You might have noticed that Popehat blacked out yesterday to join the protest against SOPA/PIPA. (The technical aspect of that effort was all David's work; if I had tried it . . . well, suffice it to say all these posts might have been lost, like tears in rain, etc.) The widespread protest seemed to succeed at its aim of raising awareness and led to defections from the ranks of SOPA/PIPA supporters.

All of that seemingly effective advocacy raises a question: did its participants have a First Amendment right to protest that way?

For folks like us at Popehat — mere individuals, not corporations or partnerships (we're more like an unincorporated mystical brotherhood) — the answer is rather clearly yes. Few would dispute it.

But for entities like Google, or Mozilla, or the Wikimedia Foundation, the answer is apparently unsettled in the minds of some of you.

Some of the criticism began with the Citizens United case, which held that the McCain–Feingold Act violated the First Amendment to the extent it purported to prohibit a non-profit corporation from producing and airing a film attacking Hillary Clinton. Elements of the Occupy Wall Street campaign took up the cry, asserting that corporations are not people and only people, not corporations, have constitutional rights.

These sentiments seemed largely absent yesterday when various business entities — from non-profits like Wikimedia Foundation to for-profits like Google — expressed themselves in opposition to SOPA/PIPA.

So, to critics of Citizens United, I have a question: should those business entities have had a right to engage in SOPA/PIPA protests like they did? If so, what is the source of that right, and by what mechanism is it vindicated?

After all, not everyone was happy with the corporate participation in the protest. As I discussed on Tuesday, the MPAA broadly hinted that such expression is permitted only at the sufferance of government and its favored lobbyists:

It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Note how the MPAA cloaks itself in populist anti-corporate rhetoric, hoping you are too intractably stupid to grasp that the MPAA is the ultimate corporate lobbyist asking Congress to pass sweeping legislation favoring it over the rights of citizens and other corporations. Note also the MPAA's use of the core idea underlying opposition to Citizens United: incitement, the concept that corporate speech is illegitimate and dangerous because it leads citizens into false consciousness so that they vote and act in ways we don't like.

But the MPAA is just an industry mouthpiece. Surely the media — which prizes freedom of expression above all else — will reject this narrative, right? Wrong — or, at least, wrong in some cases, as with the sad rag-peddlers at the Boston Herald:

Within hours of the online protest, political supporters of the bill — including the usually sensible Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — began dropping like flies, thus proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be.

"Cyber-bullying" is, of course, one of those Humpty-Dumpty categorical terms that we use when we disagree with speech but can't articulate a principled basis for saying it lies outside the protection of the First Amendment.

So: many were happy with the SOPA/PIPA protests, but some weren't. Some of the unhappy people are powerful — like the MPAA and its gang of censorship apologists.

If you think that Citizens United was wrong — if you think that corporations shouldn't have First Amendment rights — then why, exactly, can't the government punish Wikimedia Foundation or Google or any other non-human entity for speech that offended its favored lobbyist and contributor, the MPAA?

(Note that I'm addressing people who say corporations have no First Amendment rights, not people who say campaign donation restrictions do not violate the First Amendment because money is not speech, which is an entirely different ranty post.)

So:

1. If corporations have no First Amendment rights, why can't federal or state or local governments single out, say, Wikimedia Foundation for its SOPA/PIPA blackout? Why can't they penalize or fine or even dissolve it? Why can't they single Wikimedia Foundation out for disproportionate enforcement of unrelated laws in retaliation for disfavored speech?

2. If your answer is "the political process — the voice of the people — will stop them from suppressing expression in this way," what is the historical basis in America for the assertion that the political process, standing alone, without judicial review based upon application of constitutional rights, is sufficient to stop governmental overreach? How's that working out for, say, the rights implicated by the War on Drugs, or the post-9/11 Security State? How well does the political process work to protect freedom of expression from government efforts to, say, ban mean pictures on the internet? The political process will protect corporations from governmental retaliation against disfavored expression? Are you shitting me?

3. If courts adopt your view — if the Supreme Court says "corporations have no First Amendment rights" — is it really your view that government restrictions on corporate speech will be imposed in a neutral and even-handed manner? Really? You think that corporate influence will be so driven from politics that, for instance, the MPAA and RIAA won't be able to induce the government to retaliate against the Wikimedia Foundations and Googles of the world? Again, on what historical precedent — on what logic — do you premise that belief?

4. You say that people, not corporations, have First Amendment rights. Fine. Tell me: as a person, how do you plan to exercise your freedom of speech if corporate venues for doing so may be restricted by the government? SOPA/PIPA is actually an excellent example of this. SOPA/PIPA did not merely attack accused pirates directly — it used ISPs as its minions. SOPA/PIPA threaten ISPs and major web sites — corporations — with dramatic consequences if they so much as link to sites that the government (or its preferred lobbyists) disfavor. So. If the government is allowed to use this method, what, exactly, protects us when the government decides to bully corporations into making us vanish from the internet? If the government says "you writers at Popehat have First Amendment rights; we can't punish you. But you, Google, you have no First Amendment rights; you have no right to list Popehat in search results. You, ISP, you have no First Amendment rights, you have no right to host sites like Popehat. You, Major Publisher, you have no First Amendment rights, you have no right to publish Popehat's exciting upcoming book, In Which Snark Substitutes For Grammar And Serious Analysis: The Taint-Snorting.

For that last, you might say, "they can't do that, because you have First Amendment rights, and those corporations are just the vehicles through which you are exercising those rights." To which I say: exactly. That's what entities are — vehicles through which people do things. Sometimes they are objectionable things, sometimes they are stupid things, soometimes they are things that, if accepted, would lead to deplorable results. But entities — corporations — are vehicles for human activity, including expression.

So. Advocates of the "corporations have no First Amendment rights" position: why can't the government punish the corporations that blacked out yesterday?

That was the title of an email I received an hour ago. OK, I added the exclamation point — the email was titled only "Felony Arrest."

Other criminal defense attorneys — indeed, perhaps most attorneys — know what comes next. Was it from a client, or potential client, alerting me to crisis requiring my assistance? No. No, it was not. It was an unsolicited email from a legal marketeer I had never heard of before — from a fairly well know referral service — who wanted me to "discuss a relationship" in which I would pay for access to his firm's list of potential clients. Here, with certain deliberate omissions and alterations, is how it went:

Ken,

I do not believe that our two firms have met.

