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Lawyers Using Databases To Grab Clients
bc90021 writes "It seems that lawyers are using jail-house email lists to send potential clients letters offering their services. One couple, on finding their son who'd been missing for two days, '...was astonished that deputies failed to call them when their son was arrested -- though contact and medical information was in the young man's wallet -- yet managed to inform people who wanted his business.'"
Great quote from the film: "North, this is America. Everybody needs a lawyer."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wonder why they give out the emails of people that have been arrested. I can see some reason for giving out names, but e-mails? Is there actually a public benefit for this, other than letting the public spam those e-mail addresses or helping lawyers find clients?
They've been doing that for a while, at least in California. Someone goes through the records and collects addresses. My neighbor got a DUI, and he started getting lots of snail mail offers from lawyers.
I wonder if lawyers contacted OJ after his arrest...
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I wonder if this violates any privacy laws. The police just giving out a person information. If they give out what they were arrested for than that could be another issue. Don't you have to sign a waiver before they can give out that kind of info???
Evolution or ID?
I actually used to run a small business that collected traffic ticket (and DUI) information from the counties and provided it to ticket law offices in a format they could use (i.e. mailing lists). This information was hosted on various gov't run BBSs; but, it is now available on the internet. And this was back in 1999! And the jail (who had been arrested the day before) data was available, but my clients were only interested in traffic citations and DUIs... My point? This has been going on for years, and the timing of the article suprised me. I think those people were especially upset since the police didn't call them (although they had gone through his wallet to determine and post his demographic info); however, the article seems to indicate that he was 18 or over, making you wonder if anything 'wrong' occurred in this situation. Annoying? Yes. Public information? Hey, it is. Interesting debate, though.
So I'm going to guess he is over 21. I'm going to have to ask any future arresting officers to please NOT call my parents. The fam doesn't need to know everytime I get a drunk and disorderly.
The thing about needing medication sucks, but its well within the realm of possibility that his health issue both doesn't present as an actual health issue and renders him unable or unwilling to notify the officers. If thats the case, nothing to see. IF the officers knew something was wrong and still failed to act, well then fsck them.
I carry contact and medical information too, but thats only for use if I am unconscious or otherwise unable to speak for myself. Don't call my mommy just because I get picked up. If the officers dug through the medical records of everyone they picked up, wouldn't we by crying invasion of privacy then too?
I want it on the record so that there's no misunderstanding on the part of future generations, or the current generation who's building the future:
I don't want to end up living in a Neal Stephenson novel. No, not even if I get to be Hiro Protagonist.
Reading this writeup reminded me of the scene in Snow Crash where we discover the police have outsourced incarceration, and take YT to The Clink. All that is left is dollars. The human equation is lost, and anyone holding a sense of morals or ethics is seen as an anachronism. I don't know about anyone else, but... Yuck.
Great books, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Oh, yeah. This one's got false arrest written all over it, particularly if the young man was wearing a medicalert bracelet or carry medical id tags.
First thing the parents have got to do is...find a lawyer...hmmm...
One of my many side jobs is procuring information for attorney's solicitation. Let me tell you, call it scummy or what not, but lawyers will go to any means possible to get their solicitation letters out. This is their livelyhood for 90% of them. It is not very surprising that the lawyers would have the information faster than the parents. And for those of you who might refer to this practice as scummy, remember that in the event that you might find yourself needing an attorney. Competitive soliciation drives the prices down, and in areas with a lot of attorney's soliciting, expect to find prices half of what you would find in more friendly, less competitive areas. Any advertisement can be called scummy until it benefits you personally.
Hey a serious reply to my comment. I was about to lose faith :)
It's been my experience that if a lawyer has to advertise their services you probably don't want to do business with them. The best lawyer I ever dealt with didn't advertise at all -- I found out about him by talking to a friend who had the misfortune of going up against him in an unrelated case (his lawyer got his ass handed to him). I suppose that's probably true of a lot of professions though.
I'm not usually sue happy but I think I'd go after the whole lot of them for this. It would have been one thing to call the cops out of concern and he wound up at the mental health clinic -- but to actually arrest him because you thought he was using drugs? Makes me wonder if he was subjected to any tests to see if he was using drugs. Yeah, I'd say he has quite the case.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There is not near enough information in this article to make any kind of judgment on what happened.
Last week my brother arrested "Satan" (that's who he said he was)- I guess they might have let him keep harassing people while they tried to diagnose what his problem was but instead they took him in. It was meth so I guess you would be o.k. with it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
My roommate was arrested in November of last year. There were 10 solicitations in the mailbox 2 days later, 15 the next, and between 7 and 20 everyday for a week thereafter. (South Florida, if it makes a difference).
If I sell a t-shirt with Michael Jordan's name on it I could get sued. Isn't this the same thing? If so, then why can't I get paid when my name is sold? If it isn't the same thing, how is it different and why don't I have a choice in the matter?
Speak truth to power.
