Some of you are aware of a cottage industry whereby “entrepreneurs” scrape the websites of local law enforcement, put mugshots on the web, and then, for a small but tasty fee will take them down when an aggrieved individual complains. I wrote about this last year (as did Scott Greenfield, see also Reuters).

No, I don’t know how such people can live with themselves by creating misery for others just so they can turn a buck. But that is only a secondary point of this post.

As first reported by the New York Law Journal ($), a New York judge shot down the Freedom of Information request of Kyle Prall, who owns one of those extortion-like sites. In Prall v. New York City Department of Corrections, Justice Darrell Gavrin denied the request, which came to her attention when Prall sued for the information after being denied by the Department of Corrections.

The website, BustedMugshots.com (no link, no juice),publishes the names, addresses, dates of birth, arrest records and photos of inmates. The charge is $68 to have the data removed.

Given the problems with identify theft and the fact that much of the information is private, the court ruled that the Department did not act in an arbitrary and capricious manner in using the magic word ‘no.” The court wrote that the Department of Corrections:

demonstrated a particularized and specific justification for withholding the dates of birth and addresses of inmates. Respondents assert that the dates of birth and addresses of inmates are not relevant or essential to their work, as it is primarily charged with the duty of detaining inmates and preparing them for successful reentry into the community. This personal information has been reported to respondents in confidence and the information is not relevant to the ordinary work of the New York City Department of Corrections.

…

In view of the privacy interests at stake, disclosure of the records of respondents containing dates of birth and home addresses, and other personal information of inmates could easily be used to facilitate identity theft, thereby resulting in both economic and personal hardship to inmates. The dates of birth of inmates, who enjoy a lesser degree of privacy, have been protected from disclosure under FOIL. The decision of respondents to deny petitioner access to dates of birth and addresses of inmates was not arbitrary and capricious nor was it an abuse of discretion.[citations omitted for blog post]

And Prall didn’t get the pictures either, and that was based on his own conduct in trying to use the information to inflict harm. As much as I hate using block quotes from opinions

As to that branch of the petition which seeks photographs, respondents properly withheld photographs of inmates as the disclosure would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy resulting in personal and/or economic hardship to inmates. Specifically, respondents contend that “the department is not privy to the circumstances surrounding any trials, court appearances, and possible cooperation with enforcement” and the release of inmate photographs could expose them to harm. Furthermore, inmates will suffer economic hardship if their photographs are released because petitioner intends to post these photographs on his website and then demand a $68.00 fee to remove each photograph. Given the earning capacity of inmates, the $68.00 fee is quite steep. If the fee is not paid, an inmate’s photograph and other information will remain on the website, causing personal and economic hardship due to the notorious nature of the photograph which would be readily available to a prospective employer, creditor, potential landlord, or the like.

Respondents also claim inmate photographs are exempt from FOIL disclosure because disclosure will endanger the lives and safety of inmates and their family members. In support of their argument, respondents submitted the affidavit of E. Perez, Assistant Chief of Security for Department of Corrections. Mr. Perez states that he has more than 20 years experience and explains that the majority of violence in jails is gang-related. He opines that the release of photographs of inmates would increase gang violence targeted at inmates and their family members. Personal information such as names, addresses and photographs of gang members in jail, which is ordinarily not available to gang members outside the prisons, would be more readily available through exposure on the internet; this exposure would endanger the lives and safety of inmates. Interestingly, petitioner did not rebut the affidavit of Mr. Perez.

The only real question I have on this, why would a lawyer be a party do such a scummy project, whose only purpose is the creation of misery so that someone can profit? In this case Prall was represented by John Campbell of Tilem & Campbell. It is one thing to represent someone bad who’s been arrested, but assist him in creating misery by representing him in a civil suit?  As I wrote just yesterday, you have to learn to say no to potential clients.

The call comes in a thousand iterations. It often looks something like this, with my quick analysis in parenthesis:

My kid was hurt on the playground. Is there anything I should do? (Parent wants to know they did everything possible for the child.)

Could my spouse’s disease have been treated earlier? (Spouse wants to know they did everything possible.)

