Do you really think we would put up a free Craigslist ad? That’s for losers, and it will never ever happen. Period. Why? Because it’s undignified, that’s why. And yes, you are a total loser if you’re putting up free classified ads for legal services on Craigslist. I don’t care if it resulted in a client or two.

Rather than hijack his post with a rambling comment, I figured I’d share my experience posting on craigslist. Let me tell you a story.

The year was 2007. I had no money, so I was working one weekend and thought I would put up a post on craigslist. Within minutes of publishing my little ad, I got a call. The guy needed help with a case set for Monday and wanted a free consultation right away. I agreed and met with him after hours. He was an hour late. I let him do a payment plan with very little money down. I put myself in the worst situation imaginable for a criminal defense attorney, but bizarrely, the guy turned out to be a great client. He was so happy with the representation that he showed up one afternoon a few weeks later and gave me a hug along with a check for the balance due months before he actually had to pay it.

Let me tell you another story that’s very closely related.

The year was 2006. I had even less money than I did in 2007, and I was really sad because my brother was playing second trombone in the Mozart Requiem with the Seattle Symphony and I couldn’t afford to fly out and see him play the famous Tuba Mirum solo. I went for a depressing motorcycle ride that I had to cut short due to a lack of gas money. I had five dollars in my pocket and made the decision to stick it in a video poker machine at a casino on my way home. It was all I had, and it wasn’t even enough to pay my way into a respectable game with other human beings. Anyway, I stuck my five in the machine, pressed “max credits” for a hand of deuces wild, and watched my balance drop to zero. Nothing. I hit “draw” and sat there dumbfounded as four beautiful deuces popped up on the screen. I won enough money to put myself on a flight that afternoon to Seattle and treat my brother to microbrew and oysters after the concert.

Strangely, every other year or so, the mood strikes and I saddle on up to a video poker machine. I’ve never put another ad on craigslist. It’s mostly because I’d rather not be the kind of lawyer who posts between an old guy seeking a topless female roommate and a stewardess hoping to fornicate with a golden shepherd in front of her husband, but it’s also because I know the odds of a good outcome are terrible and I stand to lose a lot more than five dollars. Plus, gambling in a casino makes for a much better story than gambling with clients.

I just wonder why Chris has hired someone to go find lawyers and try to sell himself on their blogs. Can’t he send his own email, or “call directly?” Where’s the “personal service” Chris. Chris?

That highlights a fascinating phenomenon that would probably be easiest to explain with some examples.

I know a lawyer who sucks. Okay, I know a bunch of lawyers who suck. They never answer their phones. They never respond to emails. They can’t even be bothered to respond to a desperate text for a call with a simple “LOL I’m ignoring you because I’m drunk in Vegas.” When I finally get so desperate to contact them that I resort to mailing a letter, I might as well have written Santa Claus at the North Pole requesting a Ferrari for the Fourth of July.

Those same lawyers have no money, but they always seem overworked and burnt out. They ask silly questions about how I find business, yet they represent more people in any given week than I represent in any given year. It’s very confusing.

Luckily, I also know a bunch of lawyers who are awesome. Several of them probably made more money this week than I’ve made in my entire career. They are all brilliant and hard-working.

Strangely, although they all differ greatly in what they do, they are all easy to reach. Most of them have staff, but I wouldn’t have ever noticed unless I’d really paid attention. When I call, they pick up. When I email, they respond. I never worry about them ignoring me, just as I’d never worry about them ignoring any of their clients.

The general public seems to think there should be some kind of mystique about lawyers. When it comes to availability, that’s bullshit. Unless a client is making plainly unreasonable demands regarding his lawyer’s time, the lawyer should always respond to everything. A phone tree that leads nowhere doesn’t make me impressed by how important a lawyer must be. It makes me vow to never send a case his way because he’s hard to reach.

One of the most famous trial lawyers in this state picks up his own phone when people call. So does a lawyer who holds more records for huge civil verdicts than I could count on my fingers and toes as well as a lawyer who runs a major public defense agency. So should everyone. What the hell are these struggling lawyers who can’t be bothered to do any work themselves doing with all of their time?

Unavailability does not equate to skill or prestige. It equates to more unavailability, a quality that few people seek in a prospective attorney.

I know that Scott Greenfield made the comment that, “if you’re going to screw up and have links from one attorney go to another, can you at least link Matt’s website to some really good lawyers rather than losers?” If you thought he was serious, I do appreciate that you found us Arizona’s most well-known attorney, a Harvard Law School grad with forty years of experience who has served as a judge, as the state superintendent of schools, and in the state legislature, but your time would have been better spent poking around Simple Justice and reading some of Scott’s posts. He’s a funny guy, and I’m pretty sure his comment here was in jest.

