Monthly Archives: August 2007

 

August 20th, 2007

Duplicity at Wachtell Lipton?

Wachtell Lipton may be saying one thing about its advertising and marketing while doing the opposite.

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions today did a search of law firms that edit their Wikipedia pages in order to burnish their image. Wachtell, despite a prior disavowal of any marketing or advertising activities, apparently made 168 Wikipedia edits that included their own page as well as those of Cravath and Kramer Levin, according to Hoffman.

It is the law firm related edits that bring up the issue of duplicity. Because Wachtell already told the New York Times earlier this year that it didn’t engage in marekting or advertising. From a story on March 2nd on New York’s new attorney advertising rules:

Another big law firm, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz — did nothing immediately after the new advertising rules went into effect on Feb. 1. After the firm was contacted by a reporter, it put up a disclaimer.

“I did that in an overabundance of caution,” said Meyer G. Koplow, Wachtell’s executive partner. “Somebody was obviously asking questions.”

Mr. Koplow said that the firm views its site only as a tool in recruiting law students.

“You’re not going to see highlights of our flashy cases,” he said. “This is a law firm that has no marketing department, no marketing director and does not engage in advertising activities.”

If they are not going to show “highlights of their flashy cases” then why was I so quickly able to find this edit (I stopped looking after finding one, there may well be others) touting the firm from edit #72441900 (addition in red):

The firm is also known for its skill in business litigation. It has handled many of the precedent-setting Delaware corporate governance cases.

It seems to me that if the firm wasn’t interested in touting their “flashy cases” they would have let others do the writing.

No marketing or advertising? Leaving aside the existence of a web site, doesn’t editing your profile on Wikipedia to improve your image qualify as marketing? It seems like a reasonable question to ask since such conduct would be the type of thing one might expect from a marketing department.

 

August 20th, 2007

New York Cleans Up Claims Act

One of my pet peeves is the demand for damages that often gets placed in personal injury suits. Sometimes those claims for a bazillion dollars end up in the paper. Which is to say, they make the attorney (and the bar as a whole) look stupid and greedy. The folks at Overlawyered and other tort “reform” sites love that kind of stuff.

Except that the ad damnum clause — as it is still known to latin-loving lawyers who want to look smart in front of others — is usually all-but-meaningless. The claims are often put in because the lawyer has no choice, since putting a number in may be statutorily required (though putting a stupid number in is not). The basic problem in determining what the demand will be is that, quite often, it is unknown how extensive the injuries will be when the complaint is drafted. So an attorney, scared of putting in a number too low and being bound by it if the injuries turn out worse than currently known, puts in a whopper of a number to be safe. Making a $100,000 demand on a case that turns out to be worth $300,000 could lead to big problems depending on where you are.

Back in the 80s, New York did away with this foolishness in medical malpractice cases, because the doctors’ lobby thought the big numbers in the complaints were outrageous. Big numbers made big headlines. When the case settled for less, or was resolved on some “normal” terms, it certainly wasn’t newsworthy. The medical community was right to want this demand removed from the filings.

Then New York expanded the rule to all personal injury cases in 2003. Thankfully, we were no longer required to create some number to put in the papers.

But there was one catch. If you sued the State of New York in the Court of Claims, you were required to make that damages demand. And a case was dismissed this year for failing to do so. New York clearly needed to get its act together on this.

As of last week, that problem no longer exists as it has been legislated out of existence.

Other states that still require such a speculative demand at the outset of a suit should likewise send this rule to the trash heap. It is unfair to a plaintiff that is forced to create it and likewise unfair to a defendant that must endure it.

 

August 19th, 2007

NY Times to Add Health Blog, Is Law Blog Next?

The New York Times is expected to announce tomorrow the start of a health blog, according to Gawker.com (via Kevin, M.D.). The writer will be Wall Street Journal columnist Tara Parker-Pope.

If the Times is expanding its blog menu into such a heavy-duty area, and you can find a list existing Times blogs of them here, then I have to believe that law will soon follow. That’s not based on any inside information (though I will gladly accept tips on that subject), but on a basic gut feeling given the prominence the Times gives to law news and the current lack of such an offering.

 

August 18th, 2007

American Medical Association Article on Flea

For those who want yet more on the saga of Flea, the pediatrician who was live-blogging his own medical malpractice trial under his pseudonym until he was outed on the witness stand by plaintiff’s counsel, the American Medical Association’s American Medical News has an article, Internet won’t protect your secret identity. It includes an interview I did with them last month.