Trends develop quickly on the internet. They die quickly too. One of the latest that has hit Simple Justice fairly hard is the latest effort in advertising by desperate lawyers, who apparently pay someone else to post comments to a blawg (such as this) with a link to their website.
The name of the commenter is listed as “Miami Lawyer” and the link is to some Miami lawyer’s website. One might think that the concept would be followed through with some further degree of thought, such as searching for posts that relate in some way to stories about Miami, so that people who read the comments to the story might have a better chance of being interested in Miami lawyers. Not so.
In the course of a day, I get one individual posting a dozen comments to miscellaneous old posts without any apparent nexus to each other or the geographical or subject matter area of the lawyer. Each will link back to this “Miami Lawyer’s” website. But here’s the rub: The comment is written in broken English and fails to demonstrate any knowledge of the content of the post.
Example: Greet to the webmaster for this wonderful site.Keep up good work.
This is the actual comment left yesterday. To the Miami Lawyer who paid someone to leave this comment and link to his website, this word of advice. It makes you look like a blithering idiot. Is that what you are trying to accomplish?
Of course, this begs the question of how I know it’s spam rather than, well, a lawyer who is indeed a blithering idiot. The latter can certainly be the case, and sometimes is, but not with this latest scheme. The trick is that I have access to additional information about the commenter that doesn’t appear on the blawg. All blawgers have access to this information on people who visit or comment. And when the email address of the commenter isn’t “miamilawyer”, but “indiasolutions”, it’s kind of a dead giveaway.
While these comments invariably say nice things about the post or the blawg, thus making the blawger somewhat more inclined to leave the comments alone, they are pure unadulterated spam. I delete them, even if they say that I’m tall, thin and good looking (also a dead giveaway that it’s spam).
So as a public service to anyone foolish enough to pay good money to some advertising “solutions” company that outsources its work to people who will make you look far more pathetic than you are, let me say this. Don’t do it.
You are wasting your money. You are not going to get any cases from comments that make you look stupid. You are going to have your comments deleted, and then I’m going to ban you from here.
If you want to actually read a post (you do read, don’t you?), and want to leave a real comment (in English) with a link to your website, go for it. I’ve got some of these types here and I let them slide, even though I believe that it’s just to put their links all over Simple Justice to try to freeride a bit.
But don’t bother with the spam. It’s not going to happen.
Update: Regular readers here may recall a commenter who goes by the handles “Joe” and “JT”. He commented regularly, though his comments were marginally substantive. His comments were linked to one of two lawyer websites in California. While his comments rarely added anything, and were largely pro forma restatements of the obvious, they showed some very minimal connection to the posts and I figured that perhaps this was the best Joe could muster. Hey, dumb people are allowed to have opinions too.
But after posting this post, I realized that it was hypocritical of me to allow Joe/JT to continue to post comments for the sole purpose of making some pocket change by linking his customers websites here. So even if Joe did read the posts, it was wrong to let Joe get away with it and refuse the same courtesy to others. So, as of now, Joe is gone, his customers’ links are gone, and all comments by Joe/JT have been deleted.
There is, however, one thing to consider. Some of you have added comments following Joe’s saying, “Joe is right,” and “I agree with Joe.” Joe’s comments, at their very best, were a statement of the obvious, reflecting no deeper thought than it took to write a line or two. Those of you who agreed with Joe may want to consider what’s going through your own heads.
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What you say about lawyer spam comments is so true. Good point. Your site is great. Keep up the good work. Here are some more sites your readers will be interested:
http://park-ridge-illinois-criminal dui-defense-lawyer.com
http://chicago-eviction-bankruptcy-lawyer.com
Sigh. I get those too, with just enough original, on-topic sentences to get past the spam filter.
Does anybody click on these links? If anything, doesn’t this raise a red flag that any lawyer who does should be avoided at all costs?
I’ll keep deleting these comments, though on occasion I have a little fun by pointing out in a reply that the comment is pathologically stupid in the hopes that the lawyer might get the point. My oath prevents me from saying this, but some lawyers are just so pathetic.
I’ve been getting those for years. They got so bad that I had to moderate comments.
