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Attorney Sues Website Over His Online Rating
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that a local attorney is suing legal startup Avvo over a rating that was algorithmically assigned. The story covers the controversy of computers grading humans. 'Browne, who has participated in a number of high-profile cases in the state, including the defense of arsonist Martin Pang, said in an interview that Avvo is being irresponsible with the ratings and called them a fraud. And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low. Three other attorneys interviewed by the P-I also expressed doubts about the rating system, while News.com reported that the site "seemed to be riddled with bizarre errors."' Such practices are not new: the New York Times earlier this year reported on Google using algorithms to determine applicant suitability. But what happens when you don't like the result? Can a computer program be considered defamatory?"
There's nothing wrong with computer rankings, but they inputs are very, very important. We shouldn't pretend that they are different somehow from human rankings, since humans still carefully select the inputs.
An example that most here can relate to is the US News and World Report college rankings. It's a whole other topic in itself, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of discussion about their inputs and how it has influenced the way colleges operate. Most colleges try to get many small donations instead of a few big ones, because the rankings weigh number of donors more heavily than total amount donated. They encourage many, many applications from just about anyone because they get ranked based on the number of applications that they reject.
Once people learn what the inputs are, they just game the system.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I can think of a few reasons why supreme court judges would be legitimately rated low. Support for blatant ex post facto laws; commerce clause inversion; allowing states to take people's property; allowing wiretapping before a warrant is issued (FISA); Allowing congress to blackmail the states by withholding highway (and other) funds; allowing the right to bear arms to be infringed upon; allowing government support of Christianity; outright ignoring the 10th amendment (see earlier reference to blackmail); cowardly and un-statesmanlike refusal to hear critical cases of government malfeasance (like Robert Newdow's); allowing the state to infringe upon the liberties of the citizens (drug war, censorship, marriage, sexuality, unreasonable copyright and patent terms and mechanisms; allowing the feds to step beyond the enumerated powers without requiring a constitutional convention; restricting freedom of speech (free speech zones, censorship, funeral zones, etc.)... that's all just off the top of my head.
Yeah, I could definitely see low supreme court ratings.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As an aside, I really doubt that skin colour is going to be expressible as a simple enumeration or integer, so you won't be able to switch on it...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Mod parent up, that's a great point. If you can't defame a person using a Computer Program output based on an algorithm then people can just design algorithms to defame people and have no repercussions.
Everyone in RL judges people based on algorithms in their heads, "He didn't do as well as person Y, and charges more than Z". Typical defamation cases are thrown against people who have messed up algorithms, "He wears white all the time...I hate white" or poor input, "I've only seen him lose". Why shouldn't a computer programmer be held to the same standards when they make judgments about people?
I'd say that if you're willing to reveal your algorithm you shouldn't be able to be sued, as a poor algorithm will garner more laughter than defamation. If you're not willing to reveal it, however, then you should be treated the same way as if you were saying what the program is as it's probably using your algorithm and input.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Hasn't this been done to death with people suing over FICO scores?
It happens because human laws have a lot of flexibility that computers don't have. When human logic turns against them, people respond with "don't be a fool, you know what I mean". You can't do that with computers.
It's a simple fact that this guy is not as good as some other lawyers, according to a given set of objective factors. If they change the algorithm to improve his rating, then what about other lawyers that are downgraded by the new algorithm? Computer algorithms aren't flexible, they cannot be bent so that everyone comes out looking good.
So maybe this John Henry Browne deserves this rating? Perhaps he has a penchant for spectacularly losing cases for his clients thereby destroying the lives of hundreds of families. Or maybe not. According to my rating system, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would get a rotten rating as well, but that's all this is, an opinion. Even though there are undoubtedly fancy-schmancy algorithms behind avvo.com's ratings, these functions and formulae are no more concrete than a set of rules and opinions developed by very human creators. Don't like what a site is saying about you? Become a better lawyer... or better yet, find out how the scoring mechanism works and play it - this has worked wonders for the likes of Harvard and Princeton (ie US News and World Report). Either way, I find Mr. Browne's threat of a lawsuit in extremely poor taste and conduct - particularly for a practitioner of law. Maybe avvo.com has a point.
It sounds like the rating algorithm isn't very good, but I don't see how this guy can win a suit for defamation. In US law, only false claims of FACT are actionable. If the web site stated that a lawyer had received a reprimand from the bar association when he had not, that would be defamatory. If it said he had cheated a client or bribed a juror and he had not, that would be defamatory. But saying: "This guy is a jackass" or "This guy is a poor lawyer" is not actionable because these are opinions.
I'm not sure what can be made of the use of a poor algorithm. If they disclose the algorithm and say "Here is what we get when we plug in the data we have", so long as the data is accurate and they apply the algorithm correctly, they aren't making any false claims of fact. Ethically, it seems like there should be a penalty if they persist in using an algorithm that demonstrably does not produce output that is reasonably related to what people generally take to be valid measures of lawyer quality and if they deceive people into thinking that it is valid, but I'm not sure how this can be addressed legally. I think you'd have to argue that there is an objective definition of lawyer quality of which the algorithm gives a false view. I don't know if defamation has ever been proven on such a basis.
If you think the algorithm is defamatory, pick it apart and show how it isn't accurate.
If the algorithm has a rule that says "if lastname=Browne then rating=rating-100" that's obviously a bogus algorithm.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This guy is a public figure. In order to successfully claim libel, he must prove malice. An algorithm can't have malice against him in particular. This guy is out of his depth. To paraphrase an old saying in the legal profession, a lawyer who represents himself is an idiot.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"This lawyer has been sanctioned by a state disciplinary authority." That says all that needs to be said: the rating was based on demonstable fact!
