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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?"
If I use a hand-held calculator to get a result, and then publish it and that publication defames someone, I can't blame it on the calculator.
In this case, a computer is just another tool used to calculate something - perhaps a tool that many people don't understand as well as they should - but a tool nonetheless.
You use it, you take responsibility for the results. You don't understand how it works? Hire a consultant. The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone.
( NB: The above paragraphs presume that there is indeed libel, a fact not yet proven.)
... if John Henry Browne does sue Avvo's computer ranking program it will make him a bad lawyer and thus the ranking will have been a self fulfilling prophecy.
Parent's Sig: When members of a profession start referring to non-members as 'laymen', it is time to start shooting them.
Shooting whom? The members of the profession or the laymen? If you're going to call for someone's head, you should at least be a little more specific about whose head you want served to you on a silver platter.
imagine what would happen to consumers who were negatively affected by soundscan's demonstration of the buying patterns of human beings and its effect on the decline of popular culture in music? we could recoup millions in damage to lost souls.
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.
Is it just me, or does it seem like there are a lot of legal professionals who normally have no problem applying existing law to novel situations but who turn into drooling idiots as soon as a computer program or computer network becomes involved?
Uh....
... } ?
switch (person.getSkinColor()) {
Well, if they made it clear to viewers how their ratings are calculated, they should not be responsible for harm done. In that case they would just be stating facts (e.g., rating = this lawyer wins X% of his cases - this lawyer charges %Y percent over the industry average for their type of cases...) But if they don't tell people where the ratings come from, then I wonder: how is writing a shitty algorithm that says defamatory stuff about people any better than just saying defamatory stuff about people. People are responsible for the computer programs that they knowingly use.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
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.
1) Attorney sues website that assigned him a low rating. ...
2) Attorney loses, and his rating goes even lower.
3)
4) Profit!
Ok, 3 and 4 aren't really necessary.
^[:q!
Correction: "Robert Newdow" should be "Michael Newdow." Told you it was off the top of my head. :) My apologies for the error.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Shooting whom? The members of the profession or the laymen? If you're going to call for someone's head, you should at least be a little more specific about whose head you want served to you on a silver platter.
Those who call lawyers useless aren't being very open minded. Lawyers may be a melamine-free source of protein, but I think my cat would prefer something a bit less bony than the head.
I wonder if the computer program has a way to rate them on flavor?
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'!"
....Computer says nooo .
May the Maths Be with you!
Fixed:
try {
switch (person.getSkinColor()) {
}
catch( CaucasoidFeaturesException ) {
switch (person.getReligion()) {
switch (person.getCountryOfOrigin()) {
}
finally { person.warilyAccept() }
Hasn't this been done to death with people suing over FICO scores?
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.
If this comment doesn't get modded +5 insightful, I'm going to sue Slashdot.
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.
Let me get this right -- these AVVO folks decided it would be a good idea to base their business model on saying things about attorneys that might not be complimentary?
This is quite possibly the first time anyone thought they could make money by being sued constantly. Anyone who thought that the dot-com bubble used up all of the reservoirs of stupidity may now rest assured that fresh reserves have been discovered.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Yeah, because nobody is ever falsely accused of rape and therefore anybody accused but not convicted is a rapist walking the streets...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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
Seriously, can an algorithm be biased? YES! Very much so. Imagine if we had an algorithm that rated people on a 100 point scale. If your skin color is white you get 100 points to start with, black people get 0 points. That's biased.
Does that mean the company behind the algorithm is biased? Yeah again. In this case (not necessarily Avvo's case) this algorithm is blatantly biased, trying to rate people on their skin color.
Does this mean it's illegal? Not unless the law has changed. If he wants to litigate then he needs to prove the algorithm is biased (and a few anomalies doesn't mean it's biased, it means it has a flaw) Avvo has to be biased in such a way they are making a profit over the difference. Avvo has to be deliberating trying to damage someone's career for it to even be illegal.