Lawyers are told that when you embed your search terms into a link, then when someone uses those search terms on Google, they’ll find your site.
Thing is: The traffic spam got so bad for everyone that blog software makes it so that there is no authority to those links. So it’s a fool’s errand.
It also makes them look bad.
I’m going to leave you the same comment I left on another blog that linked back to your post. But I’m not spamming, I just didn’t see the point in retyping. 😉
“I’d be willing to bet that this person hired someone claiming to be a virtual assistant through one of those freelancing sites. Those places are full of people from other countries bidding on jobs for $3 an hour. Problem is, you get what you pay for and this is a perfect example. And just like this “Miami Lawyer” person is giving lawyers a bad name, those so-called “virtual assistants” are giving VAs a bad name.
Now there ARE some legitimate virtual assistants out there who do offer social networking as a service and that does include things like writing blog posts, leaving comments on other blogs, managing profiles on places like Linked In, etc.
But, seriously, they need to be aware of what this person is doing/saying/writing on their behalf or it will just backfire.”
This”>http://www.DefendingPeople.com”>This are gud posts. Plese keep up gud work.
April,
I have no doubt that what you’re saying is true. But the concept of “virtual assistants,” even good ones, is abhorrent. This isn’t a big advertising scam, with the only question being whether it’s done well or poorly. If lawyers are hiring people to do their work for them, to write posts, leave comments, etc., they are deceiving others. It may be good for the “virtual assistant” industry, but it’s nothing more than a lie and a scam.
Will they have VAs try their cases for them as well? Is it acceptable for lawyer to scam people? Is it acceptable for there to be an industry of people willing to scam on for a fee on behalf of lying lawyers? It’s a disgrace.
I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Well, I could, but I won’t use that sort of language here.
Lawyers have been hiring assistants for years. Those assistants have done things like write letters for the attorney, respond to emails for the attorneys, etc. That doesn’t constitute “a lie and a scam”. And virtual assistants do the same thing in-office assistants do (other than get coffee). I don’t find hiring legal assistants, in-house or virtual, at all “abhorrent”.
I take it you’ve never had a legal assistant? You’ve always done all of the work yourself?
Asking if lawyers will have a VA try their cases for them is making a huge leap. Legal assistants or paralegals do not practice law but they do assist in the process by performing administrative duties. With the advent of social media this happens to be one of those.
“Virtual assistants” are not paralegals. And trained paralegals work under the direct supervision of a lawyer, with their work subject to the lawyer’s oversight. The do not function on their own, representing themselves to be the lawyer, with no one approving their work.
I suspect the poor lawyer simply fell victim to another “marketing vulture.” He bought a website that has a PR of “0” and was probably guaranteed “top placement.” The lawyer probably wants to do the right thing but has spent absolutely zero time learning about marketing and thus is trusting his webmaster. (How else would you explain the top of the website being a nightline of Miami?–How useful is that to a prospective client.) Anyway, the lawyer then trust the marketing vultures to do the right thing for him.
Nothing inherently wrong with using virtual assistants to track down blog fodder, even write up the blog’s first draft…that’s an effective use of time. Its up to the lawyer, however, to add interesting information that will help consumers and it should be up to the lawyer to make the decision to actually publish the blog post.
If the post is ultimately the product of the lawyer, then it is his words and thoughts, and thus legitimate.
But there’s one other aspect of your comment that I’m unclear about. “Blog fodder?” Is this just lawyer marketing camouflaged for mass consumption?
There are a ton of blawgs out there today. Most receive negligible notice, and even that is more than they deserve. These are the ones that serve no purpose but self-promotion. They add nothing to the conversation, and clog the blawgosphere like space junk orbiting the earth.
For some, this is all about scoring the “prospective client.” That’s not my perspective, and I’m no fan of self-promotional blawgs.
If you will re-read my original comment you’ll see that the point I made was that this person posting comments on the attorney’s behalf is most likely one of those $3/hr people claiming to be a virtual assistant when they’re not. This is not a virtual assistant and the fact that you insist on badmouthing the entire VA industry proves my point that these people give legitimate VAs a bad name.
