“Br-r-r-r-r-inggg”
[Gee, hope that’s H_____ D______ calling me re: my piece of the S_____________ settlement.] “Good morning, this is Bruce Godfrey; may I help you?”
“Hi, may I speak to the owner of the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey?”
[Christ, one of these.] “Yes, I am Bruce Godfrey; this is my law office. May I help you, sir?”
“Yes, I am Jake and I am calling from Lexorrhea, the legal marketing solution for the social media age. And who might you be?”
“My name is Godfrey and you may call me “sir”. What is the purpose of this call to my law practice?”
“Oh, well, good morning, Bruce? Bruce. I am calling to make sure you know about how Lexorrhea’s slots for Baltimore City are filling up. You are in Baltimore City, right?”
“Jake, let me ask you – you are not from Maryland, are you?”
“Our company is a national company using legal marketing experts to help you with your practice.”
“Let me try this again, Jake – do you live at Lexorrhea’s headquarters, or do you leave at the end of the day and go home to an apartment or home somewhere?”
“I live in Austin.”
“I see. I have never been to Texas, and probably will die having never visited. Have you spent at least 30 days of your life in Maryland?”
“Ahem, no, though I once went to a football game at Camden Yards.”
“Nice. Ok, my office is in Baltimore County, 15 miles from downtown Baltimore.”
“And that’s great that you are in Baltimore. We would be happy to help you become the top attorney in your field in Baltimore City, so you should act quickly before the slots fill up for our social media marketing plan.”
“In which fields do I practice, Jake.”
“Why don’t you tell me, Bruce?”
“Jake, you should have researched who I was and what the geography of the state is before you picked up the phone. Baltimore City and Baltimore County are distinct, and somewhat mutually indifferent, jurisdictions. I don’t live in the city.”
“Well, maybe you can market also for Annapolis and Anne, A-run-dale?”
“Anne Arundel, Texan. And no, if you are in Owings Mills, you probably won’t get a lot of traffic for Annapolis litigation as they are about an hour apart.”
“Oh, I see. Well how about the Prince George area?”
“That’s Prince George’s County with an apostrophe. Tip for you Jake: don’t call it ‘P.G.’ and don’t mess up the name, lot of local pride. And again, that’s 45-50 miles from my office.”
“Well, that’s not that far.”
“You aren’t in Texas, Jake”
“Well, Bruce, I am.”
“No, you are calling me, and this call is happening here, not at your desk. Do you know this state at all?”
“Well, we have had a lot of success with our Maryland area attorneys. We have attorneys in Rockville, Salisbury, Boa-ie-”
“That’s Bowie, rhymes with Huey and Louie.”
“Ok, well, we help our attorneys by making sure your clients know what you specialize in.”
“Jake, no attorney in this state can ethically claim to be “specialist” or to “specialize” in anything; this is Maryland. Haven’t you taken the trouble to read the Maryland advertising ethics rules under Rule 7 before you picked up the phone? You are an internet marketing company, surely you could spend 5 minutes Google-ing them?”
“Well, that’s not that big a deal, is it?”
“Jake, an attorney named Turkewitz in another state once said that outsourcing marketing is outsourcing ethics. Not only do you bastards not know your market, you don’t know the regulatory environment. When did you go to law school?”
“Well, I took a business law course at Austin Community College, got an A- in it.”
“Goodbye Jake – nothing personal but I hope both you and your company go out of business tomorrow. Never call me again. Really.”
[Click]
[20 minutes later] – “Hey, D – it’s Godfrey. How’s it going with my piece of the S______________ settlement? BTW – stay away from Lexorrhea.com…..”
