by Structured Settlement Watchdog®
Eric Turkewitz has penned an interesting article on the New York Personal Injury Law Blog entitled " FuneralHomes.com Digs Deep For Personal Injury Lawyers
While the title is self explanatory and Turkewitz makes the witty observation that "the bar for attorney advertising has been lowered to new depths. It now appears to rest six feet under", what is interesting about his post is his observation about how in this modern day bad business practices get effectively dealt with on the internet.
In the past 5 years, while some in the structured settlement industry have complained to me about issues either I, Mark Wahlstrom, or Patrick Hindert have raised, believing that resolution of these issues is the province of the NSSTA (or SSP), the reality is that despite having published codes of ethics, the standards are rarely (if ever) enforced
With respect to lawyers, Turkewitz states in parallel: "The ABA position doesn’t really matter. And you know why? Because when lawyers see conduct that they deem to be offensive and detrimental to the legal field – and I think that lawyers advertising on funeral home websites fits that definition — then some lawyer-bloggers will write about the subject. And if those bloggers are sufficiently offended by the conduct, then they might publicize the names of those that are chasing cases in such a manner. You can see examples of such e-shaming here by Mark Bennett, or another by Kevin O’Keefe here".
I concur with Turkewitz' observation that "the web moves very fast when it comes to correcting the behavior of those that act offensively, a hell of a lot faster than the ABA" (or the NSSTA or the SSP for that matter). This is the reality that has been borne out over the past 5 years and it's a good thing.
It took a while for the structured settlement industry to adjust to the paradigm shift of "peer pressure by Internet" that, for better or worse, has proven to be effective.
It has been 5 years since this author started this blog. It hasn't always been easy, but this author and fellow bloggers have scythed through disparate efforts to thwart the new reality. At the NSSTA hospitality suite at the Bellagio last week this author was gratified to hear more compliments than criticism for his brand of watchdog commentary.
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