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Congratulations, You May Have Already Won…
So a lawyer gets an email / letter saying:
Congratulations, based on our extensive research and review you have been named as a top ranked / elite / awesome lawyer in your practice area and will appear in our print / online publication. You can obtain / enhance your listing by completing form X / sending a profile and the (non-trivial) sum of $X.
The questions are:
- Do these publications do any more than feed our egos?
- Do buyers of legal services actually look at these print or online publications to find a lawyer?
- If so, do they trust the contents?
- Do readers know that money has been paid for certain levels of inclusion and discount that?
- In today’s world where every law firm and lawyer has online profiles on their web sites, and often on social media, are these directories relevant?
What do readers think about this?
I consider many of these scams. Often the only people who receive copies of the directory are the others who have signed up for it. They get you agreed to sign up, and then sell additional things like a press release to announce your inclusion, more robust listings and the like. They quote a price on the phone (“That will be seven forty-nine” and you think it is $7.49, but later you get a bill for $749).
One way to tell if it is a scam or not is to check with your law library–do they carry a copy of the directory? Do the librarians consider it a reliable source?
That’s good advice. Many of these are scams, but many are not (Sometimes the difference between a scam and an imprudent purchase is in the eye of the beholder). So if you decide a particular one is not a scam, is there any value to being in it? If a listing is free, there is no harm, but is it worth paying for a listing or an enhanced listing?
A family member, a master tradesman, was offered this very thing; but his more skeptical nature coupled with their very aggressive marketing gave him pause to delve further into the offering. As it turned out this directory attempted to give the impression it had the support of a police association but suffice to say that made no sense. In short, I’d approach them with a healthy dose of skepticism – and even if they prove legitimate, it still raises the question whether they reach ones targeted client markets at all.
I get this garbage all the time no matter how often I flag it as junk. Bane of my existence.
These days, Google is the world’s directory of everything so if your bio and other social media vehicles are consistently updated and well SEO’d, you’ll be found by those who are looking. I’ve written about this and, at the risk of self-promotion – which this isn’t, you’ll find the article at http://heathersuttie.ca/images/files/Legal_Directories_in_the_Age_of_Google.pdf