Seeking Clients, Lawyers Find them on the Net

Type the keyword "Ritalin" into a personal computer's search engine, and what might you find? Among other things, a solicitation to join a potential class-action lawsuit.

It's on a Web site with the no-holds-barred name of ritalinfraud.com, sponsored by the Dallas plaintiff's law firm Waters and Krauss. Its target: Swiss manufacturer Novartis AG, maker of the drug for hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder. The site suggests that Web surfers join a suit filed last month in state court in Brownsville, Texas, alleging that Novartis failed to adequately disclose Ritalin's side effects. Novartis denies the allegation and is fighting the suit.

As Americans flock to the Internet to investigate nearly every problem of modern life, lawyers are greeting them with invitations to sue someone. Skeptics of the plaintiffs' bar might call this development online ambulance chasing. Legal-ethics experts, however, say that like old-fashioned advertising on billboards or in the Yellow Pages, Web solicitation is, in most cases, constitutionally protected speech.

It isn't known how many surfers responded to Waters and Kraus's invitation to sue Novartis; the law firm didn't return phone calls seeking comment. But such Web sites can drum up a lot of business.

Dan Bryson, a construction lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., recently set up syntheticstucco.com because he was swamped by phone calls from people who wanted information on what to do about rot in their homes that they blame on artificial stucco siding. The site offers text, graphics and Web links for such consumers. It also has a section titled "Should you file a lawsuit?" and offers an in-depth questionnaire for visitors to fill out if they think they have a claim against a siding producer. "In this day and age," says Mr. Bryson, people with a problem are "going to go to their computer and type in "synthetic stucco" and "lawyer" or "attorney."

When Paul Anderson, an Oakton, Va., homeowner did just that, he arrived at Mr. Bryson's site and invited the attorney to meet a group of unhappy consumers in the Washington, DC area. Mr. Bryson walked away with 21 clients and has filed suit on their behalf against two synthetic stucco manufacturers, Senergy Inc. and Parex Inc. The suits are pending in Fairfax County Circuit Court, in Virginia.

Elaine Jordan, an attorney for Senergy, notes that the company entered into a national class-action settlement in North Carolina superior court in 1998 and is seeking to have the Virginia plaintiffs bound by that settlement. An attorney for Parex, Timothy Hughes, says the company believes its products are not defective and that it has good defenses to the lawsuits.

Overall, Mr. Bryson credits the Web for bringing about 50 synthetic stucco clients to his firm. He says he has settled one, involving a 22-story condominium in Myrtle Beach, S.C. on confidential terms earlier this year.

As more law firms of all kinds discover the power of the Web, sites seeking plaintiffs proliferate, many with descriptive Web addresses—securitiesfraud.com, justiceseekers.com, diveinjury.com. But Thomas Hargett, a partner at Maddox Koeller Hargett and Caruso, says a catchy name isn't what attracts surfers. His firm, which has offices in Indianapolis and New York and represents investors in disputes with their brokerage firms, has a Web site called investorprotection.com. "The name's nice," he says, "but nobody finds us because of our name."

How a surfer might find Mr. Hargett's firm, among others, is to search for "securities arbitration" or "litigation" or "churning." These keywords—"meta tags, in Internet parlance—represent a Web page's content to a search engine. Once at the investorprotection.com site, visitors can call up explanations of various forms of misconduct. They can also click on "grade your broker," which walks them through a series of questions about their broker's practices. A visitor who answers "yes" to any of the questions is then invited to fill out an e-mail form with details of a possible legal claim. Clicking on "investor protection kit" brings up the same form.

Mr. Hargett says his firm invested more than $25,000 to get the site up and running during its first year, as well as more than 1,000 attorney work hours. the payoff, though, has been huge. "We have been retained by a significant number of new clients—and large clients—through our Web site," he says, although he won't provide specifics.

Charles F. Fenton III says he owes his entire law practice to the Web. A practicing podiatrist who attended law school, he and two colleagues set up footlaw.com in late 1997. The site, which discusses such topics as bunions, "sweaty feet/foot odor," and gout, is aimed at both potential plaintiffs and other lawyers looking for assistance on cases.

Dr. Fenton says footlaw.com has attracted 300 to 400 inquiries a year from individuals who want to know if they have a claim against their doctor. About a dozen have turned into lawsuits, all of which are pending. Other than a few cases he has filed for people he knows, Dr. Fenton says the Web site is "the only way I get my clients."

Defense lawyers aren't happy about online marketing. Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics expert at New York University Law School, says he has been contacted by two defense counsels wondering if they could challenge plaintiffs' attorneys who recruited clients on the Web.

But Prof. Gillers says legal advertising — even when it targets specific groups of alleged victims—has been deemed by courts to be "protected commercial speech." That conclusion should hold, whether the advertising is done or off the Web, he adds.

Lawyers operating online do need to observe state rules on solicitation. A state, for example, may require a notice that, even in contingent-fee cases, plaintiffs are responsible for expenses. But even though online solicitation crosses borders, Prof. Gillers says lawyers should be safe if they follow the rules in the state in which they are admitted to the bar.

Monroe Freedman, a legal-ethics specialist at Hofstra University School of Law in Hempstead, N.Y., says that the Web informs "consumers of their rights and that there are lawyers to represent them." It is, Prof. Freedman says, "capitalism at its best."