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Rating Mark Britton
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Memo to Disciplinees Avvo's Fratricidal Race for the Bottom. Avvo is a business model for failure. |
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Once you have received a reprimand, Avvo will create and publish your Avvo page with the inducement: "Claim Your Page." Whether you want it or not; whether you like it or not; and whether you claim it or not; Avvo will create and publish your page and shove it down your throat.
Prominently displayed on your Avvo page, Avvo gratuitously announces to the world - i.e., anyone and everyone who surfs the world-wide-web - in red ink (or perhaps orange ink since July of 2021) that you have a Reprimand. Redemption may have been your goal when you walked out of your bar hearing; however, when Avvo makes a national spectacle of your Reprimand, you will soon learn that Avvo's re-branding has reclassified your career as Road Kill. If you are a freshly minted lawyer with discipline, brace yourself! Team Avvo is offering the public a Disney-fied view of Mark Britton and is intentionally arousing an insidious spirit against you. Team Avvo has decided in its wisdom that you are expendable. For some perverted and supposed commercial benefit for Avvo, you must now experience these amplified hostile feelings and enhanced inflamed passions that your Avvo page will add to your suffering.
Avvo and Mark Britton do not physically kill human beings, but they do kill the emotions that make your life productive and worth living. Given Avvo's international band width, when anyone Googles your name for the remainder of your life, Google will display your Avvo listing on the first page that the search engine returns. When you change doctors, your new doctor's office will readily find and read your Avvo page which you have never claimed. When you change landlords or buy a new home, your new landlord and your new neighbors will readily find and read your Avvo page which you have never claimed. When you interview for a new job, your prospective new employer will readily find and read your Avvo page which you have never claimed. When you meet with a new client, your new client will readily find and read your Avvo page which you have never claimed.
Cruelty is the only possible explanation for this attack on disciplined lawyers - Mark Britton is churning the idea of the evilness of "the Other" as a marketing ploy for his web site, and in this instance "the Other" is the disciplined lawyer who is striving to redeem himself. Whether or not he participates in Avvo and whether or not he has "claimed" his Avvo page, Avvo gives the disciplined lawyer an Avvo page which prominently displays his name and identifies him as a disciplined lawyer - "This lawyer was disciplined by a state licensing authority." Mark Britton's use of red ink is indeed appropriate since this is the new blood libel against lawyers with discipline who are striving for their redemption.
Thomas Jefferson, who was not only a Founding Father but also a member of the legal profession, is remembered for saying: "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots." Mark Britton and Avvo have apparently decided that "The Tree of Avvo with its paradigm of instant gratification must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of disciplined lawyers." Disciplined lawyers do not blame Mark Britton for their reprimands, but they are well justified in pointing out that Mark Britton has made a national spectacle of their discipline while they are striving for redemption.
Mark Britton's use of red lettering to single out marginalized lawyers is clever but is not original: this red letter technique has been used effectively in past cultures. What appears below is the top portion of the passport page issued by the Third Reich in 1939 to identify marginalized people in Germany. According to the Museum of Passports - who publishes this image at PassportMuseum.Org - the "Red J means ‘Jew’ stamped to make it easier for border guards to identify and pull out Jews from queues from Germany and other Nazi occupied countries." Avvo and Mark Britton ensure with total certainty that people who surf the internet today can readily "identify and pull out" disciplined lawyers. Of course, neither Mark Britton nor Avvo are guilty of killing human beings, but they do kill the emotions that make their lives productive and worth living.
 Making matters worse, most American lawyers now worship at the shrine of Avvo-com, so Mark Britton wields more power and influence over the legal profession than the fifty organized bar associations sanctified by state law. The ugly truth is that there are very few lawyers on the payroll at Avvo. Team Avvo consists mostly of overpaid computer techs ("coding" people) and overpaid junior execs ("sales" people). If you are willing to face reality: Team Avvo is a mob of propaganda ministers who are masquerading as dispensers of legal wisdom and moral justice. How quaint! Mark Britton and his Team Avvo have delegated the task of demonizing and shaming disciplined lawyers to non-lawyers on Mr. Britton's Team Avvo who are armed with massive international bandwidth! Figuratively speaking, the lunatics have taken over the asylum!
With a little nudge from Mark Britton, you can easily imagine a whole constellation of sins, errors and omissions on the part of the disciplined lawyer. Indeed, if you let your imagination run wild, you can envision a disciplined lawyer who is not only guilty of moral bankruptcy but also living a life of conspicuous consumption. Mark Britton's insight into morality is unmistakenly glorious and pagan. Thus, Mark Britton is a connoisseur of brutality.
