Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘chasing clients’

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Six of the eight most expensive Google AdSense search terms are for attorneys (the other two are for mortgage and loan refinancing), with “mesothelioma lawyers” topping the charts at $54.33. A regularly updated page can be found here. (CyberWyre blog, Mar. 23 (h/t Slim)). Earlier search-engine follies: Apr. 8, 2004; Nov. 18, 2004.

(“McDonalds coffee lawsuit” [sic] goes for $0.67, which is a shame, because the top ten links all refer back to ATLA’s propaganda on the subject. Perhaps if our blogging readers could link to our coverage…?)

Update: Clearly, there’s a lot of competition for that “mesothelioma lawyer” keyword, given the $54.33 price; this is because there is a lot of easy profit to be made on mesiothelioma cases by lawyers: there are so many defendants, and so many cases, that attorneys and defendants find it cheaper to settle for nuisance sums, which add up quickly to an automatic profit for the attorney, even if the case is tried and lost against recalcitrant defendants who dare to expose themselves to lottery litigation (cf. also POL Jun. 10, 2005). The interesting question is what market failure has occurred such that this gigantic profit is not being competed away by, say, offering clients a smaller attorneys’ fee. This is surplus that should be going to clients, not to Google. Is there collusion not to lower attorneys’ fees? If consumer advocates cared about consumers, rather than attorneys, we might see some investigation into the matter.

I’ve refused to publish a few comments. Reasons why in the jump.

Read On…

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Help wanted (Calif. shakedown practice)?

Three years ago California’s notorious Trevor Law Group was found to be mass-mailing demand letters to small businesses alleging violations of the state’s ultra-liberal s. 17200 unfair business practices act, then settling the complaints for cash. A major furor ensued, and the state bar and Attorney General Bill Lockyer made gestures toward reforming the law to prevent law firms from running “shakedown” practices. But did it work? Mike Cernovich notices that a law firm has placed an employment ad on Craigslist seeking “additional counsel” to handle an “expanding workload”. What kind of workload? Well, it’s “primarily in the practice of wage and hour law inclusive of class actions … almost all [of our] cases are settled and are rarely tried.”

That business about settling rather than trying “almost all cases” got Cernovich’s suspicions up, and then he “saw something that made my jaw drop:”

In assessing the nature of the work and return on time spent it is helpful to keep in mind that the burden of proof is always on the employer to establish that he has paid the correct wages. The law requires that the employer keep accurate and timely maintained records that show hours worked and amounts paid. Failure to maintain such records is almost always at the heart of the case ….

Furthermore the employer will be liable for our legal fees if he is unable to defense the case. These two elements [the inability to prove us wrong and threat of attorneys fees] provide our clients with extraordinary leverage to resolve the matter.

Cernovich reads this as amounting to: “we sue employers knowing that it’s unlikely they’ll be able to produce records that will prove us wrong. … In other words, let’s just sue someone, hope he can’t produce any employment records to contradict us, threaten him with attorneys fees, and then settle the case post haste.” Or is he being too suspicious? (Mar. 8). (Updated/corrected shortly after posting to fix a mistake on my part about who placed the Craigslist ad; also retitled next morning.)

More on Trevor Law Group here and here. More on wage and hour law: Mar. 10, Jan. 9 and links from there.

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Restrained, tasteful lawyer advertising, cont’d

A lawyer’s commercials depict him spinning “like a human tornado, generating cash for his clients,” and proclaim “GOAL” in soccer style as he gets checks. “As long as my ads are not false or misleading, I can say what I want to say,” says Glen Lerner, who’s currently in a dispute with the State Bar of Nevada about the wording of one of his slogans, “The Heavy Hitter”. “I’m selling a product. Me … I’m like the Ty-D-Bol man.” (Glenn Puit, “‘Heavy Hitter’ will sue”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mar. 2)(via Lattman).

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He’s a doctor, a lawyer, and so much more

The Barnes Firm, formerly Cellino & Barnes, is a powerhouse in the personal-injury business in upstate New York, where it is a ubiquitous advertiser. According to the Buffalo News, it’s built one of the largest caseloads of Vioxx lawsuits in the nation by hawking its star attorney, Brian A. Goldstein, who in television ads

described how he was uniquely qualified to represent Vioxx users. Not only was he a personal injury lawyer, he told viewers, he was a former physician and board-certified surgeon….

The lawsuits accuse the drug’s maker, Merck & Co., with failing to tell patients the whole truth about Vioxx.

Goldstein, though, appears guilty of the same charge about his medical background. Georgia’s Composite State Board of Medical Examiners revoked Goldstein’s license to practice medicine on Jan. 10, 1991.

Goldstein was found guilty of providing Georgia licensing authorities with misleading and incomplete information about his education, according to records obtained by The Buffalo News. The licensing board found that Goldstein:

• Attended college and medical school at the same time in the Dominican Republic.

