I thought my expose on the Lawyers of Distinction Scam (in which my kid’s pet chicken, Zippy made it through the LOD’s vetting process) may have pushed them to quiet down. Apparently NOT. Yesterday, Lawyers of Distinction mass spammed thousands of Lawyers (and a handful of non-lawyers), falsely suggesting someone had nominated them for this bogus, unvetted, bullshit and otherwise misleading “award”.
How do I know?
Yesterday, Mockingbird’s site got pummeled with SEO based traffic to the Lawyers of Distinction articles we’ve posted.
Looks like an email was spammed out around 10:00 am PST yesterday, and many of those email recipients decided to undertake a modicum of research before plunking down the equivalent of a (very) nice car payment for a piece of lacquered wood and some self supplication for a fragile ego.
There was a smattering of web chatter about these faux “nominations.” Here’s Helen Bukulmez:
And not all “lawyer” nominations were even for lawyers…here’s a comment from Abby Peretz:
I received notification that I, too, am eligible for this distinguished “award!” Here’s the catch: I’m a law student. I don’t hold a license anywhere. My law review Note hasn’t been published yet (but will be soon!). The extent of my legal experience derives from a few very meaningful, wonderful externships in various practice areas, including consumer protection. Jesse’s email to me is a big fat UDAP. I’m tempted to pass it along to some folks I know.
I don’t know where all of these email addresses were sourced from, and I don’t care. So – if you ego is blinding your ability to connect the dots…no one nominated you. You are being played. You are being pitched an overpriced plaque that you have to pay for EACH YEAR! Still don’t believe me…come talk to Zippy, she can set you straight.
Part II: The Marketing Lesson
If you want more than a rant out of this post, here’s your opportunity:
I’m going to use this example to show how NOT all traffic is equal. In general, I get annoyed with lawyers focused on ranking reports (a useless metric for determining how well your site is performing). Instead we prefer to look at actual traffic. BUT…and this is a big BUT…not all traffic is created equal. You can see here that despite the massive influx of traffic to our site, we received just one single inquiry from the article – meaning just 0.035% of readers were interested in inquiring about hiring us.
It’s going to take a lot of readers to build a business on that performance. In contrast, our typical contact rate is 0.5%. So clearly not all traffic is created equal. BUT – and here’s the counterpoint to my argument – some high volume pages do eventually generate an inquiry. Note #3 in the matrix above: our typically most read article is a post about setting up a google email account. The vast vast majority of readers who read this aren’t lawyers; they aren’t looking for marketing assistance; and almost none of them are lawyers looking for marketing assistance. BUT…we did get one inquiry from that post yesterday. So…in summary, not all traffic is created equal; however, enough volume can eventually generate business.
I was bemused to see a tradeshow booth from .law at the recent AAJ conference in Louisville (which was awesome btw). And further bemused to know that Carl Jaeckel would be speaking to the conference about the TLD. To be honest, I sat in the back of the room, huddled with fellow internet marketing shiny object curmudgeon, Gyi Tsakalakis as we plotted gotcha questions to fry Carl on stage.
To catch you up to speed if you know nothing of .law…. in 2015, this new Top Level Domain (TLD – think “.com” “.gov” and now “.law”) was introduced and aggressively advertised as an SEO silver bullet by the marketers behind .law. (IMO $200 a year for domain registration seemed a beyond slightly excessive.) This marketing included a bogus “case study” conducted by SEO veteran Bill Hartzer, vigorous PR outreach, a slick brochure (which seems to have been purged from the web), “sponsored” articles placed in legal and marketing blogs and a backlash from Google directly. Regardless, the case study was touted widely among those selling the new TLD, including FindLaw and John Morgan of Morgan and Morgan, the chairman of the new domain selling service.
Over the past two years, our firm dealt with more than 10 .law domains that failed to generate anything in the way of Search Traffic – at great expense to the lawyers duped into purchasing the domains on the false pretext of SEO awesomeness.
But…. Carl (Morgan’s former CMO and COO of .law from the very beginning) gave us the straight honest truth, albeit two years late. At the AAJ conference, in response to a point blank question about the SEO benefits of the new .TLD, Carl replied:
I’d love to sit here and lie to tell you that you put on a .law and it will amazingly shoot you to the top of the search rankings. – Carl Jaeckel
So there you have it…. the .law marketers were lying all along (and they knew it… there’s a very good reason John didn’t move forthepeople.com to forthepeople.law.) When I introduced myself and spoke with him later, thanking him for his candor, Carl blamed the “marketing people” for the false SEO promises.
