1. Sign up and claim your profile
The first step toward increasing your Avvo rating is to sign up and claim your profile. You can start this process by searching for your name here: Avvo.com/for-lawyers/avvo-profile
Next, click on your name and then click “Claim my profile”.
You will then be directed to the Claim page where you can claim ownership of your profile automatically using either LinkedIn, Email, Facebook, or Phone Number.
2. Fill out your profile to 95%
Although it may take some time, grab a cup of coffee and fill out your profile to 95%. This means adding information for all of the following items:
You won’t see the progress bar get to 100%
To get the last 5% you need to add an Avvo Rating Badge to your website. I don’t recommend doing this, and it will not impact your ability to get to a 10.0 rating.
Fill out your practice areas properly
The practice areas that you use will determine what categories your profile shows up in.
Let’s say that you’re a personal injury lawyer: If you indicate that 100% of your work is car accident related, then you will only show up for car accident searches.
I suggest that you diversify this ratio by getting granular. If you’re a personal injury attorney you’ll want to show up in search results for other more specific practice areas like wrongful death, car accidents, truck accidents, etc. Take the time to determine how your case experience breaks down, and reflect that breakdown accurately:
If you are licensed in another state, or were, add it to your profile
You can increase your Avvo Rating by a full point if you add additional state bar licenses. Even if it was in the past you should add it (assuming you were not disciplined by the state bar). If you were disciplined by another state bar, adding it would dramatically decrease your score.
3. List your work experience
Listing your professional work experience is not only essential to completing your profile, but it also will help onlookers understand your areas of specialty.
Pro Tip: Add start and end dates. Be sure to add start and end dates wherever Avvo requests them. This will actually add points to your Avvo rating.
4. List any awards you’ve won
This is another area where Avvo’s rating system falls down, in the opinion of many. Without having some sort of award on your profile, you likely won’t reach a perfect Avvo Rating.
However, the credibility of the awards that impact Avvo ratings the most (Super Lawyers, Million Dollar Advocates, etc.) is something that many of our clients question.
Regardless of credibility, legal awards have a significant positive impact on your Avvo Rating, so add ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
Pro Tip: Add award dates. Avvo awards point value to each award based on a variety of factors, including date. More recent awards will get you more points than older awards. If you don’t add a date to each award, Avvo will assume the oldest possible date, which results in the minimum amount of points you can receive for that entry.
5. Add Cases to your Portfolio
Adding the details of your most impressive case work is really the best thing you can do to help people understand your qualifications. It is also necessary to continue to increase your Avvo Rating.
6. List the legal and business organizations with whom you are associated
List any business or legal associations you can claim. Common examples we see are Million Dollar Advocates, State and County Bar Associations, and the Better Business Bureau.
Be sure to include the association name, position name, and the duration.
7. List any publications you’ve written
Have you written a book? Had a piece published in your local bar journal? Blogged on a popular website or provided an opinion piece on your blog or website? These ought to be listed under the Publications section of your profile.
8. List speaking engagements
Adding speaking engagements will moderately increase your Avvo Rating.
What I’ve seen is that you’ll get a +0.1 score increase for every speaking engagement, but you will only get it if you include a link to information about the event on the web.
If the organization for which you spoke does not list your speaking engagement on their website, you could create a press release or recap of the event your own website and link to it. However, in some cases this may not be adequate to get the rating increase. Avvo looks for recognized, authority organizations here so your own website may not qualify.
9. Get Peer Endorsements
Getting peer endorsements will raise your Avvo Rating.
Peer Endorsements are votes from your peers that act as a vote of confidence in Avvo’s algorithm. Avvo asks two questions about every peer endorsement:
The options for the first question are:
- Fellow lawyer in community
- Worked for lawyer
- Supervised lawyer
- Worked together on a matter
- Opposing counsel on a matter
- Co-Worker
- Friend
- Family Member
- Other
In my experience, Peer Endorsements indicating “Worked together on a matter” and “Opposing counsel on a matter” will increase the Avvo Rating 3x more than any of the other options.
This does cap-out over time. Usually when you get to the 15-20 endorsement range, additional endorsements do not add additional points to your Avvo Rating. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop going after more peer endorsements after 15, just know they won’t impact your score.
