October 8th, 2009

I’m A Super Lawyer! (Now What?)

A relative told me something that I already knew: That I had been selected as a personal injury Super Lawyer. They knew because it had been published by the New York Times.

Yeah, well, kinda sorta. But not really. Super Lawyers is a supplement to the magazine; an advertising supplement. You don’t have to pay to be listed, you only pay if you want your name displayed prominently in a large box or page with a story about you that looks like news. Sort of an advertisement within the advertisement. I think the marketers call it an advertorial. I declined their offer to pony up big bucks for such an honor many months ago.

But now comes the other issue: What, exactly, do I do with this “honor”? Is this really an award to put on your wall or display on your website? Or is it a faux-award? A pseudo-faux award? A mockery of a pseudo-faux award? A mockery of a sham of….OK, you get the idea.

I have mixed feelings about this. The company that puts out the information says the lawyers are vetted before they appear. So if we are vetted, then perhaps this really is something to be proud of?

But what kind of vetting actually takes place? Super Lawyers claims on their website that:

Peer nominations and evaluations are combined with third party research. Each candidate is evaluated on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement. Selections are made on an annual, state-by-state basis.

Of course, they never asked me to evaluate any of my peers. And I don’t know anyone else that was asked to do an evaluation. (Update: Now I do.) They have a full page of words on their website to describe their process, but it doesn’t seem very revealing to me. They have a “research department” that assigns “point values” to different criteria.

I must confess that this all seems pretty meaningless to me. If you want to know if I’m good at what I do, it seems you would have to read a brief I’ve written, read a deposition I’ve taken or perhaps watched a trial. Even if a lawyer comes in second at trial, an observer might still be able to gauge how comfortable s/he is inside the well of the courtroom. Everything else is, shall we say, hearsay. Inadmissible.

But that little logo sure looks nice, doesn’t it? And it would look great on a website if someone were looking for counsel. (Though not so good if a juror should see it and conclude I was thoroughly full of myself.) And I can’t just say that Super Lawyers is making stuff up, because I could be very wrong about that. I just don’t really know. And they don’t really reveal the way they do their analysis, despite all the words they use to talk around the issue.

So what will I do? I don’t really know yet, though putting it on my website (the website that I hate) and then linking that “honor” back to this post showing my complete ambivalence might be one option. At least it would educate the legal consumer a bit about those that put such things on their sites or on their office walls.

And I am also left with the impression that this is a notch above being in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Of course, that didn’t really set a very high bar.

Is SueEasy Going Under?

Last year I wrote about a start-up called “Sue Easy” that I branded as one of the worst lawyer ideas ever. And given the proliferation of attorney marketing sites out there, that was saying a lot.

But now it appears that the site is up for auction. I can only think of one reason to hold a public auction of a company like this, and that is that it was a miserable failure. One can only hope.

But not to worry. Surely many more people who want to make a buck by trolling for clients will try other avenues. And just as surely, some lawyers will follow those trolls without thinking that by outsourcing their marketing to others that they are outsourcing their ethics.

I get the sense when looking at my email (begging for links or spamming my comments with links), and seeing all the marketing folks out there on Twitter, that there are more people interested in marketing for cases than there are people willing to actually do the work. This is, of course, a skewed perspective from being a blogger and reading much of what goes on in the legal blogosphere. I’ve never seen any surveys on the subject, but I would guess that most lawyers don’t even have a website. And with a million lawyers out there in the U.S., but only about 1-2,000 active blogs, I realize few are active online (at least in public).

But it is this vacuum that also allows the SueEasy’s of the world to garner attention and tarnish whatever is still left of the good name of the legal profession, which I fear isn’t much. So it is good to see them dry up and blow away. May the same now happen to WhoCanISue.com and any other crappola sites that are similar to them, whose sole reason for existence is to be a front company for others.