I'd like to discuss a relationship regarding the rights to our criminal law matters in the San Diego area.

Take a look at some of our current pre-screened (for financial capability) client matters in that protected territory.

To access our database:

• go to our site, societyforcornholingunsuspectingchildren.com;

• click on attorney log-in;

• your user name is rube2012;

• your password, is sucker2012;

• all lower case

• note that the password and user name are different

• click on the "all" cases line near the top of the home page;

• expires on January 4

Of course, I do ask that you not yet contact any of the clients.

Let me know whether it looks like a potential fit.

Cordially,

Mr. Feculent Q. Pus-Crust
Society For Cornholing Unsuspecting Children
[Los Angeles address and numbers]

My new pal Feculent is right about one thing — our firms have not met. That's because my firm is a law firm, and his firm is lodged, like a partially absorbed suppository, in the legal referral industry.

A few notes:

1. As is common with solicitations form the legal referral industry, the email title is intended to deceive. They do they same thing when they call — they tell the receptionist "I'm calling with a referral of a case" or "I need to talk about a criminal case."

2. My firm does, in fact, do work throughout California. However, most of our work is in the greater Los Angeles area. Our San Diego work is a few percentage points of our practice. Trying to pitch San Diego strongly suggest that dear Feculent is working off of some sort of automated lead generator. [Note: Feculent writes an enraged email back stating that he writes each pitch by hand and does not use any automated lead generator.]

3. Note that the misleading headline and the lack of a prominent opt-out provision puts the email squarely in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

4. I cannot imagine doing business with someone who seeks to initiate a business relationship based on deception. Even if I thought that using a legal referral service is palatable (which I do not) or made business sense (which I do not), I would never in a million years turn to a firm like the S.F.C.U.S., which approached me with a deceitful heart and a dishonest pitch.

5. I didn't use the password to look at their "pre-screened (for financial capability)" client matters. But the mere existence of a list of such things being put on the internet and emailed to potential customers is bizarre. I assume — I hope — that the list doesn't disclose actual names. Even if it does not, what type of criminal case has (a) a client pre-screened for financial ability and (b) such a leisurely pace that it can be summarized on a web site and used for marketing purposes to attract potential lawyers to represent the client, as opposed to, I don't know, immediately connecting the criminal defendant with a lawyer to protect his or her rights?

I feel the way I do when I get body-part-enlargement spam and fortune-in-gold-in-Nigeria pitches: what sort of morons respond to this? Isn't the model, in some ways, inherently self-repudiating? Isn't any lawyer who would respond to such a pitch inherently unsuitable to represent any criminal defendant?

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:

Author: Detroit Criminal Lawyer
IP Address: 180.234.117.75
Email Address: detroitlaw7@gmail.com
Home Page: http://www.metrodetroitlawfirm.com/criminal-lawyer
________________________________________
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
________________________________________

This delightful spam comment ostensibly promotes The Law Offices of Scott Aaronson in Detroit.

Can't sleep. Marketeers will eat me. Can't sleep. Marketeers will eat me.

Some protips, Scott Aaronson: (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) Scott Aaronson, I want to believe that you didn't draft that yourself. God, I want to believe that, even though you are some sort of marketeer yourself ("Scott is also a successful entrepreneur, managing internet based marketing businesses."). 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 Scott Aaronson and his 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.

Lawyers:

If you quickly say, "I'm sorry, I don't think my firm can handle this case, but I wish you the best of luck, goodbye," the instant you hear any of the following words or phrases from a cold-call potential client:

* CIA
* Implanted
* Tapped my phones
* Gangstalking

. . . . then there is a very negligible chance that you will miss an awesome case, but that chance will be more than made up for by the many hours of your life you will get back.

You're welcome.

(Attorney readers are invited to add more words and phrases.)

There's a scene I love in Tombstone, an otherwise inconsistent movie. It's the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The Earp boys, backed by Doc Holiday, head to the O.K. Corral to enforce Tombstone's new weapons ban on the Clanton boys and their gang. They catch the Clantons unawares. For a moment, it looks as if the Earps, by walking tall and projecting confidence and authority, are going to be able to make the Clantons give up their guns and end the confrontation without violence.

Then Doc Holiday — played with a fey combination of indifference, amusement, and sociopathy by Val Kilmer — delivers a slow, saucy wink to Billy Clanton, played by Thomas Hayden Church. Billy's expression goes from surprise to incredulity to outrage:

Wyatt sees what's happening and says "Oh, shit," but it's too late — the enraged Billy pulls his gun, and then everybody's shooting at everyone else.

I love that scene because it so perfectly captures what representing clients can be like. Litigation is ridiculously expensive, hopelessly unpredictable, and does a piss-poor job at vindicating values like "justice" or "fairness" or "truth." Quite often, settlement is the rational business decision, the rational outcome from a financial perspective. Under our flawed system, that's true whether the client's cause is righteous or bogus. You can demand your day in court, but it's a huge risk if you're a plaintiff and both a risk and an almost certainly unrecoverable massive expense if you're a defendant.

So: clients often decide that it's rational to try to settle, whether in front of a mediator or through attorney negotiation. But even though clients can be rational, they always retain the lizard brain, the part that wants their day in court where they can talk about how the other side is made up of mendacious assholes, and how righteous/bogus the lawsuit is. The urge to lash out at the people who wronged them/maliciously sued them is powerful. In short, even in the midst of a settlement negotiation that is proceeding very well and likely to produce what under the circumstances will be a favorable result, they want to give the other side Doc Holiday's saucy wink.

Unfortunately, the other side is made up of people with lizard brains, too. The clients on the other side (and, for that matter, even the lawyers) may react to your client's saucy wink with Billy Clanton's irrational, suicidal outrage, and then the whole settlement goes to hell, and everyone stubbornly plods to a ruinously expensive trial in front of people who couldn't get out of jury duty. The saucy wink may come in the form of provocative language at a mediation session, or it may come in the form of a client insisting on putting gratuitous swipes into settlement communications.