Someone said mean things about me on the Internet that are defamatory, can you help me? (Rage, often justifiable.)

That car ran a light and almost injured me. (Almost doesn’t count.)

You know where this is going, right? Lawyers that work on contingency receive all kinds of calls; they may be from the “how much is this worth” crowd, but quite often the motivation is emotional, not financial.

The word every lawyer needs to know is this: No. Say it out loud, say it again, say it often.

Part of the reason is because taking poorly vetted cases will drive the lawyer to bankruptcy. But also important is to save the potential client from themselves. A few minutes explaining the Streisand Effect, for instance, may make perfectly clear to the potential defamation litigant why that cease and desist order may catastrophically backfire.

When the injured person is a child, saying no isn’t particularly easy. Especially when you have your own and can truly empathize. But the ill-taken case will almost always lead to disappointment, making not only your situation worse, but theirs.

Interestingly, the most common response to the the word no is gratitude. The potential litigant simply didn’t know what was involved or how things worked or called because a friend insisted, or simply needed to know that they did all they could under the circumstances. Most people are appreciative when a clear response comes back.

I’m  asked, every so often, if I could be a juror in a personal injury case.  Defendants would no doubt want to boot me from the jury ASAP assuming I would be overly sympathetic and would have a tough time saying no to an injured litigant. But that would only be because they don’t know how much experience I have at turning people away.

No is the most important word. Use it and use it often.

Former Senator and V.P candidate John Edwards is, it seems, returning to the law. As per CNN:

Former Sen. John Edwards is looking to open a new law firm this September, a source told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

The firm will be based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and will focus on plaintiff work, the source said. Before entering politics, Edwards was a nationally known attorney who specialized in representing plaintiffs in medical malpractice, personal injury and product liability lawsuits, earning millions.

On the one hand, he would return to a field he knows best. He was obviously comfortable earning his bread in the courtroom well.  The knee jerk reaction of many is likely to be that this is the job he should have.

But when someone writes “On the one hand” then you know another hand is about to throw the opposing view. And that will come from me.

If his job is to stick his name on the firm and make the rain and manage the firm, I see no problem. But if he wants to actually appear in front of a jury again, I think he brings too much baggage to do it well.

Trial lawyers, whether we like it or not, are perceived by many jurors as almost the same as a witness. Of course we aren’t and of course the judge tells jurors that “what the lawyers say isn’t evidence,” but what happens when the person standing in front of the jury doesn’t have credibility? We do, after all, have to make arguments that we hope to be persuasive, and human nature is to more readily accept arguments from people that we like.

On the criminal defense side, a lawyer can, perhaps, be a bit outspoken and a bit bombastic if s/he wants, the way William Kunstler was and his protege Ron Kuby is. But criminal defense lawyers don’t have the burden of proof and only need to convince one juror to save the client from the gray bar hotel. It gives them, in the eyes of some, a bit more elbow room to be a big personality.

Plaintiff lawyers in civil suits, however, have the burden of proof. We can’t afford quite as easily to have have a couple jurors dislike us. In New York, for example, we need five out of six jurors to persevere.

This is the reason many lawyers try so hard to ingratiate themselves to jurors during selection, trying to bond with them over similar ideas and likes. I think it looks horribly superficial and don’t do that, and keep things as straight and narrow as possible. I refuse to dumb things down. My one concession that I do make regarding the issue of being liked, is to wear boring suits so as not to offend.

Now we return to John Edwards. He brings with him tons of baggage. Many people don’t like him, for reasons that go beyond political differences. Like the kid he had with his mistress and lying to his dying wife. Or the circumstances that led to felony indictments over campaign contribution issues. It doesn’t matter that much that he was found not guilty of one and the jury hung on the others. People formed opinions.

There may be no shortage of people willing to say they can be fair that will look down their nose at anything he says. His credibility vanished years ago.

So as a rainmaker or law office manager, yeah, he can do that. But for the sake of the clients, he shouldn’t come near a jury.

