LexBlog interviews from Avvo Conference

The first-ever Avvocating Conference was hosted in Seattle a couple weeks ago by the folks at Avvo, and some members of the LexBlog team were able to head over and chat with some of the attendees. You may have read some of Kevin's blog posts on the Avvo conference. Now you can check out the video interviews as well on our site, LexConference.

We'll try to keep interviewing interesting attendees at any conference LexBlog attends, so if you have something to share and don't mind the camera, don't hesitate to reach out.

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Beer for Bloggers Friday night in Seattle following Avvo Conference

LexBlog Kells Beer for Bloggers In the great tradition of LexBlog's Beer for Bloggers events, we'll will be hosting a get-together Friday evening following the conclusion of Avvo's Internet Marketing Conference.

Fellow bloggers, Twitterers, lawyers and other legal professionals, please come by Kell's Irish Pub around 5:30 tomorrow evening. LexBlog is picking up the tab. Kells is located in Post Alley just above our historic Pike Place Market.

Here's a map to Kells with directions from the conference center. It's just a short walk after going up the elevator or stairs that are just south of the Marriott Hotel across from the conference center.

See you there. And enjoy our fine city of Seattle during your stay.

Do law firms want free client development and marketing solutions?

The message of Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo, kicking off Avvo's Internet marketing conference, is that, with the advent of Web 2.0, lawyers ought to be looking at free very and low cost client development solutions to market their services.

Is that what lawyers really want? Is free or marketing for dollar a day in the best interest of you as a lawyer? Is it in the best interest of your law firm? Is it what you really want?

Sure, the Web has brought us some incredible tools that lawyers may harness at little or no cost.

  • Consumer and small business lawyers would be foolish not to avail themselves of completing profiles, and using the question and answer features, in the Avvo and Justia lawyer directories.
  • A LinkedIn profile is a necessity for any lawyer, consumer or large business based, and the groups and answers features of LInkedIn can be very fruitful for networking.
  • Twitter, when used strategically, can be be a very effective relationship building and brand building tool.
  • Google local search may be worthwhile depending on the density of lawyers in your locale and the type of law you do.
  • A link from the DMOZ directory and/or the Yahoo Directory ($299) to your blog or website is worthwhile for SEO purposes.
  • JD Supra allows you to upload articles and pleadings.
  • Facebook can be a an effective way to enhance relationships and build communities.

But if you're a lawyer trying to get the top of your field and trying to reach financial independence for you and your family, is your goal to keep your client development spending down to a dollar a day?

If you're focused on honing your skill and expertise as a a lawyer, while at the same time addressing your client's affairs, do you have the time to tinker with the free and low cost Internet marketing solutions?

Britton says all these "Web 2.0" tools are easy to use. Look at the above list of Web 2.O and social media tools. Do you know what they all are? Do you know how to use them for client development purposes? Do you know how to use them in a way where you don't embarrass yourself? Do you know how to use them well enough to burn political capital in your firm by advising the firm's leadership that the firm ought to embrace these tools?

I talk with thousands of lawyers and hundreds of law firm leaders a year. I observe what lawyers are doing online as much as anyone. Not only don't lawyers and law firms now how to use these 'free tools,' but a lot of them, including law firms with huge marketing budgets, embarrass themselves through the foolish use of these free and low cost tools. In response to lots of lawyers who have told me they are getting seen online, I ask them "Is that a good thing?" It's often not.

I practiced law for 20 years. I found that lawyers and law firms who invested in themselves to improve themselves as a lawyer and invested in their marketing and business development did markedly better than other lawyers.

I laud Avvo for what they are doing in offering lawyers a free directory. While serving as a VP of Business Development for Martindale, I could never get Martindale to send their people out to educate lawyers on Internet Marketing. Avvo and Britton are doing a good job of such lawyer education. There's probably 200 lawyers sitting in front of me in Seattle at Avvo's Internet Marketing Conference.

But free marketing services or doing your law firm's client development for a dollar a day, less than a can of coke costs, seems terribly misguided. Especially for a lawyer who has invested seven years in getting an education. And especially for a professional who is holding themselves out to the American public as someone they can trust to address their most important and personal affairs.

Hiring someone to help you do what you're not good at is a concept Americans are very comfortable with. You as a lawyer expect people to hire you, when perhaps they could incorporate their own business or do their own divorce.