The client has a perfect right to reject settlement and go to trial. I see my role as advising the client about that, not telling the client what to do. But this is a context in which I argue more forcefully with a client than I would otherwise. It's simply foolish to waste time and money on mediation or negotiation just to tank it by preying — wittingly or unwittingly — on the human foibles of the other side. I get that this mediation or negotiation may wind up being the closest thing the client has to a "day in court" where he gets to express his outrage at the situation. But it's a situation where self-indulgent venting is harmful, unless the point is to end negotiation. That's why try to insist on a shuttle diplomacy approach in mediation so that the client can vent to the mediator, not to the other side, and not be exposed to the other side's venting. That's also why I ask clients to write out everything they want to say in a settlement communication, as vividly as they like, and then delete it from the communication and sit there while they yell at me about it until they get it out of their system and agree to the firm, but non-gratuitous, letter. Indulging in the saucy wink — or reacting to it — enriches nobody but the hourly-paid lawyers, who are the coffin-makers of this particular O.K. Corral.

As a result, sometimes it seems like I spend a lot of my professional life getting yelled at. They don't teach you about that in law school.

(Note that some lawyers favor communicating "holy shit, my client is crazy" to the other side, in order to encourage a better settlement, on the theory that the other side will conclude they are not dealing with a rational actor and adjust their settlement tolerance accordingly. That's swell, if you can reliably depend upon the rationality of the other side. But often humans don't react by saying "the other guy is irrational, which is going to make trial much more expensive, so I'm going to improve my settlement offer." Rather, they say "You think you're irrational? I'll show you irrational!! WHARRRBARGLGL!)

Someone would like for me to spend $159 for an ugly plaque commemorating a meaningless anniversary that passed two years ago. Presumably I would then put it on my wall, to impress clients.

The someone in question is a company called American Registry. They make plaques designed to allow your supervisors to demean you in a socially acceptable manner.

Now, apparently, they are in a partnership with our old friend Martindale-Hubbell. Martindale-Hubbell, perhaps momentarily bored of boobs-based advertising and referring crazy people to me, has apparently sold my email address to a commemorative plaque manufacturer.

Or perhaps "partnership" means Martindale just gave them my email address for the lulz; I don't know.

So. What do American Registry and Martindale think of me, as a lawyer? Are they offering plaques with renditions of Bragg prints? Plaques with jury verdict forms showing my clients being acquitted or massively rewarded?

No.

They want me to pay $159 (or today only, $139!) for this:

That's right. American Registry and Martindale want me to pay at least $139 to commemorate a two-year old anniversary of the date I was admitted to the bar.

American Registry and Martindale don't have the stones to say it straight out — but clearly they think I am a tasteless, insipidly vainglorious moron. Attend me: I would rather print out my least favorite Dungeons & Dragons character — from Second Edition — and post it on my wall to promote myself than let any client ever see that plaque. If you, as a client or prospective client, see that plaque on a lawyer's wall, then you should stand up immediately and back out of the room, never showing fear or exposing your back to the lawyer, and then flee to a competent lawyer's office as soon as possible. Because that lawyer is either (1) a hipster asshole who has the plaque up to be ironic, and will find it equally distantly amusing when the legal system runs a train on you, or (2) a mentally feeble git who is probably drooling as we speak.

So, to recap: Fuck you, American Registry and Martindale-Hubbell.

Dear prospective client who cold-called me:

Yes, I turned you down rather abruptly. I'm sorry if you were offended. But I had work to do, and wanted to get home to see my family.

Here's why I turned you down:

1. You were calling the day before an important hearing seeking to hire a lawyer to advise you about the hearing.
2. You were currently pro se, meaning that either (a) you lacked money to pay for a lawyer, or didn't want to pay what lawyers would charge to handle your case, or (b) you were unable to convince a lawyer that your case had merit, or (c) you believed — almost certainly incorrectly — that you knew better about how to handle your case than the lawyers you consulted.
3. You wanted me to step into a lawsuit in which you were suing a prior lawyer for malpractice.

See, unless you are coming to the table with so much cash-up-front that you make it worth the risk, that's a clear no-go for me. It's not that I won't sue other lawyers. I will. My reluctance has nothing to do with they're-all-in-it-together tribalism. My reluctance springs from the fact that someone who is suing his last attorney pro se is highly likely to wind up suing me pro se if he doesn't like the result of my representation. My reluctance springs from the fact that there's no way I can get ready to do a competent job at a complex hearing in a civil case by tomorrow. My reluctance springs from the fact that your failure to call me until the day before the hearing suggests either (a) many other lawyers have already turned you down, or (b) you have extremely bad judgment and/or self-discipline.

Why would I take on a case where I can't possibly be adequately prepared to represent someone with a penchant for suing lawyers who don't deliver the results you want?

It's possible that I might have given you more time — and possibly even reviewed some documents to evaluate the possibility of taking your case — if you had (a) called much earlier in the game, and (b) been able to articulate why you sued in pro se in the first place, and (c) been able to explain your case in a few sentences, as I've recommended before.

But life is too short, my day is too long, and I can't give away big chunks of time to everyone who calls, or else I'll go broke and/or never see my family.

Sorry if you feel disrespected.

Partners made me remove the final line of a letter written in response to a bumptious trustee's counsel: "Go troll elsewhere."

Stupid partners.

[Scene One]

AT MEDIATION

MEDIATOR: Ken, I like to run mediations with the parties face-to-face, so they can express their feelings. That's what I want to do today.

KEN: That will end badly. I know my client. I've been to mediation with him before. A face-to-face confrontation will harden hearts and tank the mediation — especially in this case, especially with the attitude on the other side. I strongly prefer a shuttle diplomacy approach where we are in separate rooms and you go from one side to the other. Face-to-face time will end badly.

MEDIATOR: Well, Ken, I've been doing this for a while, and I know what I am doing, so that's the way we're going to do it. This is all about letting the parties express their feelings and get things off their chests.

[SCENE TWO]

MEDIATOR: Well, here we are. Let's start with the plaintiffs. Plaintiff, what do you feel about this case?

