"Web ad for lawyer linked to competitor spurs dispute" is the headline to this story today in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some quotes:
Should a lawyer be allowed to drum up business by exploiting searches for his competitor on the Internet?See the story for much more. Posted by Marcia Oddi at July 6, 2004 07:41 AMThe Kentucky Bar Association is scheduled this month to consider the ethics of such search-engine advertising, which has arisen in a contentious dispute between two Kentucky attorneys who themselves specialize in lawyer ethics.
Ben Cowgill, a Lexington lawyer who launched a practice representing other lawyers after resigning as the KBA's chief disciplinary counsel last summer, had targeted his chief competitor — Louisville lawyer Peter Ostermiller — by arranging to have his name and Web site link appear when potential clients searched for Ostermiller's name on Google, the world's largest Internet search engine.
Cowgill, like other advertisers, agreed to pay Google each time a searcher clicked on the link to his site.
Ostermiller demanded last month that Cowgill end the practice, alleging that it was misleading and deceptive. "In general, I could care less about (your) various advertisements," Ostermiller said in a June 7 letter to Cowgill that he also sent to the KBA. "However, when the advertising is using my name, that is where I must draw the line."
Cowgill defended his use of what is known as a "sponsored link" to search results for Ostermiller, and he denied he was trying to, as he put it, "sponge on anyone's reputation." * * *
Ethics and marketing experts, as well as practicing lawyers, denounced Cowgill's advertising effort, contending he was unfairly trying to cash in on another lawyer's reputation. Ostermiller, who has represented lawyers and judges in disciplinary and ethics cases since the late 1980s, was profiled recently in The Courier-Journal and Lawyers Weekly USA, a trade publication. * * *
Sponsored link advertising — also known as "key word" or "trigger" advertising — is common among businesses.
Many lawyers buy sponsored links to generic terms such as "divorce lawyer" or "drunk driving." But representatives of the American Bar Association, as well as lawyer-marketing professionals, said they had never heard of a lawyer acquiring a link to a competing lawyer's name.
Brad Hart, manager of sponsored-link lawyer advertising at CJ Advertising in Nashville, Tenn., described the practice as "cheating" and said, "No one should do that."
Kevin O'Keefe, a retired Seattle lawyer who writes a blog — short for Web log — about lawyer marketing and helps lawyers market themselves through blogs, compared such a practice to "standing in front of another lawyer's office with a sandwich board saying, `Would you consider coming down to my office instead?'"