Do Free Advice Sites Generate Business?

There are a few sites out there that allow consumers to post questions to be answered by lawyers. Avvo.com and FreeAdvice.com are the two biggest. From a lawyers business development standpoint, do these products provide any value?

Highly Scalable Traffic Generation

Both of these sites get quite a bit of traffic, and continue to grow at a rapid pace. The main driver of this traffic is a highly scalable content generation plan. Giving any visitor the ability to generate content (ask and answer questions) is a great way to grow traffic quickly. Community generated content sites like these, social media sites, forums, etc scale content almost exponentially, which drives an incredible amount of long tail organic search traffic. Not to mention, once visitors become involved in the community, they return, bringing the daily amount of traffic even higher. This is contrast to static sites such as lawyers websites, or profiles that tend to bring primarily new visitors.

How Valuable is this Traffic?

Considering the nature of the traffic, is answering questions on these sites, and building up a rapport with the community worth a lawyers time? Obviously, I don't have access to detailed traffic analysis of either site, but using some SEO tools available online, most of the highest traffic generating keywords are variations of "free legal advice". That can't translate very well into legitimate business for a law firm.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Avvo and FreeAdvice aren't good places to market yourself, by all means take advantage of these free services. I'm just wondering if a lawyers time wouldn't be better spent generating content that is timeless, helpful and will continue to provide value (for both consumers and the attorney) in the long-term. The kind of content that continues to function as a resource for anyone looking for legal information (not advice) online, such as an authoritative article, how-to, blog, etc.

Q/A type content certainly scales, and builds a lot of traffic, but is it valuable? It seems to me, a helpful, authoritative article like this one, while it requires more effort to generate, will continue to provide value in the long-term and establish to visitors that the author is an Alpha Lawyer.

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