PLAINTIFF'S COUNSEL: [Very mildly snarky and only semi-forceful exposition of his position]

KEN'S CLIENT: [erupts in outrage] [shouts in two languages] [spittle, red face, clenched fists] [storms out] [leaves mediation]

PLAINTIFF'S COUNSEL: [smirks] [didn't want to be there in the first place]

[SCENE THREE]

MEDIATOR: Well, Ken, that was very disappointing. I didn't expect that would happen. I heard you, but maybe I wasn't listening to you or feeling you.

KEN: Did you get your law degree in a box of wind chimes and dreamcatchers?

END

But otherwise I fully recommend this story about District Attorney Susan Doyle of Johnston County, North Carolina, who, by availing herself of North Carolina's "alienation of affections" law to sue the "other woman" for adultery, has turned her private "mental anguish, humiliation, injury to physical and emotional health and the loss of assistance and financial support of her spouse" into a public joke.

District Attorney Susan Doyle has a nice smile

Taxpayers of Johnston County, who vote for their District Attorney, may wonder if they're getting full representation from Mrs. Doyle as she splashes her private venom for the other woman all over the courthouse.

As for attorneys, well in the words of one who practices in a county nearby, "The opportunity to be humiliated in front of your peers is not something elected officials often seek."  If Mrs. Doyle thinks she's suffered agony thus far, wait until she seeks reelection.

It's not much of a secret that I'm not a fan of modern legal marketing. I mean, I'm not a crank on the subject on the level of a Greenfield or a Tannebaum, but I'm a critic. I think that modern legal marketing is epitomized by comment spam, legal search engines that produce mostly calls from crazy people, sham referral services, and aggressive flimflammers trying to make money from lawyers.

So I wasn't exactly surprised to see Antonin Pribetic's link to a Canadian site extolling Klout for lawyers. However, I was, like Antonin, appalled.

No, Klout is not an East German techno-pop band. It's a meta-social-networking company — not one that lets you post on Facebook or tweet, but one that measures how many people might conceivably give a shit when you do. Klout helps you focus on things like this:

Reach
Are your tweets interesting and informative enough to build an audience?
How far has your content been spread across Twitter?
Are people adding you to lists and are those lists being followed?
Demand
How many people did you have to follow to build your count of followers?
How often are your follows reciprocated?

Klout does not have a metric for whether, as a professional, you have the faintest grasp of what you are doing. (I sure hope they're working on it.) But to the drinkers of modern legal marketing's Kool-Aid, that's not the right question. Neither is "how does Klout influence actually translate to clients hiring me?" Rather, the question is how much the other people who like this sort of thing are liking the way that you do this sort of thing:

Legal marketers and others who advise lawyers (myself included) have been gently prodding lawyers to start using social media in marketing their practices with such services as: Twitter, Facebook, blogs and others. Oftentimes, we are asked: “How do you know if this is effective or just a waste of time?” Well now all of us can start gauging our effectiveness via a growing number of websites that seek to place a quantitative assessment of your clout (or Klout as it may be) in social media circles.

. . .

Klout is a great way to determine whether your social media message is strongly focused, whether it is reaching your target audience and whether you are seen as an influencer or not. Or as they would put it, do you have Klout?

To legal marketeers, Klout — like Twitter followers and Facebook friends and search engine hits — is its own reward. Marketeers would prefer that you not focus on how one uses this to deliver effective service to clients (if you're feeling noble) or at least how one monetizes it (if you're feeling crass). If you focus on that, you're going to know that you can't stand up in court and say "Your Honor, the prosecutor may have a good argument about the admissibility of that statement, but allow me to point out that my Klout score is much higher than his." If you focus on that, you're going to realize that, in terms of actual calls to you, what Klout and Twitter and such tools most reliably produces are calls from marketeers wanting to sell you (a likely sucker) on some other marketing widget. Meta-marketing geegaws like Klout, in short, are effective money-making tools only for people who operate them or who make money telling you to use them, not for lawyers.

Such things are also colossal time-sinks. Look, I love watching hits roll into this site on Woopra as much as anybody. But that's a hobby. We don't promote our real-world employers on this site, and we don't delude ourselves that our Popehat-marketing activities produce anything other than people who like to read free stuff. Lawyers who spend long hours tracking how many people are retweeting them might imagine they are contributing to the bottom line — but they are deluding themselves.

Antonin made this point for us all at the Canadian site that touted Klout. Here's the part they left in:

Are you seriously promoting Klout as having any value to lawyers? Do you actually believe that Klout or any other social media snake-oil metrics measure “influence” or offer anything remotely useful or quantifiable? Are you not aware that Klout and other so-called social media metrics can be gamed, just like any SEO crap tactics? Your bio states that you are a “lawyer and Practice Management Consultant” [...] Instead of the same-old, same-old, why not write a post about whether lawyers need practice management consultants, instead of spending 5 minutes to open a Twitter and Facebook account and 10 minutes to get a WordPress or Blogger account? What about the pitfalls of social media credential fraud and the ethical implications of lawyers using social media?

Here's the part they cut out as against site commenting standards:

So, have you given up your gig and now spend your time helping lawyers harness the awesome power of the internet? No, not interested? Figures.

I'm waiting for a response. But not holding my breath.

Look, legal marketing has always been susceptible to shallow babble. Anyone who has ever watched late night TV, with its cheap-suited lawyers standing in front of mismatched books, knows that. But modern legal marketing is insidious in new and exciting ways. The incessant hum of marketeer bullshit is calculated to encourage both lawyers and clients to mistake solicitation and substance. Marketeers and their acolytes are pushing the notion that's not just descriptive, but proscriptive — that not only do clients choose clients for stupid reasons like finding them first in a Google search, but that this is a good thing. In fact, any competent and honest attorney will tell you that picking an attorney out of the yellow pages, be they paper or digital, is an awful idea to be avoided if at all possible. That's how the Rakofskys of the world get hired. Moreover, as Antonin suggests, the focus on marketing's SEO power, as opposed to its honesty and accuracy, continues to mainstream dishonest marketing tactics among lawyers on this relatively new medium.

