Injury law firms in St. Louis and Seattle run promotional blogs for which they’ve been generating content as follows: a post summarizes (presumably from police or news reports) a recent local road fatality or injury naming the victim and other persons involved, towns, roads and other identifying information. Then it adds a bit of discussion of the accident, and advises that the law firm can assist the victims in filing claims. Often the killed, maimed or comatose person’s name appears prominently in the post title, which aids in search engine visibility to reach families searching for their own names or the names of witnesses or other parties involved in the accident. The law firms have had no previous involvement whatsoever in most of the incidents, nor have they been invited onto the scene by any of the persons they name or their survivors.

Isn’t legal marketing wonderful? In years to come when you go online in quest of remembrances of your loved ones, paging through their school reunion pages, club involvements and professional achievements, you can look forward to confronting the equivalents of giant if outdated lawyer billboards along the way. Kevin O’Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs blasts the practice as “a cheap stunt” and “the stuff that gives plaintiff’s lawyers a bad name” (Dec. 11), “unseemly” and “wrong” (Dec. 14), “shameless” and “sleazy” (Dec. 15). Eric Turkewitz adds his voice in condemnation (Dec. 13). Peter Lattman’s link at the WSJ law blog (Dec. 14) draws out numerous posters who appear to approve of the idea, though.

Filed under: chasing clients, Seattle