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Avvo Answers
Avvo is a free website that rates and profiles every lawyer to help people choose the right lawyer. Avvo makes the process of selecting a lawyer easier by presenting the Avvo Rating, client ratings, attorney profiles, and a disciplinary sanction history (if any) for every attorney in the states that we cover.
Avvo is different from other lawyer search sites because it was designed specifically for consumers. Our research shows that consumers find the process of selecting a lawyer to be difficult and confusing. We believe that offering guidance and increasing transparency is better for both consumers and lawyers.
The Avvo Rating is our assessment of how well a lawyer could handle your legal issue. It is based on data we collected about the lawyer, including the attorney's experience practicing law, professional achievements, and disciplinary sanctions (if any). This data comes from several sources, including state bar associations, court records, and lawyer websites, as well as information that lawyers provide to Avvo. We've created a mathematical model that takes all this information into account and calculates a score on a ten-point scale. Learn more about the Avvo Rating.
Avvo is free - you can view all the attorney information, use all the features, and even submit client ratings free of charge. Avvo is also free for lawyers, who are encouraged to update their profiles with the most current and complete information.
We make money by selling advertising on our site. Advertising is independent from the Avvo Rating and attorney search results rankings, which cannot in any way be influenced by advertising or any other form of payment.
Lawyer profile information may come from various sources, including state bar associations, court records, and lawyer websites, as well as information that lawyers supply to Avvo. Avvo brings all this data together in one convenient, easy-to-use website, so you don't have to spend hours trying to find it all yourself.
Keep in mind that we collect lawyer profile information from different sources that we do not control, and we do not verify such information. If you feel that you have found incorrect information on an attorney's profile, please let us know immediately. Our goal is to ensure that all data on Avvo is as accurate, up-to-date, and helpful as possible.
We strive to keep lawyer profile information as current as possible. However, we are sometimes dependent on others (state bar associations, for example) to make updated data available to us. For data collected from government sources, we show the date that the information was last updated on Avvo.
The lawyer must be practicing in a state Avvo currently serves. We're rapidly expanding our coverage, but right now we don't have information for all states.
If you've done a search by name, you may want to try the following:
- Check to be sure you're spelling the lawyer's name correctly.
- Remove the lawyer's first name from the search box.
- Sometimes the name the lawyer registered with the state bar association is different from the name you know (for example, a maiden name). If you know another name for the lawyer, try searching with that name.
To add an Avvo logo, button or search box to your blog, homepage or other website go to the "Link to Us" section of the About Us page. We provide the formatted code so you can simply copy and paste it into to your webpage.
Lawyers with multiple profiles are licensed to practice in more than one state. An Avvo profile will be displayed for each state where the lawyer is licensed. When reviewing a lawyer's profile in one state, make sure to check the lawyer's profiles in other states as well. The other profiles may include more information on the number of years the lawyer has been licensed to practice law or disciplinary sanctions.
Each Avvo Rating is based upon only the information in the particular profile it accompanies. For instance, if the lawyer has been practicing for 20 years, with the first 18 in California and the last 2 in Washington, the Avvo Rating in the lawyer's Washington profile will reflect only two years of practice. In that instance, it would be important to look at the California profile and consider those additional 18 years of experience.
Avvo contains profiles of deceased attorneys who remain in the public records of the state bar associations or courts. We do not rate deceased attorneys or display them in our practice area search results, as this obviously would serve no purpose. But we have left their profiles in our database, just as they remain in state public record databases, and you can find them by searching for the deceased lawyer's name.
Be as specific as you can in selecting a practice area - that way, Avvo can show you the lawyers who can help you. Think about your legal issue and what type of experience you'd like your lawyer to have. If you're not sure - and many people aren't - take a look at the brief, easy-to-understand legal practice area descriptions we've written to help you decide.
The easiest way to narrow or expand your search results is by using the drop-down menus in the left column of the search results page. You can target your search by location, practice area, Avvo Rating, or disciplinary sanctions.
When you search by city or zip code, Avvo includes lawyers with an exact match, and also those within a five-mile radius. This way you can see a broader selection of attorneys who are still close to your desired location. If you'd like to see the list of attorneys sorted by distance from the location you entered, click on the "Dist" column header.
When you initiate a search, the results are determined by several factors, including the amount of information that we know about a lawyer, a lawyer's geographical location, and a lawyer's practice area.
If you prefer, you can sort by lawyer name, practice area, Avvo Rating, client rating, distance, or disciplinary sanctions - just click on the header at the top of each column.
No. An attorney's rank in the search results is based on how well they match your search criteria. Advertising is completely independent of search results - search results cannot be influenced by advertising or any other form of payment.
Lawyer profile data comes from several sources, and not all sources are available or have been accessed for every attorney. Data sources include state bar associations, court records, and lawyer websites, as well as information a lawyer may choose to provide directly.
