Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

“On Behalf Of”">“On Behalf Of”

FindLaw’s lat­est mar­ket­ing gam­bit: “blogs” for lawyers, using lightly-reworked (as in, “para­phrased so that a par­tic­u­larly stu­pid high school fresh­man might turn it in as orig­i­nal work and then be sur­prised to get an F”) news sto­ries, pub­lished “on behalf” of the lawyers pay­ing for the mar­ket­ing. A few exam­ples (if the link doesn’t work, go to blogsearch.google.com and search for “on behalf of” crim­i­nal defense or “on behalf of” per­sonal injury).

Despite my (and oth­ers’) evan­ge­lism against Find­Law, one of my fel­low Hous­ton criminal-defense lawyers has been suck­ered in; the blog (nofol­low link, of course) is here.

Para­phrased news sto­ries are not orig­i­nal work. Since the bot­tom of each post has a link to the orig­i­nal, they are arguably not pla­gia­rized, but why go to the trou­ble of para­phras­ing the orig­i­nal if not to decep­tively con­ceal the lack of originality?

Pay­ing for Find­Law to exe­cute words “on behalf of” your des­per­ate need to make a dol­lar may not be uneth­i­cal, but it’s ugly, and when you go to a party you can do as much harm to your rep­u­ta­tion by hav­ing a bowel move­ment in the foyer as by steal­ing your host’s silver.

These lawyers get closer to steal­ing the sil­ver when they pay Find­Law to pub­lish things not on their behalf but as them; even the Find­Law blogs’ first-person “wel­come” posts con­tain boil­er­plate text.

For exam­ple, my colleague’s “Wel­come to My Hous­ton, Texas, Crim­i­nal Defense Law Blog” post begins, “If you have been charged with a felony or mis­de­meanor, you want an expe­ri­enced crim­i­nal defense lawyer to pro­tect your con­sti­tu­tional rights”; Find­Law has used the same lan­guage (or a near para­phrase) for criminal-defense lawyers in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton; Huntsville, Alabama; White Plains, New York; Albu­querque, New Mex­ico; and Maryland.

(In the “small world” cat­e­gory, Find­Law used the same “pro­vide you with a clear assess­ment of your options” lan­guage for my Hous­ton col­league as for a friend of mine who defends crim­i­nal cases in Kin­ston, North Carolina.)

My Hous­ton friend’s blog says:

I set up this blog to pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion to any­one in and around Hous­ton who has ques­tions or con­cerns about a crim­i­nal mat­ter. I will make reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions to the blog, post­ing arti­cles on a wide range of issues, including …

An Atlanta crim­i­nal defense lawyer’s Find­Law blog says:

I set up this blog to pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion to any­one in the Atlanta area charged with a state or fed­eral crime. I will post arti­cles to the blog on a reg­u­lar basis, address­ing such top­ics as …

A Lake County, Illi­nois DWI lawyer’s Find­Law blog says:

I set up this blog to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to peo­ple who have ques­tions about license rein­state­ment, traf­fic and DUI offenses in Illi­nois. I will make reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions to this blog, pro­vid­ing arti­cles on a wide range of top­ics, including …

When you out­source your mar­ket­ing, you out­source your ethics. You also out­source your rep­u­ta­tion. How many times does Find­Law have to screw up before lawyers real­ize that they do not want to entrust their rep­u­ta­tions to that company?

I won­der what Find­Law is promis­ing these folks.

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This entry was posted by on Friday, October 22nd, 2010 at 11:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

2 Responses to ““On Behalf Of””

  1. Justin T. says:
    22 October 2010 at 1:32 pm

    I gen­er­ally try to put enough pro­fan­ity and inanity into my blog writ­ing that no one will be tempted to pla­gia­rize it. So far it seems to have worked. Then again, I usu­ally don’t write about any­thing impor­tant or inter­est­ing enough to war­rant the temp­ta­tion of plagiarism.

    Reply
  2. Charles B. "Brad" Frye says:
    24 October 2010 at 10:18 pm

    Unfor­tu­nately, Mark, I wasn’t smart enough to do my own research and start read­ing your blog before my expe­ri­ence with Find­law.
    I won­der how these guys will react when (some­day) they dis­cover WordPress?

    Reply

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