Interesting article in today’s New York Times:  On Second Thought, Let’s Just Rate All the Lawyers, by Adam Liptak:

John Henry Browne, a criminal defense lawyer in Seattle, was steamed. A new Web site that rates lawyers the way Zagat rates restaurants, with numbers, had assigned him a low score.  So Mr. Browne filed a class-action lawsuit last month. “We want to shut the site down,” he said.

The site is called Avvo.com, and Mr. Browne’s first rating on its 10-point scale was 3.7, a score in a range that the site labels “caution.” After he complained, the rating was changed to 5.5, or “average.” Mr. Browne said he deserved better. … But it was Bernie Willard Potter’s initial score of 6.2, or “good,” that drove Mr. Browne out of his mind. Here Mr. Browne had a point. Mr. Potter, another Seattle lawyer, was in fact not likely to provide effective representation, on account of possessing neither a law license nor a pulse. “I do take offense,” Mr. Browne said, “when I get rated lower than a dead, disbarred lawyer.”

Last week, Avvo was scrambling to respond to complaints about the site and to the lawsuit. It took many ratings off the site, though not Mr. Browne’s, and on Thursday it filed a vigorous motion to dismiss the suit.

The idea behind Avvo, short for avvocato, the Italian word for lawyer, is a sound one. Ordinary people have no good way to look for a lawyer. Faced with a life crisis — a divorce, an injury, a criminal charge — they rely on word-of-mouth recommendations, the Yellow Pages, billboards or subway ads. On Avvo, potential clients can search by specialty and ZIP code, and they will be presented with a list of ranked possibilities. Nothing wrong with that.

But Avvo has a long way to go. It does not disclose how it generates its rankings, though it says that it relies on public records. It seems clear that disciplinary reports hurt and that experience, education and specialization help.