Avvo

As a JD, I wrote a negative review for Kevin Limeaux, APC. They refused to post it, claiming, "it contained too much personal information and wasn't safe"! The case is a public record! This scam outfit AVVO has this grifter listed with ALL 5 stars! Clearly Avvo is not posting negative reviews and rejects negative reviews citing arbitrary rules that don't apply to posts!
Try leaving a negative review for an unsrupulous attorney listed on AVVO and see what happens. Draft after draft will be denied for vague undefined violations. Attorneys cited by the CalBar Assoc. Can easily contest complaints and win! Positive client reviews have no point of reference to how they are vetted and most often wreak of bots and family members. Gary Langlais is an attorney for CSC Service Works, Inc. He is illegally practicing law and was cited by CalBar Assoc. As such. Yet AVVO refuses to let a negative review of his conduct be posted. Further Pablo C. Palomino, another unscrupulous CA attorney is hosting hate cites targeting protected classes, again noticed and acknowledged by CalBar Assoc. And is documented scrubbing comments that contradict his homophobic hate speech. AVVO refuses to host the negative review.

I've had two different bad attorneys and they refuse to allow me to speak the truth. They only allow good ratings, so don't trust them.

I have posted reviews of lawyers on this website over the last few years. When I post a five-star review of a lawyer, it goes through somewhat automatically, I get an approval statement from the website usually the next day. On two occasions, I submitted negative reviews of lawyers who had not done a good job. The next day, in both cases, my reviews were rejected for violating "community guidelines." The community guidelines are overly broad and, more interestingly, the website does not tell you which guideline you have supposedly violated. This is particularly noteworthy for a website that deals with lawyers, lawyers deal in details. In any case, in both of my negative reviews, I had to change the reviews until eventually, several days and several emails later, they were accepted. I know that in one of these two cases, the lawyer, Andrew Fitzgerald in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, actually tried to deny that I had been his client and Avvo asked me for proof that I have been his client. This is a violation of confidentiality by a website. In any case, Avvo eventually posted the negative review of this man in Winston-Salem, after several days and several emails back and forth.

According to its website, Avvo claims to provide "more information" to help potential clients make "better decisions." Yet, Avvo apparently makes little effort to screen positive reviews (which could possibly be provided by the personal friends of a lawyer). It is my understanding that the only way that Avvo actually verifies positive evaluations is to let the lawyers challenge such reviews. On the other hand, Avvo routinely intercedes with negative reviews (as well as allowing the lawyer to question such reviews, as happened to me with Mr. Fitzgerald in Winston-Salem). So, in the case of incompetent, unprofessional, or disreputable lawyers, Avvo does not really provide a platform for consumers to make "better decisions."

I made a complaint about Steven Katz who has a conflict of interest, but it was refused by Avvo on spurious grounds

I was solicited to write a review for my attorney on Avvo, and I wrote a glowing one indeed.

I received an eMail back, vaguely stating that my review was rejected because of Avvo's unspecified "community standards", although zero specifics are given. The review contained no profanity. Avvo provides no mechanism to revisit and re-edit my submission. I am to start again from scratch, after I take an an hour or so to read its tedious fine print boilerplate in an attempt to divine what it arbitrarily requires, and why — and then make a wild guess in the hope that whatever mystery word or phrase has offended its sensibilities has been toned down or removed. Wow, what an enticing offer.

I also seem to have been subscribed now to Avvo's broadcast mailings, which arrive containing no unsubscribe link. More specifically, to unsubscribe I must log into an account with logins I never created — in other words with a login which does not exist. How utterly lame. This makes Avvo's eMail perfectly fit the very definition of Spam, the technical textbook example of Spam itself, and as sure as sunrise, thousands of recipients will correctly tag them as such in their eMail clients' Spam filters, just as I have done.

I'm not even sure why I'm taking the time to write and post this review. Maybe it's because I'm so annoyed with Avvo's wretched functionality choices, and conversely, so fond of my attorney. In other words, they've pissed off a user enough that he's actually taking the time to let the world know how severely they suck, instead of just sending their eMail directly to trash and instructing his eMail client's spam filters to block them completely in future, as the majority of users would, and certainly do.

They're asking me to volunteer my time to write a review. This is the equivalent of asking someone to take an unpaid survey. They then reject the submission, while offering no specifics as to why, or a direct link to edit whichever specific part of it has offended their sensibilities. Instead I'm instructed to donate my precious time reading, to educate myself regarding Avvo's lengthy community standards and vainly try again… because I'm just that devoted to Avvo's capricious needs.

Wow.

Avvo's customer service is a joke. I am a tenant in a 2 family home, and the other tenant family is neglecting their pets and damaging my property. They do not speak English, so I can't communicate with them; and my landlord seems to treat them with kid gloves. For this and other reasons, I believe they are illegal immigrants. Because they're certainly not awful people and I suspect that they may be illegal, I am reluctant to call the police on them which may get them into more trouble than is necessary. I'm sure that most people, lawyers included, after hearing my entire issue, would recommend that I first speak with them or call the police before getting legal assistance. In order to not waste answers from Avvo's lawyers with these recommendations and to stress that those two options are kind of out of the question, I made sure to include our inability to communicate and my reluctance to involve the police in the other facts in my question.

When I went to see my question and potential answers, I couldn't find it. Upon emailing customer service, I was informed by a very nasty "senior customer care representative" named Katherine who informed me that my question wasn't posted (which I'd have never known if I didn't contact them) because I included "unnecessary information" in it. Apparently, "their immigration status and inability to speak English" are irrelevant and discriminatory. I responded to reiterate that everyone suggests speaking with the neighbors first, and then if all else fails, calling my landlord or the police, as well as my reasons for not trying these options first. This "senior customer care representative" never responded to this or any subsequent emails from me.

So, even though I made it clear that I'd rather not get these people into trouble with immigration by involving the police, and cannot do this by speaking with them regarding the issues, one person at Avvo with insufficient reading comprehension skills decided that I must have an issue with illegal immigrants, and decided that I don't deserve legal advice. She also is apparently allowed to completely ignore customers despite being a "senior customer care representative."