Every few hours an email comes in touting some new scheme to suck in desperate attorneys. This time involves some website called the Attorney Forum, which announces “As of March 30th, 2008 we have launched our
newly updated legal forum which is soon to become the internet [sic] largest destination for legal help and advice in North America.”
Soon to become? Yeah, I’ll hold my breath. This is the fifth email I’ve gotten from this fellow named Brian Williams, who, besides being punctuation challenged, appears to have issues with hyperbole as well when he calls his scheme “the largest online legal discussion forum online.” Largest? Is he referring to personal girth?
The point of the email is to offer me the opportunity to put a banner ad for his business on this blawg so I can become a “link partner” and, in return, they will add Simple Justice to their “directory”. It’s almost as exciting as Steve Martin when the new phone book arrived.
But let’s cut to the chase: This trend toward free legal advice forums is not merely dangerous and embarrassing, but offers huge ethical exposure. I wrote this when Avvo started down this path, and I’ll say it again with this new crapola website. It is impossible to give sound legal advice to half-baked, half-informed questions from the public, whether for free or otherwise. It is unethical for an attorney to suggest that he can, and to engage in this sort of scam for self-promotion.
I don’t care how much rhetoric these for-profit websites spout in support of the wonderful, consumer-friendly, beneficent service they provide; It’s a scam. It’s wrong and, beyond the most simplistic inquiry or the response of “speak to a lawyer,” there is no possibility that lawyers responding to these public questions are doing any good.
So why are lawyers prostituting themselves in these forums? For business. It’s sold to lawyers as a marketing concept, to show the public how wonderful and giving they are by answering their questions for free, and establishing their “expertise”. Have so many lawyers become that desperate for business that they will put aside both dignity and ethics in the name of self-promotion? Apparently so.
Where are the bar associations and disciplinary committees? Maybe they haven’t figured out that this is happening yet, considering that they barely recognize the existence of the internet. Perhaps they are afraid of bad PR by challenging the rhetoric about providing this wonderful service to the public of giving bad “legal advice” upon which individuals rely to their detriment. I don’t have a clue, but it pains me to think of the pompous declarations of attorney ethics while allowing this scam to continue unabated.
The reactions of these scammers is to resort to their hyperbolic statements of the good their doing for the public by providing access to the law. Giving bad advice does the public no good. My guess is that the people who seek advice this way are far less concerned with the quality and exactitude of the responses than the fact that it’s free.
If lawyers want to help the public by offering free legal advice to those who are unable to afford counsel, that’s a wonderful thing. Sit down, talk, gather all the necessary information to form an opinion and advise away. Establish an attorney/client relationship and take responsibility for your legal advice. If you’re wrong, bear the consequences.
What’s wrong with lawyer that we are willing to demean ourselves and our profession by taking part in these schemes? Will some lawyers do anything for a buck? Unfortunately, we all know the answer to that question.
And Brian Williams, please stop sending me emails. I really don’t want to be your partner, even though you are no doubt destined to be the biggest, best, most heavily trafficked lawyer website anywhere. I’ll pass.
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“It is impossible to give sound legal advice to half-baked, half-informed questions from the public, whether for free or otherwise.”
I’m sure you’re right for criminal law, but I think there’s more of a gray area in other types of law.
For example: “I took my car in for repairs, but it’s still not working right. What can I do to get it fixed or get my money back?”
The situation is pretty generic, and the consequences of a legal error aren’t very high, especially compared to a lawyer’s fee, so a little general advice may be good enough.
It’s the same principle as do-it-yourself legal books: If the stakes aren’t too big, a lawyer isn’t worth the cost. I do almost all my own legal work for my consulting business—state filings, contracts—and so far I have no cause for regret. It would take a pretty big screwup to offset the thousands of dollars I’ve saved.
Of course, that’s another problem with this forum: If the question doesn’t require a lot of careful thought, you can probably Google the answer somewhere already.
You never need a lawyer until you need a lawyer, Windy. If any of you pro se filings has a mistake, or you filed for the wrong thing, and everything goes south, will the savings be worth the problems?
Take the question in your example. Simple enough, right? So give me your answer, then I’ll give you ten questions, any of of which could completely change the answer. This is what a lawyer would do in a consultation. It’s all simple, except that it could all be wrong without accurate and complete information necessary for a valid opinion, and then it’s not simple. And you don’t know until you’ve asked the questions.
“If any of you pro se filings has a mistake, or you filed for the wrong thing, and everything goes south, will the savings be worth the problems?”
It depends on what the problems are, and how much it would have cost me to avoid them. Illinois has a pretty detailed web site about the paperwork needed to start and run a small business, and I’ve get several “How to start a business in Illinois” books. Lots of people do it.
If my business grows or gets more complicated, I may at some point want to hire a lawyer (and an accountant) to beat it into shape. That may even cost me more than doing it all correctly the first time. But I’ll be paying that extra cost at a time when I can afford it.
As for the auto repair issue, I don’t have an answer, so I won’t ask you for your ten questions.
However, unless I do something insane, I can’t see how my maximum exposure could be much worse than losing the amount of the repair bill, or maybe a little more if I do something that has fees. That might be $600.
If the worst case seems unlikely, and a legal consultation would cost a significant fraction of $600, it may not make sense to involve a lawyer.
I also do my own carpentry and plumbing, but I’ll hire a pro if I screw up.
If I could afford it, I’d have lawyers on retainer—civil and criminal—along with a personal assistant, bodyguards, a chef, a heating and air conditioning repairman, and an auto mechanic. (No chauffer, I love to drive.)