Buying services and solutions that cast you in a better light, make your life easier, and allow you to accomplish your goals is something lawyers do every day. Lawyers buy software, lease offices (as opposed to practicing at home), hire associates and legal assistants so they can do more work for more - and better clients.

Free and low cost can be good be good for lawyers. Especially when compared to the expensive services offered by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Thomson FindLaw whose services often under deliver.

But I'm not sure free and low cost is what American lawyers are looking for. What do you think?

Avvo Internet marketing conference in Seattle next week : I'll be attending

Avvo, an up and coming online lawyer directory, will be holding an Internet marketing conference in Seattle on January 21 and 22.

Mark Britton, Conrad Saam, and the Avvo crew have pulled together a good group of presenters, including folks from Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Google, and the University of Washington. Included among the presenters are my good friends, Bob Ambrogi, who'll be keynoting, and Tim Stanley, CEO of Justia.

Though I won't be presenting at the conference, I'll be attending and hanging out at the Bell Harbor Conference Center, a beautiful place for a conference. I look forward to seeing lawyers from around the country, including some of LexBlog's clients. Maybe we can even pull together a 'Beer for Bloggers' one evening.

If you're looking to learn a few things on Internet marketing and escape from the cold of the Midwest and East, you ought to join us in Seattle. The conference only costs $249 and you may register here.

Will Avvo legal directory surpass lawyers.com in 2010?

The Seattle startup legal directory, Avvo, appears to have caught Martindale-Hubbell's lawyers.com in the number of unique visitors per month. This per the below comparison I ran with Compete.com, a web traffic analysis service.

avvo versus lawyers traffic comparison

Avvo only trailed lawyers.com by 85,000 unique visitors in November (838,000 versus 753,000). In October the gap was even closer, a difference of 42,000 unique visitors (911,000 versus 869,000). It's possible Martindale's multi-million dollar national television ad campaign increased the gap slightly In November.

Perhaps more telling is the rate of growth for each website. Lawyers.com's traffic is up 43% the last year while Avvo's traffic is up 127%. You'd have to think Avvo is going to pass lawyers.com in unique visitors in the coming year.

This increased Avvo traffic is resulting in exposure for lawyers listed in the Avvo directory and participating in Avvo website features such as Avvo Answers and Advice. Lawyer contacts such as emails, phone calls or website visits from prospective clients totaled 160,000 last month, per Mark Britton, Avvo's CEO.

Increased traffic is also resulting in increase sales at Avvo. I'm told their account managers have been fulfilling orders for their Avvo Pro product at a volume that was unexpected for the pre-holiday season.

Avvo may not be right for all lawyers (more focused on consumer & small business lawyers), and I have been critical of Avvo on some items, but there's little question Avvo, with it's rising traffic, is going to be included in lawyers' Internet marketing buys and be a strong competitor to Martindale's lawyers.com.

What Martindale Hubbell should do before it becomes an endangered species

Martindale-Hubbell lawyer directoryConstance Ard's blog post asking 'Martindale Hubbell Listings An Endangered Species?' is the prevailing view of legal professionals. Despite LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's surveys indicating that it's still the preferred legal directory of the masses, the vast, vast majority of professionals (both in law firms and corporate counsel) I speak with believe the Martindale-Hubbell legal directory is no longer of much value. The person on the street is much, much more likely to go to Google than Martindale's lawyers.com to look for a lawyer.

The results of a small survey on a law librarian listerv Ard follows are telling.

Of the 34 librarians who responded for their firms, 15 have cancelled their listings, five are in the process of deciding whether or not to list, and 14 have retained their listings.

Why the cancellations? Per Ard:

In the golden age of distinguished law firms, Martindale Hubbell listings were a given, the ratings were a powerful marketing tool and the directory was a great tool for finding local counsel.  Now the ratings don't matter so much and there are many ways to find local counsel.  The given isn't a given any longer and the cost-benefit analysis is proving that the cost just isn't worth the investment for more firms each year.

This is not a new occurence but as more firms are giving up their listings, it makes it easier for those firms who benchmark against certain firms to justify the cancellation internally.

