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“Exclusive Attorneys”: Lies, More Lies, Still More Lies, and a DR Violation">“Exclusive Attorneys”: Lies, More Lies, Still More Lies, and a DR Violation

Bryant Valdes to MWB, 1 April 2010:

Mr. Ben­nett:
I tried reach­ing you by phone and you were unavail­able, so I decided to write you an email. I found your Law Firm on local.yahoo.com. I am with a com­pany called Exclu­sive Attor­neys. We are NOT a refer­ral ser­vice. We chose your name because we are cur­rently look­ing for just one rep­utable law firm that can han­dle all of Har­ris County or some of the sur­round­ing Coun­ties, exclu­sively for the Crim­i­nal Defense & Dui clients that are vis­it­ing our site. I wanted to see if you or your firm were look­ing to gen­er­ate any new cases this year?
The way we work is very dif­fer­ent from other online com­pa­nies. We only look for ONE attor­ney per county/State instead of putting you on a list with hun­dreds like Find Law, Lawyers.com, yellowpages.com, etc. ExclusiveAttorneys.com is guar­an­teed to be found on the first page of Google when you type in key­words such as: Crim­i­nal Defense Lawyer, Drug Crime Lawyer, Mur­der Lawyer, Drunk Dri­ving Lawyer etc… Once a poten­tial client is at our web­site, it prompts them to enter in the County of where they are look­ing for a lawyer. If they select Har­ris County, it will route the client directly to your firm’s web­site exclu­sively, hav­ing the client call­ing you directly.

etc.

Lie Num­ber One: that Mr. Valdes “Tried reach­ing me by phone and I was unavail­able.” I wasn’t unavail­able, I log all incom­ing calls, and he never called. “Exclu­sive Attor­neys” is spam­ming thou­sands of lawyers, pre­tend­ing that they’re putting more effort into it than they are.

I’ve writ­ten before about the lies that mar­keters tell to try to get lawyers on the phone. If they’ll do it for their busi­ness, they’ll do it for yours; when you let mar­keters lie on your behalf, your license hangs in the bal­ance (and it should).

Lie num­ber two: “ExclusiveAttorneys.com is guar­an­teed to be found on the first page of Google….” Try it now: Google “Crim­i­nal Defense Lawyer” (with or with­out quotes). I did, and Exclu­sive Attor­neys is not in the first five pages of results. “Drunk Dri­ving Lawyer”? Same result. “Drug Crime Lawyer” and “Mur­der Lawyer”? Zip. Some guarantee.

So this, their core prod­uct, “Our web­site is found on the first page of Google, and when a poten­tial client comes to our web­site, we route them directly to you,” is a lie.

Lie num­ber three: “we are NOT a refer­ral ser­vice.” If poten­tial clients inquire about a lawyer in a par­tic­u­lar county and you refer them to a par­tic­u­lar lawyer, you are a refer­ral ser­vice. You’re not a very good refer­ral ser­vice, and you’re not a legal refer­ral ser­vice (about which more later), but you’re a refer­ral service.

Lie num­ber four: “We chose your firm because we are cur­rently look­ing for just one rep­utable law firm….” Exclu­sive Attor­neys chose your firm because you were on a list of lawyers, and they’re look­ing for a sucker to send them money.

Bryant Valdes to MWB, 11 August 2011 (and 11 August, and 16 August…seven times in all):

RE: May I give you a call?

or

RE: Look­ing for a crim­i­nal lawyer

or

RE: crim­i­nal defense, dui clients

or

RE: I’m look­ing for a crim­i­nal defense lawyer

[Lies num­ber 2–4 repeated, except that instead of look­ing for a rep­utable law firm they are now just look­ing for a law firm, they don’t use the word “guar­an­tee” in con­nec­tion with Google place­ment, and the pitch is for Florida coun­ties rather than Texas—I joined FACDL, and Exclu­sive Attor­neys some­how got my email address in con­nec­tion with Florida practice.]

Lie num­ber five: “RE:” I sus­pect that this is an effort to a) get past spam fil­ters; or b) get a busy lawyer to open the email, think­ing that it’s part of an ongo­ing conversation.

“I’m look­ing for a crim­i­nal defense lawyer” isn’t really a lie, but it isn’t the whole truth either. A criminal-defense lawyer is more likely to open an email with that sub­ject than one with the sub­ject, “I want to sell you online advertising.”

Manny Mar­tinez to var­i­ous Hous­ton criminal-defense lawyers, 12 Octo­ber 2011:

My name is Manny. I was email­ing you because I found your firm online and I was look­ing for lawyer in Hous­ton that han­dles Crim­i­nal Defense. It’s not a spe­cific case for me. I’m with a com­pany called Exclu­sive Attor­neys and I promise you that we are not a refer­ral ser­vice or a direc­tory like Find­Law, Lawyers.com or any other online company.

.…

Many Coun­ties are already reserved in Texas for Crim­i­nal Defense, but we just opened the mar­ket in Hous­ton which is why I am con­tact­ing you today.

Lie num­ber six: “We just opened the mar­ket in Hous­ton.” We know that this is a lie because Bryant Valdes was try­ing to sell Exclu­sive Attor­neys’ ser­vice in Hous­ton eigh­teen months ago.

