ROI 2011 Recap: Ethics and Online Marketing

Editor’s note: This blog post is guest authored by one of the speakers from this year’s ROI 2011 conference. These posts are meant to give readers a glimpse into what these practitioners discussed during their sessions at the conference. The opinions expressed here are those solely of the author.

By Brian Tannebaum

The legal profession has turned the Internet in to a sewer of lawyer marketing. A lawyer’s goal used to be to develop a network of people that would refer cases and clients, and through the lawyer’s hard work and the satisfaction of clients, more cases and clients would come.

Now, the goal is simply to get on the first page of Google. This goal has resulted in lawyers abandoning true “networking,” and instead finding their way onto every website and social media forum that is available — treating them as billboards for their law practice. Lawyers too busy to produce their own content on websites and blogs have outsourced their marketing; thereby, outsourcing their ethics to marketers whose interest is not the lawyer’s ethics, but the race to the top of Google — otherwise known as the race to the bottom of legal marketing.

Can you say that the best case you got was from the Internet?

Erik Turkewitz’s coined phrase “outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics” defines those lawyers who are using non-lawyer and former lawyer marketers to write their content, spam blogs with comments linking back to their own websites and accept that “puffing” (lying) about their credentials (i.e. “My team and I closed a $450 million deal,” when the only thing the lawyer did was read documents) is OK.

Ethics rule number 1 for lawyers is 8.4 — it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.

Lawyers also need to be vigilant about checking out the backgrounds of marketers and should never pay a former lawyer to do their marketing or to provide social media advice.

Lawyers are getting caught in their marketing lies, and other practitioners are writing about these unethical lawyers and the Google searches for their names are turning up their unethical marketing. Ironically, lawyers are getting the attention they so desperately wanted — it’s just not the right attention.

Lawyers also need to be mindful of Rule 7.3 regarding direct contact with prospective clients. Do not ask people to like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.

Why? Not because it may cause someone to say you were overreaching, but because you wouldn’t do it in person. Remember that online marketing and offline marketing are not mutually exclusive. If you wouldn’t go to a cocktail party and ask someone to like or follow you, why do it online?

Here are some tips to consider:

• Nothing false, misleading, deceptive.
• Nothing that would cause someone to claim you were soliciting them as a client.
• Put yourself on social media.
• Be a part, not apart, of the conversation
• Act like you would at a networking event.
• Shake hands, talk about non-business topics.
• Share interesting aspects of your practice.
• Death, injury, despair is not interesting.
• Open an account.
• Talk to people.
• Listen.
• Don’t pay for social media advice.
• Don’t hire a former lawyer to do anything regarding your marketing

*Update – 6/27/2011* – Watch the presentation in its entirety.

Brian Tannebaum is managing partner for Tannebaum Weiss PL. Tannebaum exclusively represents clients in the defense of criminal cases in state and federal court and in matters before the Florida Bar and the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. He currently serves as president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.