Comments on: Legal blogs: keeping lawyers more honest?

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:00:35 +0000

From personal experience, these blogs can also expose the unethical, questionable at best, behavior of some attorneys. Oftentimes the Bar needs to be able to establish a pattern of abuse in order to discipline these attorneys, but not all damaged clients bother to go to the bar. Sometimes these clients can meet through blogs about the attorneys who failed them.

My blog http://heresagem.blogspot.com/ , chronicals the experience my husband and I have had as entrepreneurs, and now pro se litigants.

We do not prefer to be pro se litigants, but the attorney we did have neglected our case, failed to answer a motion for summary judgement and failed to fulfill her promises to get the case reinstated. We then hired another attorney to file a 60(b) motion. This attorney refused to included critical arguments in the motion (like whether or not the case had merit!), revealed that he was “childhood friends” with opposing counsel, argued with us over the merits of the case while consistently forgetting CRUCIAL elements, and ultimately ran up a bill for over twice as much as he told us it would cost to write the 60(b) motion.

We ended up writing it ourselves. We lost, mostly in part because we “took too long”.

Through my blog, I have discovered other former clients of each of these attorneys who have had eerily similar experiences. My hope is that we will be able to establish a pattern of abuse and prevent any future clients from being damaged.

By: wfjag

wfjag — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:47:12 +0000

Provided that the person or firm whose abuse is profiled in the blogs really cares or — as in the case of the abusive discovery directed towards Neurodiversity a few months back — the matter catches a certain amount of wide-spread attention and disapproval, then blogs can reveal and possibly prevent abuse. However, when you’re dealing with a deliberate campaign, I don’t think you should be in a self-congratulatory mood, since the efforts have been either largely ineffective or not sustained enough to ignite public outrage. See this example from Red State:

The Campaign To Bankrupt The Palin Family
Posted by Martin Knight
Tuesday, March 24th at 5:21PM EDT

http://www.redstate.com/martin_a_knight/2009/03/24/the-campaign-to-bankrupt-the-palin-family/

As the article relates, this is an all-too-common tactic. Further, one of the reasons it is successful is that the allegations start being “reported” by the “news media” — who, if they were being fair, would report critically instead of merely repeating unsupported allegations as if they were fact.

So, don’t pat yourself on the back too much (at least, not yet).

Still, any publicly available domain that reveals litigation abuse is an improvement.

By: Venkat

Venkat — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:39:17 +0000

I agree with Max. I don’t think the blogs “checked” BlockShopper” or the First Circuit’s Staples decision, but they definitely raised a hue and cry. From the point of view of a lawyer or judge – that has to have some psychological impact. Maybe for future decisions?

Good point Matt. Blogs have allowed the general public to sort of weigh in on the issues. To me it’s interesting that in today’s day, an obscure decision or lawsuit may end up on the front pages b/c (or the internet equivalent, now that newspapers are becoming less important) of being highlighted on the internet. This was much less likely to happen pre-internet. Undeniable that there’s increased scrutiny of the legal process and that can only be a good thing.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:13:22 +0000

I think that Mr. Balasubramani is essentially correct, but for a reason he doesn’t explicitly state: blogs are more accessible to the layperson than even well-written law review articles, appellate decisions, etc. The real push to correct ridiculous behavior starts among other lawyers, but unless a wide section of the public scorns such nonsense, it goes inadequately punished.

By: Max Kennerly

Max Kennerly — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:37:28 +0000

Can’t pat ourselves on the back yet: BlockShopper ended in the victim getting steamrollered into $100,000 in legal fees, after which they settled by agreeing not to deep-linki to Jones Day.

Did Jones Day “lose?” Sure. They got bad press and a “settlement” that made them look like morons who just crawled onto the internet for the first time.

But look at BlockShopper, a small company out $100,000 grand. More than enough to create a chilling effect among others, too.

Was it worth Jones Day’s own fees, probably the same amount (though, really, in lost time rather than paid out of pocket), to intimidate others? Probably so.

We lost, not them.