Martindale is trying to add value to law firm customers with its Martindale-Hubbell Connected, beefing up its Law Digest, and adding an expert directory. But that's not going to be enough to keep law firms paying tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a Martindale subscription listing. Plus Martindale's core business is a lawyer directory including complete and professional lawyer profiles, not peripheral products and services adding marginal value and revenue.

What if Martindale-Hubbell made it's legal directory freely available to anyone, including other websites and web services? It could be done via an Open API which would allow web developers to embed Martindale's directory in third party services and websites.

If Avvo wants to build a valuable lawyer ratings site for consumers and small business people providing other valuable legal resources to the public, let Avvo embed Martindale's directory in Avvo's website. If Justia wants to build the most complete resource for free legal information in the world, let Justia embed the Martindale directory in Justia's website. If LexMonitor wants to build the most complete review of lawyer blogs and journals, let LexMonitor embed Martindale's directory in the lawyer profile section at LexMonitor. Same for any other service or product.

Sure makes it a lot easier for third party websites to gather detailed law firm and lawyer information. Plus Martindale is arguably the best at keeping such information up to date and accurate. All at no expense to such other companies.

Third party sites would be free to pursue their own business models for reveune whether it be advertising, law firm sponsorships, or selling other products and services to lawyers or the public. Martindale would not share in any of that revenue.

How does that work for Martindale? If I am a lawyer or law firm and I know that Martindale's directory appears everywhere, I want to keep my Martindale profile complete and I am happy to pay heavy subscription costs to Martindale.

Martindale could also cut heavy expenses it's incurring to draw people to their websites. TV Ads for lawyers.com running on CNN, FOX, and elsewhere? That's nuts. How many successful web services (Amazon, Google, Zappos) do you see running such Ads? Buying Google sponsored links for all the Martindale websites is expensive.

Building a community like Martindale-Hubbell Connected is laudable. But it's expensive and time intensive. Maybe there are other companies who do it better at no expense to Martindale. Maybe it's Legal OnRamp.

An Open API of its directory sure seems like a credible solution for Martindale.

Also seems to work for other companies. Companies have been coming along for years thinking they are going to put Martindale-Hubbell out of business by building a better lawyer directory. Martindale-Hubbell still pulls in $200 or $300 million a year. And the road is littered with companies who couldn't outlast Martindale, which has been around since 1867.

Also understand Martindale-Hubbell is owned by LexisNexis. LexisNexis needs demographic info on lawyers and law firms so it can sell legal products to the lawyers and firms in a targeted fashion. LexisNexis getting rid of a service that collects this demographic info, especially one where customers pay to provide their demographic info to LexisNexis as the vendor, is highly unlikely.

Am I crazy? Is it too late for Martindale-Hubbell to take such action? Would third party sites go along with this? LexBlog runs LexMonitor and my thinking today is we'd be inclined to include Martindale profiles.

I'm anxious to get the thoughts of Martindale, law firms, and web service providers with legal oriented websites. Let me know what you think about an Open API of the Martindale-Hubbell lawyer directory.

Are Avvo blogs a credible solution for America's lawyers?

Seattle based Avvo, a free online legal directory for lawyers with consumer and small business law practices, announced a blog service for lawyers a couple weeks ago. Avvo charges $300 per year for the service.

I've got a couple of concerns as to whether Avvo's blog solution is a credible client development tool for lawyers. Sure I've got a dog in this hunt, but over the last six years this blog has been all about honest and straight forward counsel to lawyers looking to achieve client development success via the Internet.

No question Avvo is targeting lawyers unwilling to invest in a blog for reputation enhancement or client development. I'm perplexed though as to what Avvo offers that lawyers cannot receive for free from Wordpress, a well known free blogging platform used by many lawyers.

Here's the features of an Avvo blog:

  • Blog running on Wordpress technology.
  • Your choice of one of 9 Wordpress design options.
  • Customizable blog pages.
  • Pre-populated and customizable blogroll.
  • Support (as to buying blog and turning blog on).
  • Hosted on your own domain.

Here's the features of a Wordpress blog:

  • Blog running on Wordpress technology.
  • Your choice of one of 60 Wordpress design options.
  • Customizable blog pages.
  • Customizable sidebar allowing customizable blogroll and other elements.
  • Free support on setting up blog.
  • Free hosting on a Wordpress-owned domain.
  • Hosted on your domain name for $9.97/year.

