 Avvo Watch is watching Avvo-com. Sadly, Avvo-com and its former CEO, Mark Britton, have successfully transformed the American legal profession into three dark provinces where dignity and decorum are cast aside ~ (1) lawyer bashing; (2) lawyer rating in a counterfeit system which lawyers can easily game with extravagant self-promotion; and (3) free legal advice with a counterfeit system which offers black letter law commentary in response to consumers' questions and then denies in a footnote under "Terms of Use" that free legal advice is legal advice.
For Mark Britton and for his Team Avvo, the Truth is a set of movable blocks that Mark Britton can shift around ~ forwards, backwards, and sideways ~ to create whatever counterfeit reality pleases them on the Avvo-com web site. For Mark Britton and his Team Avvo, the American Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct accomodate and track their every whim and caprice. Ethical standards vary according to what Mark Britton needs and wants.
Thanks to Avvo, the legal profession has now subsumed public trust and legitimacy below its role as a platform for performance. In making that bargain, lawyers have demonstrated their willingness to dumb down their standards of scholarship and to water down their ethical standards.
Simply put, the legal profession has made a choice ~ Avvo's "quick fix" is the best approach to building a reputation. Physicians, by contrast, enter a residency program (three to five years of hard work and financial sacrifice) in order to build or enhance their skills and reputation. The residency is long hours supported by commitment with legitimate peer review sessions from experienced senior doctors whose critiques are both brutal and thorough. At the end of the residency, the physician undergoes testing and final evaluation. These residency programs are demanding and ultimately rewarding.
Au contraire, lawyers build and enhance their reputations with an Avvo score based on superficial emails from 'satisfied customers' and fellow practitioners. The lawyers' Avvo scores soar higher and higher with each new laudatory email effortlessly sent to the Avvo server ~ click, click, click ~ based on Avvo's paradigm of instant gratification.
Thus, Mark Britton has given the legal profession a social media nightmare called Avvo-com which is a bull horn for toxic speech offering self-promotion and self-aggrandizement to ambitious lawyers and law firms. Just as Facebook had a poster hanging in its original corporate offices announcing "Move Fast and Break Things!" so too Avvo-com motivates simple-minded lawyers to join the Avvo business plan to capture the attention of internet surfers and to encourage the public to identify and reprehend lawyers who have been disciplined.
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.
Making matters worse, one of our national bar associations is now enchanted with the word "disruption" and confers awards on lawyers who disrupt the legal profession and gives them aristocratic titles like "Legal Rebels." This national bar association has sadly conferred praise on Mark Britton for his Avvo web site. Mark Britton is no slouch -- Mark Britton has not only disrupted the legal profession, but indeed he has broken the legal profession. The national bar associaiton thereby implicitly approves and endorses Mark Britton's demonizing and shaming of disciplined lawyers. Avvo Watch asks whether any bar association should tolerate Avvo's demonizing and shaming of disciplined lawyers? In the fullness of time, Avvo's high tech lynching of disciplined lawyers is damaging all lawyers insolido across the board. Neither Mark Britton nor Avvo are retarded 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 with the blood of disciplined lawyers.
The story of Avvo-com is the story of everything that is wrong with the legal profession. If you were told to create a polished web site with all of the digital bells and whistles available in today's internet marketplace about the legal profession ~ including a distillation of all the credential-kiting and double-dealing tactics that give lawyers a bad name ~ you would create Avvo-com. Mark Britton and his Team Avvo are polluting our culture with "junk law" when they advertise free legal advice, and the only people who are buying this junk law are consumers who live in an emotional slum. Above the fold, the Avvo-com web site is offering free legal advice, and below the fold Avvo-com denies that free legal advice is legal advice ~ a tart contradiction. Mr. Britton and his Team Avvo are experts in incongruity.
Lawyers and non-lawyers who visit the Avvo web site and review the "Terms of Use" will notice that Mark Britton and his Team Avvo rely upon psuedo-legal vocabularly like Legal Information and Avvo Created Content to support Avvo's ridiculous claim that "free legal advice" is not really "legal advice." Simply put, Avvo and Mark Britton are pulling out of their narrative hats the values that they have smuggled up their normative sleeves.
