Avvo Review 2019: Pros, Cons, and Best Alternatives

What Is Avvo?

Avvo offers the largest online directory of lawyers and lawyer reviews. Avvo also has an active legal forum, where you can post a legal question for free and get a response from lawyers within a few hours.

Avvo was founded by an attorney in 2006; today 97% of U.S. lawyers have an Avvo profile, and there are currently over 11.5 million questions and answers in their legal forum.

Beyond the lawyer directory and legal forum, there aren’t any other legal services available on Avvo. However, if you’re just looking for a starting point for legal help, Avvo can be an excellent resource.

In addition to business solutions, Avvo offers personal legal services, which may be of interest to freelancers and people with home-based businesses.

Avvo Pricing

The services available on Avvo are completely free to use for small businesses. You can post an anonymous question, and lawyers will post their replies. When we tried it, we got multiple replies within one hour. Although you shouldn’t consider these responses as legal advice, they often provide a good starting point for solving a legal problem.

Searching the lawyer directory for lawyers near you is also a free service. Avvo takes a cut from the lawyer if you end up finding them through Avvo and retain them.

Avvo Pros

Largest Directory of Lawyers

Avvo has the largest online directory of lawyers, with 97% of U.S. attorneys having an Avvo profile. One of the best uses of their site is to locate a local lawyer who is qualified to help you. Lawyers are listed in every zip code, sortable by area of specialty, client rating, number of years of experience, and whether they offer a free consultation or fixed-rate legal services in partnership with Avvo.

Free Legal Q&A Forum

Avvo has one of the largest, most active legal forums on the Internet. You can anonymously ask any legal question for free and get a response back within a few hours from multiple Avvo attorneys. These brief responses shouldn’t be treated as legal advice. However, this feature can be invaluable if you want to get some initial guidance or figure out where you need to go for more information.

Free Legal Forms

While many other sites charge for accessing legal forms, Avvo has a library of free forms. Similar to other sites, you can customize these forms with your business’s information. The downside is that there are fewer forms available on Avvo compared to other sites. Currently, there are only 19 business legal forms available for download.

Avvo Cons

Legal Services Not Available

The two main services available on Avvo are the lawyer directory (including attorney reviews) and the legal Q&A forum. Apart from that, there’s not much in the way of legal help that you obtain on this site. The fixed-rate legal services that Avvo used to provide were shut down in July 2018.

Questions About Lawyer Ratings

Avvo allows former clients to review their attorneys and also has its own “Avvo rating” for lawyers based on information in their profiles about work experience and qualifications. However, there has been some controversy around the validity of these reviews and ratings. Sometimes, for example, inexperienced lawyers receive higher Avvo ratings than more experienced ones, and better connected lawyers get higher ratings. Lawyers also don’t have much control over the information that gets listed on their profiles.

Avvo Customer Service

There’s no customer support phone number listed on Avvo.com. You can submit an email request on Avvo’s contact page or live chat with a support agent.

Summary of Avvo Online Reviews

Avvo gets mixed online reviews. Average Avvo reviews include:

• Better Business Bureau: 1.1 out of 5
• TrustPilot: 7.8 out of 10
• Sitejabber: 1.4 out of 5

Positive Reviews

People raved about the fact that they could post legal questions for free and get a response from multiple attorneys. They often ended up hiring an attorney who responded to their question.

Negative Reviews

Customers weren’t so happy with the process for leaving reviews of their attorneys. Some people claimed that they left honest negative reviews of lawyers they had worked with, and Avvo didn’t post them. Others claimed that the Avvo attorneys were unresponsive or didn’t complete the work as promised.

Avvo Competitors and Alternatives

Avvo is a great way to find a local lawyer who is qualified to help your business and to get some fixed-rate legal services. But, due to cost or the particular legal services you need, Avvo might not be the best option for you.

Here are some of the leading alternatives to Avvo:

Best Avvo Alternative for Finding a Local Lawyer: LegalMatch

A lot of people use Avvo to find a lawyer who is located near their business. Another platform that does the same thing is LegalMatch. On LegalMatch, you can submit a description of your legal problem, your business’s location, and your budget. Several attorneys will respond with a personal message about your case, their relevant experience, availability, and fee structure. You can then choose who is best suited for you and your business.

Unlike Avvo, LegalMatch doesn’t list lawyer profiles with reviews. However, that may not be a bad thing. Instead of having to weed through hundreds of profiles, LegalMatch decides which attorneys are best qualified to help you. The attorneys you’re matched to charge an hourly rate, which is independently negotiated between you and the attorney.

Best Avvo Alternative for Business Formation: IncFile

As we mentioned above, Avvo no longer offers fixed-rate legal services and business formation services. If that’s what you need, consider IncFile, which is the least expensive option for business formation services online. You can register your business entity for as little as $49 plus government filing fees.

IncFile even includes registered agent service at no additional charge during your business’ first year. A registered agent is a person or company who will accept official mail for your business. States require you to name a registered agent when you launch your business.

Best Avvo Alternative for Complex Legal Issues: UpCounsel

Many straightforward legal situations, such as creating a standard contract or filing formation paperwork for a business, can be handled quickly and don’t take much of a lawyer’s time. However, some legal problems are more complex, and there’s more at risk. For example, your business may be sued or you may face a highly specialized legal problem.

In those types of situations, try a service like UpCounsel. UpCounsel has a network of attorneys just like Avvo, but UpCounsel lawyers all have specialized business expertise. They can help businesses with things like employee immigration issues, IP matters, securities and finance, and import/export issues.

The price range on UpCounsel is in the range of $125-$350 per hour, but there are also some fixed fee arrangements.

Bottom Line on Avvo

If you have a pretty straightforward legal question, an excellent way to get it answered is to post it in Avvo’s free legal forum. For more in-depth questions and personalized legal help, use Avvo’s lawyer directory to find a lawyer near you. Whatever legal help you need, chances are that Avvo is a good starting point.  

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from Fundera Ledger https://www.fundera.com/blog/avvo-reviews/