Coffee with Avvo founder Mark Britton
I sat down with Mark Britton, founder and CEO of Avvo, at Starbucks in Pioneer Square this Monday. After talking about Missoula, Montana — the city where he grew up and I go to school — we moved on to discuss his company, which has come under fire recently as a class action lawsuit was filed against the company. Throughout the meeting, Britton emphasized his company’s goal serving consumers first and foremost.
The idea behind Avvo came to Britton, who spent years finding lawyers for Expedia’s legal and government relations teams, while he was teaching a Gonzaga University affiliated Finance class in Florence, Italy. Britton said the distance didn’t keep friends and family from contacting him for recommendations on lawyers.
Britton said most people don’t know where to start when looking for a lawyer. Many begin by either heading to the Yellow Pages, where the biggest and brightest ads win, or by asking lawyers they know who they would recommend.
After researching the potential product, Britton saw that not only were consumers having a tough time finding lawyers, but lawyers were having trouble finding peers to recommend.
“This lack of information started to ring true, both for consumers and lawyers,” said Britton.
He said the goal behind Avvo is to replicate a sophisticated user search. He said that if a consumer went to a lawyer for a recommendation, that lawyer would probably first scan the web for lawyers, check their bios and awards, then take a look at the public record to see if there was any reason for concern. Very similar to what Avvo does.
Britton explained that the research behind Avvo’s database of lawyer listings and records was done by a company called Electronic Scriptorium. Electronic Scriptorium first went though all the public records, scanning for registered lawyers. The company then used crawlers to search for websites that were potential matches for each lawyer. If an appropriate match was found amongst the potential websites, information was then pulled from both the public records and the website for the lawyer’s Avvo listing.
For some listings, information comes from the public records alone. When this is the case, Avvo does not display the much talked about Avvo Rating, which Britton said is generated from the same type of math many consumers do in their head. This is a recent change. Avvo took down ratings on lawyers with listings generated from public records alone, but they stand by displaying the public record of lawyers with sanctions against them.
“Don’t be afraid to turn over some rocks to serve the consumer,” said Britton, who stressed that Avvo never claimed to be the be-all and end-all as far as finding a lawyer.
Britton said Avvo has always claimed to be simply a “great place to start,” not the only stop in a consumer’s search for the right lawyer. Britton pointed to Avvo’s three step guide as good process to follow when conducting a search.
Britton wondered why there was so much concern over the product, which he said does more to help lawyers than harm them. He stressed the positive effect Avvo has on small firms and solo practitioners, who survive by working together as a network.
He said Avvo makes it easier for solos to network with and recommend other lawyers. On top of providing networking tools, Avvo also gives lawyers a free web presence. Britton also said that, amongst other things, Avvo will introduce more networking elements over time.
As the Beta label on the Avvo site indicates, the current product is just the beginning. The company is still small — at one point Paul Bloom, VP of Products and Marketing, came in to offer homemade cookies and tell Mark an article on Avvo had made Section A of the New York Times — and plans on adding quite a bit to the current version of Avvo.
“There will be many other versions,” said Britton, “there are so many more tricks up our sleeve.”