I met with Avvo CEO, Mark Britton, and Conrad Saam, Avvo's Senior Marketing Manager, on the day of the announcement to get a better understanding of Avvo's blog offering. I also wanted to learn how Avvo blogs compared to our professional turnkey blog solution at LexBlog.

Mark and Conrad made clear Avvo didn't look at Avvo's offering as competing with LexBlog. No strategic consulting, customized development, training on blogging/networking through the net, SEO, marketing, syndication, or network.

Avvo's goal was simply to get more lawyers using a more effective means of Internet marketing - blogs. The concept being if lawyers just get started blogging, they'll realize blogging's potential and in many cases move on to a solution like LexBlog's.

I laud Mark's goal of bringing technology to legal marketing and offering a free online directory, arguably offering more features than Martindale-Hubbell's pay per play directory. I've met lawyers around the country who've obtained clients through their Avvo listings. Speaking to consumer and small business lawyers, I suggest completing an Avvo profile and participating in other areas of Avvo's site such as the question and answers section.

I wonder if Avvo's blog effort is misguided though. Blogging for client development is an art and a skill acquired over time. Blogging is not throwing content onto a website. Throwing yourself on the Internet as a lawyer where everyone sees you immediately while driven by the goal of not spending more than a dollar a day seems odd.

I'm not sure how much time Avvo has really thought about a credible blog solution. They've only got two references to blogs on their web presence. One page on its website and a blog post. Each mislabeling Incisive Media's Legal Technology Blog as running on Wordpress when it's running on Six Apart's TypePad blog platform.

Avvo has sought my counsel in person any number of occasions, before and after their website went live. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking credit for what they're doing, but I suggested ratings and questions & answers long before they were implemented. I provided counsel to Conrad Saam as to blogging and how to work with bloggers for more effective PR. Seems strange that being only a mile away I was not asked about blogs if the goal was to serve lawyers.

For six years I've worked my ass off to assemble a team of 20 people at LexBlog, many of whom train and provide ongoing support to lawyers for years. Ask anyone on my clients services' team if lawyers are natural born bloggers. Ask anyone of them if most lawyers will have fun and achieve success in client development through blogging on their own.

There are many lawyers who on their own have achieved success through blogging and who publish wonderful blogs. I read a ton of them. They're the exception, not the rule.

Sell someone lower cost ski equipment, give them a week's pass at Aspen, and then push them out of the Gondola at the top of the mountain when they have never skied before and without any lessons. At least an unenjoyable experience. At worse, fraught with danger and injury.

Don't tell me there's beginner's blogging at the bottom of the mountain on the 'bunny hill.' Blog and you'll get seen fast. Do something stupid and embarrassing - Google has a lifetime memory.

Lawyers are busy people. The good ones are willing to invest in client development for their professional and personal success. They've often got a family and a mountain of debt riding on their success.

LexBlog is more than happy to provide Avvo lawyers a credible blogging solution. We'd welcome a partnership with Avvo which would mutually benefit Avvo and the lawyers in its directory.

But selling lawyers something that on the face of it looks like they can get for free without the necessary turnkey solution that brings client development success is not the answer.

Avvo lawyer directory expanding to Mass and Florida

AvvoPicked up from Bob Ambrogi this morning that the lawyer-rating site Avvo is expanding to Massachusetts and Florida, bringing its coverage to 60 percent of licensed U.S. attorneys and spanning 11 states and the District of Columbia.

Like Bob, I was originally skeptical of Avvo's goal of serving as a consumer resource by rating and profiling every U.S. lawyer. But as I have gotten to know Mark Britton, Avvo's CEO, and watched the site in action, there's no question Avvo serves as a worthwhile resource not only for people looking for a lawyer, but also for lawyers looking for a cost effective way to connect with prospective clients.

Bob provides a nice summary of the Avvo service.

The site operates by collecting information about lawyers from multiple sources -- bar records (including disciplinary sanctions), court records, Web sites and the lawyers themselves -- and assigning each lawyer a rating of one to 10. For lawyers for whom only minimal information is publicly available, Avvo provides no rating but labels them as either 'Attention' or 'No Concern.' Lawyers can 'claim' their own profiles and add information about themselves and also request peer endorsements and client ratings.

Avvo also includes Avvo Answers, a forum in which consumers can ask questions and lawyers can post answers with links back to their profiles. In addition to Massachusetts and Florida, its profiles now cover lawyers in Arizona, California, D.C., George, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.

