Steve Nober at MTMP 2021
So I went about a year and a half ago and got what I think are the three best ethics lawyers in the country to put a white paper together for us on the leading issues regarding law firms, dealing with lead generators like us, and what to look for and what the issues could be, and even pointing out all sorts of state rules and examples of violations. It’s really, really a great white paper. And we’ve updated it every quarter since we started it, so it’s this living document. You can go to our website. You can go to our booth and we have them, or request it. But I highly recommend get signed up for our website so you can get it every time. We update it every quarter. And then we also on our website created a database of the advertising rules of every state in the country, and we update it in real time if your rules change at all. So we want it to be a good reference for just all the rules. You can easily find them from every state in the country.
So before I do, I always just mention ethics. We were on a panel this morning and half the panel was to talk about ethics. We have a very good client who’s a firm that many of you might know really well, super credible litigating firm, one of the top in the industry, just a great firm. And they got served a suit a couple weeks ago, a lawsuit claiming a dozen different violations of marketing. Calling, making claims and misrepresentations on the digital ads, conversion call centers making outbound calls that didn’t comply to the TCPA rules. It’s a whole bunch of violations and it lists five or six call center and conversion centers. And my client sent me the filing and said, “Was this us?” Because they use us for marketing, but I think obviously, they also use other firms as well.
And so I’m in a panic and I’m looking at it and I see all the names of all these conversion centers. I’m like, “I have no idea who these guys are. I’ve never heard of any of them.” So I emailed the client back. I said, “It is not us. We self-originate.” What that means is we control the beginning of the messaging, the ad that ran the disclosures, all the ethics that are involved all the way to signing the cases. Right? And so my point is there are a lot of marketing companies. I think the ones here are probably not doing that. There’s really good companies here, but all the new marketing firms that are blasting plaintiff firms like crazy and offering prices that don’t make sense, they’re using aggregators and outsourcing the vendors that they have no idea how they’re getting cases for lower prices. And the law firms are going to end up being part of it like my client was a couple weeks ago.
And so I just think everyone should be careful with the marketing partners you work with. Make sure you understand the origination, the disclosures, just everything you can. That you’ve seen the agreement, you’ve seen the creative. It’s like buyer beware. Right? So depending upon how you like to get cases, media buying or buying cases or doing media buying services to get cases from your local market or national, there’s ups and downs to both that can be talked about. So check out your marketing, a little checklist, just really make sure. Don’t just jump at a good price, please. Because you don’t want to end up like this guy. It’ funny, this slide still, I don’t think the slide will ever be dated.
