NEW YORK, NY Sept. 26 (DPI) – Avvo, the Seattle-based company that for years annoyed lawyers by assigning numerical ratings to them, settled a lawsuit with the NY Attorney General’s office this month, an agreement that will scale back the use of such ratings.

According to NY State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, Avvo will no longer call its ratings “unbiased” and Avvo agreed to remove ratings for lawyers who do not participate on the Avvo web site.   The settlement also required Avvo to pay $50,000, according to Thomson Reuters.

Avvo was founded in 2006 by internet entrepreneur and George Washington Law School graduate Mark Brittan, who received more than $70 million in venture capital financing. He created a business model of assigning numerical ratings to lawyers,  offering fixed-fee legal packages, and selling advertising to lawyers, among other activities. Many in the profession objected to Avvo’s approach, especially a numerical rating system. What’s more, various states and their bar associations challenged the legality of some of Avvo’s services.

In January 2018 a media company, Internet Brands, acquired Avvo and within months let go of Brittan and other senior managers, and the new owner sought to settle the various legal disputes facing the acquired company. Internet Brands, which also owns webmd.com and lawyers.com, and is controlled by the buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, plans to fold Avvo into its other operations.