(hat tip, Overlawyered)

It is unlikely that the name Robert Israel means much to many of my readers. But if you are a practicing personal injury lawyer in New York, it means a whole lot. And the fact that he was just placed on probation for professional misconduct means a whole lot more.

Dr. Israel has been, for many years, one of the most frequent orthopedists that defense firms and insurance companies turn to for medical-legal exams. These are done so that the defendants get an “independent” view of a plaintiff’s injuries, apart from the opinions of the treating doctors. Then he comes in to testify.  It’s fair to say that he has far more experience in the courtroom then the vast majority of attorneys in the country.

How many litigation exams has he done? When I cross-examined him five years ago, he said he was doing 30 of these exams per week; 1,500  per year. Robert Israel Cross (page 20).  He’s testified hundreds of times, and never for a plaintiff unless it was his own patient (page 33). That is a stunning business that also has a remarkable impact on those who’ve brought suit for personal injuries.

And what was he placed on probation for? Well, I wouldn’t be writing this post if it was for getting drunk and tossing his skivvies at a cop. That would be wholly unrelated to his practice and, I think, a cheap shot.

No, he was sanctioned because of his conduct doing these types of “independent” medical exams, which are more properly referred to as Defense Medical Exams.  (Because the docs that do these things aren’t being selected by the court.)

As per the charges against him, it all deals with his conduct performing these medical-legal exams by failing to take adequate, accurate and complete medical histories and by failing to note accurate, complete and appropriate physical exams. This is, as it happens, directly in accord with the testimony I took from him where he botched (deliberately or not, I don’t know) the history of my client, making statements of things that were never claimed in the lawsuit.

(By coincidence, I blogged that trial in day-in-the-life format in 2008. This was part one.)

How many victims were turned out of court due to Dr. Robert Israel’s misconduct?  Only he knows. Maybe. Will anyone turned out of court due to questionable testimony he gave sue him? Intriguing question, glad you asked.

As per the three-year probation agreement that he consented to, online here, he agrees that his:

…license to practice medicine in New York State shall be limited to preclude me from engaging in any practice as an Independent Medical Examiner as of March 2013. I shall not contract or agree to perform, nor perform Independent Medical Examinations.

<long low whistle>

Now here is a big legal issue for all those defense firms and insurance companies that thought they were being so smart in hiring Dr. Israel: The consent order does not preclude him from testifying. He can’t be an examiner for the next three years for sure, but the examination part is done. His records and reports (for what they are worth) are already made. There is no reason he can’t testify, other than the fact he will be (justifiably) torn to bits. But being torn to bits is not the same as being unavailable to testify.

That means there’s a good chance they will all be stuck with him. The insurance companies got the benefit of his exams previously and now they will get the downside. Karma. Sleeping with the devil. Laying down with dogs and picking up fleas. Choose your metaphor or proverb.

Will a judge allow the insurance companies to take a mulligan on the medical-legal exams? Will a plaintiff respond by saying, hey, if you don’t like the guy, let’s re-open all those cases where Dr. Israel previously testified?

Now if a doctor that performed an exam dies or becomes incapacitated during litigation, they would be entitled to another exam since s/he would be unavailable. But Dr. Israel is still available and is not precluded from his regular practice as an orthopedist.

The order goes  into effect this Friday, June 7th.

So apparently there was a panel discussion held by 500+ lawyer firm Edwards Wildman Palmer on potential liability for the Boston Marathon bombings. You can read an article about it in the National Law Journal here, but this is the lede:

Government agencies probably won’t face much liability from those physically or fiscally harmed by the Boston Marathon bombings, but the race sponsors could prove vulnerable depending on the terms of their insurance policies.

No, they didn’t invite me to participate. But given that I do personal injury work, have run my share of marathons (including two Bostons and 13 New Yorks), and am the founder and race director of a popular 1/2 marathon race, I figure this subject is pretty damn close to my wheelhouse.

So here’s the answer on potential liability: No. As in, it won’t happen, no way, no how, you gotta be kidding me, and I can’t believe there was actually a panel discussion regarding it. Was someone just looking to create topics to burnish their CLE credentials? Did someone need to buff the old resume a bit?

