Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Avvo's attorney rating system draws fire. Setting up an online rating system that attempts to rank the best and worst attorneys, is kind of like dipping your toes in shark-infested waters. Sooner or later, you are bound to get bitten. That's the situation facing Avvo, the heavily funded Seattle startup that just four days ago unveiled a controversial Internet site that ranks lawyers on a scale of one ("extreme caution") to 10 ("superb"). John Henry Browne, a Seattle criminal defense attorney who in my story on Avvo Tuesday called the service a "joke," is now threatening to sue the company over what he calls a "ridiculously low rating" for him and other attorneys.

My question is whether his lawsuit will call more attention to his not-so-hot rating than if he'd just left it alone. The ratings, according to the posting, are suspect in any case.