Sadly, the problem doesn’t stop with the incoming link, as we keep getting emails asking us to view Mr. Horne’s profile. The emails also provide a link to claim it. As endless and humorous as the possibilities might be if a couple of defense lawyers claimed the Avvo profile of the chief legal officer of the state of Arizona, Adrian and I have far better things to do with our time. I imagine there might be a few ethical problems with that as well.

Is it too much to just ask you to leave us alone? We haven’t bothered claiming our own profiles, and I’m doubtful Mr. Horne wants us to claim his. Although other lawyers may think Avvo is the bee’s knees, it just isn’t our cup of tea. If you’d stop the emails and remove the links, we’d be thankful. I bet Mr. Horne would be too.

Sincerely,
Matt

My friend is about my age, and we’ve been practicing for about the same amount of time. He’s done nothing but criminal defense, just like me, but when Adrian and I were hanging our shingle, he was starting work at the county public defender. He gained some incredible experience, and he’s a great lawyer. He recently started his own firm. I try to send him cases when I can because I trust him to do a good job. He’s proven me right.

My friend wasn’t sure how to deal with his online critic, and sadly, I was very little help. For a while, almost every hit on Google for my name went to pages elsewhere criticizing various things I wrote based on my inexperience. The most popular pages on my own blog were ones that were peppered with comments mocking me for being green, and a few internet crazies actually took the time to put up their own websites discussing how much they thought I sucked. I was once in truly impressive company when I made the cut for some sort of Asshat Lawyer Twitter list. Oddly enough, that may be the most elite group of talented individuals in which anyone has ever thought to include me. I was quite flattered.

Looking around now, all of that appears to be gone. Some of my critics couldn’t afford to keep their sites up, it seems, while others just lost interest. No one really hit below the belt, so I didn’t really care at the time. I ignored it, and it went away. I’m lucky in that respect. Weirdo detractors come in all shapes and sizes. Mine were small and gave up easily. I never had any motivation to learn how to deal with online critics due to a combination of good fortune and an intense workload that stopped me from dwelling on it. Basically, I’m the last person to ask for the advice my friend wanted, something that came through quite clearly when I couldn’t offer him anything particularly helpful.

What’s interesting to me isn’t the solution, which I don’t know, but what the whole situation says about the nature of lawyer marketing on the internet. You see, I can put up a page about all my accomplishments whether I have any or not. With a little money and a whole bunch of free time, I could probably become the best lawyer on the internet. I could probably become the best neurosurgeon on the internet too. It doesn’t really matter that I’m not a doctor and don’t know the first thing about the nervous system or medicine at all. I can build any online reputation I want, and my puffery and white noise will probably edge out lots of the genuine article in search engine results.

Luckily, online hype is mostly powerful online. That’s a good thing. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Here, that’s a good thing too. Dollar for dollar, few things are as cheap as an online reputation, and even the lightest esteem is probably too much to give it. Unless it’s the product of real work in the real world spilling over into the internet or it’s the result of a truly valuable contribution to the world that happens to be made online, it’s pretty much meaningless.

The flip side is that what the internet can giveth the internet can taketh away, and that’s just as important. What you can achieve online without discipline and hard work can also be taken from you without discipline and hard work. It’s a pretty agreeable symmetry, in my opinion, as it appropriately cheapens the value of an online reputation. Though it may be unfortunate that good people are frequently tarnished online by n’er do wells, good people are far more than just their internet personas.

An online attack doesn’t change the fact my friend is a good lawyer who serves his clients well. The potential new clients who look elsewhere because of a poorly written diatribe exposing a former client’s unreasonable expectations and inability to judge good legal work are the same kind of potential new clients with a high likelihood of one day becoming former clients posting poorly written diatribes exposing their unreasonable expectations and inability to judge good legal work.

If you’re an internet lawyer, internet problems are a big deal. My friend is a real lawyer though, so he really shouldn’t care. That was the inarticulate advice I tried to give him. I hope it made sense.

Avvo, which purports to provide “Expert Advice When You Need It Most,” is directing traffic to my site through the profiles of three lawyers whom I’ve never met. Avvo, a company that people apparently use to make the extremely important decision of finding a lawyer and that touts its supposedly unbiased ratings system as being based on a mathematical model and capable of enabling prospective clients to assess a lawyer’s qualifications, can’t seem to figure out that my website isn’t some other lawyers’ website too. It’s actually worse than just that.

