The economic opportunity on the internet, while still evolving, has one significant flaw.  There is a very low barrier for entry.  That means that almost anyone can start up a business online and make a go of it.  While this can present a vast opportunity for scammers and thieves, it similarly presents a bit of a problem for lawyers.

Almost daily, I receive an email about some new lawyer search website, spamming me about how it’s the Number 1 website to promote my practice.  Lately, the spam has come as emails thanking me for joining their Number 1 website.  Except, I don’t know who they are and I most assuredly haven’t joined. 

The business model is simple.  Put together a list of lawyer names and addresses from publicly available sources, mix in a basic search function, and you too can be the Number 1 lawyer search website on the internet.  After that, it’s just a struggle for SEO supremacy and some advertisements.  Lawyers are notorious at paying for advertisements if they can be sucked into believing that they will get business, whether it’s the yellow pages or the latest scummy effort like lawyersearch.com, whose 3 emails arrived yesterday.

Who’s the genius behind this latest scam?

Why was the site founded?
The site was founded by Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School graduates who kept receiving the same requests from their friends, family, and neighbors: Do you know a good lawyer in this practice area?

But not a name to be found.  Harvard really?  Not that it matters. 

Some will remember my thoughts about USLaw.com, the scummy website the skims blog content off RSS feeds to sell advertising on its site, under the theory that if they can steal it, it must be their right.  This new lawyersearch is such garbage that they’ve listed at least one dead lawyer from my cursory inspection.  I’m fairly certain that he didn’t join from the grave.

So why should we care that these entrepreneurs are skimming our content, taking out name, capitalizing off our existence to manufacture an enterprise?  This is America, the land of opportunity.  Shouldn’t every slacker be entitled to make a cheap buck off his effort to join the many others before him with the same idea?

To the person who finds your name on the website of some scum, along with his promises and representations, whether they be free consultations, brilliance or success, you are now perpetually tainted by whatever characterizations and representations that this entrepreneur, a total stranger to you, has imposed.  For the poor reader who came upon your name through that website, it is no different than if you spoke the words yourself.  You may not bear any responsibility whatsoever for the misinformation, but you are nonetheless tainted as far as the reader is concerned.

I googled myself today, and see that I am listed on many, perhaps hundreds, of legal directories.  One might suppose that I am deeply engaging in marketing, getting my name listed wherever possible.  I’m not.  I don’t have a clue how I got there, but there I am.  Much of the information is wrong, but it’s still there. 

If nothing else, it gives the impression that I have sought to promote my availability to the public.  I don’t see voices raised to inform the public that the lawyers listed in these low-entry-barrier scams have nothing to do with them, don’t endorse them, would prefer that they disappear off the face of the internet.   Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this is a problem?

But I did not join your “club” and do not support your efforts.  I don’t care how wonderful you think you are, what an important and valuable service you believe you are offering to the public (with a mere side of self-serving profit for yourself using my name).  I am not part of your path to financial independence, and the fact that I can be easily found online, or that I have an RSS feed available to readers, does not mean that you are entitled to build your business on my coattails.

I am not a member of your club.  I do not want to be a member of your club.  Leave me out of your scam. 

And to other lawyers, consider what your inadvertent inclusion in these lawyer search websites means for your integrity and public perception.  This has grown far out of control, and every lawyer whose name shows up in these scummy websites is presented as every bit as scummy as the low-threshold entrepreneur.  Is that who you want to be?  Think about it.