Have a legal question? At Avvo.com, there’s a lawyer waiting to answer it. For free. You don’t even have to have proper punctuation or leave an e-mail address.

The year-old site named after avvocato, or lawyer in Italian, targets consumers who want free legal advice or help choosing a lawyer. Yet, says founder Mark Britton, Avvo’s chief executive (pictured on right), it’s also for lawyers. I spoke to Britton recently to get the background on how this works for lawyers and us regular folk.

“Our mission is to get consumers more information and better guidance regarding legal situations and specifically in choosing a lawyer. We give them a free place to get information and feel empowered,” said Britton, a lawyer himself who previously oversaw the legal team at travel site Expedia.com.

Avvo lists thousands of lawyers in the Orange County area, and 1,158,491 listed on the site. With ratings and reviews, this is definitely better than hiring a lawyer straight out of the Yellow Pages, which most people still do, Britton said.

Asking a question is simple. Just type in the question, categorize it by legal subject, hit ‘continue’ and your question is live for all to see and waiting for anyone (hopefully a lawyer) to answer it. You will need to leave an e-mail address to be notified of a response or to answer a question yourself. Then check back in to see if anyone answered your question, which will look something like this:

Britton says that only 9 percent of the questions don’t get answered and that’s usually because they are incomprehensible.

“It’s this beautiful win-win situation. The consumer has a personal question. Lawyers see it as a great way to establish themselves, or advertising. With that incentive, lawyers get in there very quickly. We have two, three, four lawyers answering the same question,” he said.

A quick glance at questions posted within the past 24 hours  shows that most have not been answered. But go back a few days, and every other questions appears to have a response.

Hiring a lawyer

Avvo assigns Avvo Ratings based on all public information on the lawyer (state bar associations, court records, lawyer web sites). Using a mathematical formula, Avvo calculates the years in practice, disciplinary history, professional achievements and industry recognition into its rating.

There is also space for registered clients and peers to leave comments about a lawyer. If a lawyer feels a review or comment is unfair, Avvo will first ask the reviewer. If there’s no response, Avvo takes the comment off. If the person stands by his comment, Avvo leaves it up.

“They’re all opinions in their own way and imperfect in their own way. But bringing them all together, they are a mosaic, so you’ll have a pretty good opinion of the ratings,” Britton said.

The online service is expanding nationwide and currently covers 65 percent of the lawyers in the U.S. By the end of the year, the site will have cover 80 percent of the lawyers.

“The reality is that lawyers solve a lot of problems in our community every day and they get a bad rap. We’ve all heard the bad lawyer jokes. But in reality, you have a lot of lawyers out there solving problems.”

Images from Avvo.com

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