I have changed the outgoing message on my office switchboard voicemail to tell online social media marketing companies aiming at attorneys (or others, but especially at us lawyers) to change careers and explore honest work as an alternative. The number of loud-mouthed Glengarry-wannabes calling and leaving messages to the effect that “we have a few new slots left to guarantee you placement on the first page of Google” or “we will manage your online reputation for you/manage your website/Tweet for you”, etc., has grown to the point where they need to receive some commercial hate speech. So I recorded some. Hope it stings.
As attorney Eric Turkewitz stated it far before I did and far more succinctly than I could have, “outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics.” If you are a online legal marketing “expert”, please consider this as First Amendment-protected speech inviting you to change careers. I have seen the damage that these clowns can do in other Maryland attorneys’ practices, and am skeptical of the entire lot of them based on their demonstrated failure to understand the basics of attorney advertising regulations. While we attorneys are ultimately responsible for anything our hired hacks do, whether they are attorney hacks or non-attorney hacks, the attorney hacks at least got a passing grade in Professional Responsibility and on the Bar exam.
The marketing goofballs, who apparently now have the nerve to demand a “seat at the table“, are just a train wreck, and their sales reps sound like the sleaziest bunch of 25-year-old creeps out there in their voicemail messages. No, legal marketing kids, you cannot be sued, sanctioned or grieved for your errors but we attorneys certainly can be sued, sanctioned or grieved for your feckless scammery; you are not the grown-ups in this household and you do not sit at the attorney grown-ups’ table. To quote the philosophical school of Sha Na Na, “Get a job.”
Really, folks, quit calling my office. Better yet, quit your jobs and learn a clean trade.