Technology can help lawyers, and help lawyers help clients. A good web site can provide valuable, specific, honest information to prospective clients. Email is an effective and money-saving way to communicate with clients, co-counsel, opposing counsel, and others. Sites that let lawyers share documents with colleagues and clients are marvelous. But technology is not its own justification or its own reward. For grown-ups, shinier is not automatically better.

I wish I had enough Klout so more people could hear me say that. Maybe if I added some more key words and tweeted at key hours and RT'd to some opinion-makers.

Against our better judgment, my firm pays a significant amount of money to be listed with various attorney directories. When I began practice the primary point of this payment was to be listed in large, dusty, heavy things that were called "books"; companies like Martindale-Hubbell and Thomson-West made you pay though the nose to be included. Now the primary point seems to be getting your name and information into their online directories; I haven't seen one of the physical directories in a decade.

We'd tell these companies to piss off if the only benefit were being listed on directories which people can search to find a lawyer. But, regrettably, there's another lingering purpose: some old-school lawyers, from firms to in-house counsel, believe that you're not a real lawyer if you aren't listed in Martindale or Thomson-Reuters-West-MSNBC-TMZ or whatever the hell it's called this week. Thus even when a case might come in the door through rational channels — like a personal referral — if your name isn't in the blasted proprietary databases, some will conclude you must be a hack with a mail-order degree running your firm out the back of a bait shop.

So we pay the money, and we grit our teeth. It's effectively a guild fee or a payoff to a corrupt local official.

But surely, you might say, having your firm listed in Martindale or Thomson-Disney-Hustler-West-Nickolodeon brings in clients? No. It brings in potential clients, clients who have not heeded my advice that you should never cold-call lawyers picked out of the digital yellow pages if you can possibly avoid it. The vast majority of them are completely unsuitable as clients. Most fall into familiar categories:

1. People who want us to sue someone to get the microchips out of their head;
2. People who want us to sue their last lawyer, who fell down on the job on suing the lawyer before that, who fell down on the job on suing the lawyer before that, who may or may not have been hired to get microchips out of their head;
3. People who want to sue based on things that happened decades ago — like the person who wanted to sue a major metropolitan newspaper for a article printed during the G.H.W. Bush Administration which described an anonymous woman she thinks was meant to be her;
4. People who want us to take, on a contingency basis, plainly meritless cases against people who are on public assistance;
5. People who want to sue for defamation based on nasty things said about them that nobody heard and that did not result in them losing any job, benefits, property, or reputation;
6. People who want to sue doctors because they believe that, if their surgery did not transform their middle-aged bodies into Olympic-quality artworks, their doctor must have been incompetent;
7. People who are convinced of legal propositions that have no place in the law, or reality, and will scream at you if you do not agree with them;
8. People who want pro-bono criminal representation;
9. People who want to pay you $500 to get a twenty-year-old life sentence overturned, because "it's so clear and outrageous that what they did isn't right";
10. People who just want to talk to someone.

That's what Martindale and Thomson deliver. If I counted up the actual, paying clients we've gotten from the Martindale and Thomson listings, I think they've brought in less in gross revenue than those listings have cost.

The cost is not just the annual price of a listing. It's time. I tend to field all cold calls to the firm — at least for criminal and litigation practices. I do that to maintain quality control, to manage the firm's public face, to keep other employees doing real work, and to avoid more expenditure of time down the road (which you get if someone who can't issue-spot takes the call and sets up an in-person consult). I try to be polite, I try to be respectful (even to the assholes who won't let me finish a sentence or think they should be instructing me on what the law is based on what they see on TV), and I try to be constructive when I turn them down ("you might want to look for a smaller firm, or a solo, that could do such a case economically" or "you should rethink the impact the Streisand Effect might have on your proposed defamation case" or "you should try to find a doctor who will give you an opinion about whether or not you've actually gotten improper treatment"), and (as a crazy person myself) I try to be merciful to the crazy people. Often, not always, I succeed in these goals. But I spend an immense amount of non-billable time managing these calls (not to mention the time I spend deflecting legal marketers, who flock to Martindale and Thomson listings like flies to shit). It pisses me off that I have to do that for the privilege of being listed in various directories that some folks still think are essential to credibility.

It would be nice to think that the need for such listings will fade with new technology. But the incessant hum of legal marketing drivel is prolonging the life of the Martindales and Thomsons, not mercifully terminating them. The hype about web sites and social media and blog-marketing and the like continues to promote the idea that lawyers should be found — and judged — not based on the quality of their work and their reputation with people who actually know it, but based on their prominence in Google search results. This bullshit. You're not looking for the cheapest Blu-Ray player. You have to look for lawyers by seeking reliable referrals; if you get a decent lawyer through online searches, it will be by luck.

We'll have to change more attitudes of referral sources before we can stop paying the shakedown money.

Just before leaving the office last night I got a call from Greg, of Greg's Quality Plumbing.  Greg does seem, on the phone anyway, to be a quality plumber: a nice guy running a six employee shop for new construction and homeowners.  Unfortunately one of Greg's employees made a mistake, overtightening a compression nut on the toilet water supply line in a very expensive house insured by BigState Casualty Insurance Company.  The nut eventually fractured,over Christmas vacation with the family out of town, and the water flowed for days.  BigState paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to rehabilitate the waterlogged house, and wants its money back.  From Greg's Quality Plumbing.

And so Greg got my letter, and Greg picked up the phone to sort this all out, and to set me straight.  As I said, I have no doubt Greg is a quality plumber but Greg is an absolute amateur when it comes to dealing with sharks in the water.  He made a number of serious mistakes, feeding me information about his business, the employee who did the work, the general contractor who built the house and will be cross-claiming against Greg in the coming lawsuit, and Greg's business assets.  All while trying to set me straight.

In the end, Greg did not set me straight.  What he accomplished was to give me information I will use against him at his deposition and at trial.  He kneecapped the defense attorney his insurance company will retain, an attorney who won't even hear about the dispute between BigState and Greg's Quality Plumbing for several months.  I almost feel sorry for Greg, who came into the conversation with high hopes that he would frighten me off or convince me that I have no case against him.  All that he did was convince me to write this post, as friendly advice to small businessmen on what to do when they get "the letter".

