Lawyers Blast FindLaw Offerings as Spam
Screen shot of FindLaw blogs.
When Findlaw.com launched 15 hyperlocal, news-based blogs last winter, the legal blogosphere took note—and aim—at the alleged “spam blogs.”
New York City-based lawyer Eric Turkewitz’s New York Personal Injury Law Blog shares the name with one sponsored by the Thomson Reuters legal information Web portal. He blasts the legal marketer for using popular law blog titles to promote lawyers in its directory rather than create legitimate forums to analyze and discuss the justice system.
The blogs—which don’t allow reader comments—are presented as local legal news websites and are not intended to serve as a platform for legal discourse, according to Thomson Reuters. But Turkewitz and fellow bloggers condemn the blogs for regurgitations of local accident reports and cases, followed by calls to action advising readers that an attorney may help them recover personal injury claims, and links to a list of lawyers that pay FindLaw for its marketing services.
Additionally, throughout the posts are keywords related to the law and injury, as well as lawyer and state names, that link to webpages in the FindLaw Internet directory where lawyers buy listings and ads.
Click here to continue reading “Bad Blogs?” online in the May ABA Journal.