Avvo thinks my website belongs to three people whose only connection to me is commenting on this blog. One guy just wrote a post about one of my posts, which resulted in a trackback. When I put up another post discussing his post, he commented on that one. Now, Avvo thinks my website is his website. Personally, I find it somewhat tragic and almost ironic that a marketing behemoth like Avvo would link to my sleepy little blog after getting the website wrong for a lawyer who runs his own attorney marketing center. The other two erroneously-linked profiles are even more bizarre.

One guy, who seems quite fond of marketing guru, cloud lawyer extraordinaire, and public legal advice expert Rachel Rodgers (here too), is only linked to this site because he took the time to stop by and let me know in a comment that my blog and what I wrote were nothing more a joke. He accused me of speaking before reading the rules and examining the evidence. He concluded as follows:

Boom. Lawyered.

I must admit it’s one of my all-time favorite comments; I had no clue that “boom” was the sound that happens when someone gets lawyered, and I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to use that little gem of a phrase in a pleading ever since. Regardless, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that my blog is actually his website. According to Avvo, at least.

The other guy may dislike me even more, if that’s possible. After one post, he accused me of “[o]bviously not” reading certain police reports, “[going] off half-cocked,” and lacking logic. After another, he accused me of not knowing of what I spoke, making “[b]latantly false statements” that harm me and the bar in general and misinform the general public, and not taking some sort of schooling he thinks I received to heart. For that, he earned the honor of having Avvo direct traffic from his profile to my website. He’s currently suspended from the practice of law for a variety of reasons, but I doubt Avvo’s making him terribly happy by directing prospective clients over here.

As funny as Avvo’s incompetence might be, hiring a lawyer is an incredibly serious decision. Some of the people who end up on Avvo may be desperately looking for help in life or death matters. For most criminal defendants, regardless of the stakes, choosing the right lawyer is one of the most important decisions they will ever make.

Before all of this, I thought it was ridiculous to try to convince people that skilled professionals can give adequate answers to important and often complex legal questions through an online Q&A forum. I thought it was even crazier to try to convince people they can find the right lawyer based on some silly math-based rating system. Now that I’m seeing a little farther down the rabbit hole that is Avvo, the situation appears even more dire. How can someone seriously seek legal answers and consider lawyer ratings from a website that can’t even figure out the right websites for the people about whom it is supposed to be providing “expert” advice?

If Avvo is the future, then we’re all doomed.

I imagine the root of the problem is the way most solos bill. If you don’t keep track of your time, flat fees feel a lot like found money. Someone comes in and pays you, but you haven’t done anything yet. All of a sudden you’re richer, and all you had to do was listen for an hour or so and print up a representation agreement. Earning money doesn’t immediately feel connected to the work you perform. Work comes later and is not accompanied by payment. Getting money is easy. Legal work is hard and thankless.

The other thing I see with these lawyers is the desire to start a side business. If they don’t have one already, they all want to start some other company. It’s always a side business that’s supposed to run itself. The owner just sits back, kicks his feet up, and takes a swim in his money bin every once in a while.

It’s been said a million times before, probably by me in previous posts, but this bears repeating again: lawyers sell their time and efforts, so financial success means lots of time and effort.

When times are good financially, I’m usually too busy to notice. When things are slow financially, I’ve usually got plenty of time on my hands to think about it. My goal in those situations isn’t just to change my financial outlook. I also want to be busy again. After all, that’s the point. I have a job. Although I joke about wanting to join the idle rich, I’d go crazy if I didn’t have something interesting and challenging to do. Law pays, but it also occupies. They’re both important.

Sometimes the law sucks. Being broke sucks more. However, the thing that sucks most of all is doing nothing worthwhile with your life. If you’re a lawyer and you aren’t willing to put in much time, you will probably have to scam your clients to make a lot of money. I guess you could bank on your side business being as profitable as you’d hoped, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Every lawyer I know who used to talk about one day making big money in a side business is still talking about one day making big money in a side business.

Any new solo who isn’t hoping to overcharge or open up a hot dog stand on the side should probably take a deep breath and realize that time equals money and money equals time. The practice of law will probably become far more palatable when you come to terms with that simple fact.

Adrian Little looks like my lesbian aunt

The tough thing is figuring out what’s more awesome: 1) that someone finagling those search terms can end up here (it works on my office computer but not on my home computer…no clue why that is); or 2) that someone came up with those search terms to amuse us.