I recall a story about a medical expert system, related to me by the famous AI researcher Donald Michie (from the UK), that was designed to determine whether a patient with particular heart problems needed heart surgery or not. The expert system was proved to do a better job at predicting when heart surgery would increase the quality of the outcome (life) for the patient than specialists doctors (cardiologists?).
IIRC, the hospital chose not to use the system for fear of litigation when the expert systems diagnosis was wrong (which it no doubt would be in a lot of cases, just like the human's would be). Personally, I would - if I was the litigious type - probably sue if the hospital didn't use the method proven to be the most effective (in this case the expert system).
Of course, one could suggest a hybrid system where the specialist considers the output of the expert system, but I am not so sure this really solves the problem.
Cheers,
Ashley.
--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
We've had to face a similar problem as Avvo with SiteTruth, which rates web sites. The answer seems to have two parts - integrity and transparency. This means looking at information that comes from reliable sources other than the thing being rated, and showing the information from which the ranking is derived.
Avvo is trying to do this. Avvo's information comes partly from external sources, like legal directories and records of disciplinary actions. That's less game-able than traditional web search. And Avvo shows that information, so they have transparency.
Google is slowly coming around to this point of view. Originally, Google rankings were opaque, but now they've put in various "Webmaster Console" features to show some of the information that drives their algorithm.
Google faces the problem that some of their metrics for detecting junk web sites are heuristic, and rely on "security through obscurity". They don't want to say exactly how obscure text can be before it's considered "hidden text", or exactly what they consider a "link farm", or they'll be spammed right up to the allowed limit. So they can't have full transparency. They're inherently limited by the approach of primarily looking at the web site itself, which the site operator can change freely, to rate the site.
Google does look at some external non-Web information, but mostly things like how long a domain has been registered.
Avvo has user ratings of lawyers, which probably aren't that useful. User ratings are most valuable when the universe of raters is much larger than the number of things being rated. So it's good for major movies, where there are tens of new movies and millions of fans, marginal for hotels, and weak for businesses few people have heard of. There aren't enough clients per lawyer to get a statistically valid result, and it's too easy to game when the number of raters is small.
And if my algorithm says that if your first and last name start with P you must be a PedoPhile can I call you one and hide behind math?
I think not.
Sure you can. And every person named Peter can call you a fake, and every person who sees your method can tell the world that you're a fake.
The problem here isn't the math, or the low ratings. The problem is idiots like you who don't understand that an industry rating depends on the faith of the people and the respect of the industry.
If the site gets no faith or respect, the site will fail.
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You had to get a lawyer because our legal system is designed around them. If you lived in a democracy with simple laws lawyers would not be needed.
Our landlord had just purchased the place, and was still making repairs. One thing we stated very clearly was that we NEEDED the garage, because we were 7 people, and I have a home-based business. He said that the previous owner had a lot of garbage in the garage, and it would be cleaned out and we'd be provided access, then he would finish the garage. He also stated that he had already ordered the replacement parts for the broken A/C, and the panes for the broken windows. He said he would have a team come by and throw out the broken glass and things in the back yard.
We moved into the place May 28th, with prorated rent, and everyone signed the lease. The first week, the roof leaked into the downstairs kitchen. I immediately left a voicemail for my landlord. Then the upstairs shower leaked into the kitchen. The landlord said he would fix it. The front door handle was an old-style latch that was improperly mounted, and it would twist when you pressed it. We notified the landlord that it was going to break, and he said he was trying to find a vintage handle, but it was very hard to, because the door was old. Because of the moisture behind the bathroom wall (from the roof leak), the paint began to peel. We notified the landlord.
Tony finally cleaned up the garbage in the back yard.
I continued to tell him how important the garage was to us, because I also play music, and couldn't play in the house. I told him I was miserable being unable to play music, and I was losing money because my home office was in the dining room, stacked to the ceiling with stuff. My brother had his drumkit and other stuff stored in his room, as did I. The living room was stacked chest-high with stuff.
The front door handle broke in August, and we had to climb in through the window for a week until finally a handyman came out to replace it with a cheapo door handle. In that time, I had a laptop stolen. We don't live IN the ghetto, but about 2 blocks away from it. Coincidence? Sure, why not.
Mid-August, after he became increasingly accusatory and aggressive, I finally sent him a registered letter demanding $300/mo back for the garage space every month (correlating to the percentage of the total house floorspace we were being deprived of). Then he started working on the garage. In this time period, I was under a lot of stress, and began having night terrors. I was sleeping in the sun room, and I had put a latch on the door, because it didn't close properly. One night, I had a terror and thought the roof was caving in on me, so I tried to leave my room quickly, splitting the door from corner to corner.
He finally fixed the garage, fixed two of the broken windows. We notified the landlord after he finally cleaned out his garbage in the garage, and I offered to handle it for him. He looked at the stain on the ceiling in the kitchen for the third time and said, "Oh, I've never seen that before." He looked at the collapsing bathroom wall, and said, "Oh, I've never seen that before."
In November, we began being more threatening to him about the roof leak, and about the shower. We were concerned that the lease said that we were responsible for not notifying the landlord of damage, and he kept claiming he hadn't received notification. By this time, I had spent over 100 hours studying landlord-tenant law, writing letters, putting in screens, etc.
Mid-December, I sent him a letter of material non-compliance, which pursuant FL statutes states we aren't required to pay if he doesn't meet basic housing standards, doesn't follow certain laws about housing standards, or breaks the lease. He was doing all three. He sent us a letter stating basically that it was cute of us to send him a form letter, and assuring us that his lawyer did a much better job. Then he sent us a letter of eviction, retaliatory action that was again
Please stop stalking me, bro.