(Written By Attorney: Brett Emison) This afternoon, I received perhaps the most disgusting solicitation I’ve come across. It was from FuneralHomes.com (coded NoFollow).
Here’s what I received:
This solicitation is disgusting on many different levels. Not only does it encourage nefarious attorneys to engage in what amounts to solicitation, but it reduces FuneralHomes.com “clients” to nothing more than marks to be commodified and sold to the highest bidder. These are real people suffering through the worst tragedies in their lives who FuneralHomes.com turns into chattel ready for delivery.
Of course, I’m not the only lawyer FuneralHomes.com sends this trash to. Eric Turkewitz wrote about this a year ago: FuneralHomes.com Digs Down Deep For Personal Injury Lawyers. You should read Eric’s post in its entirety, but here’s a quick clip:
It made me shudder. And made me think of the washed up lawyer played by Paul Newman in The Verdict, going to funeral homes to pass around his card [see Eric’s original post for YouTube video], pretending to have known the deceased as he chased cases. But instead of standing in their parlors handing out cards, this company wants lawyers to hang advertising on their site where the bereaved might go in time of need.
So, not really believing this email was real, as I thought it too sickening to be true, I shot back a reply to its sender, Tom Keesee: Is this for real?
And Keesee called back quickly, perhaps excited about having a having a potential fish on the line. Yes, he said, it was for real.
But before he could launch too deeply into his sales spiel, I asked him about the ethics of it all. Lawyers don’t pay him for leads, he said, so there was no problem. Also, since they aren’t attorneys, they don’t have to comply with attorney ethics rules regarding solicitation.
I pointed out, of course, that the lawyers that wanted to do business with still had to comply with ethics rules. And wasn’t this solicitation? He told me, a couple of times, that his “legal department” had looked into it and it was fine.
But rather than dwell on whether lawyers advertising on a funeral home website is a permissible form of solicitation or not, I’m going to move right to the “smell test” as in, does this smell right to you?
As Turkewitz concluded: No, it does not pass the smell test. In fact, it plain stinks.
Shame on FuneralHomes.com for selling out its customers this way. I doubt there are really “over 600 law firms” advertising with FuneralHomes.com. But if there are, they should all be ashamed.
*We have received a few emails from funeral directors who have received phone calls from FuneralHomes.com regarding questionable preened leads. see below:*
*Dear Ryan,*
*I received a call from FuneralHomes.com this morning regarding their having received a pre-planning call for us. When I asked for the name of the contact, I was told that HIPPA regulations prohibit this information. However, he asked if a date and time stamp would be useful. He offered the opportunity to further discuss local and surrounding demographic information. I informed him of the name of two of their current local funeral home clients. He seemed surprised that I knew this information. I recall this organization phoning me over a year ago with the proposal of being the area’s first client and all the perks and advantages of their membership.*
*Has anyone else had an issues with FuneralHomes.com? Please post in the comments.*
This company certainly KNOWS nothing about funeral service. They have called me numerous times to get me to PAY to have one of their cities, to which I reported, I serve three counties and I am not paying for every single city in those counties. I have told them I was NOT interested, to please remove my name and company from their call list, but they continue to call. They have called so many tmes that even when I am not in the office and phones are transferred to my cell phone, I see it is them and I just ignore their calls. But I am tired of being harrassed by this group of people.
Today I called their corporate office in Deerfield Beach and asked the operator/office manager to please remove our name and phone number from their call list.
I hope others who feel like I do will speak up. We don’t need people like this trying to represent our firms.