The Florida Bar Board of Governors, overruling a committee and staff recommendation, says that a lawyer’s targeted text message does not violate an ethical prohibition on unsolicited phone calls in the immediate aftermath of an accident. [AP/WKMG] Next step: auto-send when a sensor detects that an airbag has gone off.
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Please don’t make comments like the last sentence until you’ve gotten a blocking patent (licensing condition: must pay opponents legal fees on loss). đŸ™‚
Next step: up link of surveillance camera videos, autonomous drone deployment for BDA, tele-presence for judge and venire, and a verdict ready before the pain killers kick in .
It’s like the old Onion article about “instant-win airbags”.
Don’t we send and receive text messages on our cell phones? So how is a text message really different from just placing a call the old-fashioned way and leaving an old-fashioned voice message? Because the text message is not old-fashioned?
But never mind that. The Florida Bar Board of Governors is saying a phone message is not a phone message if you call it a “text” message. It’s a tribute to the power of incentives, I guess.
And keen lawyering.
And so the guild protects its own by watering down the ethical constrictions intended to constrain their business practices…
Maybe I’m a different type of person than those a texting lawyer might be targeting, but I’m pretty sure I’d never hire a lawyer whose first introduction to me was via text message.
“OMG! R U INJURED? HIT ME BACK IF U NEED LEGAL REP!”
the ultimate would be to have the lawyer’s number printed right on the airbag itself.
To clarify, it seems the proposal was floated by criminal-defense lawyers who wanted to solicit the recently-arrested. It seems the rap sheets / criminal dockets include personal phone numbers, whereas personal injury lawyers generally don’t have instant access to the phone numbers of people involved in accidents.
I’d never do this myself, but I can see the Bar’s reasoning. The core of the prohibition is usually on “real-time” communications, but a text message isn’t “real-time” like a phone call or an in-person solicitation.
What this situation really shows is (1) law schools are producing way, way too many lawyers; and (2) there still isn’t any easy way for most people to find quality legal representation. The fact that this tactic would work at all shows a serious market failure by way of grossly uninformed consumers.