OK, enough snark, this is the reason there won’t be liability: You simply can’t control a 26.2 mile race course in a free society that rambles along public streets in a big city. It’s hard enough just stopping locals from colliding with runners as they push strollers across the course trying to get to breakfast/church/stores; there is no way to control it all.

The cost of trying to implement such control is prohibitive both in cost — all those cops don’t come cheap and someone has to pay for them — and in freedom. We don’t charge people $5,000 to run races and we don’t turn our cities into police states in order to stage events that are designed as communal celebrations of life.

Will there be some changes in big events? Sure. We saw a bunch after the September 11 attack (runners can only bring clear bags into the athletes village at the start and they are subject to search, for example), and we saw some recently in a race Central Park, but this will not stop a determined bomber who will simply find another spot on the route, or a mass transit vehicle, or restaurant or bar, etc. You can’t protect it all, just ask the Israelis.

So BigLaw thinks this is worth a panel discussion. But if calls came to my SmallLaw office from a potential client, they would be unlikely to get get their feet in the door.

(hat tip Overlawyered)

Well, you don’t see this every day — a lawyer trying a medical malpractice case passes out in court. Then the doctor that he sued rushes in to assist him. All in front of the jury.

The lawyer in question is Louisville, Kentucky’s Hans Poppe. You can see the video here, as the lawyers are at the bench discussing defendants’ motion for a mistrial.

The case arose from the negligent removal of a cervical collar that had stabilized a patient’s neck after an auto collision, with the patient then being rendered a quadriplegic. He subsequently died from infections at a long-term care facility. The defendants are the surgeon, Dr. Ryan LeGrand, and University of Louisville Hospital.

Aside from the human-interest element of a lawyer fainting and the defendant doctor rushing to assist, there’s an interesting legal issue here.

The defendants had moved for a mistrial because, on day 10 of the trial,  Poppe had played a portion of videotape deposition that mentioned liability insurance. This part was supposed to be edited out. (Many potential jurors ask the insurance question during the selection process, and we are, of course, forbidden to answer. It is deemed to be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant and not relevant to the issues.)

Poppe said that it was inadvertent that the unedited video was used; the defendants claim he did it on purpose to cause a mistrial because the trial wasn’t going well for him. Then the defendants asked for a whopping $125,000 in sanctions and fees, an astounding amount for a malpractice trial and one that strains the bounds of credibility to me.

What is most interesting, however, is that the point of whether the video-malpractice was intentional or not is actually moot in many respects. And that is because a mistrial would have been necessary anyway after the doctor rushed forward, in the presence of the jury, to assist. Life can be funny sometimes and this is one of those times.

I had a couple questions about all this, so I called Poppe. First off, he said that he fainted from lack of sleep, food and water — a situation anyone that ever stood in the well of the courtroom trying a case can relate to. Walking the proverbial high wire in front of  a jury can be enormously stressful, and the vast majority of lawyers can’t/won’t do it.

I asked if the defendants claimed the fainting was a ruse of some kind, and he said that no such allegation was ever made. It would seem, then, that a mistrial was going to happen regardless of the jurors learning about the insurance.

Finally, about that huge $125K request? He said that the hospital had three lawyers on the case. That is virtually unheard of where I come from in a medical malpractice case, and where I come from is lawyer-central. If there are any “extra” lawyers in cases here they are likely to be young ‘uns who are not there to participate, but to watch and learn.

Of course, if the judge thinks Poppe did this on purpose then a sanction might be forthcoming, but I have to assume that a judge would be viewing the entire conduct of the 10 day trial. An isolated act is likely to be forgiven; repeated acts might well be viewed with a different eye. But because the playing of the unedited video would ultimately be unrelated to the need for a mistrial, it seems the mammoth request for fees will be denied.

In any event, a quirky factual scenario with the fainting/assisting, what appears to be a serious legal issue regarding insurance mostly rendered moot by subsequent events, and a defense team with a legal meter apparently running so fast it’s hard to see the numbers fly by.

As I said, you just don’t see that every day.

Photo Brian Pounds; Stamford Advocate

This post asks lots of questions; it doesn’t necessarily answer them. It might make a decent bar exam question.