The Avvo Rating is our effort to evaluate a lawyer's background. The rating is calculated using a mathematical model that considers the information shown in a lawyer's profile, including a lawyer's years in practice, disciplinary history, professional achievements and industry recognition - all factors that, in our opinion, are relevant to assessing a lawyer's qualifications. However, keep in mind that the Avvo Rating is based only on the information we have collected about a lawyer, and we are not able to collect every piece of information about every lawyer. If we are missing relevant information, the absence of that information may affect the Avvo Rating. Learn more about the Avvo Rating.
Client ratings are provided by former and current clients and give you a first-hand account of what it's like to work with a particular lawyer.
Peer endorsements - one attorney endorsing another - can help show you how a lawyer is perceived by their peers. Peer endorsements can also give you insight into the depth of a lawyer's network, which may be important because lawyers often need to consult colleagues for expertise in different legal practice areas.
A disciplinary sanction is an action taken against a lawyer by the state agency that regulates lawyers. If a lawyer has a sanction, be sure to investigate, taking into account the severity of the sanction and how long ago it occurred. A sanction can be a minor reprimand, or it can be a very serious punishment like suspension or disbarment from practicing law. The negative impact on the Avvo Rating may be less if a sanction is minor or happened in the distant past. However, we believe that disciplinary actions should be taken seriously, and that is why we call them out in the search results.
Yes, in limited cases. The first case involves something called "private" sanctions. Bar associations can discipline an attorney in private and that disciplinary sanction does not appear in the public record. If it is not in the public record, we will not know about it. The second case is that in some states, the bar association or court may give access to data that only goes back so many years. New York is an example of this -- we were able to collect only the last three years of disciplinary history for each New York lawyer. The third case is that a bar association may post the record of a lawyer's sanction after we collect his or her information from the public records.
This pie chart shows you an estimate of how much time a lawyer currently spends in specific areas of legal practice. This can change over time, as a lawyer's emphasis on certain practice areas may change.
Keep in mind that, until a lawyer claims his or her profile, we give an equal percentage in the pie chart to each of the lawyer's practice areas that we have found. These equal percentages may not be accurate; however, they are the best information we have until the lawyer changes the percentages on our website.
Avvo is always updating and refreshing lawyer profile information; this is the date we last collected the information. The data is provided by state bar associations and court records.
If you see information that is incorrect, please let us know immediately. Our goal is to ensure that all data on Avvo is as accurate, up-to-date, and helpful as possible.
Peer endorsements are endorsements of a lawyer by another lawyer. They are a form of industry recognition and they also allow you to see the attorney's network. Many cases require a lawyer to seek assistance from other attorney, and endorsements can show well-connected an attorney is. An attorney may remove any endorsement from his or her profile.
Client ratings are feedback from a lawyer's current and former clients, and can be helpful to other users looking for an attorney. If you have been, or are currently, the client of a lawyer, we encourage you to submit a client rating. However, please note that we may not post client ratings that:
- Include profanity or other offensive language
- Appear to be personal attacks rather than comments on professional skills
- Are serious accusations that are not supported by specific facts
- Have the appearance of not being submitted by an actual client
Submitting a Client Rating is easy, and it takes just a minute or two - but it can be incredibly helpful to Avvo users who are looking for an attorney. You can submit a rating from either the Overview tab or the client ratings tab on the lawyer's profile page. You may only submit a rating if you are or were a client of the attorney.
Our team reviews every submission before posting it, to ensure that ratings are helpful to consumers, and are not "spam." The review process generally takes no longer than 24 hours.
Our goal is to offer high-quality, authentic client ratings. We ask you to register for quality-control purposes.
To protect your privacy, your name does not appear unless you specifically choose to have it listed.
Please note that we may not post client ratings that:
- Include profanity or other offensive language
- Appear to be personal attacks rather than comments on professional skills
- Are serious accusations that are not supported by specific facts
- Have the appearance of not being submitted by an actual client
We take several steps to maintain the quality of ratings: We require users to register before submitting a rating, and we carefully review every Client Rating before we post it. We also rely on the Avvo community, so please let us know if you see a rating that seems suspicious or incorrect.
Creating an Avvo account lets you submit client ratings and will give you access to upcoming features that will make it even easier to choose a lawyer. If you like, we can also let you know when we launch new states and new features.
We make it easy - all we need is your e-mail address.
If you don't want to receive Avvo e-mail, you don't have to. We'll only send you e-mail if you specifically request it during registration or on your Account Page.
We take your privacy very seriously. For more details about how we treat personally identifiable information we collect from you, please read our privacy policy
Track Record allows a lawyer to document cases they have worked on and display them on their profile. This allows you to evaluate whether an attorney has worked on similar cases.
Anyone on Avvo can search through questions asked through Avvo Answers.
If you see content in Avvo Answers that doesn't belong, be sure to flag it as objectionable. Flagging allows the community to tell Avvo when a question or answer is inappropriate. An email will be sent to our Customer Care team who will look at the question or answer and take further action if necessary.
When you are logged in, you can edit and add subscriptions to questions and answers from your account page.
Attorneys use Avvo Answers to showcase their skills and help consumers find answers to their legal questions. Non-lawyers can also share their experiences and knowledge with the community.
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