Legal Technology
Avvo Petitions Illinois Supreme Court for Lawyer List
Posted Jun 11, 2008, 10:57 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The lawyer rating website Avvo has filed a petition with the Illinois Supreme Court requesting a disk with information about all of the state’s lawyers.
The website of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission already contains information about the state’s 85,000 lawyers, but it has two limitations, the petition (PDF) says.
First, to access information, the name of the lawyer is needed. Avvo does not have the names of all the licensed lawyers in the state. Second, a limit on the number of records displayed creates problems in searching for lawyers with common last names.
James Grogan, deputy administrator for the ARDC, told the Pantagraph he couldn’t comment on the Avvo case, but the lawyer information is generally not available for commercial or political purposes.
Avvo rates lawyers on a scale of 1 to 10 and posts consumer comments. The company has expanded its ratings to include lawyers in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin. It now lists lawyers in 15 states and the District of Columbia, covering about 70 percent of the country’s licensed lawyers, according to a press release.
The company had also petitioned the New Jersey Supreme Court to obtain lawyer information, prompting the court clerk to reverse himself and release the records.