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AutoAdmit bills itself as "the most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world," which tips you off to the ethics of the people who run it. That statement is at best textbook deceit---possibly true, as there aren't any well-known "law school discussion boards," and the number of "prestigious" ones is exactly zero. What's prestigious about a law school discussions message board, anyway? But the statement is more likely misrepresentation, for "prestigious" isn't the word for AutoAdmit. "Infamous" is more accurate. "Slimy" may be even better.

The site is the creation of Anthony Ciolli, a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jarret Cohen, a 23-year-old insurance agent. It often includes useful insights on law schools and law firms. But it includes hundreds of anonymous posts that insult women, gays, blacks, Jews and Asians, frequently disparaging individuals by name. Messages are sometimes outright libel, including false claims about sexual activity and STDs, and accusations of unethical activities. To the targets' dismay, the comments bubble up through the Internet into the public domain via Google's powerful search engine. And many potential employers of law school graduates routinely check Google for information on a candidate. Thanks to AutoAdmit, what they will find will sometimes be racist, sexist or obscene gossip.

The site's founder, insurance agent Jarret Cohen, says the site merely provides a forum for free speech. "I want it to be a place where people can express themselves freely, just as if they were to go to a town square and say whatever brilliant or foolish thoughts they have," Cohen said in a recent Washington Post interview. Ciolli was quoted as saying that he "almost never censor[s] content, no matter how abhorrent it may be" because he is a "strong believer in freedom of expression and the marketplace of ideas."

This transparent rationalization for the site's irresponsible management is simultaneously infuriating and hilarious. In the "town square" one must be physically present to be heard, which means that the source of offensive and insulting speech directed at an individual must take responsibility for his or her actions. Not on AutoAdmit, however; those brave warriors of free expression can remain anonymous, because Ciolli and Cohen let them. Nor did the speeches in the town square end up on a web search engine like Google, where they could be seen by anyone in the world with a computer, downloaded, copied, and distributed to humiliate and harm an innocent victim of a verbal attack.

Comparing AutoAdmit to the town square is like comparing the late Anna Nicole Smith to Mother Theresa. What the site really resembles is the walls of a particularly busy public toilet where low-lifes anonymously inscribe filthy graffiti about others. Unlike the operators of most such cesspools of anonymous "free expression," however, these two actually boast that they never wash the walls, encouraging more and more irresponsible content.

But so much more creative damage can be done in the Ciolli and Cohen domain than in any public rest room. In mid-February, several frequenters of the site organized a contest on a separate site to name the "hottest" female student at a "Top 14" law school and used AutoAdmit to publicize the contest and the involuntary "entrants." A group of boorish University of Virginia Law students posted dozens of photos of their eight female classmates, which all ended up on AutoAdmit. None of them consented to having their pictures posted.

Then the AutoAdmit's message board was bombarded with salacious comments about the women, often referencing them by name. The Virginia Law Weekly reported that in addition to criticizing the co-eds' physical attributes on the discussion threads, AutoAdmit members continually referred to some of these UVA Law students as "whores," "sluts," and worse. One anonymous AutoAdmit poster wrote about performing sex acts on them, while another told them to "get raped." Naturally, Ciolli and Cohen did nothing. Well, that's unfair: Ciolli commented on the girls himself.

One of the female UVA Law students on the "Top 14" site was contacted by a law firm considering her for employment, which told her that her contest photo and the AutoAdmit comments about her had been found in the course of checking out her references on-line. She told the Virginia Law Weekly that although the firm hasn't changed its decision to hire her, she feels that the site has already impaired her professional reputation. "People at firms read this stuff, and the word spreads. When I come into my law firm, this is not how I want to be seen," she told the publication. Another involuntary contestant, a Fulbright scholar who graduated summa cum laude, says she now fears going to the gym because people on the site encouraged classmates to take cell phone pictures of her.

Finally, the "Hottest Female" contest so dominated AutoAdmit and was focusing so much criticism on the site that Ciolli persuaded the organizers to authorize the removal of its posts. But to do so was the decision of the contest's originators, not the AutoAdmit administrators, and the damage to the women who were exhibited and derided cannot be undone. Meanwhile, more anonymous bile pours onto the site daily. The decision to ask the contest to leave was a PR move, not a change in policy. Ciolli told the Washington Post that he thought he deserved a "gold star," even though he encouraged the competition by participating in the on-line assessment of the female law students.

[Aside to whatever state bar association Ciolli eventually applies to join: Watch out. This guy is an ethics violation waiting to happen.]

The refusal of AutoAdmit's operators to routinely and responsibly police the site panders to the worst of the web community in order to boost traffic. They attempt to defend their indefensible conduct by noting that the courts have refused to allow sites and message boards to be held legally responsible for the postings of visitors, but that legal point has no mitigating effect on their blatantly irresponsible and unethical conduct in permitting the current situation to continue. Any law student, law firm or company that cares about ethics and fairness should simply refuse to visit the site no matter how much useful information may be buried among the libel, obscenity and dreck. Leave AutoAdmit to the anonymous graffiti-scrawlers of the on-line public toilet this website has become.

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