Comparison
The best known lawyer rating site in the United States.
Overview
Avvo launched in 2006 and quickly became the loudest name in the attorney directory space. Its signature product is the Avvo Rating, a numerical score between 1.0 and 10.0 that the platform assigns to nearly every licensed attorney in the country, whether the attorney signed up or not. That single number turned Avvo into the reflexive first stop for millions of consumers searching for a lawyer, and it also made Avvo one of the most controversial brands in the profession. State bar ethics committees, attorneys, and consumer advocates have all questioned how the score is calculated and how meaningful it really is.
Under the surface, Avvo is a lead generation business. The core listing is free, but visibility, contact placement, and the Avvo Advertising and Avvo Advisor products are paid. In 2018, Internet Brands acquired Avvo and folded it into a portfolio that already included Martindale, Nolo, Lawyers.com, and Ngage Live Chat. Since then, product investment has slowed noticeably. The interface still looks and feels like a 2015 web property, and many attorneys report that lead quality has declined while pricing has stayed flat or increased.
Avvo still ranks strongly in Google for attorney names and for many practice area plus city searches, which is the main reason attorneys continue to claim their profiles. It is a defensive listing more than an offensive marketing channel for most firms.
Owned by Internet Brands, the same parent company as Martindale, Nolo, and Lawyers.com.
New to Lexoor? Read the Lexoor story, search 743,000+ attorneys, or claim your own profile in under two minutes.
Feature comparison
Honest breakdown
Enormous brand recognition
Avvo is the name most consumers recognize when they think about looking up a lawyer online. That awareness drives significant organic search traffic.
Every licensed attorney is already listed
Avvo ingests bar association data nationwide, so nearly every practicing attorney has a profile whether they created one or not.
Client reviews at scale
Avvo has collected millions of client reviews over nearly two decades, giving many profiles a long review history.
Question and Answer section
The public Q and A section still generates traffic and can help attorneys demonstrate expertise, although activity has declined in recent years.
The Avvo Rating is opaque and criticized
The 1 to 10 score is generated by a proprietary algorithm that the company does not fully disclose. Attorneys with decades of clean practice sometimes receive middling scores, while newly admitted attorneys can score very high after paying attention to profile completeness.
Aging product experience
The interface, search filters, and profile layout have received little meaningful improvement in years. Mobile experience is functional but dated.
Aggressive upsells
Free profiles are heavily nudged toward paid placement, and unpaid attorneys often see competitor ads shown directly on their own profile page.
Ethics concerns
The Avvo Legal Services pay per service model was discontinued after multiple state bars raised ethical objections. The broader lead sharing model still draws scrutiny.
Slow support and dispute resolution
Attorneys frequently report long delays when trying to correct profile inaccuracies or dispute reviews.
Pricing
Basic listings are free. Avvo Pro starts at roughly forty dollars per month and unlocks contact placement, review response tools, and analytics. Avvo Advertising is sold as a monthly package that varies by practice area and geography and can range from a few hundred dollars per month to several thousand for competitive markets like personal injury in major metros.
Lexoor keeps pricing transparent. The free tier includes a full profile, lead inbox, analytics, and messaging. Paid promotion is offered as a simple monthly plan with no annual contracts and no per lead surcharges.
The recommendation
Choose Lexoor
Choose Lexoor if you want a modern platform where a complete profile, lead inbox, and analytics come standard, where no competitor ads run on your own page, and where the rating system rests on verifiable credentials and real client reviews rather than a proprietary score no one can audit.
Choose Avvo
Choose Avvo if brand familiarity with consumers is your single most important factor and you are comfortable paying for Pro or Advertising to unlock the features that make the profile actually useful.
Verdict
Avvo built the category and still owns the consumer mind share, but the product itself has been coasting for years. Lexoor was built to answer the question every attorney eventually asks about Avvo: why am I paying to remove ads for my competitors from my own profile.
Frequently asked
For most attorneys, yes. Lexoor covers the same nationwide directory function, adds a modern dashboard and lead inbox at no cost, and removes the competitor ads that appear on unpaid Avvo profiles.
No. Lexoor shows verified bar credentials, practice history, and authentic client reviews without an opaque numerical score.
Yes. Most attorneys keep their Avvo profile claimed for defensive reasons and use Lexoor as their primary marketing platform.
Lexoor connects clients directly to the attorney they chose, with no round robin sharing across competing firms. Avvo Advertising routes leads through a shared pool in many practice areas.
Lexoor. The free tier includes tools that Avvo charges for, which matters most to solo practices watching every marketing dollar.
Still deciding? Compare Lexoor vs FindLaw, Lexoor vs Justia, or Lexoor vs Martindale-Hubbell.
743,000+ attorneys are already listed across all 50 states. Claim your profile in under two minutes.
Keep comparing
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FindLaw
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Martindale-Hubbell
A brand with 150 years of history and a peer review rating that still carries weight with older clients and referral sources.
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