D.C. bar fights consumer Web site

EXCLUSIVE:

Lawyers often sue to protect consumers. In Washington - the lawyer capital of the nation - lawyers are threatening legal action to prevent consumers from getting a full measure of information about their services.

The District of Columbia Bar Association has told the consumer service Web site Avvo.com to stop using information from the bar’s own Web site - or face legal action. The Avvo site provides consumer information about lawyers, including their fields of expertise and whether they have been disciplined by a court or bar association.

Joshua King, an Avvo vice president, said the company has had no problems gathering information from other bar associations across the country - from New York and Boston to Austin, Texas - since it started its site in 2007.

But in Washington, which has more lawyers per capita than anywhere else in the U.S., Avvo is having a tough time.

Consumer advocate Steve Pociask is appalled.

“It’s not practical for people who defend free speech to turn around and say, ‘As long as it doesn’t affect my members,’ ” Mr. Pociask, president of the Washington-based American Consumer Institute, said Monday. “It sounds like a boys club.”

Mr. King calls the D.C. bar’s demand an insult to average Americans.

“Attorney licensing data is a matter of public record,” he said. The bar “wants to protect the interests of the District of Columbia Bar and its members. Note the absence of any interest in protecting the public.”

He said the problems started after the D.C. bar realized that the company was taking lawyer-licensing information from the bar’s site.

Mr. King said the bar then posted a “terms of use” statement and blocked Avvo’s access to the site.

He said the Seattle-based Avvo continued downloading from the bar’s site to update information, at least until receiving a “cease and desist” letter Jan. 27 from Timothy K. Webster, a lawyer with the K Street firm Sidley Austin LLP.

The bar’s primary objections are that Avvo failed to ask for permission to use the information and that it is soliciting members, according to the letter.

“They made a public Web site,” Mr. Pociask said. “It’s the World Wide Web.”

The letter told Avvo to stop taking information from the site and demanded that the company “immediately remove improperly acquired information.”

Story Continues →