Should I Hire the Lawyer Who Blogged About My Accident?

I was in a tractor-trailer wreck a couple weeks ago and spent five days in the hospital.  When I got out of the hospital I went on the Internet to see if there was any news articles about my case.  I found that two lawyers had written about my wreck on their law firm blog.  Why did they do that?

They wrote the blog post about your wreck  in the hope that you would find it and hire them.  That is the sole reason that the posts were written – marketing, plain and simple.

There is nothing unethical about this type of blogging.  I have never engaged in the practice, even though I have been blogging for over five years and written over 2000 blog posts, because my idea of a blog is that it is a place to share information and help educate people.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I hope that people will read what they find here and reach that conclusion that I am lawyer who they should interview if they have a personal injury or wrongful death case of any type in Tennessee or live in Tennessee and were injured or lost a loved one as a result of another’s negligence anywhere else in the world.  But I have simply never seen what public good is served by writing blog posts that share no relevant information whatsoever and are written solely to troll for cases.  Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I recently read a newspaper article about a tragedy suffered by a local family.  It was the type of case I happen to know something about because of my experience in other cases.  I confess it crossed my mind to write a blog post about it in the hopes that the family would see it and call me.  I quickly decided not to do so – it just seemed tacky to me.  Oddly enough, two weeks later the family called and asked me for help.  

I am not saying that the lawyers who sought your case by blogging about it are bad lawyers. I do suggest, however, that before you hire any lawyer in a personal injury or wrongful death case you read our Legal Guide titled "Understanding How to Hire a Lawyer in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Cases."   This guide will give you a long list of factors to consider in hiring a lawyer.   Not one of these factors includes whether the lawyer sought to get your case by writing a blog post about it.