But, when someone comes peddling these new domains (and they will), don’t fall for fuzzy vagaries of what Google may or may not do in the future to change their perspective on TLDs. The SEO silver bullet will NOT be based on “a new .law suffix that could set off a domain gold rush” (which was the 2015 title of an ABA Journal article that has also since been purged from the site, at whose bidding, I don’t know).
Back in October of last year, Mockingbird received another Cease and Desist Demand – this time from Jesse Brodsky at Lawyer’s of Distinction. Turns out he was miffed at our post “When the Top 10% Means Nothing” which exposed his company, Lawyers of Distinction’s Top 10% Award as a charlatan scam. In short, Jesse makes his living peddling overpriced plaques to naive or egotistical lawyers.
I’ve posted a full transcript of Brodsky’s C&D letter, but here are some of the true gems amidst his defamation claims:
Your article is actionable and we will be initiating lawsuits against the author individually, as well as Mockingbird Marketing if this post is not immediately removed from the internet.
Among Jesse’s major concerns:
you refer to our offices as being in a strip shopping center, when in fact we have a corporate office in a traditional office building.
I’m not certain exactly how I was supposed to remove content from the Internet – apparently Jesse doesn’t really know how that Internet works. But, because Jesse threatened not only me, but also the author directly (Kelsey – one of our best people at Mockingbird) – I enlisted the counsel of renowned Ethics Counsel Brian Tannebaum*, to allay Kelsey’s concerns over being personally targeted by an overzealous lawyer. Brian’s reply to her:
if I were you, the thing I’d be worried about right now is what you are going to eat for breakfast. After that I’d start concerning myself with lunch and then plans for the weekend. I’d put worrying about what you wrote right below whether you are soon to run out of toothpaste.
Naturally, I told Brodsky to go stick his head in the sand.
Jesse – So nice to finally put a name to your distinguished company. Congratulations on the new office space – if you could kindly forward me the dates of your office upgrade, I’d be most appreciative. Finally, our post will stand. As you may suspect, it is almost impossible to remove a post from the Internet, regardless of pugnacious lawyers.
Good luck with your future endeavors. I trust you won’t need to reach out to me again.
Regards,
Conrad
Like a true bully, Brodsky backed down, never coming good on his litigation threats. To be fair, I was admittedly hoping my snark would inspire a lawsuit so we could further introduce Jesse to the practical practice of law and Florida’s anti-SLAPP legislation, but he didn’t bite. I thought we’d dig just a little deeper into Lawyers of Distinction. First their vetting process, which their Eligibility page describes as the following:
Independent Research to Identify Potential Candidates – Verdicts, Settlements, Experience, Reputation, Honors, Awards, Special Licenses, Bar Certifications, Professional Activities, Community Service, Pro Bono, Scholarly Writings, Lectures, Educational Background, Public Service, Other Outstanding Achievements
Nominations & Invitations – Candidates are identified either by nomination or by the Lawyers of Distinction organization directly. Nominations are accepted from members of Lawyers of Distinction, fellow attorneys, and current or former clients.
Review Application & Background Check – Lawyers of Distinction conducts independent research and background checks to ensure all potential candidates meet LOD standards. The attorney must have no ethical violations within the past five years.
Confirmation of Membership – All attorneys who meet the criteria of our screening process have demonstrated a high degree of peer recognition and professional competence, placing them in the top 10% of all attorneys in the United States.
They also claim in their footer that:
Lawyers of Distinction members have been selected based upon a review and vetting process by our Selection Committee… These potential candidates who meet the criteria of our screening process have demonstrated a high degree of peer recognition and professional competence, placing them in the top 10% of all attorneys in the United States. Attorneys may nominate other peers they feel warrant recognition or may nominate themselves. These candidates undergo the same rigorous review process.
So I thought I’d evaluate the vetting process, applying to Lawyers of Distinction membership, on behalf of my kid’s pet chicken, Zippy. Surely their “rigorous review process” would disqualify a 3 1/2 month old Golden Wyandotte? (Ignoring for the moment that lawyers can self-nominate, which must be the epitome of egotistical self-supplication.)
