Big Time Law Firm Resorts to Spamming  
by Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - 2 Comments, Last updated 09/05/2008

Whenever somebody starts ranting about “the damn lawyers”, of which I’m one, mind you, I’m fond of saying “you know, 95% of the lawyers out there…

…make the other 5% of us look really bad.”

It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, because people expect the message following the “…” to be that 95% of the lawyers are good, and it’s the small 5% that are the bad apples. And, of course, in reality usually the numbers do flow in that direction.

But unfortunately, sometimes, it’s all to true.

But even I, jaded though I am, was stunned when this little gem - this blog comment spam, landed on the Internet Patrol today:

Author : jessicachristina (IP: 122.169.176.37 , ABTS-AP-dynamic-037.176.169.122.airtelbroadband.in)
E-mail : jessicachristina84 at gmail dot com
URL : http://www.lawyertime.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=122.169.176.37
Comment:
Recognized as one of the leading personal injury law firms in Newyork. Gersowitz, Libo & Korek, P.C. www.lawyertime.com has recovered tens of millions of dollars for our clients personal injury claims in New York and New Jersey. Click here to read some of our client success stories.In order to give our clients the best representation possible, we are very selective in the cases we handle. Once you become a client, you can count on us to not only aggressively pursue your personal injury case but also to advance all costs and expenses associated with your lawsuit.

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So, what have we here? Well, on its face, we have someone in India who is posting comment spam for a law firm in New York - the law firm of Gersowitz Libo & Korek.

But this is oh, so much more than just your garden variety comment spam.

Because what we have is professionals - a law firm - who would otherwise appear to be an upstanding member of the legal community - resorting to what in many places is illegal - and in all places is unethical - business practices.

Now mind you, this is no fly-by-night, get a law degree by drawing Earl Warren from a matchbook cover, law firm. These are bonafide members of the bar, all of whom graduated from noted law schools, and have been in practice for years (in some cases decades). In fact, lead partner Edward Gersowitz was an associate with none other than F. Lee Bailey himself, at one time.

In fact, all three named partners - Edward Gersowitz, Andrew Libo, and Jeff Korek, all were associates of Mr. Bailey’s, and all graduated from good law schools.

So, what gives? Why would people like this resort to tactics like that?

It’s hard to imagine. But the most likely scenario is that they paid someone for a shadowy service known as “internet marketing”, and this is what they got. Oh, they will probably claim that they didn’t know that their “internet marketing expert” was going to resort to spamming on their behalf, which rather begs the question of whether they did their due diligence, as everybody knows that if you pay someone to drum up business for you online, the odds are very good that they will do it via spam. Which in fact is what the section of CAN-SPAM that I helped to author goes to the very heart of - if you benefit from someone else sending spam, you get the Feds knocking on your door.

But, sadly, the instant case isn’t about someone sending spam. It’s about someone posting comment spam, which is not quite as clear cut, or regulated, as is email spam.

The question is, does the law firm of Gersowitz Libo & Korek know that - are they intentionally taking advantage of what they see as a legal loophole in spam advertising?

Any why does F. Lee Bailey’s office turn out spammers?