About Us

Our Mission and Principles

At Avvo, our mission is to help people make the best decisions for their important legal needs. Finding the right lawyer often comes at a critical time in life, most people have no idea how to go about doing it, and resources that offer answers to questions are overwhelming and difficult to understand.

Avvo is guided by two basic principles:

1. Provide an unmatched level of transparency. Many of the online resources available today only show information about the lawyer who pays the most to be there. Avvo plays no favorites. We provide an unparalleled level of transparency that shines the same light on all licensed lawyers, enabling people who may know very little about law to make smart, informed decisions.


2. Provide more information and better guidance. We believe that access to easy to understand information about lawyers, coupled with guidance on how to use that information, is the best way to help people choose the right licensed professional. Information is empowering: the more people learn about their lawyers, the more comfortable and confident they'll feel seeking help. This benefits clients and great lawyers.

Our Service

Avvo empowers consumers by rating lawyers, and having these real lawyers answer their questions - all for free. Avvo profiles contain helpful information including experience, background, disciplinary history, and reviews from clients.

Information meets guidance in the editorial Avvo Rating. The rating is calculated using a mathematical model that considers elements such as years of experience, board certification, education, disciplinary history, professional achievement, and industry recognition-all factors that are relevant to assessing a lawyer's qualifications. We developed the Avvo Rating, as well as our client and peer rating systems with input from hundreds of lawyers, consumers and our top-notch industry advisors.

Avvo will continue to grow, so if you have ideas, suggestions, or even criticism for us, we'd love to hear from you. Feel free to send us feedback any time.

Our Story

Avvo was founded in Seattle, Washington in 2006 by Mark Britton, a top executive at Expedia.com. While teaching in Italy in 2004-2005, many friends and relatives contacted Britton for help in evaluating legal and financial matters, particularly evaluating the resumes of lawyers, accountants and financial advisors. Britton began to research why, when it came to evaluating these and other licensed professionals, consumers were so lost. One of his first findings was that lawyers were spending on Yellow Pages advertising in excess of $1 billion dollars and $550 million dollars per year, respectively. Britton knew there had to a better way to select professionals than the Yellow Pages "pay-to-play" model. With early funding from Benchmark Capital, Britton recruited one of Expedia's top development managers, Sendi Widjaja, who helped him build a world-class product and development team. Together they decided to first pursue lawyer ratings and Avvo was born. Not surprisingly, "Avvo" is short for "avvocato," the Italian word for lawyer.