Given these difficulties with
measuring lawyer quality through subjective client perceptions or objective outcome data, it is worthwhile to consider increasing transparency through disclosure of objective input data.
These are important things to know but they are far from providing a complete picture
of lawyer quality.
At the very least, law societies ought to engage in a broader study of all available regulatory options to provide the public with more meaningful information
about lawyer quality.
My overarching concern is that, in attempting to
score lawyer quality, Avvo seeks to measure the immeasurable.
, a Toronto coach, identifies empathy and a desire to share knowledge as
positive lawyer qualities, but she has seen those traits sometimes carried to excess.
Nowhere is that more true than when we talk about
measuring lawyer quality, which invariably yields: «Well, of course you can't measure what I do.»
Providing more information to clients
about lawyer quality is necessary, but not all information is equally useful.
The emergence of private solutions to
the lawyer quality information gap suggests that the public finds the regulatory status quo unsatisfying.
We have few reliable proxies for, let alone measures of,
lawyer quality — which currently resides somewhere between a credence good and «I know it when I see it.»