counsel Value Index.Launched in October and only open to ACC members, the online ratings system is accessed through the groups

webpage at acc.com. As of December, approximately 1,800 in-house lawyers had submitted evaluations. The ACC

plans to show law firms their ratings in early 2010.

Avvo.Launched in 2007, avvo.com uses technology to seek out

information about the lawyer, and the information is compiled into rankings. Clients and peers can rate the subjects

as well. Free to use as is, lawyers can pay a fee to add more information to their profiles. Founder Mark Brittons

goal is to have a listing for every lawyer in America. The site gets approximately 2 million visits a month.

LinkedIn. Established in 2003, the site at linkedin.com has more than 50 million members. As of June 2009,840,000 of those members worked within the legal profession, according to Stem Legal, a Web marketing group for

lawyers. The site has a recommendation function, and users can seek and select recommendations to post on their

profiles. Martindale-Hubbell. One of the oldest online legal directories, martindale.com used to dole

out AV ratings. In 2009 it introduced client review ratings, where buyers of legal services can offer anonymous feed-back for Martindale-listed lawyers. Lawyers can choose what written feedback is displayed on their profiles or

whether to display the ratings at all.Yelp. Founded in 2004, the free general ratings site now has more than 7 mil-lion reviews, with about 30 million visitors to yelp.com a month. And Yelp sells advertisements to local businesses,

which are labeled sponsored results. No reviews can be altered.

the ACCs Value Challenge, thebroader initiative behind the in-dex. I think its the right thing to

do, and theyre going to find outthe reviews anyway. It would beworse if some client says, Gee,you should see whats postedabout you.

Roster of Pasadena, Calif., theretired general counsel of GoldenWest Financial, says the ACC isopposed to law firms using theirValue Index grades in marketingmaterials.

Peter Zeughauser of NewportBeach, Calif., a former ACC na-

tional chairman who now does con-sulting work with large law firms,has voiced concern about the ACCratings. In a three-page alert, theZeughauser Group lists many ofthe objections law firms publiclystated or privately stewed over:

The comments deal with sin-gle offices and practice groups,while many legal matters involvemultiple offices and several prac-tice groups.

The brief information that the

Results delivered and ex-ecution.

In November the blog Above

the Law provided an early peekat the results (the ACC does notwant to call them rankings). Manyof those results represented com-ments from only three or fewer lawdepartment staffers, so ATL onlylisted the few firms with more in-terviews. Still, the post drew sever-al dozen comments in the next 10days, with many remarking on theranking of one firm in relation tothe others named.

Like commercial ratings sites

such as Angies List, the first ACCValue Index results are supposedto be available only to a specificgroupin this case, ACC mem-bers. Fred G. Krebs, the ACCspresident, says the associationplans to show law firms theirgrades in January or Februaryof this year.

Im a strong hawk on thisatsome point they are going to seethe evaluations, says Mike Roster,chair of the steering committee for

false or unsubstantiated claimsabout himself in the writing.

THE ACC CHALLENGETHAT MAY LEAVE LITTLE COMFORT

for those law firms that receive lessthan stellar grades on the latest oflawyer ratings, the Association ofCorporate Counsels Value Index.

For its index, the ACC has beencollecting the opinions of corporatelawyers about the outside law of-fices and practice groups they haveworked with. As of December,about 1,800 evaluations had beenreceived from law department

staffers.Firms are to be graded in sixcategories on a five-point scale.Rating categories include:

Understanding of objectivesand expectations.

Legal expertise. Efficiency and process manage-

ment. Responsiveness and commu-

nication. Predictable cost and budget-

ing skills.


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Reprinted with permission ABA JOURNAL

Value Index requests is curious. There are problematic com-

pound questions in the evaluationform.

A star chamber is createdbecause the feedback the indexgenerates isnt shared with outside

firms.Yet, despite his organizationscomplaints, Zeughauser also pre-dicts that once the firms learn theirgrades, the high rankings willshow up on firm webpages.

Ed Poll, a Venice, Calif., law firmconsultant, agrees. When you havea corporate general counsel giveyou a five-star rating, thats gold,he says. I think the large law firmsvery much do care about the ACC[grades], and if they could find away to what they would considera professional and appropriate wayto ask for a high rating, they woulddo that.

If the ACC Value Index is suc-cessful, Zeughauser suspects part-ners may campaign for gradesoverlunch, on the golf course or at big-ticket sporting eventsmuch likemany court votes for theNationalLaw Journals list of the most-usedoutside counsel.

So what can you do if a lawyerratings site has client ratings and

comments you dont want associat-ed with your firm? In many cases,not much.

Theres no shortage of locationsfor lawyer rating on the Web, eachwith its own rules. Sites like Mart-indale-Hubbell allow firms to optout of client ratings or review andreject ratings before they are post-ed. On the social networking siteLinkedIn, peers or clients can leavecomments about lawyers. Yelp is ageneral consumer review site that

had more than 7 million reviews asof August, including ratings andcomments for lawyers and doctors.

None of the law-specific siteshave yet reached Yelps prominence.But they have gotten interest in thelegal community.

TIME TO PLAY?

I THINK RATINGS SERVICES AREmore of a consternation for lawyersthan they are a benefit for con-sumers at this stage, Poll says.

Consumers have knowledge that

they can call the Better BusinessBureau to see if there are com-plaints against someone, he says.I dont think they have that withsomething like Avvo, but the daymight come.

That day might come sooner thanmany lawyers expect, says RichardGranat, whose work focuses on us-ing the Internet in legal servicesdelivery.

Just as consumers now look upthe ratings of physicians before

they select one, theyll get in thehabit of checking a lawyers creden-tials and ratings, says the PalmBeach Gardens, Fla., lawyer, whohas an Avvo rating of 8.3.

He advises lawyers to get listedin ratings directories, and if theyoffer a seal, like Avvo does, Granatthinks lawyers should post the sealon their webpages.

Earned media is always moreeffective than paid media; peoplejust believe it more, says Dorie

Clark, a Somerville, Mass., market-

ing consultant who advises clientson multimedia.

Posting and reading online re-views, she says, is more commonwith the under-30 set. Over time,Clark adds, the number of attorneyreviews will likely increase as thatgeneration enters the workforce.

Many people actually feel likeits their civic duty to provide infor-mation about sellers they interactwith. I can imagine that the samewould be true with clients of law

firms, says Clark.Traditionally, law firms andwhat their client interactions arelike have been cloaked in mystery,and nobody really knows how goodtheir service is, she says. Thatsobviously disadvantageous to cli-ents. People are spending largesums of money on legal assistance,and they want to know what theyregetting.

[email protected]

photograph courtesy of avvo

Mark Britton: If youre a great lawyer, you havenothing to hide. Let your clients go out thereand speak.

aba journal february 2010 issue features joel rothman

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