ABA partners with legal networking site CloudLaw
The American Bar Association has announced a partnership with online legal network CloudLaw.
“We know that more and more consumers look online to find a lawyer and, for that matter, so do other lawyers,” ABA President Hilarie Bass said in a press release. “Providing the public with an online directory developed by their state bar and providing lawyers a way to find their colleagues in different communities online meets both of these needs in an effective and ethical manner.”
CloudLaw is an online resource that works with state bar associations to create a directory of attorneys and provide self-help resources to consumers while meeting the unique referral and advertising rules of each jurisdiction, CloudLaw CEO Bob Aicher explains.
“By joining in this effort, the ABA and the state bars will use their combined expertise to create an online network of legal providers,” the ABA release said.
Already up and running in four states—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio—the company, a Delaware incorporated public benefit corporation based in Traverse City, Michigan, will expand to Georgia and South Carolina this year.
Aicher explains that the impetus for CloudLaw was finding his attorney profile—he is a retired Sidley Austin partner—on other legal websites, which he says created an inaccurate view of himself as an attorney.
“We’re tired of so much misinformation on the internet about lawyers,” he says. In one instance, he recalls a website claiming he was an administrative law attorney. His practice was, in fact, focused on finance and derivatives.
“You would not want to come to me if you needed anybody to do administrative law,” he jokes.
Differentiating his company from competitors, he says that they do not use web scrapers, an automated process of pulling information off of the internet, and they do not buy third-party data to create “synthetic profiles” that a lawyer has to edit.
Instead, CloudLaw develops an attorney profile with data from the local bar.
Janet Welch, the executive director of the State Bar of Michigan, says that they were already looking to develop a similar resource, but “we knew doing it right was more than we could afford to do on our own.”
That was when CloudLaw reached out. She says it was the first time a company like this had offered to collaboratively build a product, she says.
The State Bar of Michigan was the first in the country to partner with CloudLaw. Currently, Aicher says the Michigan portal receives 500,000 queries a month. The platform launched in 2016.
So far, the company has not charged state bars to be a part of their platform. Aicher says that they will spend time during 2018 to figure out the best revenue model, which may include premium features like enhancements to attorney profiles and extra data about who is searching for legal assistance. Aicher has reached out to every state bar to join the platform.
As for the new partnership between CloudLaw and the ABA, Welch thinks that this will help bring this resource nationwide.
“I see this platform as having tremendous potential,” she says.
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