Here is the advice you see before sending a comment to Bennett & Bennett via our website:

This form is for potential clients to contact Bennett & Bennett. Do not use this form if you are trying to sell SEO services or anything else.

Pretty unambiguous, right?

So when Steve Kramer of LegalMatch sent me an email via the contact form last December, I responded:

You saw this on my contact form:

This form is for potential clients to contact Bennett & Bennett. Do not use this form if you are trying to sell SEO services or anything else.

And you thought, "that doesn't apply to me because …"?
Because what?
Help me out here. I want to understand.

Mr. Kramer did not respond. I didn't hear from him again…until today, when he sent the same message again via the same form:

Submitted on Saturday, July 23, 2011 – 16:39
Submitted by anonymous user: [71.107.57.147]

Submitted values are:

First Name: s
Last Name: k
Email Address: steve.kramer@legalmatch.com
Phone Number:
Message to Bennett & Bennett:
Mark,
I do not believe that our two firms have met.

I'd like to discuss a quasi-exclusive relationship involving our criminal law matters in the Houston region.

Our volume in that region is approximately 990-1,050 criminal law matters per year or approximately 4 per day M-F.

Take a look at the current case summaries of our clients. To access our database:
•       go to our site, www.legalmatch.com
•       click on attorney log in.
•       your user name is tx072111
•       your password, is tx072211
•       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;
•       password expires July 25

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

After you have reviewed the case summaries, let me know whether it looks like a potential fit.

Cordially,

Steve Kramer

Steve Kramer's company, LegalMatch, and mine have, in fact, "met," even before last year. Mr. Kramer solicited my business in 2008, and I rebuffed him: "Your company gets terrible reviews" (typical lawyer review: "The last firm I was with tried them and recieved no business from them.  They did not stand behind their guarantee and refused to honor their commitments"). (I had checked out the potential clients then, and determined that they would be a total waste of my time—low bidders, free-advice seekers, non-criminal-clients looking for criminal lawyers, and lookie-loos, four times a day M-F. But this post isn't exactly about LegalMatch.)

I added the advisory to my contact form in response to worthless contacts like his. So why does Steve Kramer of LegalMatch think the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to him? Since he didn't answer the question last December, I'll give it a shot: It could be that he is pathologically narcissistic or that he is functionally illiterate, but my guess is that Kramer doesn't care about the rules because he can imagine no consequence for violating them.

This shows a decided lack of imagination.

I would never give a dollar to LegalMatch—even aside from the ethical questions about the company raised by the conviction of the company's founder, Dmitry Shubov, the lousy reviews that lawyers who have tried LegalMatch give it (another example: "I used them last year.  Total and complete waste of money.  The leads were absolute junk"), and the fact that I don't need twenty junk referrals a week, Mr. Kramer's inability to respect reasonable boundaries reflects poorly on the company he represents (OM=OR).

But maybe, readers, we can help them out by showing Mr. Kramer that it's not a good idea to contact people who have made it clear that they don't want to be contacted.

How?

Use your imagination.