Is Avvo worth it for lawyers? Free profile vs. paid ads.

Avvo has already given you a rating, whether you've ever been on the site or not. Avvo is a website where people look up and compare lawyers. Your profile there has your name on it. It shows a score out of ten, and potential clients looking for a lawyer can see it today.

That's what makes this different from every other ad choice you make. So is Avvo worth it for your firm? Below is what the number really measures, what moves it, and whether paying does anything.

Is Avvo worth it? The short answer

Claiming your free profile is worth an hour. Paying for ads is a separate choice, and it won't change your rating.

Avvo says clearly that ads and paid products don't affect the Avvo Rating. It also says it doesn't change ratings when you ask. So the number isn't for sale, which is better news than most firms expect. It means the free work is where the payoff is.

What the rating actually measures

It's a 1–10 score. It runs from Superb at the top to Extreme Caution at the bottom. Avvo's own explanation^[1] names three inputs:

Experience and background. Years licensed, work history, schooling, credentials.

Recognition and contributions. Awards, articles, speaking, honors from the bar and your field, and endorsements from other lawyers.

Disciplinary history. Any actions against you reported by state bars and regulators.

Here's the part that surprises everybody: client reviews are not an input. Avvo says reviews matter a lot to people deciding whether to hire you. But they don't count toward the number. They're shown next to it, on their own.

So a lawyer with forty great reviews and a thin profile can score below a lawyer with no reviews. That second lawyer might just have ten years of bar committee work. That's not a mistake. It's a score about your work record, sitting next to a different signal about your clients. And people who don't know the difference read the two as one number.

What you can and can't change

You can't ask for a better number. Avvo doesn't change ratings when asked, and there's no appeal to write.

What you can do is make sure the record it scores is complete. A low rating is very often the rating of a nearly empty profile, not of a lawyer.

Fill in the years. The dates you were admitted, past firms, clerkships, past careers. The system can only count what it can see, and public records have gaps.

Add the things you don't think of as wins. The CLE class you taught. The bar section you sit on. The article in the county bar magazine. The panel nobody recorded. Firms leave these off to be modest, then wonder about the score.

Peer endorsements are the one input that comes from a person. An endorsement is when another lawyer vouches for you, and it counts. Think of opposing counsel you get along with, the lawyer you send extra cases to, or an old coworker. A short note asking is not a strange thing to send. Most people say yes.

Check that the disciplinary section is correct. Mistakes are rare, but they happen. And it's the input with the most weight behind it.

Does paying help?

Not the rating. Avvo says so itself, and there's no reason to doubt it.

What paid placement buys is position. You show up on profiles and result pages where you otherwise wouldn't (even, awkwardly, on other lawyers' profiles). Is that worth it? It's the same question as any paid channel, and it gets the same answer. Give it a tracking number, run it for a quarter, and work out what each signed case cost you. The method is in what you can afford to pay for a lead.

One more thing to weigh before you commit. Avvo is no longer an independent rival to the other lawyer directories. It has the same owner as FindLaw, Nolo and Martindale. That's worth understanding before you negotiate or split a budget across several of them.

The hour, spent well

If you do nothing else with this, do these six things once. Then don't think about it again.

Claim the profile. It already exists. Claiming it means you control what's on it, instead of whatever a public database had.

Check the basics are right. Your name as clients would search it, your current firm, address and phone. These need to match your Google Business Profile (your listing on Google Maps) exactly, not roughly. Suite numbers and short forms count.

Fill in the history. Every year you've been licensed, every firm, school and clerkship. To a system that can't ask questions, gaps look like a lack of experience.

List the practice areas you really want. Not everything you can do. Just the ones you want the phone to ring about. If you want criminal defense or family law cases, list those, not every area you have ever handled.

Add every credential you have. Articles, talks, bar sections, certifications, awards. If you had to think about whether it counts, add it.

Ask three colleagues to endorse you, and endorse three back. It takes them two minutes, and it's a listed input.

Then write the one thing a system can't score. Most profiles have a paragraph pieced together from a form. Write two or three sentences in your own voice. Say what clients you take and what happens when they call you. That's the only part of the page a real person will read, and a real person is who decides.

The honest limit of all this

A 10.0 rating has never signed a case by itself.

It gets read as comfort by someone who already found you. Usually that's after a referral. Usually they're also reading your reviews. And usually it's thirty seconds before they decide whether to call. That's a real job, and the free profile is worth an hour of your time. But it is not a source of clients. A firm that spends a month tuning a directory score while its phone goes unanswered has things backwards. Answering the phone matters more, and it isn't close.

So Avvo is worth it as a free profile you fill in well once. Ask three colleagues for endorsements, and then leave it alone. Put the rest of your effort into the reviews on your Google profile. More people see them, you control them, and they bring more calls than any number out of ten.

Then check it again in six months: new cases, new credentials, another endorsement or two. Keep what's correct, add what's missing, and update it as the practice grows.

Questions about Avvo

Sources & references

The numbered links in this article point to the sources below.

1. 1
   Attorneys: What is the Avvo Rating? — Avvo Supportavvo.com