Events bring out the young lawyers with no jobs, wandering around like zombies clutching stacks of business cards with “Esq.” after their names but no firm name or physical address anywhere to be found. Some only list a cell phone with an Illinois area code and a Gmail or Yahoo email address consisting of a cutesy name followed by a few odd digits. As smart as some of them seem, I can’t bring myself to refer a potential client to Jim from Joliet who goes by “puppylover69″ and practices out of a post office box. I try to buy them drinks instead; they deserve a cold one.

The events also bring out the newly-minted small firm associates. Some of them are models for success, but more of them are there because they aren’t yet earning their keep. Their bosses send them out hoping they’ll make connections and snare a few small referrals here and there. They usually aren’t quite sure about what type of law they practice. They try to feel out what the solos are making and figure out how much vacation time other young associates get. It isn’t encouraging.

Perhaps the most fascinating lawyer of all at these functions is the big firm associate. Like any type of lawyer, there are amazingly talented ones as well as those who make me concerned about the future of the profession. The latter are far more interesting. Some of them are still fixated on law school. Despite all their money (I assume) and support staff (I assume) and mahogany-scented homes filled with leather-bound books (I assume), they seem to have peaked before they ever met a client. They talk about their law school grades like Al Bundy talks about the touchdowns he scored during the glory days of high school football.

In high school, I remember the people who were at their peak. I remember the pretty girls who never got any prettier, and the athletic guys whose dreams of a professional sports career turned out to be nothing more than dreams. I’m confident that the ones who made it big don’t think about high school anymore, and so it goes with the top of any law school class. There are ones who have gone on to great things. There are ones who still tell you about their grades.

Law school isn’t trade school. Maybe it should be, but it isn’t. It also isn’t a vacuum. I’m happy about that. The important parts of the professional life of a lawyer, a life centered around representing people or people’s ideas or institutions comprised of people, are the parts that occur after the lawyer starts lawyering. That much may seem obvious, but like many obvious things, it’s only that way when you have a certain perspective. Epic tales about all-night cram sessions to ascend into the elite top 7.6% of a school ranked in the top 37.5% just aren’t that interesting to me. They are to some. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

What I take from many networking events, and from grade-obsessed people in general, are a reinvigorated outlook and a little bit of resolve. It’s the idea that what I’m doing now should be the most important thing I’ve done. It’s resolving that I won’t define myself based on something I did or didn’t do in training school or at any other point in my past, but that I’m defining myself by the work I’m doing right now.

I’m not hanging around with ex-presidents. I’m mostly meeting people my age or younger. If they’re already coming down from the peak, it tells me they haven’t climbed much of a mountain. People who are eating free hors d’oeuvres and hobnobbing with the likes of me should be people whose best is yet to come. Constantly reminding myself that’s what should ring true for me as well is the best thing I can do to ensure my clients now are as well-served as the ones I’ve done right in the past.

I am no salesman. It isn’t in my genes, I haven’t gone to great lengths to develop any sales skills, and quite honestly, the idea of selling things to people, even if it’s something I believe in, makes me feel a tad bit icky. I acknowledge I must sell my services to stay afloat in this profession, but I generally do that by sticking with one basic principle. It’s the one that makes me feel the least icky.

I am the product I’m selling. Constrained only by my own natural abilities and the number of hours in each day I am capable of devoting to improving on those, I have absolute control over the quality of my product. Improving what I’m selling so it hopefully sells itself is the best way to increase sales. It’s better than making some false claims on a website, though perhaps slower to show a financial return on investment.

Unfortunately, clients don’t hire based on legal skills alone. For the most part, they don’t have the requisite knowledge to meaningfully assess legal skills at all. Even lawyers who don’t practice in my specific area usually don’t have enough understanding to tell a good criminal defense lawyer from a bad one.

Clients sometimes look to things like the lawyer’s car, the lawyer’s clothing, or the lawyer’s office. They don’t want a lawyer who’s spilled chocolate milkshake on his oversized hand-me-down suit and smells like the elephant cage at the zoo. Riding a BMX bike to your office on the corner stool of a dive bar is no way to impress a potential client, even if you’re a great lawyer. Habits can be important too.

Occasionally, I see something that reminds me that lawyers are products. As products, we should not only refine the skills that enable us to achieve our intended purpose, but we should also consider how we present ourselves. I thought about that after I got an email containing this fabulous photo of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his expensive lawyer:

I don’t practice in New York. I’ve never met that lawyer. I imagine he does a fine job considering his list of clientele, but the glance from his client is so wonderfully skeptical that my first inclination is to doubt him.

