Florida Lawyers Must Tread Carefully When Using Avvo and LinkedIn
In light of the recently-issued guidelines from the Florida Bar concerning lawyers’ website compliance, we became very interested in how social media profiles would be monitored once the six-month moratorium on the enforcement of the website rules, in effect beginning January 1, 2010, is lifted.
In particular, we focused our inquiries on two sites: LinkedIn and Avvo. LinkedIn attracts users from virtually all professions and industries, while Avvo is exclusively for lawyers; however, the two use a similar “recommendations” feature to bolster the profiles of the users. Avvo even goes so far as to tie the rating system it uses for each profile in part to the number and tone of “peer recommendations” from other lawyers.
However, since anyone can access the profiles of lawyers on either LinkedIn or Avvo, we were concerned in particular with two of the guidelines listed in the Rules of Professional Conduct of The Florida Bar:.
- Does the advertisement contain any references to past results? Rule 4-7.2(c)(1)(F).
- Does the website contain any statements that describe or characterize the quality of the lawyer’s services? Rule 4-7.2(c)(2).
Looking at some of the recommendations and testimonials posted on various lawyer profiles on both of these sites – whether from clients or professional peers – we saw many that contained “references to past results” and even more that most definitely did “describe or characterize the character of the lawyer’s services.”
We called and spoke at length with an advisor on ethics in advertising at the Florida Bar. According to our source:
“The Board of Governors has said if the attorney participates in the Avvo rating service, and the attorney provides email addresses of clients [or professional peers] and asks clients to rate them, then the attorney could get in trouble for that. But, if these people are going to the site and posting things and attorney has not controlled what they wrote [or even the fact that they wrote] then the attorney will not be held responsible.”
Similar to LinkedIn, Avvo has a function whereby a member attorney can send a mass email to clients, asking them to “please rate me.” Avvo also has the additional feature of allowing the member lawyer to contact other lawyers specifically, asking for the same favor (Note: It is only these peer-to-peer recommendations that affect the member attorney’s “rating” on Avvo).
However, on both LinkedIn and Avvo, a client, business associate, or – in Avvo’s case – another attorney, can also opt to make a recommendation, using the sites’ recommendation feature, without any solicitation or request to do so from the attorney/member.
The distinction, according to the Florida Bar, lies in whether or not the attorney did the former scenario – requested the recommendation – or was a passive participant in the latter; i.e. someone took it upon him or herself to write the recommendation.
Lawyers who – whether on LinkedIn, Avvo, or any other similar profile-posting site, send any traceable request saying “please rate me” will be held responsible for all comments that are made on the site as a result of that request.