Zippy and me celebrating her nomination to Lawyers of Distinctions Top 10% of Lawyers Award
First, I fired up an email address for Zippy through Yahoo and then impersonated retired comedian, Jon Stewart (no email address needed) to nominate Zippy:
I thought the Jon Stewart reference might be a red flag for Lawyers of Distinction, but a few days later, Zippy’s Yahoo account got mail announcing her nomination and inviting her to take the next step…..
The key to this email is this sentence: “upon completion of your application you’ll have access….” So, all Zippy needs to get the plaque is a completed application and $775? Seriously?
Surely they wanted to know more information about Zippy. What about the background checks? Independent Research? and Zippys scholarly writings? Verdicts… Settlements…. Bar Certifications? Surely that would follow in the next phase of the process; at a minimum, LOD would want to know what state Zippy was licensed in? a bar number? or a release to perform the background check? Some of her awards? Some bio information? But alas, the application required nothing more than a name, address and a domain (although, I felt certainly someone would at the very least check out www.deshickeenlaw.com, find out it was not operational and then reject Zippy’s application…)
Apparently no one at LOD bothered to review Zippy’s non-existent website, www.DeShickeenLaw.com before shepherding me to the payment screen. In the next step, LOD was very happy to order up a plaque for a 3 month old hen, placing her in Top 10% Among Lawyers.
And the most insidious part of this is the literal fine print, the part that says, “The membership shall renew annually unless Lawyers of Distinction is notified of non-renewal.” So every year, Zippy’s credit card is going to get pinged for another $775. That’s a pretty good revenue stream. In summation, after impersonating a comedian, nominating a chicken and submitting nothing more than a non-existent website, I can purchase an annual subscription for a plaque for a tidy sum, for a hen who is still too young to even lay an egg.”
Dogs Among the Top 10% of Lawyers
Now, while I couldn’t bring myself to send Jesse $775 via credit card, apparently, not one, but two different canines footed the bill and have made it through Lawyers of Distinction’s rigorous vetting process. Meet, Shasharoosticus a Lawyer of Distinction (My Dog is Better Than Your Lawyer) and canine to (real) attorney Andrew Tolchin and wait till you hear teacup poodle, Lucy’s acceptance speech.
Brodsky and Baker….
I wanted to know more about Jesse… who is this guy duping lawyers into these overpriced lacquered boards? Turns out Jesse Brodsky sent us our C&D just 4 months after being admitted to the Florida State Bar….
Now, Lawyers of Distinction has really upped their marketing since Brodsky has come on board. Recently I’ve started seeing them more frequently, advertising in legal rags, Twitter and prolifically on Facebook. And they’ve been around since before Brodsky’s first year of law school. I had thought perhaps this was the entrepreneurial endeavor of a feckless law student – as I was unable to find anyone else associated with the company. So I looked up Lawyers of Distinction in the Florida Business Directory to uncover, the long term owner, attorney Robert B. Baker of Baker and Zimmerman, who registered the business back in 2009. Ironically, the Baker and Zimmerman site is devoid of any mention of Lawyers of Distinction – in fact neither Baker nor Zimmerman is a recipient. According to Avvo, Baker has been suspended in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York and was reprimanded by the Florida Bar. I’m pretty sure if this makes him decidedly under qualified to vet the Top 10% of Lawyers.
The First Amendment and Bogus Awards
All of this brings about serious first amendment issues. During my time at Avvo, we ran into challenges of our right to publish the Avvo Rating and ended up working with Bruce Johnson of Davis Wright Tremaine, the country’s foremost expert on the intersection of the 1st amendment and the Internet. I’ve invited Bruce to join us next week for a webinar called Blogging and the First Amendment. We plan to discuss the legal framework for publishing online content as it pertains to the First Amendment, including the right of Lawyers of Distinction to publish the clearly bogus awards as well as our right to call them to the carpet for doing so. I’d invite you to join us, January 9th at 1:30 Pacific time.
And if you’d like a running log of lawyers duped into this service, try the Lawyers of Distinction Twitter Feed. But you won’t find Zippy on there… she’s too smart.
*Brian Tannebaum is not a lawyer of distinction. The only plaques he displays are of his prodigious high end wine collection, and then, only upon specific request.
New client just forwarded me the breakup email exchange from her previous agency.
We pay for links monthly.