If the algorithm is running correctly and there's no X factor (meaningless stastical values, such as the color of the skin) then there's no crime here. They might not have a perfect algorithm but they arn't claiming it.
If the lawyer in question wanted to fix this correctly, he should bring this to the attention of the site, point out numerous cases of people being graded too harshly and then publicize the data to the public if need be. From the sound of it, there's little to no proof except some lawyers feeling they are being treated unfairly. From the sound of it, that's sour grapes, there's no defamation.
Just because an algorithm is poorly designed it doesn't mean it's crap, errors happen even with great algorithm's first iterations. There's still a burden of proof on the lawyer and I'm not hearing any real proof yet.
So, if this attorney wins his lawsuit - does that mean I can sue FICO for my a credit rating?
It says something about American politics that the first thing that came to mind involved Bill Clinton and an intern.
In the begining there was nothing. And then God said, "Let there be light!" And there was still nothing, but at least yo
You're right about the ninth amendment, I meant the tenth.
... to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
Okay, this is the amendment that reads "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."
So, if the power to spend federal monies was not delegated to the United States, then you'd have a point. Let's see what Article I has to say:
"The Congress shall have power
"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.
So it looks as though Congress has the power to spend federal money. They have to do so pursuant to the laws that they enact, and they have to account for it, and it has to basically be for national purposes. But they can spend it. That means it was delegated to the United States, and thus does not fall under the ambit of rights reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment.
You want to try again?
About fair market value, the point is that when the government condemns a house, it is no longer worth much.
That's not how the value is estimated. They look at what the value would be if the owner was going to sell it at the time. Honestly, this is how appraisal of anything works. The only way you know what your car is worth without actually selling it -- which is an important questions for insuring it, for instance -- is by comparing it with other cars that are being sold. This is not rocket science.
Plus costs of moving, and generally being uprooted.
I'd want to check, but I don't see why this would be relevant. Those costs are not part of the costs of the actual property. If you live on Monster Island (don't worry, it's just a name), and it would cost you $10,000 to move to someplace safe, like Tokyo, and your house is only worth $5,000, then you're screwed. You can't afford to move. But it doesn't mean that your house is suddenly worth $15,000. Indeed, the problem is that it's not!
Also it's worth pointing out that a great number of takings are basically just taking your road frontage so that a road can be widened. You lose some of the yard, if it's a house, or parking lot, if it's a business, or nothing in particular if it's farmland, or a vacant lot or something, but they don't often take the whole parcel. Still, not every square foot is worth the same as the rest; if your lot is half swamp and half gold mine, and you only lose half, which half becomes pretty important in terms of valuation. Not everything is urban renewal projects or Central Arteries.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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.
actually they could just make the program run N times with N being sufficiently large, such as 5000 times, and show that statistically the program created a bias against women.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Yep, that'd be close, all right. Perhaps I meant injustices.
That would be the feds marching into California and swooping down on medical marijuana users based on a commerce clause argument that 100% intrastate commerce "could be" or "could have been" interstate commerce, and so the feds claim to have jurisdiction to screw with California law, legislators, and citizens. Which they do not. The ruling and the reasoning is sophist nonsense. The constitution says in sec 8, para 1 through para 3, that The Congress shall have Power To... regulate Commerce... among the several States. That's it. No more than that. It's an enumerated power, and there is no authority implied or specified that allows mucking about with commerce internal to a state. Furthermore, the 10th amendment makes the limit explicit: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. So there you have it. They have the authority to regulate intrastate commerce, but not interstate commerce. The court is out of line, and so are the feds.
That observation in no way precludes the fact that there are other ways to build roads, including ways that don't screw with people's properties at all. You can go under them; you can go around them; worst case, you can even go over them, though you certainly ought to pay for that privilege. It is wrong to steal, and it is no less wrong when the government does it.
