Our Top Lawyers

No funny business: 62 fine attorneys in 14 practice specialties — and you have a say!

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We love Lawyer jokes, but when faced with a legal situation, we turn to a trusted source for quality attorney referrals. As a service to our readers, Palm Springs Life has partnered with Seattle-based Avvo (www.avvo.com), a firm dedicated to helping people make the best decisions for their important professional needs.

Finding the right lawyer often comes at a critical time in life, and resources offering answers to even basic questions can sometimes be overwhelming and/or difficult to understand.

Avvo, founded in 2006 by Mark Britton, a top executive at Expedia.com, empowers consumers by rating lawyers and having these real professionals answer those basic questions — all for free. Avvo profiles contain helpful information, including experience, background, any disciplinary history, and reviews from clients. The profiles also break down how much of an attorney’s practice is dedicated to particular practice areas and offer clients space to share their experiences. The system is as rich as we all make it.

Avvo — short for avvocato, the Italian word for lawyer — is guided by two basic principles and provides:
Unmatched transparency, shining the same light on all licensed professionals, enabling people who may know little about law to make smart, informed decisions.
More information and better guidance.

Access to easy-to-understand information, coupled with guidance on how to use that information, is the best way to help people choose the right licensed professional. Information is empowering. The more people know, the more comfortable and confident they’ll feel seeking help.

The Avvo Rating — the number appearing adjacent to each attorney’s listing — is calculated using a mathematical model that considers elements such as years of experience, board certification, education, professional conduct, and industry recognition and achievement, all factors relevant to assessing qualifications. The Avvo Rating was developed with input from hundreds of practicing professionals, consumers, and top-notch industry consultants and advisers.

For some attorneys, the only information Avvo could collect was publicly available information from state licensing associations or other organizations that license professionals.

— The Editors