Quite simply… wow !
The American Lawyer reports…
A pair of recent lawsuits alleging that a law firm manipulated search engine results to steal a rival firm’s web traffic has shone a spotlight on a modern-day battleground for lawyers who generate most of their business from everyday consumers.
In one of the cases, filed in Illinois federal court in late August, criminal defense and family law firm Motta & Motta alleged that another firm, Dolci & Weiland, used website tagging and headers to confuse search engine results in a way that directed prospective Motta clients to Dolci. Outside of the online search-related allegations, the Motta case also involves a less technological allegation of unfair competition—specifically that the Dolci & Weiland firm co-opted a Motta employee who then steered potential clients away from Motta and toward Dolci & Weiland.
A second case, filed in June and resolved in late August, pitted New Jersey’s Helmer, Conley & Kasselman against Hark & Hark, which was hit with trademark infringement and unfair competition claims in New Jersey federal court.
Helmer Conley—a firm with focuses on criminal defense, personal injury and family law, according to its website—alleged that the rival Hark firm used Google’s sponsored search feature, AdWords, to attract potential clients who used the search engine to find information on Helmer Conley. The AdWords program allows advertisers, in this case law firms, to pay Google so their website appears in a section of sponsored results when a consumer searches for particular keywords. The sponsored links then typically appear above search results that are not sponsored.
Taken together, the two recent cases indicate fierce competition among certain types of firms that invest heavily in marketing efforts—and they illustrate how that competition is playing out in a modern age, in which people looking for a lawyer often turn first to Google to find one.
