Personal injury lawyers beware of email scams. Email scammers have been previously targeting divorce and collection lawyers to collect a debt but are now targeting personal injury lawyers.

Email scammers pretend to have been in an accident and need your legal services to settle the case. There have also been email scams aimed at the public pretending to come from real law firms (I wrote about that in my article “Is Your Law Firm’s Name or Brand Being Used to Commit Fraud?”).

You should treat any e-mail from a potential client requesting your services to collect any type of debt as a fraudulent scam. For instance, some of the e-mails requested my services to collect a business debt, money owed for a divorce settlement, or anything else someone can think of. Usually, these e-mails explain that the client is in another country and that the debtor is in my jurisdiction

Now, e-mail scams are targeting personal injury lawyers. Websites can be great for attorney marketing, but this e-mail was not part of a bulk e-mail scam sent to millions of people as most e-mail scams are. This e-mail was sent by someone who was on my attorney website and claimed to have been in an accident while visiting New York.

I have always been able to spot email scams immediately. However, for the first time, didn’t spot the scam until the second email. The writer stated that he is back in China, has a serious leg injury, and needs a lawyer. Not realizing I was being set up, I replied asking a dozen questions. It appears that the writer has already received a settlement offer but needs help with the paperwork and transferring the funds.

The scam is a little more clever than usual, but it is obvious I will be requested to prepare a release and then send the settlement funds to the “client.” Several months later, I will have to replace the funds in my escrow account after discovering that the settlement check was fraudulent.

Not only will I suffer a serious loss, but after the bank pays the money from my escrow account and the fraudulent deposit bounces, I will have an embarrassing shortfall in my escrow account which the bank will have to report to the state.

Fortunately, I caught on to this scam when they responded to my e-mail. Searching just now, it appears that other lawyers have not been so fortunate. I found these articles about lawyers who unfortunately fell for similar scams: Atlanta securities lawyer and six other lawyers; Email scam Targets Lawyers with Fraudulent Certified Checks and Wire Transfers.  These email scams targeted commercial law firms, but these email scams have now been adapted for personal injury lawyers.

Be very critical of emails you receive and always know the true source of checks you deposit. Never rely on your bank to tell you if the check you deposited has cleared. Your bank will confirm that a fake check has cleared and that you can safely withdraw the money! The bank only confirms that the funds are available because the bank is loaning you the money. The people you speak to at the bank have no idea if the check is fraudulent or not. They only know if the funds are available. If the check is not good, the bank has up to 12 months to get the money back from you!

Addendum:  The day after posting this article, I received the following scam email scam from Avvo:

Dear Philip,
Enamul Haque viewed your profile on Avvo and sent you the inquiry below. To respond, please reply to this e-mail. (Note that while most inquiries are genuine, some may not be. Avvo does not review these contact e-mails, so please use your best judgment in responding.)

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Attention: Attorney at Law ( Injury Lawyer)

This email will be received as a surprised but read carefully about my case and feel free to email me back if you are willing to represent me knowing fully well that you will be compensated.

I am a native of Sweden who is currently here in United States in search of an injury lawyer who will represent and finalize damage fees refund.
The American Embassy in Sweden issue a 7 days visa, therefore we have a limited time to stay here . My visit is with my Mother because I am totally disable due an accidental injury which occur few months ago within while I was working.My Both hands is cut off during drilling session with the machine and since then I have suffer lot of pain.

Bottom line is my Company in Sweden finally approved my special damage fees refund of a huge amount is US Dollars estimated and request to make payment through United State affiliated firm stating that I should secure the service of an injury lawyer for collection, request to also finalize collection process,so that is why am here in USA

Get back to me if this is okay with you so I can furnish you more with details.Pardon my English, Swedish language is my 1st, understand little of English

Enamul Haque
Written by my MUM,THAMINA HAQUE ( due to my hands)

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You are receiving this mail from an Avvo customer.

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Interestingly, the name Enamul Haque in the above email scam looks like it could have been a variation created by Emmanuel Ekhator a Nigerian national mentioned in this Wall Street Journal article who was extradited to the US and is alleged to have defrauded 80 lawyers and law firms by stealing $32 million through fraudulent email scams targeting the law firms.

It’s not just email scams you have to worry about. I also now receive emails with links to either a virus or spam advertising (I’m not sure because I don’t want to take a chance on my computer using Windows. If I was using Linux, I would have clicked on the link just to see what’s there without any worry because a virus cannot install itself on a Linux computer).

The emails look like this:

Unfortunately, I cannot obtain electronic copies of the Ocean, Warehouse or EPLI policy.

Here is the Package and Umbrella,
and a copy of the most recent schedule.

Coincidently, I was expecting an e-mail with information about umbrella insurance policy.

Retailers and some lawyers have long known that credit cards create more sales and larger sales. Now, the Salvation Army has reported that their experiment with accepting sidewalk kettle donations by credit card from wireless credit card processing transmitters has been a success.

The Associated Press reported, “Major George Hood, spokesman for the Arlington, Va.-based charity, said that the donation sizes are similar to online donations, which average about $75. CNN reported that the Salvation Army claimed that sidewalk donations increased from $1-2 paid by cash to $14 paid by credit card.” (see also at MSNBC)

For almost any field of law, other than personal injury, credit cards can allow you to:

• Retain clients who otherwise could not afford an upfront retainer;
• Allow you to discount your fees less often;
• Reduce situations where clients are not keeping up with billing;
• Reduce the cost of billing and collections; and
• Improve cash flow.

