Avvo's Online Ratings For Lawyers Come To Boston

The controversial Avvo.com has come to Boston (and the rest of Massachusetts). I have heard about the reviews and the law suits filed. It looks like the early rating system had some problems with gathering information and weighting the information that Avvo was able to find. As of April 2, they have added Massachusetts.

Since I am a lawyer in Massachusetts, I figured I would check out my profile: Doug Cornelius on Avvo.
At first, I achieved the "No Concern Rating." There is a process for claiming your profile. After doing that, I got a 6.2 out of 10. That did not seem very good. So I added some publications, speaking engagements, employment, etc. That got me up to a 6.5.

According to their description of how the ratings work, if you add more information to your profile then your numerical rating should increase. I also jumped into the questions feature of the site and answered a few real estate questions. Answering questions got me a badge of Level 3 Contributor, but did not seem to help my rating.

I am all for public disclosure of information, especially public information like attorney discipline. I find Avvo to be an interesting exercise, but I am still not sure where it fits into my public profile. It certainly has a marketing twist to it. Is it any more useful than this blog on law firm knowledge management or Real Estate Space, my commercial real estate finance blog?

Personally, I find the numerical rating to be distasteful and somewhat random. (Admittedly, I might not take that position if I had a rating of 10, or at least above 9.) The information is clearly more robust than the rather sparse information in Martindale: Doug Cornelius in Martindale.

I will continue to keep an eye on it and see what happens.