1. When you get a letter from a lawyer, read it. Read it immediately. Read it more than once. Then take a short break, and read it again.  When Greg called me, he told me he "wanted to find out what all of this was about."  If Greg had bothered to read my letter, which detailed exactly what we think the problem was, what we want from Greg, and how to give us what we want, he wouldn't have needed to call me. And he wouldn't have answered a bunch of my questions as I pretended to search my files and databases to get to the bottom of the problem in BigState v. Greg's Quality Plumbing.
2. Don't be an ostrich. Don't ignore the problem: It won't go away. I've spent most of my career defending clients for insurance companies, so I've ceased being amazed at how people hide their heads in the sand when they get bad news. But they do. They even get a "letter", by certified mail, that says CIVIL SUMMONS with another "letter" titled COMPLAINT attached, and file it away, meaning to get around to responding to it. They violate rule #1, failing to read the Summons which clearly states that they have 30 days to respond, in writing filed with the clerk of court, or something bad will happen to them. After you've read the letter, you need to frame a response. And that response should not come from you.
3. Don't be an internet hero. You read a lot of things on the internet: you read about the day-to-day life of lesbians in Syria. You read about cute women who are just dying to meet lonely men in New York. And you read stories about laypeople who've beaten lawyers at their own game, with nothing but their wits and the righteousness of their cause. Those sure are nice stories, but are they true? All I can judge from is my own experience: I've never "lost" a case, for the plaintiff or the defendant, in which I faced a layperson on the other side. ("Losing" is a relative term: every time I litigate against laypeople, I feel like a loser because it's like beating up a twelve year old.) I've beaten a neurosurgeon who could have afforded counsel but didn't feel the need because it was a small case, he was right, and doggone it he was smart. I've beaten a hyperlitigious crank who's filed so many pro se lawsuits she's been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. And I've beaten everyone in between. Because while I'm not all that smart, I'm old. And I've been doing this for a long time. You haven't. Which leads to:
4. Shut up. Wise advice, that applies to civil matters as much as criminal cases. Don't call the lawyer who sent you "the letter" to "set him straight". You won't solve the problem on the phone.  But you might hang yourself.
5. Get help. Obviously the person or company on the other side thought the dispute between you was important enough to retain counsel. That's a hint. If you have a business, you probably know a lawyer. Even if you don't, your customers and friends do. Ask around, discreetly (i.e. not blabbing all over town that you're getting sued), for the name of a good lawyer or two. And call the lawyer. Today. If the lawyer doesn't call you back with reasonable promptness (meaning if you call me at 11pm on a Saturday, don't expect a return call before midnight), call another.
6. Get professional help. Bob who pleads out speeding tickets for $250 a pop at the courthouse may be a good negotiator, but he's probably not the best choice to address your bank's demand for you to cover that Nigerian "certified check" that turned out to be fraudulent. The best source of legal referrals is other lawyers. By all means ask the lawyer whether the problem facing you is in one that's in his field. You'd be happy to have an ophthalmogist stop to help you as you lie bleeding on the side of the road, but once you get to the emergency room you'd want a trauma surgeon. If as Robert Heinlein said, specialization is for insects, that explains why lawyers give many people the creeps.
7. Don't be penny-wise but pound-foolish. If you're getting a letter from an attorney because you owe sixty dollars at the video store, just pay the bill. If you're getting a million dollar demand because old Ms. Shuffler broke her neck when she slipped in the banana aisle of your store, get out your checkbook. You're going to need a quality defense.  Which leads to:
8. Are you in good hands? Any claim that could conceivably be covered by your business's insurance policy (you are insured, right?) should be reported to your insurance company. In writing. Immediately. If you don't report a problem to your insurance company because you don't want your rates to increase or you're afraid they'll cancel your policy (as clients have told me when I was asked to get their default judgments set aside), YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! What do you think you're writing the premium check every month for? If a loss is even arguably covered, your insurer will take over negotiation of the claim, speak for you through an adjuster who's not terrified of lawyers, and hire a lawyer to defend you at its own expense. Don't be Greg of Greg's Quality Plumbing, who should have turned this over to his insurer (in fact that's what I told him to do) and then could have rested easy.
9. Keep your files. It should go without saying, but when you get a notice from an attorney, or for that matter the government, the first thing you should do is not to throw away all records relating to whatever the problem is. Covering up may turn a humdrum civil case into a criminal case. Instead, turn the file over to your lawyer. Let him worry about what to do with it. And lastly,
10. Don't get depressed. And don't panic. The sonofabitch who sent you that obnoxious letter may not love you, but plenty of other people do.

Lawyers should feel free to criticize or supplement this list in comments.  Our lay readers are encouraged to tell us stories of how they fought City Hall and The Man on their own, and won.

Six years ago today, my partner and I — fugitives from BigLaw — opened the doors to our new firm. We had rented desks, lots of boxes, phones that occasionally worked, and a ingrained distaste for big-firm practice.

Six years later, we've got more than a dozen lawyers and enough employees that sometimes I don't recognize them all, and they don't recognize me. Some of that is to the good, some is not.

A few things I've picked up about starting your own law firm in six years:

1. When you're at a big firm, and a partner or associate isn't working out, you can find someone else to work with, either on an emergency basis or in the long term. At a small firm, you're stuck with what you've got, unless you want to go through the unpleasant and sometimes expensive business of firing and re-hiring. So: invest a lot of time in interviewing and vetting the people you hire. Follow up on references. Use connections to get the inside scoop on people. In a small shop, you've got no choice but to rely on them.

2. If BigLaw has infected you with school snobbery, it's time to grow up and get over it when it comes to hiring associates and partners. Plenty of fantastic lawyers didn't go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Chicago. Some of our most standout lawyers have been people who would have a lot of trouble even getting an interview at BigLaw because they didn't to a top-50 school. But their "second-tier" or "third-tier" school taught them more about actually doing competent legal work than the ivy-festooned schools, which tend to focus on training people to teach other people about the philosophy of law. They need jobs, they're just as capable of excellent work, and they won't arrive with the entitled attitudes that some ivy refugees get. That's your competitive advantage over BigLaw. Use it.