At 6 pm last Friday, a Metro-North commuter rail train derailed and was then hit by another one in Bridegeport, CT. Many injured, and thankfully no one killed.

For those that don’t know, this is the busiest commuter railroad in the nation connecting New York City’s Grand Central Terminal with numerous points north (up into New York) and east (into Connecticut). I ride this system almost every day, on the same line where the collision took place, but closer to the city and thus unaffected.

This is a New York train system, with Connecticut owning its the rails and stations on its turf and Metro-North maintaining the entire thing.

Enter, stage right, the lawyers, many of whom would like to sign up the cases, especially since the National Transportation Safety Board will do all the hard work of investigating, and no one can blame the injured passengers.

That means it’s time for some folks to advertise. I’ve written on this subject many times in the past, in the wake of a Metrolink accident in California, a plane crash in the Hudson River and in Buffalo and a Staten Island Ferry collision with a pier. Do Attorney Anti-Solicitation Rules Work? (A Brief Analysis of Three Disasters)

I did a quick search and, it didn’t take me too long, stumbled on a YouTube ad for the firm of Proner and Proner. A screen grab is to the left. The video part is generic lawyer advertising about what they do and how long they have done it. You will not be impressed.

But.

The web copy under the YouTube ad, posted the same day as the derailment/collision, says:

Metro North Train Accident Bridgeport, CT (866) 209-4366 Connecticut Lawsuit Settlement

And as you can see in the right side bar of the YouTube commercial, there seem to be five such ads. They all appear identical, except for different keywords used in the titles. The law firm marketeers were obviously all over this.

By way of background, before you read the question below, this is New York’s 30-day anti-solicitation rule:

Rule 4.5(a) In the event of a specific incident involving potential claims for personal injury or wrongful death, no unsolicited communication shall be made to an individual injured in the incident or to a family member or legal representative of such an individual, by a lawyer or law firm, or by any associate, agent, employee or other representative of a lawyer or law firm representing actual or potential defendants or entities that may defend and/or indemnify said defendants, before the 30th day after the date of the incident, unless a filing must be made within 30 days of the incident as a legal prerequisite to the particular claim, in which case no unsolicited communication shall be made before the 15th day after the date of the incident.

So here are today’s questions, given that this is an accident in Connecticut, not far from the New York border. One train was headed toward New York and one was coming from here:

1.  Which rules on solicitation and advertising govern?  New York has its 30-day anti-solicitation rule for mass accidents. The site of the collision is Connecticut. Do the rules differ depending on the location of the lawyer, the victim or the incident?

2.   Proner and Proner claims to have five offices in New York,  and one in Connecticut.  Yet their website, which I won’t link to, lists only two lawyers. Yeah, I smell marketeers at work here also trying to make a small firm look big. Must they comply with New York’s anti-solicitation rules as they race after Connecticut clients?

3.  Metro-North is a public benefit corporation incorporated in New York.

4.  Is there any doubt the ads target New Yorkers (in addition to others)?

An interesting bit about our rules is that there is a separate area that defines solicitation is (Rule 7.3), making no mention of the location of the client, the defendant or the incident:

Rule 7.3(b)  For purposes of this Rule, “solicitation” means any advertisement initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm that is directed to, or targeted at, a specific recipient or group of recipients, or their family members or legal representatives, the primary purpose of which is the retention of the lawyer or law firm, and a significant motive for which is pecuniary gain. It does not include a proposal or other writing prepared and delivered in response to a specific request of a prospective client.

And in another that rule proscribing solicitation there is a separate part that is specific to soliciting people in New York:

Rule 7.3(c) A solicitation directed to a recipient in this State shall be subject to the following provisions:

Does that mean that the 30-day rule is for those admitted in New York, regardless of whether the client is in New York?

The thought of this law firm (probably more, I didn’t look) racing on the very day of the collision to get its advertising up and running, no doubt while rescue was still underway, reminds me of the Staten Island Ferry collision of 2011 that killed 11. There were law firms, at the time, racing to put ads in the Staten Island Advance before the late afternoon deadline on the day it happened. People were still trapped on board the vessel. It was just that type of unseemly conduct that gave rise to New York’s 30-day rule.

