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Thompson Hine LLP, a full-service business law firm with approximately 400 lawyers in 11 offices, was ranked number 1 in the category “Most innovative North American law firms: New working models” by The Financial Times and was 1 of 7 firms shortlisted for The American Lawyer’s inaugural Legal Services Innovation Award. The firm has been recognized by the National Law Journal as a Legal Technology Trailblazer and featured by Bloomberg for its innovative service delivery models, which drive accuracy and predictability. The firm’s commitment to innovation is embodied in Thompson Hine SmartPaTHTM – a smarter way to work – predictable, efficient and aligned with client goals. For more information, please visit ThompsonHine.com and ThompsonHine.com/SmartPaTH.

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<img style="max-width: 100%;height: auto;max-width: 100%;height: auto" loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2823" src="https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/754/2016/09/Robber-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300">Avvo has a First Amendment right to use a lawyer&rsquo;s publically-available information to generate advertising revenue for itself, the district&nbsp;court for the Northern District of Illinois <a href="http://filehost.thompsonhine.com/uploads/N.D._Ill._16-cv-02833_dckt_000036_000_filed_2016-09-12_f709.pdf">held</a>&nbsp;on September 12.
As we&rsquo;ve <a href="https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/2016/02/avvo-misappropriated-identity-for-commercial-use-says-iawyer-in-class-action/">explained before</a>, Avvo&rsquo;s business model works like this:
<ul>
<li>Avvo creates &ldquo;profile pages&rdquo; of individual lawyers using publically-available data;</li>
<li>then, Avvo collects a fee from lawyers to allow them&nbsp;to put&nbsp;ads for their practices on the profile pages of lawyers who don&rsquo;t pay the fee &mdash; and the lawyer profiles where&nbsp;the paid&nbsp;ads appear are those of head-to-head competitors;</li>
<li>then, if you are the target of this shake-down tactic, you&nbsp;can pay a fee to keep Avvo from putting ads for your competitors on your profile page.</li>
</ul>
Nice, right?
&ldquo;Non-commercial&rdquo; speech
And it&rsquo;s all protected by strict constitutional scrutiny as non-commercial free speech,&nbsp;said the district court, in dismissing the putative class action of an Illinois lawyer who said that Avvo&rsquo;s gambit violated state law by using his identity for commercial purposes without his permission.
In granting Avvo&rsquo;s motion to dismiss, the district court said that
[T]o hold otherwise would lead to the unintended result that any entity that publishes truthful newsworthy information about individuals such as teachers, directors and other professionals, such as a newspaper or yellow page directory, would risk civil liability simply because it generated revenue from advertisements placed by others in the same field.
The court viewed the Avvo site as a mere directory, and analogized it&nbsp;to Sports Illustrated magazine:&nbsp;&nbsp;just like the magazine has editorial content plus ads, the Avvo site has non-commercial speech consisting of the lawyer profiles &mdash;&nbsp;plus ads.&nbsp; The court reasoned that just as ads do not convert the entire magazine into&nbsp;commercial speech,&nbsp;Avvo&rsquo;s ads do not &ldquo;turn the entire attorney directory into commercial speech.&rdquo;
Money train
So the Avvo juggernaut rolls on.&nbsp; In August, <a href="http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2016/09/avvo-wins-first-amendment-fight-judge-compares-sports-illustrated.html">reports</a> Bob Ambrogi&rsquo;s Law Sites, &ldquo;a California lawyer dropped his putative class action against Avvo after Avvo brought a motion to strike the complaint under California&rsquo;s anti-SLAPP law.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;Avvo has also&nbsp;successfully torpedoed a 2007 federal class action complaint in Washington and a suit filed in Florida that was later&nbsp;transferred to Washington.
Ambrogi quotes Avvo&rsquo;s chief legal officer on the company&rsquo;s win:&nbsp; &ldquo;This is further validation that publishers like Avvo needn&rsquo;t obtain the consent of their subjects prior to exercising their First Amendment rights,&rdquo; said Josh King.
As I reported in February, Avvo has taken my Ohio bar information, found a&nbsp;picture of me (though it is a gorgeous one, I must say), and put up&nbsp;my profile, all without my permission.&nbsp; And&nbsp;there are still four ads&nbsp; for&nbsp;other lawyers on my profile page&ndash; so Avvo continues to use my data to make money for itself.&nbsp;&nbsp; No phone book or lawyer directory&nbsp;that I know of has Avvo&rsquo;s rapacious business model.&nbsp; But as long as courts continue to see Avvo as a mere phone book &mdash; or worse, a magazine &mdash;&nbsp;it will continue to expand its empire at the expense of lawyers who won&rsquo;t play along.

core/freeform

Ethics

Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility and the Business of Law

First Amendment protects Avvo advertising shakedown, district court holds