ADA: Advertising Makes the Man Edition

Spending lots of money on the web advertising yourself as a “DWI Lawyer” when you have taken only six criminal cases, only four of which were DWI cases (PDF) — and have never handled one to completion — in your home county in the three years you’ve been licensed is not quite enough, by itself, to win you an Asshat Lawyer of the Day Award.

Claiming to have “14 satellite offices” when what you in fact have is an arrangement with an executive suite with 14 branches is not quite enough either.

All of that puts you securely into the camp of “lawyers who give lawyers a bad name,” but that’s not quite enough to win you an ADA; I’m a tough grader on the ADA scale.

What puts Houston “Bankruptcy and DWI” lawyer Jason Sughrue over the top for today’s award is that he told one (soon to be ex-) of his four DWI clients that he would try to get her deferred adjudication probation. Deferred adjudication hasn’t been available for DWI in Texas since about 1984. Oh, and he also told her that when she admitted having one beer on video, “it was like she stuck a knife in her own side” because she admitted drinking. Now, that sounds to me like a lawyer who a) doesn’t know what he’s doing; b) knows it; and c) is trying to pressure his client to plead guilty.

Jason Sughrue’s partner in his efforts to separate unwitting citizens-accused from their hard-earned money, GetLegal.com, with the assist.

(By the way, is it “2 to 5 lawyers” or “Jason Sughrue is the sole attorney“? I guess it depends who’s asking.)