See also: Running SueEasy Turned Out to Be Not So Easy (Carolyn Elefant @ Blog Watch)

Links to this post:

“running sueeasy turned out to be not so easy”
the success of the controversial lawyer-client online matching service doesn’t seem to have lived up to its organizers’ high hopes, or so one might speculate from the site’s being put up for sale by online auction. …

posted by Walter Olson @ September 11, 2009 6:17 AM

July 7th, 2009

NYT: "Sotomayor & Associates" Becomes an Issue For Nominee and White House

On June 4th Sonia Sotomayor released an extensive, completed questionnaire about her past to the Senate, and I picked up on the fact that her solo law firm “Sotomayor & Associates” didn’t have any actual associates. This raised an ethical issue, albeit a small one, because it was misleading to the public. The private firm overlapped both her time in the District Attorney’s office and her time with her next gig, Pavia & Harcourt.

And there my little post sat, relatively ignored. Until the Washington Times picked up on it in an editorial on June 20th. While I don’t agree with their premise that it was indicative of larger issues, it was nice that they at least gave attribution to me for finding the item.

And now today the ethical issue of “Sotomayor & Associates” lands in the New York Times (Little Information Given About Solo Law Practice Run by Sotomayor in ’80s.) The Times treats the story as original material to the paper, without giving attribution to others.

The Times has now expanded on the quick treatment that I gave it, and checked with the White House to get more details on the law firm. They found that:

The White House has described Ms. Sotomayor’s outside legal work as an informal practice, one that never required her to file legal documents or appear in court. She never incorporated Sotomayor & Associates or registered it as a business in Manhattan or Brooklyn, where she then lived, according to public records, though she was not required to do so.

The Times goes on to quote old-reliable ethics commentator and NYU law prof Stephen Gillers (are there no other ethics attorneys to quote in New York?) as agreeing with me that this was a violation of the ethical rules in effect at the time:

Stephen Gillers, professor of legal ethics at New York University Law School, said Judge Sotomayor’s use of the larger-sounding title was “inadvisable because it is inaccurate.” He noted that bar associations frown on the use of the term “and associates” by single practitioners. “She could have just said, ‘Law Offices of Sonia Sotomayor,’ ” he said.

[Note to Gillers: If Sotomayor wrote “Law Offices of Sonia Sotomayor” it would also be inaccurate. It would need to be singular, not plural.]

The White House, however, claims that no ethical violation occurred with the use of “& Associates” at a time when there were no actual associates. They responded:

“Neither bar opinions nor cases to date have held that it was misleading for a sole practitioner to use the name ‘and Associates’ in such private communications…In fact, in the early 1980s, no rule prohibited the use of ‘and Associates’ in these circumstances and the only authority regarding the use of ‘and Associates’ in an advertising context was advisory, not mandatory, and thus not readily enforceable.”

Why did I bother with this minor issue to begin with? Because I sometimes write about the practice of law for small practitioners, about legal marketing and its problems, because the nominee fell into that zone of commentary, and because massive layoffs in the legal field were sending folks out on their own. It was meant as little more than a cautionary tale for those starting up their own practices to be careful about over-promoting themselves and running into trouble.

Now if we could turn to the ethics of the New York Times in using the stories of others without giving credit….

Update: I’ve added more regarding this at: Sotomayor Offers Lousy Defense To Ethics Charge Over Firm Name

Links to this post:

blawg review #220
welcome to blawg review #220, rounding up some highlights of the past week from around the legal blogosphere. it’s my second time hosting it here at overlawyered, a blog that as its name implies maintains a certain critical distance …

posted by Walter Olson @ July 13, 2009 3:40 AM

the lessons of sotomayor and associates
fittingly, it was a solo – eric turkewitz – who broke the story of supreme court nominee, sonya_sotomayor’s foray into solo practice under the firm name, sotomayor and associates -impermissible name under new york ethics rules given …

posted by [email protected] (Carolyn Elefant) @ July 13, 2009 12:59 AM

sotomayor “and associates”
when practicing a bit of law on the side during her time with the manhattan da’s office and at a larger law firm, the nominee called her very small practice “sotomayor & associates” even though it had no lawyers but herself. …

posted by Walter Olson @ July 08, 2009 7:20 AM

“Sotomayor & Associates” … meh, who cares?
Nothing has happened since May 26 to make me change my initial take on Pres. Obama’s nomination of US Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill Justice Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court. (That take, in short, was this: Obama would never …

posted by Beldar @ July 07, 2009 11:01 PM

sonia sotomayor “and associates”
[i’ve edited to make this tighter.] story here and here. eric turkewitz, a new york lawyer/blawger, broke the story. [then professor alberto bernabe, of the john marshall school of law, blogged about it.] …

posted by John Steele @ July 07, 2009 2:48 PM

legal ethics — and journalistic ethics….
legal ethics — and journalistic ethics.

posted by Glenn Reynolds @ July 07, 2009 8:54 AM

June 30th, 2009

Metro Train Accident and Client Solicitation

In the wake of Continental Flight 3407 crashing near Buffalo, I tracked how a number of firms from around the nation were using Google ads to hustle clients (see here, here, here, and here). The point was to discuss New York’s attorney anti-solicitation rules and, to see if they were effective, compare them to local attorney advertising responses in two other disasters. The other disasters were the Staten Island Ferry crash in 2003 and the Metrolink train crash in Southern California in 2008.

So now we can add another disaster to the mix: The Washington City Paper reports that:
Lawyers Use Web Site, Google Ads to Find Metro Crash Victims (via Overlawyered). An individual named Jared Reagan started a website (metrotrainaccident.com) and then started hustling lawyers to advertise on it. There is no indication that Reagan is even an attorney.

So what does this mean? For those lawyers that retain Reagan to act as their agent to solicit via web sites, it means that those lawyers have outsourced their ethics to him. Let’s be clear about this equation:

outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics

Notably, the site itself does not list any New York lawyers, either because he hasn’t reached us with his own solicitations for his site yet, or because New York attorneys, under stricter ethics rules than those in other states, have learned to become wary of outsourcing their marketing such people. See: New York’s Anti-Solicitation Rule Allows For Ethics Laundering and Must Be Modified.

On a final note, New York’s ethics rules are currently being challenged in court. Oral argument was heard before the Second Circuit in January. Judge Sonia Sotomayor was on the panel. A decision is pending.

Links to this post:

Disbar the Connecticut 5
No, not really. I don’t care whether they get disbarred or let off. A lawyer can’t pay a nonlawyer for a referral. This is an uncontroversial proposition. In Connecticut, paying a nonlawyer for a referral can even be a felony. …

posted by Mark Bennett @ November 06, 2009 8:14 PM

adam winter and thomas dicicco: lying asshats of the day
today’s asshats of the day are adam winter and thomas a. dicicco, jr. of “web guardian” (i don’t know if it’s this webguardian, but it’s probably just a boiler room in boca raton). the first time adam called he gave his full name (”adam …

posted by Mark Bennett @ July 10, 2009 3:48 PM

dc metro crash client-chasing
yes, the online ads are already up. washington’s city paper tracks down one california-based law firm marketer: “this is the only marketing i do — it’s the highest cost per click online. what else can you do, a young guy like me? …

posted by Walter Olson @ June 30, 2009 12:14 AM

June 24th, 2009

Why is LegalX.net Spamming Me? (Ethical Issues with Attorney Search Sites) – Updated

LegalX.net is one of the gazillion attorney search sites that seem to float about the web. You pay them a fee, and they add you to their directory while they try to hustle clients. Many of them seem to me to have questionable ethics. But this one, LegalX, has been trying to spam the comments of my blog like crazy over the last couple weeks. And it appears they are doing it to others.

Now I’m used to getting comment spam from various companies hustling gold, drugs and knickknacks of all sorts. And even on occasion from lawyers. But I’ve never been hit with this kind of persistence from a law firm or lawyer search company.

This is interesting on two different levels. First, attorneys that pay these marketers have entered into, what appears to me, an agency relationship. And their agents are sending out spam. But the attorneys are likely responsible for the acts of their agents. So the hundreds of law firms that LegalX appears to have taken money from are now associated with one of the most insidious practices of the web. Due to ethics rules that exist in some places for attorney marketing, ethics and lawyering go hand-in-hand. So when a firm outsources its marketing, it also outsources its ethics.

Second, I think that there is very little that is actually gained by the spam. There is no link juice, since comments on blogs are routinely set as “do not follow” so that Google doesn’t give them any link love. Their pagerank doesn’t benefit from the practice.

And some of the posts are one to two years old. This same drivel below, for example, was presented for comment in one of the Dr. Flea posts as well as one on the Million Dollar Advocates Forum:

It is essentially important for human beings to follow laws and orders without which a man can be brutal enough harm others. It can be easily mentioned that law plays a vital role in arranging the mob in a systematic manner. So, one should never fail to follow laws of any kind, concerning anything.

It also appears to have been spammed hundreds of times on other attorney blogs, which you can discover if you Google the first part.

Awhile back, I switched over from having open comments to moderated comments that need to be approved. I didn’t want to do that, but it was the only way to keep the spam out.

In sum, LegalX appears to be engaging in a widespread spam campaign. When it comes to blogs, it’s hard to think of more reprehensible conduct from a company.

Who is LegalX that has persuaded so many law firms to turn over their cold hard cash to them? Great question. Glad you asked. And I wish I had a good answer. Its website gives a Canadian address, 7018 14th Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia, but no names. Some further searching finds that it was for sale in October 200 8 by an anonymous individual located in Los Angeles under the pseudonym “fargreater.” Fargreater says that:

all seo optimization done by widecircles.com the advanced optimizers

Whether the site was sold to someone else that is doing the spamming, or it remains in this person’s hands, I don’t know. But it was also for sale (either still or again) just a month ago by someone named “Johnfa.”

I also checked out the “blog” that is on the site. I put that in quotes because the one post I read, entitled “Medical Malpractice Happens,” was in large part an unattributed rip-off (/MedMalHappens–LegalX.pdf) of this post by Patrick Malone at The Huffington Post.

Now cutting to the chase, who would want to hire a lawyer that has a mysterious company spamming for them? And yet, hundreds of law firms appear to be listed at their site. Most are likely to be unwitting dupes, though some may simply be turning a blind eye to the conduct. Either way, is that the type of lawyer someone would want? (Assuming that these lawyers have, in fact, paid to be listed on this site. Their advertising page says it is $349-489/year for a listing.)

If I were a stockbroker, I would not only mark this stock “avoid,” but also the lawyers that paid them any money.

[Note: LegalX.net is the spamming lawyer site. But there is also a LegalX.com, which is a litigation outsource support firm with a Los Angeles phone number. While both seem to have an L.A. contact, I do not presume they are related.]

Update 12/22/09: In early December I received email from someone identifying himself as “Richard Cohen,” claiming that his “organization” outsourced SEO and content writing to some other company and apologized for the spam. He never named the alleged outside company, and provided no address for himself and no means of verifying anything what he wrote.

He (if it is a “he”) also demanded that I take down the LegalX logo. I refused, based on fair use and the First Amendment. He threatened me with a DMCA take-down notice. I told him to Google “Turkewitz Avis” and to be careful of the considerable downside of filing a DMCA take-down notice without a legitimate basis for doing so.

I think any lawyer that outsources its marketing to such a company is a fool, due to the risks of outsourcing marketing (and ethics) to others.

It’s also worth noting that shortly after this email exchange took place at the beginning of December, comments started to appear on this post. There had been none from the time it was first posted on June 24, 2009 until December 7, 2009.

Links to this post:

Denver Motorcycle Lawyer Comment
I received the following comment in my inbox on Monday morning: I was just made aware that if the person who hit you is under-insured, you may be able to use your own motorcycle insurance or even your car insurance for compensation. …

posted by @ October 22, 2009 2:59 PM

comment spam — from law firms
as eric turkewitz notes, “when a firm outsources its marketing, it also outsources its ethics.” tags: chasing clients, legal blogs. related posts. march 25 roundup (2); youtube lawyer ads (3); willie gary marketing tactics (2) …

posted by Walter Olson @ June 25, 2009 10:26 AM