In the fullness of time, Mark Britton's blood lust against disciplined lawyers is damaging all lawyers insolido across the board. Neither Mark Britton nor Avvo are restrained in their fratricidal race for the bottom. The legal profession is diminished when we gloss over and ignore Avvo's blood lust which refreshes the Tree of Avvo. Any justification that Mark Britton might offer would be unconvincing. Avvo's business plan rips through the legal profession like an invisible and impersonal river which has no need of us and no knowledge of us.
Mark Britton has been enthusiastic about standing at the Avvocating Seminar podium and peddling his business plan, but Mark Britton's
scheme of things would return our profession to the culture of separate drinking fountains. Mark Britton is offering a reset of our collective memories to a time when people in pain were destined to live on the outskirts of hope. Mark Britton has persuaded the legal profession that lawyers can grow their practices by demonizing and shaming lawyers with discipline who are striving for their redemption. Thus, Mark Britton's ambitious business plan degrades nobility and rewards cruelty. Avvo-com is a House of Desolation.
Mr. Britton frequently says that his web site enables him to shine a flashlight into dark places. Truth be told, however, Mark Britton needs to shine his flashlight in his own face and stand in front of a mirror.
Mark Britton is getting rich trafficking in human pain with his lawyer-bashing scheme. By turning his back on the core values, history and traditions of the legal profession, Mark Britton enables and encourages critics of our profession to tar all lawyers with the same brush. The trial lawyer who files complaints and who summons people into courtrooms is neither ennobled nor enriched by Mark Britton's mischcief. Instead, Mark Britton confirms the prejudices of low information voters who persist in believing that Shakespeare was right! - all lawyers are hypocritical people who are cruel and who lead austere and joyless lives. Just as South Africa (the source of the Omicron variant) is the African continent's genetic sequencing powerhouse - already laden with Covid mutations - so too Avvo-com is the cesspool from which contempt and ridicule for lawyers is emerging.
Sadly, we live in a world in which sociopathic people are being increasingly rewarded, and in that world and in that context Mark Britton is an enabler. Mark Britton has persuaded the American legal profession to dumb down and water down its ethical and scholarly standards so that lawyers can now sell their brand and grow their practices by lawyer bashing and by peddling "free legal advice" with the added bonus of "lawyer ratings" based on self-aggrandizement. Sociopathic people - sociopathic lawyers and sociopathic consumers of legal services - gravitate to that model.
A few short years ago - in the early 1960's - the Washington State Bar News would publish a brief note at the end of the year informing its readership that "There were ____ [fill in the number] reprimands this year" without publishing lawyers' names or the details of their offenses. Today, of course, the Bar News publishes names and summarizes the offenses - justifying its stain on lawyers with the shibboleth that the Bar must earn the confidence of the public and punish offenders. Mark Britton and his Team Avvo ensure with the zeal of barbaric tribalism that the stain is a lifelong humiliation. Thus, Avvo-com is a House of Desolation.
Welcome to the New Blood Libel against lawyers with discipline who are striving for their redemption. You will carry the stench of Avvo and Mark Britton in your nostrils for the remainder of your life.The people who sit on the Board of Directors of Avvo's parent corporation are ignorant of Economics 101 which includes a lesson in microeconomics (the theory of the firm) and which teaches the fundamental principle that a business organization must minimize costs and maximize profits. Any truly imaginative and insightful decision maker could double or treble or quadruple Avvo's revenues. Instead, Avvo blunders forward blissfully ignorant of basic economic wisdom - social scientists would describe it as a case of structural and systemic stupidity! Accordingly, Avvo is a business model for economic failure!Justice Robert Jackson – a Twentieth Century Justice of our Supreme Court who also prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremburg following World War II - famously said: "The United States Supreme Court is not final because it is infallible; but, it is infallible because it is final." Avvo-com is neither infallible nor final. Mark Britton is neither infallible nor final.Mark Britton, Avvo's founder and former CEO, can shift and shuttle and whine and wheedle to his heart's content, but his dishonesty and mediocrity will never change. During the time that he worked at Avvo, Mark Britton cast himself in the role of a disruptor hero, but today his self-mythologizing is wearing thin. Truth be told, Mark Britton has made himself the Poster Boy for bad law, bad logic, bad morality and bad lawyering. If he had any integrity, Mark Britton would admit that he has become rich trafficking in human pain. Quite frankly, I would not hire Mark Britton to push a broom. But sufficient unto the day, there is nothing written or implied in the Code of Professional Responsibility that justifies bar counsel's willingness to ignore and tolerate Avvo's aggressive and arrogant demonizing, shaming and policing of disciplinees in the legal profession. The great unsettled question is when will bar counsel define and justify its post-disciplinary role? Until that reconciliation arrives, bar counsel will continue ruminating about the transgressions of disciplinees instead of shouldering the responsibilty of facilitating life after discipline. 
 Mr. Wolfstone has been honored for his 50 years of bar association service! |
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