Rating Lawyers
So, during the day, I work for LexisNexis… which owns Lawyers.com, the largest lawyer directory online. But before they went online, they pioneered the idea of lawyer ratings. So you can imagine they’re constantly re-considering the ways you can measure “trust”.
As I was looking over a site where you can rate congress, the (somewhat obvious) principle of leveraging user-generated content to complement the trusted AV rating service comes to mind. I know that team is working on great things in that area, but my question to the blog world out there is Would you trust community ratings/comments about lawyers? Is it true that the dissatisfied are far more likely to submit content and thereby skew results? What about shill posters who put up favorable ratings, who could do the same. The idea of expanding into 2.0 is attractive, but more complicated when you look deeply. [see the problems Avvo is running into lately...]
Thanks for mention
The validity and credibility of every-day comments is increasing as we speak by companies like SezWho, CoComment, Disqus and more. They are tracking and ranking comments and the people who make them across multiple sites. We have been testing them for a while and so far we like SezWho the best, but the full results are not in yet.
Hopefully the industry will consolidate more to provide us with a unified standard. But, even at the current time we can tell when someone is abusing ratings and comments systems, its just a bit tedious. And as awareness of reputation management increases, companies will notice abuse faster and report it.
And… as i ramble on like Grandpa Simpson, I personally love the fact that now companies and politicians have to scramble to do damage control when are caught with their hands in the cookie jar by a blogger or public ratings system. Now everyone can be a reporter or a whistle-blower. Companies and politicians have run a muck with the planet and trampled the little guy in the process, but i see a beautiful light on the horizon
The fact is, consumers DO trust, and even rely on, ratings by other consumers. You’ll find a lot of info on this subject at the Rating and Review Professional Association (rarpa.org).
Sites that rate doctors and health professionals have already become tremendously popular and successful, and sites such as AVVO and LawyerRatingz.com are doing the same for the legal profession.