Making big news this summer was the shut-down of Avvo Legal Services just a few months after it was acquired by Internet Brands.  (A couple of the many reports are here and here.)  Some speculated that the new corporate owner had no stomach to continue to fight for that portion of Avvo’s business model in the face of numerous state ethics opinions that found a wide variety of ethics problems with it.

The flat-fee service that Avvo offered through a network of lawyers required the lawyer to rebate a “marketing” fee to Avvo out of the fee that the lawyer received.  As we’ve pointed out, that raised issues of fee-splitting with non-lawyers; but other aspects of the model also troubled ethics boards.

Does “processing fee” = fee-splitting?

On another front now drawing notice, another on-line legal services provider is contesting charges in California district court that its own business plan violates false advertising and unfair competition statutes, including recently-filed allegations that it supports its business with spurious attorney ratings.

The suit is significant for highlighting that despite the demise of Avvo Legal Services, the ethics issues remain in light of the other players that continue to occupy the same space in the marketplace, and that litigation, not just regulatory action, sometimes results.

The plaintiff in the California federal case is LegalForce RAPC Worldwide, an IP firm.  In an amended complaint filed earlier this month, LegalForce alleges that it competes with defendant UpCounsel Inc. to “provide individuals and small businesses with affordable access to attorneys,” by using technology to match clients with lawyers specialized in corporate, patent and trademark law.

The allegations, which withstood an earlier motion to dismiss, include that UpCounsel’s model features a “processing fee” markup that constitutes impermissible fee-sharing with non-lawyers.

The amended complaint says that UpCounsel tries to attract consumers by promising to provide lawyers in the “Top 5%” of specialized IP and corporate practice niches in cities across the U.S, and that the representation constitutes false advertising, as there is no ranking system that could provide a basis for the claim.

“Reviews” outnumber lawyers, says complaint

In addition, according to the allegations of the amended complaint, UpCounsel falsely advertised superior consumer ratings for the lawyers in its network.  As an example, the plaintiff pointed to the rating given to IP lawyers in Cotati, California:

“Cotati Intellectual Property Lawyers, 5.0 ***** Based on 5450 reviews.”  “It is impossible for Cotati Intellectual Property Lawyers to have 5,450 reviews on UpCounsel,” says the amended complaint, because “Cotati is a small town … with a population of 7,455. There are only 21 attorneys in the city of Cotati licensed to practice law in California, and none of these 21 attorneys are listed on UpCounsel.”

LegalForce alleges that this same pattern of “perfect or near-perfect review scores” based on thousands of purported reviews is duplicated as to lawyers advertised by UpCounsel in other cities, such as Tallahassee and Savannah.

More to come…

The ethics issues regarding on-line legal service providers have not gone away just because Avvo has withdrawn from that market.  As Prof. Alberto Bernabe, a legal ethics professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, has pointed out, “Where Avvo left off, someone else will pick up…,” including, most recently, “Text a Lawyer,” an on-line platform where prospective clients can ask lawyers questions via text.

Regulators and litigation parties will surely continue to confront the ethical issues inherent in these platforms, although the ABA’s recently-passed revamp of some of the legal marketing rules in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct fails to address on-line referral providers.