Will Proner and Proner, or another firm, be the poster child for yet more regulation? I don’t know, but I also have no doubt that an investigation would find much, much more going on than the small snapshot that I write about today.

On a final note, this type of conduct takes places with only a very few firms. Yet, as with most things, it is the outlier actions of the few that tarnish the image of the majority.

My two drachmas for the day.

OK, the Rakofsky v. Internet decision is in, and the motions to dismiss were all granted. The motion for sanctions was denied. (Your familiarity with the facts will be assumed.) You can read a variety of opinions on the subject here: Simple Justice, Techdirt, Popehat, Lawyernomics, Philly Law Blog, My Shingle.

But I’m not writing to rehash the opinion (Here, if you want to read it). I’m writing instead because of the bizarre scenario that occurred where I wore three different hats. And to give my thoughts on standing my ground in this fight.

First I was a blogger that mentioned Rakofsky in a post about attorney advertising.

Then I was a defamation defendant telling him to go shit in a hat after he sued me for stating my opinion, along with a gazillion others.

And then I was local counsel for 35 defendants (16 authors). Almost all of them were highly opinionated attorneys, had law blogs, and knew perfectly well how to stand on their own two feet in the well of the courtroom. (Client list) There wasn’t a flinching fawn anywhere in this group.

I took the gig as local counsel because I assumed it would be easy. The case clearly had no merit, would need a simple motion to dismiss, and  **poof** it would be gone. I figured six months, tops, and First Amendment guru Marc Randazza was going to do all the heavy lifting as our pro hac vice counsel while I worried about local procedure on my home court.

Now lawyers working either on contingency or for a flat fee make those kinds of calls all the time, balancing the time they think they will invest in a matter against the value gained. But this took two years, confounding all expectations, and required a lot of extra time with some pretty sharp minds looking on. While I’ve had high profile cases before — including one that hit 60 Minutes some years back — I didn’t have blogging lawyers as clients and a profusion of popcorn eating armchair pundits looking on and reading the filings.

Most readers only know me through this blog, not by watching the actual practice of law. I have a separate website for my law practice (which I still hate), and I do that on purpose.  The contents over here are opinion and news, and the contents over there are a digital brochure for lawyering. I rarely link to the website, or even mention it, and it’s seldom visited relative to this blog’s traffic. People here don’t watch me practice law.

But everything was now different as I became a crazy cocktail of blogger, defendant and lawyer — shaken (not stirred) together. And folks were watching.

Given that blogger/defendant/lawyer brew , it puts me in a good position to shed some light on why this took two years, as some have criticized New York’s judiciary system for the delay. This is the short version of the procedural morass — including plaintiffs’ counsel quitting and our first judge retiring:

• We had jurisdictional failures with almost all the defendants on the original 72 page complaint;
• We had an 82-page amended complaint almost immediately with new parties, with yet more jurisdictional failures;
• We had opposition to a simple pro hac vice application;
• We had the plaintiffs trying to take papers from a motion to be relieved as counsel, altering them and trying to submit them in another motion;
• We had plaintiffs’ counsel quit soon after the suit was started — and while the individual plaintiff could proceed on his own, his corporation was required by state law to have counsel;
• Plaintiffs sought and obtained a stay so they could find that new counsel;
• We had multiple attempts by plaintiffs to modify the stay they had requested, so that only they could file papers, including attempts to add new parties and amend the complaint a second time, with a 268 page, 1,223-paragraph opus ;
• We had our judge extend the stay, and then retire;
• We had the matter re-assigned to a new judge that was swamped with new cases that he had to dig out from under;
• We had an extraordinary number of defendants all making motions.

I know that this seems like a lot, but it really is the short version.  It should have been simple, but it wasn’t. That sucks for those involved, but really, what were the odds that the plaintiffs’ lawyer would quit and then the judge would retire? Those were both biggies.