The idea of "fair compensation" is intellectually bankrupt. If I own a piece of land, and I want to sell it, that is where it can be determined that it has a specific monetary value. The way that is done is that when you offer enough money to satisfy me, I'll let you have it.
If you don't, I won't. But if I own that property and for whatever reason, I do not want to sell it, then you cannot put a value on it that equates to "reasonable compensation." How do you compensate for my ancestors having raised generations there? How do you compensate for the view, or the fishing in my lake? How do you compensate for the fact that my brother died in that house, or that I was married there? Or that I built it by hand? Or that I lost my virginity on the living room couch?
The answer, of course, is that you can't, not that it is fair to use some number a bunch of people I didn't delegate my feelings and associations to invented based on their feelings. I'll tell you how it actually works: force and threat of force. Coercion. There isn't a reasonable step in the entire process.
Sure, I'll point the problem out. It is what we call blackmail, where one party is forced to do something it does not believe is legal, ethical or otherwise proper, by another party that wields a coercive force. I'll point something else out, too: the trust the people put in the government to build and maintain a general infrastructure doesn't include the presumption that said power will be used as a weapon, nor does it include the presumption that the feds won't build roads in some states, while building in others. The collection of taxes is (barely) tolerated with the idea that said collection is done for the common good, not in order to wield a coercive force on the states. The fact that the feds do wield such coercive forces is contrary to article 1, section 8 of the
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's an enumerated power, and there is no authority implied or specified that allows mucking about with commerce internal to a state.
Unless that commerce is interstate commerce despite remaining within the state. Honestly, your argument has lost since Gibbons, which was back in the 1820's.
That observation in no way precludes the fact that there are other ways to build roads, including ways that don't screw with people's properties at all. You can go under them; you can go around them; worst case, you can even go over them, though you certainly ought to pay for that privilege.
The funny part is that tunneling would 'screw with' the owner's property, as would building an elevated road. Due to aircraft, we no longer have 'cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos' but you weren't quite going that high up. Also an elevated road can be quite bothersome. The Central Artery in Boston was elevated, and had nightmarish effects that have cost a lot of money to ameliorate. Of course, they replaced it with a tunnel that brings with it the nightmare that it'll collapse on you....
Anyway, it's actually a real pain in the ass to build a road when you have to get the property owners in the path to voluntarily sell to you. Some will sell for a reasonable price, some will try to get an unreasonably high price, and some will absolutely refuse to sell. If we did it that way, nothing would ever get built, given the hundreds or thousands of different owners along the path for the road. Going around might work, but it would make the roads a mess and insanely inefficient. Imagine driving from New York City to Philadelphia via Missouri.
Governments derive their powers from their people, with the idea being that if people could live harmoniously together without government we would, but in practice we don't, so we put together governments to help with this. We invest a takings power with the government because it is recognized that the government works better for the populace as a whole when it can work for them without each individual having significant veto power over it. (This is also why votes are usually taken by majorities without unanimity being required.) We also recognize that we don't want the government running roughshod over individuals, so we put in some protections for them too.
If I own a piece of land, and I want to sell it, that is where it can be determined that it has a specific monetary value.
Okay. Alice is a homeowner and Bob is an arsonist. Bob burns down Alice's house. Since Alice didn't want to sell, her house has no known value. Does this mean that Bob doesn't have to pay anything to Alice? Or alternatively, can we compute the value, by looking at the property in question, and comparing it with other, similar property, for which we have a history of value as determined by the market?
Honestly, how someone can be against the idea of appraisal is just astounding to me.
How do you compensate for [blah, blah, blah].
Generally a check or a wire transfer.
It is what we call blackmail, where one party is forced to do something it does not believe is legal, ethical or otherwise proper, by another party that wields a coercive force.
So you're saying that federal highway funding is a coercive force. In that case, what damage did the federal government do to the states prior to the creation of the interstate highway system? Was it a lot of damage, them not spending all that money?