Know what your agency is doing. The reason the firm reached out to us, was because, despite all the money they had invested, search traffic hadn’t changed. And then we go and find out that their agency has been torpedoing SEO efforts through an unsophisticated link purchasing scheme. Now the client is going to need to pay me an extensive sum to undo the efforts of their previous firm – just to get them back to a reasonable starting point. We call this Janitorial SEO – the cleaning up of the messes of others. It’s expensive and unnecessary.
If you don’t know what your agency is doing for you – it’s reasonable to assume they are buying links, torching your site and you are in for a huge headache (and invoice) down the road.
About a month ago I wrote about the strange case of the solo practitioner, Andrew Calcagano who staffed 66 offices across the tri-state area. Here’s the follow up post regarding his agency, Next Level – who according to one of the testimonials on their site….
“They maximize our exposure in a way no one else does.”
Well, at least that part is true.
Let me start with this: Next Level produces amazing, slick, professional quality video. They also spam the hell out of the legal market across the eastern seaboard. And while Next Level pulled all mention of Calcagno from their website after my post… there were plenty more to do a little review on like:
The Law Offices of John W. Tumelty
Solo practitioner with seven “offices” across the bottom tip of NJ.
Proner and Proner Attorneys at Law
Despite their name “& Proner” and “Attorneys at Law”, the only attorney I can find on the website is Mitchell Proner, although he manages to have no fewer than five different locations.
Team Law
Team Law is upfront about their “appointment only” office space (on their website at least).
Lombardi and Lombardi
This 10 lawyer firm manages to spread their attorneys across 6 offices across the Garden State, although their Point Pleasant locations looks like I might get to order some friend popcorn shrimp along with my legal help.
And according to Yelp, 62 Broad Street is really the location of Jack Baker’s Lobster Shanty – to be fair, perhaps this did get turned into a law office once Jack’s shut down.
I did check out more of their clients’ alleged office spaces and in many cases, found some that might have been genuine spots; athlough there was a strange prevalence of law firms sprinkled inside medical office buildings. But…. the pattern remains, small (even solo) firms, pushing 5-66 different locations is simplty Local Spam. And, to reiterate my point from my previous post: faking office space is stealing, not marketing.
Its stealing from clients who want to hire (and think they are hiring) a law firm who is just down the road. Remember 43% of people make their lawyer hiring decision based on proximity – so faking an office location when you are really 100 miles away is lying about the most important hiring factor to prospective clients.
Its stealing from other lawyers – well positioned in their local community – who are losing out to geographically distant firms. (And sometimes not even firms, but marketing agencies scumbags masquerading as law firms who sell local leads to non-local law firms).
Join me this Wednesday, for a webinar to discuss a case study on a State Bar that stepped in (or “stepped up” to deal with rampant local spam. Join us: Local Spam, Lawyers, State Bars and an Ethical Quandary. (And Next Level Marketing people…. if you’d like to join the webinar and defend your tactics, consider this an open invitation…..)
Let me start by saying that I’m calling out a single lawyer here, simply as an example. There are thousands of law firms engaging in these spammy tactics either in-house or through their “agency” or marketing “expert”. And let me also reiterate the point of my latest post:
Faking office locations is NOT marketing – its stealing.
Its stealing from clients who want to hire (and think they are hiring) a law firm who is just down the road. Remember 43% of people make their lawyer hiring decision based on proximity – so faking an office location when you are really 100 miles away is lying about the most important hiring factor to prospective clients.
Its stealing from other lawyers – well positioned in their local community – who are losing out to geographically distant firms. (And sometimes not even firms, but marketing agencies scumbags masquerading as law firms who sell local leads to non-local law firms).
Which brings me to an example of local spam, albeit an extreme one – Solo practitioner Andrew Calcagno who has more offices across my home state of New Jersey than toll booths. In fact…. according to his Google listings, Calcagno staffs no fewer than 66 different locations…
Fortunately, at the Elizabeth Office you can get your acupuncture done while waiting for your lawyer, or your acrylic nails buffed at the Bayonne office.
Hurt on the beach? Try Calcagano’s “office” just one block from the sand, that looks suspiciously like my Aunt Doris might live there during the summer.
And nothing says success like swanky office space at 460 Park Avenue in the heart of New York City…. Except of course, the 17th floor of the building is entirely occupied by Dermatologist, Dr. Steven Victor. How do I know this? Because the very nice receptionist there told me so.
