Posted on
September 30, 2012 in
Blake Knight at Legal Brand Marketing is still at it: sending strangers emails revealing the secrets of people who think they're contacting a lawyer:
State = TX
County = TARRANT
City =
Date Arrested =
First Name = Brendan
Comments = I was in a drunk driving incident in which I was travelling the wrong way on a one way street and had a collision with another vehicle. I was rushed to the emergency room and had a one week stay in the hospital. I do not have any copies of my tickets or court summons so I have not yet been to court. The ticket states that the offense was a DUI 49.04. It also states that the victims were injured as well. The state of their injuries is unknown to me at this time. Can these charges be bumped up to Intoxication Assault? Unknowingly to me, I refused the breathalyzer on the scene, will this bump my charges up? What am I facing right now since I have missed my court date? ?»?
Sure, Blake stopped sending the pigeons' last names after I published this post, putting a Hello Kitty bandaid on the gangrenous ethical wound that is Legal Brand Marketing. You don't think Richard Alpert can figure out who Brendan is? You don't think he'll find some way to use this message ("in fact, you were so intoxicated that you don't even remember refusing the breathalyzer?") against Brendan? You're mistaken.
Legal Brand Marketing's ethical problem—and the ethical problem of the lawyers hiring it, not to mention the lawyers shilling for it—is not simply that it revealed the last names of people who revealed potentially incriminating facts to LBM while they thought they were communicating with counsel.
No, Legal Brand Marketing's ethical problem goes much deeper. Legal Brand Marketing's ethical problem is that they are marketers. Marketers' ethics are not the same as lawyers' ethics; they might care a little bit about legal ethics because their failure to comply makes them look bad, but the marketers at Legal Brand Marketing have demonstrated that they haven't a clue.
…Shouldn’t you be a little more cautious about exposing “Brendan” on your blog?
Possibly. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Well, honestly, how many people do you think Blake gets at his site?
I wouldn’t be shocked to find out “Brendan” isn’t even a real person and Blake is sending out phony leads to convince you to pay him to get real leads. But the actual “leads” he has are minimal.
Am I overestimating people? Are there actually that many people who get arrested and the first thing they consult is something called Legal Brand Marketing?
When someone is in panic mode after being charged with a crime, the first place they go is the interent. Speedily. They want answers. They want to stop the heart from racing. They really don’t want the truth ( if the actual person charged is the one searching) and they don’t want to think about the cost. So, they want to get the answers they need and for good or bad, it seems easier to get bad news in writing rather than over the phone speaking with an attorney ‘ live’. With those searching for an attorney for a friend or relative, they will robo call attorneys asking both for legal info and cost and are less afraid of getting the truth.
Either way, every call and email is a way to market yourself, utilize best practices and grow your repuation as an ethical, caring attorney whatever the personality type.
They also spam websites with fake product reviews to get links to their clients websites. I left a not so friendly vm, email and FB post on one of their clients pages after they spammed my site.
The lawyer called me back personally and was very irate with me and threatened to sue me for cyber stalking and that I’m liable, then asked me if I even knew what Liable was. Then he started to proceed to say something like if you don’t do in 24 hours. I wasn’t really listening, that is where I cut him off and “politely” told him to f off.
Interesting that after that conversation the link that did redirect to his website no doesn’t. The original link is owned by Legal Brand marketing. Pretty sure he called them afterwords to find out they indeed spammed me.