Or are you an ass, who thinks that the states have gotten addicted to federal money and somehow have a right to it because they cannot properly balance the amount of government spending in their state with the amount of revenue they, themselves, can raise? If a state wants to ignore federal mandates tied to federal spending, all they need to do is either 1) go without that spending, or 2) get the money for that spending themselves. No one is stopping them. Well, other than enough of the voters to win elections, who
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
So the authority to offer compensation for taking land is there.
Yes. You've agreed that the government has the power to take land. Remember that word: take. Not 'buy,' or 'purchase,' but take. That is to take it from the previous owner, whether that person likes it or not.
Which brings us to this: No such thing as "just compensation" can be established by third parties if the property is not offered for sale.
Assuming that you're right -- you're not, btw -- then we'd have a little conundrum.
You are saying that the government can forcibly take property from people, but only if it is offered for sale, which means that it isn't being taken at all. That is a nonsensical position.
Alternatively, we could say that the government has the power to take land that is not offered for sale, but only if they pay a just price for it, again, regardless of the fact that it isn't for sale. This leaves you with the problem of computing that price, but this is presumably doable, and if there is an argument about it, it can be settled in court like so many other arguments.
The value of the property to the owner is as high as the owner says it is
Actually, that is wrong. The price is as high as the owner says it is. But if the price is too high, then the property will not sell. The actual value of the property is whatever you can, in fact, sell it for. This is often considerably lower than the initial asking price.
For example, I have a rock (it's one of those tiger-repelling rocks) for which I ask one hundred billion dollars. But if all I can ever actually sell it for is a mere one million dollars, then it's worth one million dollars and nothing more. You're on Slashdot, I'm sure you understand this in application. Think of how rapidly computers depreciate in value. The second you open the box it becomes used, and thus even if you sold it the next day, without anything having come out with better specs, you still cannot get as high a price for it as you paid. Cars do the same thing.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
See, you probably didn't even have to tell us you were a lawyer; your ability to consider an absolutely absurd and contradictory argument perfectly reasonable might have done it. "Unless that is a pillow despite being a knife" "Unless that color is blue, despite being red." "Unless you actually threatened me, despite having never threatened anyone in your life."
I lived under the elevated in Chicago for years. Worked fine for me and them. I lived over the subway in Manhattan at 168th street and Broadway. Not only worked, it was very convenient. I've also lived underneath a highway bridge on route 209 in Milford, Pennsylvania. Used to love the sound of the trucks. Your arguments are empty.
No, "we" don't. The constitution did (a group of people who never consulted either you, or me) and they limited it by requiring reasonable compensation. Again, your arguments are empty.
Ah. Here we go. Poor fellow loses argument, resorts to name calling. How tactically advanced. Work for you in court, does it?
I'm truly sorry, I had no intent to be cryptic or threatening. I just thought you would understand the remark. What I was saying is that your job - lawyer - is one of using bad law against the citizens. We've seen this before, Nuremberg comes to mind. You jumped on here, all full of vim and vigor, and attempted to defend positions that support the out of control government; posting supportively about areas in which the government is radically abusing the citizens. Eventually, as evidenced by another poster's remark about a "nice dirty civil war", enough citizens will tire of this to rise up against this abuse. I doubt it'll be as radical as the advice of Shakespeare's character Dick the Butcher in Henry VI ("First, let's kill all the lawyers.") It'll probably simply be show trials, just like those in Nuremberg, and probably with the same results. It wasn't a threat, it was just an observation brought from, and supported by, history. Abuse the people, eventually, they'll get tired of it, and things generally go downhill for the abusers after that. And really, try not to be so defensive. It isn't my fault you chose to support the government's abuses; and it isn't my fault that you signed your posts with the claim that you are a lawyer. These are your claims, your positions, and frankly, if there is anger here, your best solution is to go do something more positive and quit supporting the abusers.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.