Need a McMansion Litigation Lawyer? Try their “office” on Agress Road in Millstone, NJ
And at least Google won’t get fooled by the Regus office in Hamilton Township…
And it seems that Walmart (or women’s clothing chain, Joyce Leslie) has started offering DWI Legal services as well at their 100 Enterprise Drive in Dover, NJ locations.
Although, double check your car door is locked at the Passaic office….
I could go on and on. Suffice to say I think its highly unlikely an attorney could plead ignorance of an overly aggressive agency creating all of these “offices.” Besides, his website lists about 20 of them directly:
But speaking of overly aggressive agencies, I wondered who might behind all of these listings – afterall a single attorney probably doesn’t have the time to create and maintain 60+ “offices” – regardless of how virtual they may be. So digging just a little further, I uncovered…. post coming tomorrow. 🙂
A month or so ago, I gave an amazing webinar with Local Search nerd and founder of Sterling Sky, Joy Hawkins Frankly, the webinar was awesome because of the subject matter and Joy… this is no humblebrag. Joy and I spent the better part of an hour talking about Local spam…. the underhanded dirty practice of faking office locations as a marketing tactic to artificially expand a law firm’s geographic reach.
During the webinar I made the comment, that this practice is not a marketing tactic, but instead theft… that law firms are stealing business from other lawyers with fake locations. One of the webinar attendees commented, “thank you, thank you, thank you for finally calling this out for what it is.”
So here goes again: Those of you engaged in local spam are stealing, not marketing. And those agencies helping you do so should be shunned.
If there’s any question note this: according to a Google study, 43% of prospects select their law firm based on the proximity of the lawyer – so lawyers faking locations are screwing not only their competitors, but their clients as well.
I’ve seen the devastating impact on the bottom line of many firms who suffer from competitors virtually elbowing their way into a market. In any given month, 10% of our clients’ marketing investment is targeted towards combating those fake listings.
To date we’ve been quiet and private about those firms and agencies marketing with Local Spam caught stealing from our clients. That stops today. More to come….
You’ve likely received an email with a subject line like “Building quality links on trusted and high authoritative websites” or “Blogpost/Links.” Heck, even search quality representatives at Google get these embarrassingly lazy emails to try and sell high DA (domain authority) links.
Here’s an example I received this morning:
I appreciate being part of your team, mate. However, I’m not buying the BS.
We know what linkbuilding is, and it’s not following up to a poorly written email and handing cash to a stranger.
We know that linkbuilding, especially for law firms, is difficult. So difficult, many law firm marketing agencies won’t even bring it up to you. Go ahead – ask em. What is your SEO agency’s strategy on earning your website links?
I’m hoping their answer didn’t involve replying to Deep and spending your hard-earned money on the small chance of getting that buzzfeed link…
For the record, Google is very good at ignoring these types of links. You may even be penalized for breaking their quality guidelines.
As readers search for information on the web, counterfeit sites attempt to redirect their results. In a new deal with the UK, Google says ‘not today’.
Described by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) as a “landmark agreement”, the deal serves to reduce the visibility of infringing content by June 2017. This will result in many pirated sites disappearing from the first page of search results for Google and Bing when people look for content.
Initially there was question whether the deal between IPO and Google would involve any algorithm changes. In a conversation with SearchEngineLand.com, Google confirmed no algorithm changes are necessary. Google is confident that their current algorithms (namely their “Pirate” algorithm) will continue working to prevent bad content from showing up in search results.
Google voiced that their main goal is to provide high-quality content to readers that is relevant to their needs. It is important for readers to be referred to legitimate and helpful websites. The existing algorithm serves to prevent pirated content and spam from interfering with that process.
Although Google seemed to downplay the significance of this agreement, the deal is monumental for the British Phonography Industry (BPI). To them, it was a much-needed move to reduce the visibility of pirated content and reduce copyright theft.
Without major algorithm changes, this means that websites that serve the needs of their customers and readers will not be negatively impacted. Instead, we will see a reduction in sites that may redirect their readers to pirated content and spam sites.
In the US there has been additional pressure to reduce the visibility of pirated content. Google and Bing aim to provide the best information for readers, as well as ensure that content creators see their valuable content appear in the results.
Civil and white-collar anti-counterfeiting attorneys can work alongside Google’s attempts at getting pirated content off the web. Anti-piracy law is invaluable when it comes to securing the sanctity of original content, sources, and businesses. We encourage attorneys to focus on what your clients care about and help protect their original and unique content online.
