Avvo Watch / Page 1 Avvo Watch / Page 2 Mr. Wolfstone Mark Britton
AVVO Watch
Avvo is not only a negativeinadequacy, but also a positive evil.
or legal professional standards, Mark Britton and his Avvo web site are a model for failure. Mark Britton clearly appreciated and understood at the time of launching his Avvo web site
that his ranking and rating of lawyers ~ and his humiliation of lawyers who have received bar discipline ~ is a pale imitation of a Greek tragedy.
Men and women who have invested long years of sacrifice to prepare for and gain admission to law school and who have devoted their
blood, sweat and tears to graduating from law school and passing the bar exam, occasionally have suffered damage to their
reputation with a stroke of the hearing officer's pen. The disciplined lawyers are then picked up by
Avvo's web site which publishes the fact of their discipline with a red tag.In this digital age when search engines give us unlimited access, we all face the
prospect of people "googling" our names whether they be friend or foe. Given Avvo's huge presence on the web and
Avvo's multiple gigabyte web site nationally and even internationally, the now humiliated lawyer's name will appear
on the first page that Google returns almost instantly. Saddam Hussein would hang his political adversaries in his public squares,
but at least he would cut down the body after it had baked in the hot sun for a few weeks. Avvo does not physically
murder people, but Avvo does kill the emotions that make life productive for a damaged person. Avvo grants no
concession ... the disciplined lawyer's entry on Avvo's page with his name, business address, and a brief characterization
of his law practice moves from the terrestial landscape to the celestial landscape ... it shines on Avvo's web site eternally.
For each lawyer whose name, business address, practice details and discipline summary appears on Avvo's web site, Avvo
invites the subject lawyer to "claim" his page. As and when the lawyer "claims" his page, the lawyer becomes a willing participant. At that point, Avvo has the lawyer's
implied consent to rank him and rate him as Avvo sees fit.The point at which Mark Britton crosses the divide
between mercy and cruelty; the point at which Mark Britton makes a conscious decision to abandon decency and to
embrace indecency; the point at which Mark Britton knowingly begins to live in the hour of shadows, however, is
the point in time when he publishes a profile about a lawyer who has been disciplined and who has never agreed
to participate in Avvo. At that point, Mark Britton becomes a wealthy man in the material sense ~ advertisers
flock to Avvo and open their purses. Mark Britton is getting rich trafficking in human pain. From that
moment forward, Mark Britton can occupy himself collecting,displaying and counting the injured souls of disciplined
lawyers ~ like a miser counting pieces of silver.
Scholars who have studied literary criticism agree that the most highly respected standard for
evaluating a tragedy is Aristotle's Poetics. There are many different cultures from which the tragedy emerges:
the Greek tragedy, the Roman tragedy, the French and Italian tragedies, and Shakespeare's Elizabethean tragedies.
While there is a great diversity in evaluating the tragedy, scholars generally agree with Aristotle that the
tragedy should never reward evil and should never degrade nobility. Mark Britton fails on both scores
because his web site does indeed reward cruelty and does indeed degrade nobility.
Cruelty is rewarded when Mr. Britton and his Avvo site amplify the
presence and persistence of the bar discipline and suggest and reinforce the notion that hiring a disciplined lawyer
may be risky and that the lawyer with discipline may be evil beyond redemption. Nobility is degraded
when redemption is denied or delayed or obstructed. There is no greater nobility in
the legal profession than a disciplined lawyer's committment to rebuild his law practice, reform his life, and
rescue his reputation. The truth is that a disciplined lawyer who has made a choice to seek his redemption
is probably the most honest lawyer in the market place because his faith in himself has been tested. Moreover,
when Mark Britton's Avvo site rewards cruelty and degrades nobility, he also
damages the legal profession in solido across the board. All lawyers and all forthcoming generations of
lawyers suffer. The entire legal profession is diminished each time Mark Britton publishes another page
on his web site making a public spectacle of another injured lawyer. Avvo is a House of Desolation. |
