Key facts
- Avvo gives most licensed US attorneys a profile automatically, built from public bar and court records, whether or not the attorney signed up.
- The Avvo Rating is calculated by Avvo's own formula from experience, disciplinary history, and peer endorsements. It is not for sale and cannot be bought with ad spend.
- Sponsored placement is a paid add-on that moves one attorney's profile to the top of search results for a chosen practice area and location; Avvo's own pages do not publish a flat rate for it, and pricing is set through a sales conversation.
- Avvo's parent company, Internet Brands, requires 30 days of informal negotiation with its legal department before either side can start arbitration, and arbitration itself runs through JAMS.
- Content a lawyer posts to a profile, including Q&A answers, is licensed to Avvo under broad, non-exclusive terms; the underlying rating and review data belong to Avvo, not the attorney.
What Avvo actually is
Avvo is a lawyer directory and legal question and answer site for the United States, now operated under Internet Brands' Martindale-Avvo network. A person can search by practice area and city, read attorney profiles, and post a legal question for any lawyer to answer publicly.
Most licensed US attorneys already have a profile, because Avvo builds a base profile from public bar records without waiting for the lawyer to claim it. Claiming your own profile lets you add a photo, a bio, and case types, but the listing exists either way.
Every claimed profile also carries an Avvo Rating out of 10. The rating is generated from public information such as years in practice, disciplinary record, and endorsements from other lawyers. It sits on the profile next to any paid placement, so a visitor sees the free rating and the paid position in the same view.
Who else sees the same client
A person who lands on Avvo is looking at a results page built for one practice area and one city, and every attorney who serves that combination shows up on it, whether they paid or not. Sponsored placement changes where a profile sits on that page. It does not remove the other lawyers from the page.
Avvo's own marketing states that sponsored profiles show up higher in Find a Lawyer results, keep a visible phone number and contact button, and can suppress rival ads from appearing on that one attorney's own profile page. None of that stops a different firm's sponsored profile from sitting above or below it on the results page for the same search.
The Q&A side works the opposite way on purpose: any attorney can answer any public question, so a single question from one visitor commonly draws replies from several lawyers competing for the same reader's attention.
How the paid product is priced and billed
A basic Avvo profile costs nothing. Sponsored placement is the paid layer, and Avvo's own pages route an interested attorney to a sales conversation rather than posting a rate card, so the price is not published anywhere on avvo.com.
Third-party reporting on the product describes no long-term contract and no setup fee, but that detail comes from marketing copy and reviews rather than a fixed schedule Avvo itself publishes, so treat it as a starting point for a sales call, not a locked term.
Because pricing is quoted per practice area and per market, two attorneys in different cities, or in the same city with different caseloads, can be quoted very different monthly numbers for what looks like the same product.
What happens to the listing once the invoice stops
Avvo's own support pages do not carry a published refund schedule for sponsored placement, so a specific refund policy for that product is not published where a lawyer can read it before buying.
For disputes generally, Internet Brands' terms require an attorney to contact its legal department and negotiate informally for at least 30 days before either side can file for arbitration. Disputes that reach that stage go to binding arbitration administered by JAMS rather than a courtroom, and that structure covers use of Avvo's sites broadly, not sponsored placement specifically.
Stop paying for sponsored placement and the mechanism is simple: the paid boost ends and the profile returns to unpaid placement in the same results page. The base profile, the Q&A history, and the Avvo Rating stay online either way, since none of those depend on ad spend.
The page was never yours to begin with
A lawyer does not own the profile page itself. Avvo built the base listing from public records, and Avvo's terms grant it a broad, non-exclusive license over anything an attorney adds, including bio text and Q&A answers, so that content can keep living on Avvo's platform even if the lawyer stops engaging with it.
The rating, the review layout, and the site's own design belong to Avvo outright. What a firm keeps, no matter what it spends on sponsored placement, is its own name, its own license to practice, and any client relationship it converts off the platform, such as a signed retainer or a saved phone number.
That is the core trade a directory makes with a paid channel: the placement is rented for as long as the invoice is current, and the underlying page belongs to the platform.
Where a directory listing fits, and where it stops being enough
Avvo fits a lawyer who wants visibility inside a screen full of competing profiles without first building a website, and who is comfortable with a rating and a public Q&A history shaping how new clients meet the firm.
It also suits a solo or small US firm testing a new practice area or a new city before committing real budget to a website and search campaign of its own, since a claimed profile is free and sponsored placement can be started or stopped through a sales conversation rather than a build project.
A firm chasing exclusivity, control over its own page, or a long-term asset it keeps regardless of ad spend is solving a different problem than a directory listing solves, and that gap is where an owned website and search presence usually take over.
Related questions
Most licensed US attorneys do, because Avvo builds a base profile from public bar and court records without the lawyer requesting one. Claiming the profile lets a lawyer add details, but the listing and the Avvo Rating exist either way.
No. Avvo states the rating comes from an algorithm using public data such as experience, disciplinary history, and peer endorsements. Sponsored placement changes where a profile sits in search results, not the rating itself.
No. Multiple attorneys can buy sponsored placement for the same practice area and city, and they appear together on the same results page. Paying moves a profile up; it does not remove other paid or unpaid profiles from view.
The paid boost stops and the profile drops back to unpaid placement in the same search results. The base profile, prior Q&A answers, and the Avvo Rating stay published, since Avvo builds and keeps those independent of ad spend.
Internet Brands' terms require 30 days of informal negotiation with its legal department first. If that does not resolve the issue, the dispute goes to binding arbitration administered by JAMS rather than a lawsuit, for use of the site generally.
Sources
- Avvo for Lawyers (advertising overview) (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Avvo Support Center (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Internet Brands Terms of Use (arbitration terms) (accessed 2026-09-23)
SearchPod sells an alternative (an owned website, ads and search); facts come from the provider's own pages on the dates shown.
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