3. The time you invest in your associates — showing them how to do things right, giving them lots of feedback on their work, and explaining why you are doing what you are doing — pays back tenfold in the long run. If I spend 100 hours this year painstakingly training up an associate, that's about 500 fewer hours I have to spend next year on writing first drafts of stuff myself, because that associate is going to be trained to do things right the first time, and is going to develop into someone whose work I can trust.

4. Turnover is killer, and retention is key. Unless you're in extraordinary circumstances, you're not going to be able to match BigLaw salaries. Don't pretend to try — particularly in this economy. People will stay with you at a fraction of the salary that BigLaw pays if you give them what they can't get at BigLaw: decent and respectful treatment, no bureaucratic bullshit, more reasonable and honest billable hours requirements, and access to significant work. Let them wear jeans, for God's sake. Make it clear that as long as they get the work done and they're available by email and return client calls, you don't care what time they come in or leave. Order in lunch a lot and have the whole firm eat together. Handle minor legal matters for their family and friends for free — because you take care of your people. That sort of decent treatment gets a type of loyalty that BigLaw's ludicrous salaries never will.

5. Small firms and new firms tend to be very nervous about bringing in business. Never lose sight of the fact that the most important way to keep business coming in is keeping your clients happy through quality work and responsiveness. If your economic model depends on high volume rather than satisfied customers, you're running a mill, not a firm.

6. As soon as you can afford it, hire someone to handle HR and office-management crap. You'll be amazed at the number of hours you get back, how much of a relief it will be, and what you can accomplish in those hours.

7. Find friends and colleagues who have opened small firms and take them to lunch to pick their brains for pricing information. The first few times you make a flat-fee offer, you may either price yourself out of the market or take a bath. Ask for help learning the economics of it.

8. Sometimes you'll make more money turning a case down than taking it. Listen to your gut when it tells you a prospective client is a crank, a nut, or a con-artist. If they've cycled through three or four sets of lawyers, and they're bad-mouthing them all, the problem might be with the client.

9. If you can't have drinks in the conference room at 4:30, or close the office and take everyone bowling, or take a pro-bono case just because you want to, why did you start your own shop in the first place?

Let me start by saying this: you shouldn't be cold-calling a lawyer in the first place.

By that I mean you shouldn't be calling a lawyer because you found him in the Yellow Pages, or because her web site was on the first page of Google results, or because the firm has a bitchin' Twitter feed.

If you need a lawyer, you should be calling one based on the recommendation of someone you trust.

You should be asking friends, and relatives, and co-workers, and your doctor, and your accountant, and your pastor, and your neighbor who is a lawyer, if they can recommend a lawyer with the specialty you need. If they can't, see if they can recommend any lawyer, and then ask that lawyer for a referral to someone with the specialty you need. When people are recommending a lawyer based on their own experience, ask them these questions: was the lawyer honest? Was she responsive to calls and emails? Did he charge [what the client saw as] a reasonable fee? Did the lawyer produce results? Did those results bear any relation to what the lawyer promised? If the person you are asking says that their friend or relative had a good experience with a lawyer, ask if you can talk directly to that friend or relative about their experience.

In short, get a referral from a human being with experience with the lawyer. If possible, if that person had a good experience with the lawyer in question, ask them to make a call to introduce you and tell the lawyer you will be calling, and then call the lawyer yourself.

However, on occasion, you'll need a lawyer with an obscure specialty, or in a remote area where you don't know anyone, or you won't have time to seek a recommendation, or you'll be a reclusive misfit with no friends like me, and you'll not be able to six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon your way into a connection with the sort of lawyer you need. In these circumstances, you might find one online, through a Google search or a lawyer search site or in the Yellow Pages. You might even call the local Bar Association — though in my experience you might as well ask the cat.

So — you have a name. Either it's the name of someone who has been recommended to you, and they are expecting your call, or it's someone who was on the first page of Google results for +oh +shit +need +lawyer +Pismo Beach +dwarf +public +indecency +hedge-clippers or something.

What do you need to do?

Prepare for the call: Oh, sweet Jesus, please prepare for the call. Here's what that means:

1. If you've been sued, or subpoenaed, or searched, or arrested, you've almost certainly received some papers. Look at them. What court is this in? Is it civil or criminal (that means are you being charged with a crime by the government or sued by someone for money?) Does it say "Superior Court" or "United States District Court" or what? Be as familiar as you possibly can with the papers, and have them in front of you when you call. If you don't have the ability to fax or scan documents to get them to the lawyer, figure out ahead of time how you will do so, by going to Kinkos or a friend's house or something. If you have trouble understanding it, ask a friend to go over it with you. If you call a lawyer and don't know whether the case is criminal or civil and don't know what court it is in, the lawyer will suspect that representing you will frequently involve gritting his teeth to stop from screaming at you.

2. Especially if you are calling a lawyer to talk about suing someone rather than facing criminal charges or a lawsuit against you, think about how to explain what you want. If you can't summarize what the problem is and what you want in four sentences, keep thinking until you can. This is especially a problem if you are one of those people, bless their hearts, who cannot explain a straightforward situation in less time it would take James Joyce fully to explore the tension between autonomy and religion. Here's a good example of a summary to start a conversation with a lawyer: "I think I want to sue someone for defamation. My coworker went around telling people that I peed in the coffee pot again, and people have been making fun of me and they put me on the night shift." Or maybe "I want to sue my business partner because we had a contract to split profits from a business and I think he's been cooking the books to hide profits." Rule of thumb: a summary does not have supporting cast, characterization, multiple settings, chapters, or leitmotifs.

Why is that important? Because lawyers are irritated by people who can't convey information succinctly. Lawyers want to go back to screaming at associates and billing current clients, not listen to someone who can't get to the point. Lawyers think, probably correctly, that if you can't discipline yourself to start with a brief summary, then their entire experience with you will be miserable. Every call will be a marathon, and you'll be impossible to prepare for deposition or trial testimony. Are you worried that you only have one shot at telling the lawyer every single fact they will ever need to know? That's not right. Lawyers will ask pertinent follow-up questions to get more detail necessary to evaluate your case. In fact, the lawyer is waiting impatiently to do that right now while you natter on about what someone said to someone else on an occasion entirely irrelevant to the legal issue presented. If you're someone who simply cannot cut to the chase, even when gently encouraged, the lawyer may well decide she doesn't want this case and check out mentally, waiting for a lull in your life story to say this isn't her practice area.

