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No, you cannot edit Avvo answers.   I suppose you can ask the folks at Avvo to just remove all of client's answers. No idea whether they will do it for you. I have had them remove an answer or three for me, so it can't hurt to ask.  Not sure how your client will feel about you doing that, of course.

Avvo provides only one follow link, and that is in the person's profile.  Links in answers are nofollow. As a result, answering questions on Avvo should not harm a site.

I answer a lot of questions on Avvo and it hasn't hurt my firm's site. I often put relevant links in the link section of my answers. For example, if I am answering a question about medical malpractice, I might put a link to a page I wrote on the basic requirements for a medical malpractice case.  However, I do not put links to my firm in every answer. I only use links when I think the person might be a potential client for my firm and I would like to guide him/her to my firm's site.

I agree with irvingw that your client may well be doing this sort of thing all over the web, which might be the source of the problem. In addition, if your client is adding a general non-useful link back to his website, he might be violating Avvo's terms of service.

I see a lot of disavowing in your future.

I am a lawyer, but I am not going to provide you with legal advice. What I am going to provide you with is PR advice. It is always best to get permission. You don't want a client to contact you and ask you to remove it, or even worse write a review on Google+ or somewhere else stating how badly you treated it (even if you didn't treat it badly.)

You also can avoid any potential legal problems by getting permission first.

I am in a hard market for links as well. I find that studies and reports on data work quite well. So what I do is identify a topic that is interesting, gather the governmental data and put it together in a way that I have not otherwise seen.

My firm uses several websites. When I first came in house there were a lot of sites, but I took them down because of the content quality at the time. I am slowly building them back up.  I find that specific area websites can be very useful for pointing ads or specific campaigns, since many people want to know just about X concept I am very careful not to reproduce content and not to try to hide that the sites are owned by the same company.

I hesitated to bring the sites back up until I got some confirmation from Matt Cutts that having more than one site is fine, as long as you follow good content and other SEO standards. http://www.brafton.com/news/cutts-on-similar-website-content-multiple-domains-duplicate-or-safe

I link between the sites, but in an organic way. I.e. if I have an article on one site that naturally links to another site, I link it.  I also don't have a huge number of sites and don't expect to do so.

Avvo provides only one follow link, and that is in the person's profile.  Links in answers are nofollow. As a result, answering questions on Avvo should not harm a site.

I answer a lot of questions on Avvo and it hasn't hurt my firm's site. I often put relevant links in the link section of my answers. For example, if I am answering a question about medical malpractice, I might put a link to a page I wrote on the basic requirements for a medical malpractice case.  However, I do not put links to my firm in every answer. I only use links when I think the person might be a potential client for my firm and I would like to guide him/her to my firm's site.

I agree with irvingw that your client may well be doing this sort of thing all over the web, which might be the source of the problem. In addition, if your client is adding a general non-useful link back to his website, he might be violating Avvo's terms of service.

I see a lot of disavowing in your future.

No, you cannot edit Avvo answers.   I suppose you can ask the folks at Avvo to just remove all of client's answers. No idea whether they will do it for you. I have had them remove an answer or three for me, so it can't hurt to ask.  Not sure how your client will feel about you doing that, of course.