So imag­ine that you’re a criminal-defense lawyer who wants more busi­ness in Hous­ton, and you get this email from Manny Mar­tinez or Bryant Valdes. And imag­ine that it doesn’t mat­ter to you that they’re lying to get your atten­tion, it doesn’t mat­ter to you that the lies start in the sub­ject line. Imag­ine that it doesn’t mat­ter to you whether the peo­ple mar­ket­ing your prac­tice online are liars and char­la­tans. In other words, imag­ine you’re an uneth­i­cal bas­tard and, as long as it’s not going to get you dis­barred, you’re okay with a lit­tle decep­tion. Imag­ine fur­ther that it doesn’t mat­ter to you that their promises about their prod­uct fail to stand up to even a quick Google search. Not only are you an uneth­i­cal bas­tard, but you’re a cred­u­lous uneth­i­cal bastard.

Say­ing that some­thing is not a refer­ral ser­vice does not make it so.

Texas Gov­ern­ment Code Sec­tion 952.002:

(1)  “Lawyer refer­ral ser­vice” means a per­son or the ser­vice pro­vided by the per­son that refers poten­tial clients to lawyers regard­less of whether the per­son uses the term “refer­ral ser­vice” to describe the ser­vice provided.

Does Exclu­sive Attor­neys refer poten­tial clients to lawyers? You bet. They do it two dif­fer­ent ways. Like this:

and like this:

ExclusiveAttorneys.com, which takes an inquiry from a poten­tial client and refers that per­son to a par­tic­u­lar lawyer, is a refer­ral service.

In Texas a lawyer can­not par­tic­i­pate in a refer­ral ser­vice that does not com­ply with the require­ments of Chap­ter 952 of the Texas Occu­pa­tions Code. So a lawyer who uses Exclu­sive Attor­neys is in vio­la­tion of Rule 7.08 of the Dis­ci­pli­nary Rules.

Sup­pose that Messrs. Valdes and Mar­tinez were cor­rect, and Exclu­sive Attor­neys were not a refer­ral ser­vice. There’s a State Bar Ethics Opin­ion, Num­ber 573, deal­ing with online ser­vices that might look a lit­tle bit like refer­ral ser­vices but are adver­tis­ing. I dis­cussed it here in con­nec­tion with the eth­i­cal prob­lems with Legal­Match. Among other things such a ser­vice must, in order to pass muster, not

unrea­son­ably limit or restrict, either directly or by means of a high fee struc­ture, finely drawn geo­graphic areas and legal prac­tice areas, or oth­er­wise, the num­ber of lawyers it allows to par­tic­i­pate for a given geo­graphic area or legal prac­tice area to such an extent that the Ser­vice in effect is refer­ring par­tic­u­lar types of poten­tial clients to par­tic­u­lar lawyers.

Exclu­sive Attor­neys fails to com­ply with that part of Opin­ion 573. The ser­vice is—not only in effect but by design—referring par­tic­u­lar types of poten­tial clients (they would prob­a­bly say “leads”) to par­tic­u­lar lawyers. That’s the whole point of the ser­vice, as Valdes and Martinez’s emails make abun­dantly clear. (“Unrea­son­ably?” if lim­it­ing the num­ber of lawyers to one is not unrea­son­able, then noth­ing is.)

So even if Bryant Valdes and Manny Mar­tinez were cor­rect, and ExclusiveAttorneys.com were not a refer­ral ser­vice, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ser­vice would vio­late the Texas Dis­ci­pli­nary Rules.

(Because this bull­shit will con­tinue until lawyers stop out­sourc­ing their mar­ket­ing, here’s a list of Texas lawyers who, accord­ing to Mr. Mar­tinez, par­tic­i­pate in ExclusiveAttorneys.com:

  • Coby Wooten has the Dal­las area for Per­sonal Injury and has already renewed 3 years in a row.
  • Bai­ley & Galyen have the Dal­las area for Business/Corporate Law.
  • Tom Thur­low recently took over Per­sonal Injury in the Hous­ton area.

)
 

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This entry was posted by on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 3:43 pm 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

6 Responses to ““Exclusive Attorneys”: Lies, More Lies, Still More Lies, and a DR Violation”

  1. Alex Bunin says:
    14 October 2011 at 4:26 pm

    You got one too? And I thought I was exclu­sive. I am so disappointed.

    Reply
  2. Brian McGiverin says:
    15 October 2011 at 9:41 am

    The plain­tiff rests?

    Reply
  3. Tanner Andrews says:
    15 October 2011 at 5:07 pm

    Glad it is in Texas. In Florida, if I knew of some­one par­tic­i­pat­ing in such a ser­vice, I’d be oblig­ated to report it to the state bar.

    Reply
    • Mark Bennett says:
      15 October 2011 at 8:35 pm

      If you wanted to find them, it wouldn’t be dif­fi­cult. Go to exclusiveattorneys.com and look for a CDL in the Pan­han­dle, between Miami-Dade and St. Lucia, or in Hills­bor­ough, Orange, Semi­nole, Nas­sau, Duval, Clay or St. Johns Counties.

      Reply
      • Tanner Andrews says:
        18 October 2011 at 8:20 am

        In that case, I hope that fail­ing to explore their web site does not con­sti­tute will­ful blind­ness to vio­la­tions. Because I have not seen the desk under all that paper at any point dur­ing the cur­rent administration.

        Reply

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