So: prepare for the call the way you would for a wedding toast at a wedding where the mother of the bride is sitting next to you and is notoriously violent and has personally informed you that if you speak for more than forty-five seconds she will be jabbing you in the crotch with an oyster fork.

3. Think about what you want. If you haven't thought up front about whether you are interested in suing or not, and whether or not you are willing to pay any money for legal services, then you're wasting time. Of course you'll want the lawyer's advice, and want to know what the lawyer would charge, and so forth. But don't go into a call like a blank slate without reflecting on what your goals are. The lawyer is not a therapist.

Don't be a know-it-all:

Look. Do you go to the doctor with an unpleasant discharge and argue with the doctor's diagnosis of the clap because you think based on your extensive familiarity with the first three seasons of House that the symptoms seem more like syphilis? Probably not. So, if you need a lawyer to advise you, why the fuckity fuckity fuck are you arguing with the lawyer based on an understanding of the law cultivated by CSI and your aunt Bernice who reads lots of detective novels? Nothing will turn off a lawyer faster than a potential client who must win every conversation, even if the conversation is one in which the client is seeking important advice about an issue on which he is abjectly ignorant. This is in part because lawyers themselves are mostly people who must win conversations and resent you treading on their patch.

This doesn't mean that you're dumb and the lawyer is smart. But you don't necessarily need a lawyer who is smart; you need one who is honest, knowledgeable, and experienced. Albert Einstein or Doogie Howser can get you lethally injected just as fast as a dumb guy if they decide to try their hand at criminal defense; the guy who got Cs all through high school and college can get you off because he's done it hundreds of times and is frankly too jaded to bother lying to you about it.

So: go into the conversation that you are consulting a subject-matter-expert to learn something. Don't be the guy who has never figured out how to replace the batteries in his mouse but still argues with tech support on principle. If what the lawyer says sounds wrong to you, then call a different lawyer and get another opinion. And if you truly do have some specialized legal knowledge, like you know that general legal principles do not apply to your case under the Special Snowflake Act of 2011, and this lawyer doesn't seem to share that specialized legal knowledge, then he's not the right lawyer for you anyway. Go into the discussion to learn and evaluate, not to argue or persuade. Be prepared for the possibility that the law might be something other than what you expect based on your life experiences. A lawyer is not there to tell you what you want to hear. If you insist on a lawyer who will only tell you what you want to hear, you will eventually wind up with one who is (1) meek, and therefore a shitty lawyer, (2) dishonest, and therefore a shitty lawyer, or (3) so desperate for work that they will put up with your bullshit, and therefore a shitty lawyer.

Also, when you're talking to the lawyer, would it really kill you to let the lawyer finish a sentence now and then?

Give a little thought to timing:

On the one hand, if you hear you've been sued or charged or wronged or something, don't start calling lawyers in a panic before you've learned anything. If you're going to be telling the lawyer "my husband says we've been served with legal papers, but I haven't driven home to see them yet and I haven't called him back so I don't know anything, but can you take my case?", then you're wasting time. If you are calling to say "somebody said something bad about me in a newspaper article that I haven't read yet," then you're wasting time.

On the other hand, don't procrastinate. Don't wait to call until the day before that hearing or trial or briefing due-date. If the judge gave you 30 days to do something, don't start calling on day 25. Lawyering is not rocket science, but it's usually not like replacing the toner in the printer either. It can take time to be prepared to do the job right, and the lawyer probably isn't sitting there playing minesweeper waiting for your call; she's got other clients.

Bear in Mind That Lawyers Are Sort of Like People Too, In A Way:

Do you deal with "the public," or "clients," or with strangers asking you for things, in your life? Then you have a sense of what it's like. Lawyers can be insufferable, sure. But you're not talking to a lawyer because he's asking you for a favor. You're asking the lawyer to work for you. And lawyers are human, at least in the bundle-of-flaws sense. So if you are curt and abrupt, if you are openly incredulous at what the lawyer says, if you treat the lawyer openly like someone who is out to cheat you (as opposed to doing so subtly, which is perfectly sensible), if you can't let the lawyer speak a complete sentence without interrupting, if you negotiate in a contemptuous manner as if you are buying a fake Rolex off a guy in an alley, then the lawyer is not going to be enthused about you, and his vestigial humanity is going to lead him to turn you down or charge you more or resent you and work less hard for you. He can't spit in your food the way waiters will if you act like bad consumers, but he can do stuff that's far, far worse. Pretend that the lawyer is a human being with feelings, and things will go much smoother. (But note: do not carry this too far. Get second opinions, exercise skepticism, and do not under any circumstances attempt to have sexual intercourse with the lawyer, or make sudden movements in his presence, particularly while he is eating.)

This is merely a guide for how to handle the initial call with a lawyer when you are seeking counsel. Look for a future guide on sealing the deal with a lawyer and the care and feeding of your lawyer.

Note: if you are saying "I can't believe he thinks he has to tell people these things," then you do not deal with the public on a regular basis.

Edited to add: RL Mullen asked a question that he may have meant ironically, but bears addressing seriously: if you get arrested, should you ask your bail bondsman for an attorney recommendation?

My answer is the Platonic ideal of an attorney response: maybe yes, maybe no; it could work out great, or you could get utterly shafted. Some bail bondsmen take kickbacks for referrals, or have cross-referral agreements, and send clients to similarly seedy and questionable lawyers. They're in it for the one-time-customer volume. On the other hand, some bail bondsmen are reputable and recommend lawyers they think are trustworthy and reasonably priced. They're in it for repeat business and word-of-mouth — they want their clients to have a good experience with their lawyers, because they want their clients to come back if they get arrested again, and because they don't want to develop a reputation for being associated with crappy lawyers.

In general, if you select a quality, reputable bail bonds company, you can at least consider their recommendation of an attorney. When you contact that attorney, carefully evaluate whether the attorney gives you individualized attention and seems interested in your case; if the lawyer has a secretary or paralegal interview you, or seems sleazy or fly-by-night, run the other way.