• Graduated from medical school less than three years after he graduated from high school.

• Received credit for courses he had not taken, had not completed or failed.

• Said he attended Tulane University when he had not, falsified his earlier training and submitted a false letter of recommendation for a residency at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

The hearing officer in Georgia not only recommended revocation but also said the decision should be published “as a public reprimand for [Goldstein] for his conduct.”

But none of that information was mentioned in the Vioxx ads, or in Goldstein’s biography on The Barnes Firm Web site.

The Buffalo News investigation includes various defenses of his conduct offered by Goldstein, including the following:

He also said Georgia authorities failed to consider the fact he had received an undergraduate degree from Empire State College.

The News confirmed that degree from the college, which grants degrees based on life experience as well as academic studies. But the degree was granted in 1988, three years after Georgia filed charges against him.

The newspaper asks medical ethicist Arthur Caplan about Goldstein’s “selective use of parts of his medical background to recruit legal clients”. Caplan’s response: “I think it’s sleazy”. (Michael Beebe, “Did Barnes Firm lawyer tell the whole truth?”, Buffalo News, Jan. 22). Carolyn Elefant comments at My Shingle (Jan. 22), and the incident also stirs memories for blogger Gina at Together Again (Jan. 23). The law firm of Cellino & Barnes has figured in these pages before: see Jul. 15, 2005.

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Update: lawyers’ “pit bull” ads

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled (PDF) that the law firm of Pape & Chandler violated the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers by marketing itself with the image of a spike-collared canine and the phone number 1-800-PIT-BULL (see Aug. 23, Sept. 19, 2004). The law firm says it is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing precedents of First Amendment protection for lawyers’ advertising. (David L. Hudson, Jr., “Florida Muzzles Pit Bull Ads”, ABA Journal eReport, Dec. 2). Commentary: Capt. Fogg, D. McGowan, Giacalone, Schaeffer.

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Lawyer-promotion spam, cont’d

Jerry Pournelle of sci-fi fame (Oct. 11, scroll down) got an unsolicited email from an outfit called “National Association of Personal Injury Lawyers” offering a “limited-time, complimentary membership” allowing for a listing on its website http://www.napil.com as a nifty “method to get more personal injury clients”.

I could compare notes on the subject, since I got a (somewhat differently worded) email from the same outfit in October (sent to an email address which is available to website visitors, but which I don’t use to subscribe to anything; it receives a lot of spam). And I, too, can vouch with confidence that I never requested or invited email from NAPIL.

According to the email I got, “There is no Sign-up fee, no annual fee. You only pay a voluntary referral fee when we give you a lead and you settle the case and earn your fee. To comply with most State Bars’ prohibition against fee sharing, we have no mandatory fee sharing agreement. When you do pay us a fee, you will share fee with a lawyer.” In the “P.S.”, it said: “Our website www.napil.com is on the top on Yahoo and MSN” — not a very useful boast without any specification of which search term results in their being “on the top”.

More on spam promoting lawyers and lawsuits: Jan. 5, 2005, Mar. 29-31, 2002.

P.S.: Well, that didn’t take long. This morning (Monday), less than a day after posting the item, I got an email from NAPIL, by its appearance sent to a wide audience rather than to me alone, adding specificity to the “at the top” boast. It says: “www.napil.com is on the top of Yahoo search. If you search for the term Personal Injury Lawyers on Yahoo, NAPIL is the Number One Result.” This claim checked out as true, as a visit to Yahoo confirmed. It goes on to claim: “We are also on the top on MSN.” When I visited MSN, I found that NAPIL turned up on the first page of results (at #9) when I entered the search phrase “personal injury lawyers” with quotation marks around it, but did not turn up on the first page when I omitted the quotation marks.

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Hurricane-chasing, cont’d

New Orleans criminal defense attorney Joseph Larre’s 300 clients were evacuated and now sit in lockups across the South, some as far away as Jacksonville, Fla. Many of his case records were destroyed by floodwater, and the city’s criminal courts have not reopened. So Larre, 47, drove around the city last week in his champagne-colored Ford Explorer and nailed signs to telephone poles announcing, in big red letters, “KATRINA CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT.”

By Friday, he had received 300 phone calls. At least two other lawyers, he said, have put up similar signs.

Larre said he hasn’t decided whom to sue for what. But he says he has heard from homeowners who fear that insurance companies will scrimp on settlements, as well as irate residents looking to haul New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even the Red Cross into court.

As he considered potential defendants, Larre said, “I definitely like the oil companies and their insurance companies.”…

“You really hit the jackpot if you nail the Army Corps of Engineers,” he mused, standing in a mud-caked intersection in his shorts, T-shirt and running shoes.

(Douglas Birch, “Lawyers drawn to storm cases”, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 10).

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