Quite frankly, most American lawyers now worship at the shrine of Avvo-com so you would disagree with Mark Britton at your peril. 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 the truth: 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 who are armed with massive international bandwidth! Figuratively speaking, the lunatics have taken over the asylum!
Thanks to Avvo-com and Mark Britton, the American legal profession is undergoing a moral crisis and a linguistic crisis ~ and the two crises are organically connected. When Mark Britton steals intellectual property from the D.C. Bar Association and passes it off as "data mining," he thereby generates his own language-field to legitimize his dishonest motives, values and ideals.
Mark Britton is a middle-aged business man who has never devoted his career to bar leadership. He has appointed himself a one man super bar association for purposes of ranking and rating every dentist, doctor and lawyer in America. Mark Britton quite frankly does not have the whiskers to do the job! Team Avvo also decided in one of its "stroking sessions" to confer an Avvo score of 9.2 on its CEO, Mark Britton. We mortals cannot help but wonder whether Mark Britton is a greek god or just another narcissistic personality.
Mark Britton's supporters might admit that he is guilty of "managing the facts" with his Avvo-com web site, but Mr. Britton's scheme of things is much more ambitious. Mark Britton apparently believes that his name is a password to a previously repressed truth ~ that the quest for money, the drive for power, and the celebration of vanity rule every lawyer's behaviour in the American legal profession. The truth is that Mark Britton is a human wrecking ball.
Avvo-com has unleashed a whole tribe of spiritual sons and daughters who now give "free legal advice" to anyone ~ sight unseen ~ who has a keyboard and who submits a question. These pseudo lawyers are willing to practice law without the empirical support of carefully probing the questioner's facts in a face-to-face meeting and apparently do not rely upon a thorough research of applicable caselaw and statutory law ~ i.e., research tailor made to the specific person who is submitting the question with a specific legal problem. These pseudo lawyers bear a striking resemblance to pseudo scientists who generate hypotheses to explain the universe with a smorgasboard of scientifically untestable supernatural causes. These pseudo lawyers do not research potential conflicts of interest. These pseudo lawyers may have graduated from law school with an Order of the Coif certificate, but now they dance for Mr. Britton and his Avvo-com enterprise where instant gratification and mediocrity are the prevailing standards.
Mark Britton has persuaded these pseudo lawyers that it is possible to make a rapid vertical descent into greatness ~ by becoming an advice-giver on his Avvo-com web site ~ rather than doing the hard work of meeting face-to-face with clients and achieving the moral awakening of connecting with clients and their problems. These pseudo lawyers are missing the opportunity to meet with prospective clients and to unravel a complex skein of facts. For these pseudo lawyers, the solution to a client's legal problem can be stated with the streamlined simplicity of remarking that a train has arrived on time. Avvo-com's approach and Mr. Britton's approach to problem solving are anti-intellectual and one dimensional. If he were honest, Mark Britton would admit that these pseudo lawyers are making a rapid vertical descent into mediocrity.
Mark Britton subsequently added a new feature called Avvo Advisor to his web site to deflect attention from his "free legal advice" fiasco. Mr. Britton's new feature, Avvo Advisor, offered a program of paid legal advice with a "money-back guarantee." Apparently, Mr. Britton resorted to the new feature to sprinkle a little pixie dust on his nightmare and eliminate ethical problems inherent in offering free legal advice (coupled with his cleverly footnoted denial which says that free legal advice is not really legal advice).
However, Mr. Britton overlooked the fact that lawyers and law firms live in existential dread of any effort to make their legal fees refundable on demand. Avvo Advisor's "money-back guarantee" which was published on Avvo-com's web site promised the consumer subjective satisfaction ~ thus, the participating lawyers' legal fees evaporated in front of their eyes like a handful of seafoam. In rhetoric, in fact and in policy, Mark Britton's "money back guarantee" was nothing more than a unsuccessful "Charm Offensive" to cover up and provide contrast to his flawed program which boasts "free legal advice" above the fold and then hastily retreats with the suggestion below the fold that free legal advice is not really legal advice.
