The 10 Most Amazing Threatening Letters Lawyers Sent to Avvo

This year marks Avvo’s 10th anniversary. In that time, they have grown from a lawyer profile directory to an enormous lawyer ratings, legal Q&A, and online marketing platform. They are also host to one of the leading business of law conferences, their annual Lawyernomics event in Las Vegas, which I’m excited to attend for the first time.

Avvo is an important and valuable part of the legal tech community. Their CEO, Mark Britton, was just a keynote speaker at the 2017 ABA TECHSHOW and their Director of Industry Relations, Dan Lear, just participated in our second TBD Law conference, and they are well regarded as thought leaders in the solo & small firm universe.

But over the past ten years, some lawyers have really hated Avvo.

Above, you can see Dan Lear holding the full stack of angry letters Avvo has received from lawyers over the years. (That doesn’t include all the angry emails they have received.) It seems worth noting that despite all of these threatening letters from lawyers, only eight of them have every actually sued Avvo, and none of those cases ever made it past pleading or resulted in Avvo paying a cash settlement or deleting a profile.

Below are 10 of the most amazing and outrageous (and redacted) letters lawyers have sent Avvo over the years to threaten and complain about the ridiculous things they hate about Avvo. Thanks to Avvo General Counsel Josh King for sharing them with us.

Enjoy.

10. F*ck your warm regards (2008)

This angry lawyer likes to yell in all caps to make his point. He also hates politeness.

9. Two exclamation points is too many (2012)

This lawyer has some very nuanced thoughts about red exclamation points and fire alarms.

He also thinks it’s very alarming (pun intended) to address people by their first name.

8. The one with all the Latin (2013)

This excerpt from a much longer letter shows a lawyer doing some deep legal analysis for Avvo’s education. Josh indicated that a simple brief request would have been sufficient here.

7. This is BOGUS (2013)

This lawyer’s 6.5 Avvo rating demonstrates, obviously, that Avvo’s entire ratings system is BOGUS.

6. What the font? (2013)

Please, please, please tell me this isn’t how this lawyer actually formats documents and correspondence.

5. Josh King is a perve [sic] (2013)

To make his point that the internet can unfairly categorize people, this lawyer did his own opposition research for fake internet content about Avvo’s Josh King. The lawyer then spelled perv wrong, which for some reason makes this even more amazing.

4. One MILLION dollars! (2014)

This lawyer demanded a LOT of money from Avvo. Like right now. Avvo decided not to pay it.

3. Avvo doesn’t want you to die (2015)

This lawyer really didn’t want to be listed in Avvo, so, rather than dying, she withdrew from the profession.

2. This is just, like, your baseless net opinion, man (2015)

The Department of Justice will definitely want to hear about Avvo’s EXTORTION.

1. Attorneys are evil, vile, and pus-filled.

In fairness, this is just a random internet person, not a lawyer, but it’s definitely an angry letter to Avvo.

The 10 Most Amazing Threatening Letters Lawyers Sent to Avvo was originally published on Lawyerist.com.