I got a speeding ticket, less than a week later i had letters from 3 lawyers offering to "take care of it" for me. I had already had one take care of it, but it's interesting what is available to them.
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
I guess the "new" thing here is emailing the solicitation?
SpeedingTicket.net pays the state 10 to 30 cents for each record that it downloads (the state collects about $1.7 million annually this way), then charges lawyers 50 cents to over $1 to relay the data or perform value-added services, such as printing and mailing letters to prospective clients.
it sounds like the state in question (california was it?) is selling this information
I've defended rape suspects. I couldn't say for certain one way or the other if they were innocent or not but even if they were guilty, I wouldn't have denfended them any less vigorously. It's not my job to judge them, that up to the judge and/or jury. The real world isn't as simple as many people like to believe. Would any of you want a lawyer that defends you half-assed because it appeared that you were guilty? The vast majority of the lawyers I know zealously represent their clients regardless of their personal beliefs. That's doing a honest job and keeping to oaths we took. More often than not, it's the clients who are scummy. Lawyers just get paid to deal with them or work for them.
"We need more people willing to face the consequences of their actions."
I agree but that is just so completely un-American. Americans in general are not good at taking personal responsibility. Nuisance lawsuits, people wasting court time (i.e. my tax dollars!) to avoid paying speeding tickets, etc. Why does every product I buy have a huge warning label on it telling me something so painfully obvious it hurts? Often because some idiot loser hurt themselves or allowed their child to be hurt and thanks to the horrific American civil system of justice was able to sue or force a settlement with the threat of a suit. It's pathetic and it makes me ill.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
move to florida. in FL all junk mail has to say 'Advertisement' in red letters on the front.
Give me a break. You just say that because you've never been in the situation before. When you find yourself in an orange suit with hand cuffs and ankle manacles, I would pay to see you take that "high road."
And as for only fighting back when you personally think the law is wrong . . . give me another break. Any law you are accused of and tried for breaking is objectively one that you do not want to plead guilty to.
From the moment the police restrain you an attorney is a must. If they find your name from a database, great, representation that much quicker.
Obviously you've never had to face anything like this before. Before considering how high and mighty you'd be, remember that prosecution conviction rates are in the 90% across the states. If you ever get accused, win any way you can.
I've lost both of my parents to prison. My mother is guilty and my father is not. My father was actually a lawyer who believed in justice.
We do not have justice. We have law. There is a big difference. Don't trust that they'll play fair. Don't trust your lawyer to do a good job. Don't trust the jury to see the holes in the story.
Bash any hole you can in the prosecutions case.
And remember, it's going to cost a ton of money.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Hey, in california, fairly recently, a judge issued a warrent to search a house suspected of housing a marijauna growing operation. The reason for suspicion and supposed 'probable cause'? An electric bill that was high for the area. When the cops raided the place, they found a mom with three young kids, lots of laundry (she was doing several loads a day. I haven't been able to confirm, but from other things said I think she may have been using cloth diapers on 2 or all three of the kids) and an electric dryer.
I mean, it's one thing to sit outside of hydroponics stores and then watch those people to see if they have unexplained income (though I personally think that's a waste of law enforcement's time as well), it's a completely different thing to search every house that uses more electricity than the neighbors.
The concept of probable cause has been severely eroded by the war on drugs. The war on terror is now doing it's part too. Maybe the lesson to be learned from this is that domestic wars are a bad idea?
It's something I worry about too. I have an autistic spectrum disorder and tourettes. Through high school (esspecially when the tourettes started and then got worse) even my own damn parents believed I was on drugs. They used to search my room with a video camera in hopes of finding proof of this so that they could get me into rehab. They tried just about everything, but they couldn't prove I was taking drugs because I truly and actually wasn't. I didn't even drink or smoke cigarettes until after I left home.
I was in my twenties when I was diagnosed, finally, and it was a relief. Now I can tell people who are giving me that look that I have these disorders, and that they are neurological dysfunctions. But sometimes I go non-verbal and sometimes I have movement problems that make me freeze or make me move in 'funny' ways, and if I think my body or brain have it in for me in that way at any given point, I won't go out in public at that time. My professionals think that this is an anxiety issue, but I think that this is a perfectly reasonable choice, given that the worst case senerios are either spending some time in jail or being sent off to a mental hospital. In the former, do you know how most people in jail (staff and inmates both) will treat someone they consider 'crazy' or a 'retard' (unless that person is beserker crazy, but I'm not)? In the latter, the risk of having that said of professionals accidently misdiagnose me (it's happened to me prior) and force brain damaging drugs on me (also happened to me prior) is too great. It's a terrifying possibility, and given my prior experiences, I think the odds are higher than the pros think. Unfortunately, the APA and NAMI aren't helping the situation.
I don't know that a suit would help -- in this security conscious (ha! freakin' paranoid...security conscious implies a level of logic that is largely lacking in current policies, from local right up to federal) country, arrest first and ask questions later is becoming the standard to ensure 'public safety'. A judge and/or jury (dependant on venue) might well see it that way, unfortunately.