When he cobbled together "free legal advice" with "paid legal advice," Mark Britton's intellectual scaffolding came tumbling down on the heads of Digital Natives who visited the Avvo-com web site. Upshot: ~ Avvo-com's new feature was a bundle of contradictions which gave the reader an attack of vertigo. Avvo finally waived a white flag and totally aborted its "paid legal services" new feature. In a letter dated June 6, 2018, Avvo's General Counsel (B. Lynn Walsh) announced to the North Carolina State Bar whose committee was investigating Avvo's apparent "Unauthorized Practice of Law" that Avvo (Internet Brands) was discontinuing its "Legal Services product." Obviously, the term "Legal Services product" is corporate-speak for paid legal services on the Avvo-com web site.
How, then, does Avvo make money for its investors and shareholders? Avvo makes its money selling advertising to lawyers and law firms. In order to circumvent the problems ~ notably ethical problems ~ associated with its original scheme of free legal advice, Avvo's new program called Avvo Advisor was an on demand 15 minute telephone consultation session with an Avvo member lawyer that cost $39 and was available in 18 states. Make no mistake about it, however, Avvo has always made its money selling advertising space on its website, and the advertsing space is purchased by lawyers who are promoting their brands ~ credential kiting and self-aggrandizement. Avvo was never supported by "paid legal fees." Avvo is well aware that it was creating the false impression ~ a pure fiction ~ that it was supported by consumers who are paying legal fees for legal advice. Avvo Advisor was a pale imitation of the robust revenues that are generated by selling advertising space to lawyers who love to hear the sound of their own names.
If Mark Britton truly believes that Avvo will ever earn significant money from legal fees paid by consumers, then Mark Britton is economically illiterate and is still dreaming about his failed plan which has been tagged as the Unauthorized Practice of Law.
Instead of worrying about their ethical well-being which is codified in the American Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct, Mark Britton and his Team Avvo offer the Avvo-com lawyers a "new ethical abundance" which is more powerful than any drug and which gives the lawyers a "nice buzz" ~ Avvo-com offers to establish the American lawyers' ethical superiority by staging a sleazy parade of injured and damaged lawyers with discipline; Avvo-com offers to show the American lawyers how to grow their practice and make more money with their Avvo pages; and Avvo-com offers to express the American lawyers' power and potency with an Avvo score.
Avvo and Mark Britton live in a world in which the American legal profession is characterized by its three lowest common denominators ~ dishonesty, hypocrisy, and mediocrity. For Avvo and for Mark Britton, action authenticates meaning. For Avvo and for Mark Britton, the lawyer is only responsible to the bottom line. For Avvo and for Mark Britton, a lawyer's financial success and moral convenience have joined hands at last.
Mr. Britton frequently says that his web site enables him to shine his 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.
Many young lawyers are graduating from American law schools today deep in debt and with no job. What awaits them in the practice of law is a profession that now worships at the shrine of Avvo-com ~ a motley crew of superficial circus clowns who are getting rich trafficking in human pain.
Most American lawyers who are deeply embedded in bar associations, government offices and law firms are blissfully unaware of this disaster and impending doom ~ they only hear the soprano voices of Team Avvo, and they are humming along as they crank their wheels of justice.
A few short years ago, young lawyers in America emulated the standards of hard work, honesty, loyalty to one's clients and plain speaking. However, Avvo-com has redefined the code of conduct for the American legal profession. If lawyers follow Team Avvo's example, the code of conduct has become assertiveness and zeal at the borderline. Mark Britton and his bullies can now boast that an American lawyer's business success is his highest achievement.
Avvo Watch asks the question: Do you believe that Avvo-com (and similar organizations) engender greater respect or disrespect for lawyers?
Avvo Watch does rank its member-lawyers but that function is strictly incidental to our educational purpose. We are influenced by each member's own assessment of his or her dedication to the practice of law - What rank do you believe is appropriate in your case? Do you concur in our educational goals?
Avvo Watch is sensitive to the rich traditions of our profession and our global community. Avvo Watch speaks Truth to Power.
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