Adeo Ressi

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed a case against the lawyer review site, Avvo. The suit was foolish, at best. One of the two lawyer plaintiffs, Browne, claimed that the Avvo rating system was clearly wrong because he his rating on Avvo was only “5.5,” yet a magazine had previously rated him as a “Super Lawyer.”

How do you even respond to that? Here is a copy of the decision.

This is great news for TheFunded.com, since everything from the First Amendment to the Communications Decency Act was cited in by Judge Lasnik in the acquittal. There is some chance for an appeal, though this appears unlikely in this case, as a lot of problems with the underlying argument were cited.

At the end of the day, you cannot bully rating a site into submission, even if you are a “Super Lawyer.” I always thought the idea of rating lawyers was asking for trouble. If ever someone was going to fight this issue tooth and nail, it would be the lawyers themselves. Hopefully, this puts a nail in the coffin for the time being.

Given the sheer number of lawyers and people who use them, you are relying on unqualified consumers to contribute review content. This creates data quality issues. Meanwhile, there are restrictions surrounding advertising legal services, which limits your model upside. Anyway - score 1 to the review sites!