Is it possible the case could go on further with an appeal? I suppose it is, but as pointed out elsewhere, the judge was quite charitable toward Rakofsky by not sanctioning him, perhaps believing he’d been punished enough with the scathing online commentary, albeit much of it brought on by his own conduct.

But appellate judges might not be as dismissive as the trial court was of his having held himself out as a New York lawyer and putting a New York law office on his letterhead when he’s not admitted here. Leaving aside the cost of an appeal, there is much to lose by having appellate judges look at the conduct that many were already criticizing.

I gave up long ago trying to make predictions about this case, so I won’t make any here about whether it’s truly over. In fact, I try not to make predictions on any of my cases since the vagaries of life and litigation tend to upset the prediction applecart.

But assuming it is over, since that is what logic tells me, we move to the ultimate question: Was it worth being part of the defense team?

The answer has to be yes. The clients I have are like-minded individuals that cherish the First Amendment and are willing to fight for it. They could have easily ponied up the $5,000 that Rakofsky wanted early on to make the case go away, but they elected to fight. These are the types of people you want in your foxhole.

The message should go out loud and clear to all that consider bringing a frivolous suit against us. We make our living within the justice system, many of us by battling in the courtroom well. We have a pretty good grasp of how the courts work and the bounds of our freedom to speak and to write that are immortalized in the Bill of Rights.

We think it’s important to shine a light on ethical issues that we see with respect to attorney conduct that we believe crosses red lines, in the grand hope that such light becomes a disinfectant for the legal community. We do not want to see the cops’ Blue Code of Silence or the medical community’s White Coat of Silence darken our profession.

We will not cower or wilt under fear of empty threats or vacuous suits. Those that attempt such intimidation will find hardened and opinionated citizens who don’t care to relinquish our rights to speak freely. We know how to stand on the ramparts to fight for those rights, and we know how to win.  Representing such resolute individuals, despite the procedural shambles that ensued, has been my honor.

Was it worth doing? You’re damn right it was.

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special announcement on the latest and greatest in law firm marketing.

As you can guess from the picture to the right, my answer is not about  phony press releases like this that are little more than advertisements with links to obtain Google juice (this link is coded “No follow” to avoid that problem).

And it isn’t about creating fake law blogs, or flawgs (a great portmanteau), in order to create empty content that Google indexes in hopes to game search engines so that potential clients will find you.

And it isn’t about amassing gazillions of Twitter followers with less-than-candid personal profiles.

It isn’t about outsourcing marketing so that others can leave comment spam on blogs in the name of the law firm.

No, I am here to announce that the best attorney marketing — other than the obvious one of doing a good job for  your clients, who in turn refer you to others, a tactic that seems to get overlooked by the marketeers — is the tactic that is close to home. Do something in your community. There are approximately one gazillion ways to do this.

Being involved in the community isn’t a bad way to have people learn who you are and what you do while also providing muscle, brains or perhaps some financial support so that kids can, for example, take part in the national pastime. It’s the same approach used by generations of professionals and businesses of all stripes.

That’s right, this year’s winner of the best marketing technique is the same one I discussed back in 2010 when I got disgusted by all the marketeers pimping the “leads” they could get me for new cases from their attorney search services.

As I’ve told more than one cold-caller: I don’t have leads, I have clients. Humans are not commodities to be bought and traded.

I like to think of my version of marketing as an all-around win-win. It sure beats placing your firm name over a urinal.

And, by the way, since I know you were wondering, the kid on the mound to the left is the same one previously featured with his skateboard.

He done good this weekend. Thanks for asking.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, I wrote down some of my thoughts about the event (Boston Marathon Bombing — And the Lives We Lead), since the race is one of my favorites.  One of those thoughts, at the end, was this:

Some psychotic(s) want to affect the rest of us by terrorism. But I’m not interested in losing my fond memories, or stopping the creation of new ones.

This guest post below addresses that very theme; it was an essay written by my running club president Steven Stein for our weekly newsletter, which went out last night.  Last weekend he ran a race in Central Park and noticed that things had changed. A lot.

Since Stein grew up outside the U.S. he brings a perspective different than most to the concepts of freedom and security. It is reprinted here with his permission:
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