I expect he’s just the victim of an unfortunate photo. I feel bad for the guy, but nail-biting is such a fantastically expressive thing that it completely colors my impression of him. You could pull up to your billion-dollar office in a Bugatti Veyron wearing a suit made of solid gold thread, and I’d be suspicious if you started biting your nails. I’d probably look a lot like Mr. Strauss-Kahn looks. It just isn’t a good habit, especially not in the middle of a hearing.

That picture reminded me that any product improvement on the part of a lawyer needs to be comprehensive. You can still focus primarily on increasing the quality of services you provide, but you should also remember not to bite your nails or engage in any other bad habits that might reflect poorly on you. It doesn’t look good. It might cost you business.

It doesn’t seem like it’s hurt Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s attorney, but then again, he and I aren’t exactly in the same situation. I suspect his product isn’t too hard to sell at this point in his career. As for me, I think I’m going to go shine my shoes and drop my suits off at the dry cleaner’s.

I had a great time and met some very nice people, but I was surprised by just how many people were there promoting their social media and search engine optimization services. I would bet that more than half of all the people at the event had businesses involving computers or the internet. At least half of those people did SEO and social media work. Even people with businesses that seem very traditionally business-like to me (insurance salesmen, accountants, repairmen) seemed to dabble in SEO for extra profit. There really must be an awful lot of money in it.

After a day or so, calls started coming in from people I’d met. Suddenly, I remembered why I’m not so crazy about networking events, but that’s a different post altogether.

Some of those calls were from companies that do SEO and social media. They all wanted to get together and talk about my “online presence” and “social media strategy.” I could tell that what I was hearing from each was a carefully crafted sales pitch. Being the nice guy I am, I humored them.

I explained my situation as honestly and accurately as I could. I get way too many calls from people who found me online and either don’t need or can’t afford my services. Those rare people who do need and can afford my services tend to want free advice over the phone followed by a free initial consultation, and they don’t understand why I can’t guarantee I’ll match the lowest price they find. I am no different from every other lawyer, after all, so why can’t I do what every other lawyer does?

After explaining my predicament, I made each SEO guy a proposal. I’d seriously consider hiring them if they could figure out a social media and SEO strategy that reduces my overall call volume while increasing calls from people with disposable income and an immediate need for a lawyer in a pending Arizona criminal matter. Those people need to have a clear understanding that I am providing them with professional services and not a guaranteed result, a good deal, or just a warm body to keep them company at court. I give the SEO guys an example of what I want.

One of my former law professors, a practicing lawyer who maintains a thriving practice and a person whom I respect immensely, has given me a great deal of guidance since Adrian and I began the firm. He hesitantly sent me one criminal referral during my first year of practice. Things ended up working out, and the lady became a client. She was extremely pleased with my representation, and the professor has continued to refer me cases.

It always starts the same way. The professor calls, tells me the type of case, and finds out first if it’s possible I might have some kind of conflict. He gives me a general overview of what he knows about the client and the situation. If I say I’m interested, he gives the client my name and number and recommends the client call me. He tells the client I am busy and charge for an in-person consultation. For each client, I’m the only lawyer he recommends. I always get a call from the client within an hour or so of his call, the client always schedules a meeting, and the client always shows up for the meeting. I’ve never had one not hire me.

I want the web equivalent of that. I tell this to the SEO guys knowing such a referral will likely never come from a web marketing company. Maybe, just maybe, it might come from years of building relationships online, but I still doubt it. It certainly won’t come from 140-character high-fives and blog posts repeating keywords ad nauseam.

The SEO guys are never deterred. They tell me the secret is keywords. They act like they believe it, so I almost feel a little guilty for harboring no realistic belief they are telling me anything even remotely resembling the truth. I tell them I might believe them if they had proof, and I tell them what I’m going to need from these magical keywords.

To reduce my call volume, I will need terms few people will enter. My site must be chock full o’ terms only people with the means to hire a private lawyer would know. It must have terms only people with a pending Arizona criminal matter would know too. Furthermore, the terms must be carefully selected and combined to display an understanding of the nature of the professional services I intend to provide. The terms should probably be ones known only to those who know and appreciate me already. My site should be invisible to most people.

You may grasp the absurdity of any keywords fitting that bill, but the SEO guys don’t. They tell me it’s possible, but they always revert to the same old stuff everyone’s been trying to sell me since I first set up shop. They can tell me whatever they want, but I’m going to see through it when their ideas don’t go much past spamming other blogs with nonsense and tagging my site with meaningless catchphrases. I’m open-minded, but only to a point. As the title says, I’m open to embracing a new social media strategy…maybe. If I keep hearing the same stale lines about keywords, however, that maybe is going to become a no.