More than the Avvo ratings, reviews from lawyers and past clients posted to the site are a huge plus for consumers. I can't imagine buying a product or service these days without doing research on the Internet. I'm particularly interested in reviews of the service or product from people like me. Heck, that's why I thought Amazon was so cool when I first saw it 13 years ago.

Look at this review page of Kirkland, WA divorce lawyer, Araceli Amaya. In addition to the basic info on years of practice and emphasis of her work, look at these reviews by past clients.

  • Araceli Amaya was a great relief to me after I had spent useless time and money for a previous attorney who did little for me overall. Araceli was always quick to respond to my question, was thorough and, in the end, saved me over $5000.00 that the previous attorney would have, undoubtedly missed. I would highly recommend her as an honest representative in any divorce proceeding.
  • Araceli was very attentive to my case, worked hard, great results. Very responsive, well experienced, great leadership skills. I would most definitely recommend Araceli to any one needing a family law attorney.
  • She is very professional and knows her law, especially dealing with the military. She is patient and can be trusted to not only get the job done, but done the right way with a first time go.

Each of her reviewers gave Amaya 5 out of 5 stars on the four areas Avvo seeks past client feedback.

  • Trustworthy
  • Responsive
  • Knowledgeable
  • Kept me informed

That type of information and review runs laps around the lawyer bio's on Marindale-Hubbell's consumer site, lawyers.com. And Avvo is a free service for lawyers.

People do not ask you as a lawyer where you want to law school and undergrad. They don't care what award you received 15 years ago. People looking for a lawyer want to know what you can do for them and whether you'll be trustworthy, responsive, and keep them informed. And they want that info from people like them.

I've heard the same bull crap for years. The outcome of one person's case is not indicative of the next so we cannot allow client review of lawyers. People are not knowledgeable enough to know whether a lawyer is any good. Past clients will just criticize lawyers so we cannot allow clients to speak up on websites like Avvo's. Bunk.

People are entitled to information on lawyers. They can take Avvo's info on a lawyer into consideration with any other info they have on a lawyer. The more information people have on lawyers the better - for both the public and our legal profession.

Will Google offer better search of lawyer directories than lawyer directory websites themselves?

If you watch Google closely, one of the recent changes you've see is that when Google displays organizations and directories on the search results pages, it's allowing a search of the subject website without having to click to the website.

Look at the below example for the Super Lawyers lawyer directory.

Super Lawyers at Google

Internet users would not need to go to the Super Lawyers website to search for a lawyer. If I'm looking for an environmental lawyer in New York who went to Harvard, I just enter 'environmental lawyer New York Harvard' in the 'search superlawyers.com' box at Google.

Here's the first three results displayed - right in the Google interface without going to Super Lawyers - and in a fraction of a second. When I click on the result I go directly to the lawyer's page in the directory, skipping the website home page and any interim search pages.

Super lawyers Google

Expect the Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and FindLaw lawyer directories to be next in line for the Google treatment.

What's the implication? For Internet users, there may be advantages. No limited text fields or 'drop-downs' for search such as by practice area and location, the type of things Martindale-Hubbell requires.

Google's search will allow us to do a search for exactly what we want - like I just did for the Harvard environmental lawyer in New York. I could have added an association or two that I wanted the lawyer to belong to limiting my results further. I'm not sure searches at lawyer directory sites themselves would allow me to do that level of search.

For lawyers, it may be great. People can search for someone matching my background and find me immediately. That's impossible if I'm displayed in a Martindale-like directory as one of 165 lawyers in an area of practice in a locale.

For lawyer directories? I think they'll be uneasy allowing Internet users to search their data without going to the directory's website. No adds displayed. No fancy user interfaces with pictures and the like. No branding of the directory. Lots of confusion with lawyers asking directory salespeople questions.

Where do you see this headed? See advantages for people looking for lawyers? See advantages for lawyers?

For you readers employed at legal directories - Martindale-Hubbell, FindLaw, Avvo, & Super Lawyers - what do you think of the development?

