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Oct 10, 2011 
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Here at Popehat we like calling out lawyers who attempt to promote themselves by spamming blogs with inane comments designed to enhance search engine rankings. Spam comments nominally promoting lawyers demonstrate what lawbloggers have been saying over and over: when you outsource your marketing to Web 2.0's snake-oil salesmen, you outsource your reputation and your ethics.
Ultimately watching for attorney comment spam gets dull. So many of them are alike. But now and then you'll see a real gem. Courtesy of Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice, today we have this one, which was left on a TSA post rather tangential to criminal defense:
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Comment:
i think defensing the criminal is such a great thing. The criminals must have legal rights to hire advocates. I am a criminal lawyer and my office is Detroit criminal Lawyer
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This delightful spam comment ostensibly promotes a law firm in the Midwest.
Some protips, Midwest Law Firm: (1) "Defensing" is not a word.
Not to be confused with defenestrating, which is more satisfying but leads to fewer referals.
(2) Professional defense attorneys generally avoid repeatedly referring to people accused of crimes as "criminals," as that is the government's job.
And finally: (3) Midwest Law Firm, I want to believe that you didn't draft that yourself. God, I want to believe that, even though you include an attorney who proclaims himself a marketing expert. But if I do believe it, then I also have to believe that you turned over your firm's marketing, or "web presence", or "social media position," or some other vapid terminology of the month, to some slick-talking marketing stooge. That stooge is either himself a sub-literate idiot (because he thinks that "defensing" is a word, and because he thinks that comment spam works), or he is taking your firm's reputation and ethics and re-outsourcing them to someone who barely speaks English. The comment spam does nothing to improve your firm's search engine rankings; it just leaves drivel droppings across the web making you look like a moron. Fire your marketeer forthwith. Use a shovel if necessary.
By the way, I'll make the Midwest Law Firm the following offer: I will scrub this post of data identifying him and his firm on two conditions. First condition, he must make a sincere apology for outsourcing his reputation and ethics (or, if he did this deliberately himself, a sincere apology to the English language and to defendants everywhere). Second condition, he must provide emails or other documentation identifying the marketeer he hired who produced the comment spam and proving their responsibility for this, so that we can alter the post to call them out by name. Because lawyers who hire bad marketeers have bad judgment, but bad marketeers are vermin, and ought to be stomped.
Edited September 2012: the lawyer in question has made a satisfactory statement of contrition and I have scrubbed the post. The point remains.
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23 Comments 
Comment Spam, Marketing