I am a virtual assistant and I am a paralegal. I do work under the supervision of an attorney. I would never post comments on a blog identifying myself as the attorney.
Just like this Miami Lawyer’s actions separate him from decent attorneys, the spammer’s actions separate them from decent VAs.
So to say that an entire industry is a scam and a lie based on the actions of one person is ludicrous. Attorneys, of all people, should know that.
It’s the classic fallacy of inductive reasoning: I’m competent; I’m a paralegal; I’m a virtual assistant. Therefore, virtual assistants are competent paralegals.
I’m from New York; I have dark hair; I’m an attorney. Therefore, attorneys have dark hair and are from New York.
To say that an industry that is predicated upon publicly pretending to be someone you’re not, lacking the competencies to be the person they’re pretending to be, and doing so with as much frequency as the hourly wage will allow, is quite fair. Perhaps your issue is that you’ve characterized the people posting spam comments as Virtual Assistants, not me. You might want to revisit your effort to claim him as one of yours, and distinguish your definition fo VAs.
I have only spoken for myself in regards to virtual assistants as paralegals in response to your comment that VAs are not paralegals. Some are. I never said all of them are.
Again, if you re-read my original comment I stated that this spammer is NOT a virtual assistant, that they are probably claiming to be one. Not only am I NOT claiming him as “one of our own”, I stated that they are causing harm to the VA industry by using that label. I have never, not once, characterized them as virtual assistants. I said that they themselves were using the term and wrongfully so.
And to his own detriment, this Miami Lawyer has indeed harmed his reputation by not doing the research and trying to save money by using cheap labor. Assuming that the scenario I presented is true, he thought he was going to save money by outsourcing to another country for a few dollars per hour and what he got was junk.
I repeat: The person posting those comments is NOT a virtual assistant although they may have claimed to be. There are many, many competent paralegals out there who are now working virtually. Some of them may leave comments on blogs that are actually contributing to the topic and then identify themselves as “Mary Jones, Assistant to Attorney William Smith” with a link to Mr. Smith’s website. A true VLA would not leave illiterate, nonsensical comments claiming to BE the attorney. There is a BIG difference.
You’re responding as if I’ve said any virtual assistant can work for attorneys and posting comments pretending to be them is common when, in fact, I’ve said quite the opposite. This spammer does not represent the VA industry any more than that Miami Lawyer represents attorneys.
With that, I’m just going to leave the conversation because I feel like I am just repeating myself only to get the same reaction and there’s no point in that.
I’m sorry that you have such a poor impression of what exactly a Virtual Assistant is and what we do.
Think you could have made your reply any longer? There could be a reason why you feel you’re just repeating yourself. And it doesn’t work any better this time than it did any of the times you posted before.
I have been posting on sites for years without leaving my name. It is not a form of spam but rather a FORUM to post my woes about today’s society and today’s law. Hope you do not eliminate the “real” attorneys’ comments from the “paid by” impostors.
Let me explain how I see it. When you use a handle like “Arizona Lawyer” and link to your website, it’s presumptive advertising. If you have a real comment to post, rather than some nonsense comment like “great post,” I’ll leave the comment and delete the website or change the name.
You may want a forum, but if you want to play the adversiting game as well, then your forum will be elsewhere. No one has a right to comment here or link to a commercial website. And no one has a right to post a comment here if I find it problematic.
I had to start moderating all of our comments and forum entries across all of our sites because of comment spam. They mostly say the same thing, some version of butchered English that amounts to “I like this post, keep it up,” along with links out to attorneys from all over the country.
In addition to moderating our sites, I also have had to add “nofollow” tags as a deterrent, and then manually remove them at times when “nofollow” is not appropriate.
Attorneys just need to be educated about these kinds of sleazy “linking” campaigns. They need to recognize that if a “SEO” company that cold-calls them thinks it benefits them to post to a “nofollow” site and/or by using contextually irrelevant comments, then that company is just taking advantage of their greed and inexperience.
Most of this garbage comes from outside of the US. I get a lot from India, and surprisingly, from Australia. I have seriously considered using an IP database to ban all traffic from the countries that produce the largest number of offenders. A visitor in India is highly unlikely to benefit my attorneys anyways, right?