Avvo to disrupt Martindale-Hubbell's ratings system

Avvo Martindale HubbellThat's the word from an article in Internet Law and Strategy running at law.com this weekend. From the author, Joseph Campos, Chair of the Corporate/Securities Law Group at Stanislaw Ashbaugh in Seattle:

Since 1868, Martindale-Hubbell has provided the largest library of lawyer and law firm profiles and ratings. Law firms across the country reflexively and dutifully subscribe to the company's hardbound volumes, placing them prominently in their libraries, confident they have taken the most obvious step to ensure clients looking for legal representation will find them. Just as important to such firms is Martindale-Hubbell's peer review and rating system, touted by the company as an objective measure of a lawyer's ethics and abilities. Receiving a peer review rating is a singularly egocentric moment for a lawyer, suggesting he or she had 'arrived' in a professional sense.
......
Today's Web 2.0 business models have completed the paradigm shift by eliminating the barriers to global publication and distribution of client opinions. Companies such as Avvo.com now give clients, as well as lawyers, the power to publish opinions about lawyers easily, instantly and without cost, in a medium that reaches a global audience. Harnessing the concept of 'collective intelligence,' there is now a totality of information about a lawyer available. Consumers can easily search for a lawyer and read what other lawyers and clients think about that lawyer. Lawyers are able to provide far more information about themselves, their practices and their experience than has ever been possible before. Some features provide a way for lawyers to communicate and interact directly with the public and showcase their understanding of the law and legal issues.

The new paradigm is: clients and lawyers rating lawyers for the benefits of clients and lawyers. As with all change, this new paradigm creates a great deal of fear and uncertainty among lawyers, who are by training risk-averse.

......
A collection of hardbound volumes cannot generate the sort of interactivity and real-world information about lawyers and law firms that is experienced, contributed and compiled on Avvo every day. Information about lawyers is being shared by those who have first-hand experience, resulting in a searchable database of information that is accessible to prospective clients around the country and the world. If information is power, then Avvo effectively shifts the balance of power away from lawyers and law firms to clients, prospective clients and every other user of its Web site.

Campos' firm, a 20 lawyer commercial litigation and corporate securities boutique, is embracing the Avvo concept.

A comment about a lawyer posted on Avvo has the potential to reach a global audience, whereas the letter of gratitude sent to a law firm requires action on the part of the firm to publicize it. We decided to take advantage of the opportunity. We now display 'Avvo badges' on our Web site profiles of each of our lawyers, which link directly to each lawyer's profile on Avvo. Rather than fear what clients have to say about us, we embraced the possibilities created by empowering clients to weigh in directly on their experience working with a lawyer or law firm.

And clients of the law firm are using Avvo to the benefit of future clients and the firm.

Though certainly not true in every case..., clients will often post comments on the Avvo Web site shortly after the conclusion of a particular matter. Such comments generally provide considerable detail about the specific matter handled by their lawyer and their overall experience. When a client posts a review about a lawyer, Avvo's system asks how long ago the client used the lawyer's services. This kind of information is an invaluable tool for prospective clients seeking to gauge the most recent experience others have had with a particular lawyer. Not surprisingly, one of the more common uses of Avvo by clients is vetting word of mouth referrals.

And it's not only smaller firms embracing Avvo. Davis Wright Tremaine, an AmLaw 200 international law firm, claimed the Avvo Profiles of all 225 lawyers in their Seattle and Bellevue offices.

The Avvo concept is here to stay. Consumers of legal services who can get online reviews on dishwashers are going to demand, through their behavior, that comments about lawyers be freely available. Whether comments come from other lawyers or clients, the information is just too valuable.

Martindale-Hubbell has been suppressing this concept for years. They want a monopoly on lawyer ratings. Money to made there. Plus when you're charging law firms 10's and 100's of thousands of dollars to display their lawyers in a directory, you don't want law firm customers walking when they don't like what another lawyer or consumer has said.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Martindale-Hubbell dismissed Google as a force in clients finding lawyers. Now their own studies find Google is viewed as an important source in locating counsel by almost 20% of corporate counsel. And Google didn't exist 8 years ago.

Avvo does have the staying power issue. Though VC backed, significant revenue generation will be necessary at some point. There's money via sponsorships, premium listings, and services, but will it be enough, and will it come soon enough.

And there's always the question whether LexisNexis will pay to just put a concept like Avvo's on the shelf. Though that's a little harder today with web based systems costing so little to develop and user generated content from all over continuing to flourish.

Related posts from elsewhere: