Overlawyered

His future in private practice? (NBC Saturday Night Live, dubiously safe for work; via Turkewitz).

Posted by Walter Olson at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Damage Control comedy team has done parody ads under the titles Neglect, Nursing Home, Personal Injury, Sexual Harassment, and Sue Somebody. (h/t: Nicole Black).

Posted by Walter Olson at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new website aspires to match would-be litigants with the right class action and lawyer for them, but Michael Arrington likely is a great deal too flattering in terming it a "Shangri-La for ambulance chasers" (TechCrunch, Apr. 12), since it remains to be seen whether such a mechanism will be able to attract either litigants or lawyers of the highest caliber. To Luke Gilman (Apr. 13) it calls to mind "a hairball generator.... Looks like a race to the bottom on both sides to me." Writes Writes TechCrunch commenter "Joey": "I hope they make a Facebook app: '6 of your friends joined this class action lawsuit! Click here to join!'" P.S. Much more from Eric Turkewitz, & welcome visitors from Legal NewsLine and United Press International.

Posted by Walter Olson at 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've previously noted that seemingly public-spirited websites purportedly set up to offer medical information and advice on mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses are usually fronts for law firms. Roger Parloff at Fortune "Legal Pad" takes a look at a couple of such ventures operated by Beasley Allen of Alabama and Early Ludwick of Connecticut. (Mar. 27). NYU's Stephen Gillers says the "disguised nature of [Beasley Allen's] web site would not allow it to survive challenge under the New York rules" on attorney promotion but doesn't have reason to think it violates the (presumably less stringent) Alabama rules. Early Ludwick's "Mesothelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center"

uses a popular symbol of medicine as its emblem - the two serpents wrapped around a winged staff - and its "about us" blurb says: "Our organization is staffed entirely by volunteer writers and other contributors who recognize the importance of building awareness."

but if you look hard enough you can find a hyperlink leading to an "Attorney Advertising" notice. And what's with the law firms' having managed to secure dot-org domains for these ventures, just as if they were nonprofit or something?

P.S. As several readers point out, those who distribute domains make no attempt to police the recommendation (originally requirement) that .org be reserved for non-profits; for one thing, it's now routine for .com owners to obtain the .org equivalent of their name and arrange for it to redirect to their main site. I should have phrased my point more narrowly: when they select a dot org as the primary address for their site, law firm marketers make it more likely that unwary readers will mistake the site for that of a medical philanthropy.

Posted by Walter Olson at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Erin Brockovich, the real-life character who brings fictional lawsuits, thinks my criticism of her trolling for clients in Avandia lawsuits is "shameful". She should know from shameless.

I was very amused by Brockovich's remark "It is no coincidence that thousands on Avandia now have heart attacks." Really? Thousands of people who saw Erin Brockovich in the theaters have had heart attacks, and many others have had strokes. Some even contracted cancer! Coincidence, or has Ms. Brockovich put movie royalties ahead of safety?

Posted by Ted Frank at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

According to a website maintained by MediaBids, an online advertising broker, the Boston law firm of James Sokolove as of recently was offering $1,500 for every mesothelioma "lead" that publishers could bring in through print ads. The offer was apparently good whether or not the patient elected to sign up with Sokolove's firm, and whether or not the patient had worked in an asbestos-related trade, so long as the diagnosis was a genuine one. Mesothelioma is a fatal cancer accepted by the legal system as a "signature" of asbestos exposure. (Ann Knef, "Sokolove's 'creative' advertising skirts ethics rules, says professor", Madison County Record, Feb. 14). The relevant page on MediaBids was visible within the past few days, but appears to have been taken down now. For more on how avidly lawyers seek to reach this category of patients, see Sept. 5 and Oct. 13, 2007, etc. More on Sokolove here and here.

P.S. MediaBids page GoogleCached here.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lots of reports of lawyers chasing potential business after the explosion [Fulton County Daily Report; Elefant]

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a Valentine's Day promotion, Charleston, W.V. radio station WKLC-FM is offering a drawing for a free divorce. "Charleston attorney Rusty Webb will handle the actual filing" and says winners should not expect anything complicated in the line of contested proceedings. (Charleston Gazette, USA Today).

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

David Lat reports (Jan. 22) that the criminal defense attorney covered in this space a few months back has a new ad in the Baton Rouge phone book that omits his former slogan, "The Thugs' Lawyer". It does, however, offer a new "Expungement Special Only $500 * Plus Filing Fees".

Posted by Walter Olson at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Injury law firms in St. Louis and Seattle run promotional blogs for which they've been generating content as follows: a post summarizes (presumably from police or news reports) a recent local road fatality or injury naming the victim and other persons involved, towns, roads and other identifying information. Then it adds a bit of discussion of the accident, and advises that the law firm can assist the victims in filing claims. Often the killed, maimed or comatose person's name appears prominently in the post title, which aids in search engine visibility to reach families searching for their own names or the names of witnesses or other parties involved in the accident. The law firms have had no previous involvement whatsoever in most of the incidents, nor have they been invited onto the scene by any of the persons they name or their survivors.

Isn't legal marketing wonderful? In years to come when you go online in quest of remembrances of your loved ones, paging through their school reunion pages, club involvements and professional achievements, you can look forward to confronting the equivalents of giant if outdated lawyer billboards along the way. Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs blasts the practice as "a cheap stunt" and "the stuff that gives plaintiff's lawyers a bad name" (Dec. 11), "unseemly" and "wrong" (Dec. 14), "shameless" and "sleazy" (Dec. 15). Eric Turkewitz adds his voice in condemnation (Dec. 13). Peter Lattman's link at the WSJ law blog (Dec. 14) draws out numerous posters who appear to approve of the idea, though.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Norm Pattis makes a couple of nominations from the local crop he sees in Connecticut (Nov. 14). To me, at least, "Lady DUI" doesn't sound as bad as Pattis's choice for a "close second", which

goes to a firm boasting that it can get every dime possible for you if you are injured. The lawyer intoning this commitment stands slapping baseball bat into an open hand. What does he do, beat the adjuster to death for an extra dollar or two?

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

William K. Mattar, 43, of Buffalo "has built a substantial auto-injury practice through the estimated $2 million he spends each year on ads produced by CJ Advertising in Nashville, Tenn." Now three lawyers who worked for Mattar have quit in acrimonious circumstances, providing a look inside the firm's workings. Joseph Bergen said Mattar had admitted never having tried a case and had never taken a client deposition in the nine years Bergen had worked with the firm. As business poured in from TV viewers, the lawyers say, Mattar stopped using his staff lawyers to screen the cases for likely merit, instead devolving that task on a call center in Tennessee. Meanwhile, the staff lawyers' caseloads swelled to more than 200 cases apiece, along with which came "increased pressure from Mattar to settle a minimum of two to three cases a week each," whether or not the lawyers felt the cases were in an appropriate posture to settle. The three are setting up their own personal-injury firm, and Mattar depicts them as disgruntled employees who are misleading clients in hopes of taking away business from him. (Michael Beebe, "Mattar’s 3 trial lawyers quit", Buffalo News, Oct. 25; "Mattar says lawyers conspired to steal clients", Nov. 1; Martha Neil, "Former PI Colleagues Now Battling in Buffalo", ABA Journal, Nov. 1). For some reason the Buffalo-Rochester area has generated a steady stream of colorful stories about law firms with saturation TV-ad budgets, sometimes coupled with factory-line methods; see our earlier coverage of Cellino & Barnes/The Barnes Firm and the now-retired Jim ("The Hammer") Shapiro, of "hand you their severed heads" fame, who conceded in a deposition that he had never tried a case.

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Adam Liptak at the Times looks at the heavy lawyer-ad presence on Google sponsored links (“Oakland personal injury lawyer” costs $58.03), and quotes both Ted and me. “Instead of competing on price,” Ted says of plaintiffs’ lawyers, “they compete on Google.” And I point out that the family in search of information on, say, cerebral palsy, will run into plenty of medically tendentious material posted by lawyers as part of their client-intake efforts. (New York Times, Oct. 15).

Posted by Walter Olson at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Except, reports Robert Ambrogi, that Mr. J.'s firm does not list a Boston office. Yes, it's the sometimes tacky world of search engine pitchmanship and mass-produced website generation, courtesy of an outfit called Top Lawyers, now with a growing presence on YouTube as well. (Oct. 12).

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beck and Herrmann ask some pointed questions about principal-agent problems in plaintiff-side litigation.

Posted by Ted Frank at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seventeen months ago, I noted that the most expensive Google AdSearch term was "mesothelioma lawyers" topping the charts at C$54.33. I further noted that such rich referral costs suggested that lawyers were rent-seeking and unethically obtaining surplus from clients, and bidding it away to search for new clients instead of lowering their rates.

How have things changed since? Well, lawyers have gotten slightly more sophisticated: the most expensive Google AdSearch term as of July 9, 2007, is "mesothelioma treatment options", and, aside from a couple of medical facilities, the vast majority of advertisers are for law firms or fronts for law firms. And the price for that search term is C$69.10, up about 27% in just over a year, demonstrating the rent-seeking involved. David Giacalone comments on the related issue of fixed contingency fees that take advantage of litigants.

Posted by Ted Frank at 12:22 AM | Permalink

The Tennessee Supreme Court confirms that lawyers in that state may publish potentially defamatory material outside the courtroom provided they are acting in quest of an "identifiable prospective client". The case was filed by a screw maker against a law firm whose client-trolling website had asserted that the company's deck screws were "defectively manufactured". Without determining whether the phrase was defamatory, the court ruled that even if it was, the manufacturer would be afforded no legal remedy. (Day on Torts, Aug. 21; Simpson Strong-Tie Company v. Stewart, Estes, & Donnell, Aug. 20 (PDF)).

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

David Lat, er, profiles the marketing efforts of attorney and reggae musician Peter "P'Ta Mon" John, who calls himself "The Thugs [sic] Lawyer," and has a toll-free number with the five-letter combo "NOT ME."

Posted by Ted Frank at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While "the divers are still in the river looking":

Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis said he has received at least a dozen telephone calls from law firms, most of them local, since it became public knowledge that a pregnant Somali woman, Sadiya Sahal, and her 2-year-old daughter, Hanah Mohamed, were among those missing after the collapse.

The calls started coming about 4 p.m. Thursday, less than 24 hours after the collapse, and haven't stopped, Jamal said. Some of the attorneys have asked for telephone numbers and other personal information about Sahal's family, Jamal said.

"This is the worst form of ambulance-chasing," Jamal said. "The divers are still in the river looking, and the attorneys keep calling us."

(Chris Serres and Matt McKinney, "Question of liability rises", Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Aug. 8)(via Ambrogi who got it from Minnesota Lawyer Blog).

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Craigslist ad doesn't mention that the opportunity would involve suing L.A.'s Patina Group over break-time violations. (Eater L.A., Aug. 2).

Posted by Walter Olson at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)