Apparently, my post about marketers efforts to  contort the language of lawyers to turn clients into consumers and potential clients into leads did some damage to the nice men and women who brought you “new and improved,” when they only changed the color of the box.  It certainly got  Charlie Green riled up enough to write a lengthy screed about the evil Greenfield.

When someone starts talking about being “responsible for the lives of others,” get your megalomania sniffer out.  Greenfield’s parallel here isn’t with doctoring—it’s with witch-doctoring.

In my experience, most law firms are still a long way from being touched by market forces, much less dominated by them.  The idea that marketing is in fundamental conflict with client service makes as much sense as an Ayn Rand Daycare Center.

Krugman integrates ethics and economics.  Greenfield is anti-integration when it comes to law and economics—there can be no compromise with the devil. Such intolerance, I find, is closely correlated with cases of the Hammer-Nail Syndrome.

I haven’t got much of a clue what Charlie’s ranting about either, as logical connections don’t seem to be his forte.  He just seems to make stuff up as he goes along, but then, that’s the nature of the beast.  Don’t assume, however, that there’s a village somewhere looking for its idiot.  Charlie’s no fool, his writing notwithstanding.  Charlie is a marketing consultant who goes by the name “Trust Advisors.”  It’s pure marketing genius, unlike the typical “new and improved” gang.  Charlie has set himself up as the arbiter of Trust, the final authority on how to sell lies with a straight face.

While his writing suggests that he doesn’t have the slightest clue what lawyers do, or the ethical constraints under which lawyers function, don’t be fooled.  It’s just part of the trick of circumventing the big brick wall that separates Charlie from money. To the marketer like Charlie, the rule of professional responsibility demonstrate megalomania; Any lawyer who fulfills his ethical obligations toward his clients is psychologically impaired.

While this won’t work well with any lawyer reasonably concerned with ethical rules, those aren’t the people Charlie’s out there sniffing for anyway.  What Charlie and his ilk want are the desperate lawyers, the ones looking for an excuse to ignore the responsibility to their clients.  You can trust Charlie.  He’s manufacture the excuse.  And here it is:

Professionalism must include ethics.  To me, that means treating our clients and patients as intelligent equals in a joint search to make things better in their part of the world. Your expertise is not a license to bloviate, much less to be respected for doing so.  Your expertise is an attribute that, if you treat clients decently, will be perceived as such and rightly so.

That means—let me spell it out—if you’re not proactively seeking opportunities to improve the world via your expertise, then you’re not behaving as a professional.

Charlie lapses into a rationalization that if a lawyer invented the cure for smallpox, then sat in his office waiting for smallpox sufferers to call, he would be unethical.  It’s a great point, aside from its total and bizarre disconnect with anything bearing on what lawyers do.  When is the last time you cured smallpox and didn’t tell anybody?

Of course, the image probably makes desperate lawyers feel not only justified in marketing themselves, but more important about themselves.  Imagine, curing smallpox! They’re society’s saviors, and all they had to do was market themselves!  Plus, they can scam a few unsuspecting clients out of some money at the same time!  Woo hoo!

Scott says he’s responsible for his clients’ lives.  I suggest that’s a bad rule for the rest of us.

We’re not responsible for our clients’ lives; they are.  Our job is to help them—not live their lives for them.

You have to give Charlie credit.  It takes huge cojones to argue that ethics = marketing.  So what if it means you have to close one eye, squint with the other, suspend all reason and just plain make stupid stuff up.  After all, it’s about marketing, and if you’re so desperate that you are willing to believe such nonsense, then Charlie is the guy you should trust.

But for the rest of the legal profession, take a hard look at Charlie’s apologia.  This is the crap marketers are trying to sell you, the effort to find out which lawyers are desperate and ignorant enough to embrace such nonsense. 

I’m looking forward to reading about the next lawyer who trusts Charlie, the one who’s been a lawyer for 12 minutes but is “highly experienced” and cured smallpox.  You can’t make this stuff up.  But Charlie can.