Even business lawyers will benefit. I have seen many times when the owner or President of a small business would only use a credit card either to get mileage or because of cash flow difficulties in the business.

If your law firm doesn’t accept credit cards yet, you should spend an hour to open a vendor account now.

A TV advertising campaign requires sufficient capital to produce or license TV commercials and maintain an uninterrupted weekly budget to buy media on several TV stations. The financial requirements can be difficult for a solo law practice to afford. Where the advertising is for personal injury cases, which can take from several months to years before income is realized, cash flow difficulties require an even larger amount of available capital. If you don’t have use of a 1-800 vanity phone number, which can reduce advertising costs by more than 50%, even more money is needed for advertising. Shared TV lawyer advertising programs or group lawyer TV advertising programs offer lawyers on a limited budget the opportunity to participate in TV lawyer advertising by combining the advertising dollars of many lawyers to form a competitive advertising budget. The only group lawyer TV advertising programs I am aware of are for personal injury cases.

There are basically two types of group lawyer advertising programs on TV. One method provides exclusive geographic territories to each participating lawyer. More common methods are sequential routing of telephone calls to participating lawyers in the TV advertising campaign who get a percentage of calls from the territory chosen. Some lawyers have done very well with both of these programs, while other lawyers have not. Advertising for personal injury works very well, the problem is when several lawyers share the advertising. Both methods of lawyer advertising offer advantages and disadvantages.

Exclusive geographic territories, such as territories divided up by ZIP codes, offer the advantage of knowing that you’ll receive every phone call from your territory. If you’re concerned about receiving all of your calls, you need only to make test calls from any area in your territory and you should receive the call or a message in your office. Additionally, if the client calls you back on the same advertised telephone number, or refers that number to a friend, the caller will reach you and not another lawyer. Injury Helpline®, the only advertising agency in this category that I’m aware of, states that they use their own call center to answer the calls and gives the messages to your office. This is a very big advantage for solo lawyers who are not always able to answer the telephone when calls come in. If you’re a solo lawyer without a secretary or someone to answer the phones, your only choice would be to forward calls to your cell phone when you are out of the office. Unfortunately, cell phones are unreliable and some callers will likely reach your voicemail and hang up. Even if you have a secretary, there will be times during the day when both you and your secretary are out of the office or you may be out of the office and your secretary is involved in a telephone conversation and unable to timely answer the telephone just when a call comes in from advertising. Injury Helpline® will manage the TV advertising campaign and media buying for you, so all you have to do is handle the cases. Another advantage is that Injury Helpline® has been successfully doing business for over 20 years. A disadvantage of geographic territories is the qualitative differences between the territories. A territory may have a large low income project and maybe one or two hospitals in it which will perform very well for the lawyer, while other territories may be in industrial areas or in residential but less densely populated areas or upper-income areas. Since these programs have been around for over 20 years, the territories that perform well were usually taken a long time ago and are rarely given up, while the lesser performing territories keep coming up over and over again.

Lawyer advertising groups using sequential routing offer the advantage of a much larger geographic territory. With this method, lawyers receive a proportionate share of telephone calls based upon their contribution to the advertising budget. This method allows all the lawyers in the larger territory to receive calls territory-wide, including any low-income projects or hospitals. There are currently several group lawyer advertising programs of this type. The oldest and most well-known is Lawyers Group®. Lawyers Group® routes calls directly to your law office so you can speak directly to the caller without a delay. Lawyers Group® will manage the TV advertising campaign and media buying for you, so all you have to do is handle the cases. Disadvantages are that there is no way for you to know if you are receiving all the calls you are entitled to. If you choose to participate in a group lawyer advertising program using non-exclusive territories with sequential routing, make sure you choose a company that has been around for a long time. Lawyers Group® is an advertising agency that has been successfully doing business for over 20 years. Another disadvantage is that if a client tries to call you back on the advertised telephone number, they will likely reach another lawyer.

There are disadvantages common to both methods. One is that it is not possible to distribute an equal value of cases to each lawyer. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are fewer people with personal-injury cases then people who are seeking mortgages or people looking to buy a widget. This creates the effect of a lottery. Some lawyers will get more cases, while some lawyers may get a lot of hangups and crank calls or uninteresting cases. Because there are so few large cases, some lawyers will be lucky and some will not. Even if each lawyer were to receive the exact same number of telephone calls, it is impossible to equally distribute an equal value of cases. For instance, if six lawyers are sharing your advertising market and there are only two seven-figure cases, obviously not everyone will receive a seven-figure case, and it’s possible that only one of the lawyers will receive both of those cases. Group lawyer advertising in New York with 1-800-HURT-911 resulted in a few lawyers signing up a lot of cases and at least one lawyer signing up three seven-figure cases, while some lawyers did not do well at all. Additionally, group lawyer advertising programs claim that they spend from 65% to 70% of your money on advertising. This amounts to a commission of 30% – 35% which is substantially more than the usual 15% advertising agency commission. Group lawyer advertising agencies usually do not advertise at night or on weekends. Overnight ads are effective and less expensive. Frequently, some overnight and weekend bonus spots are offered for free to advertisers, however, group lawyer advertising agencies do not use these spots which are wasted. Finally, you have no control over the advertising budget. You can only buy additional territories or shares if they are available. Lawyers looking for aggressive growth will want the ability to increase advertising whenever they want.

Shared advertising programs are a good way for solo lawyers on a low advertising budget to get involved with TV advertising. If you are unable to afford a group lawyer advertising program or interested in augmenting your marketing with a less expensive, no risk method, read my article “Inexpensive Lawyer Marketing”.

If you are interested in aggressive growth and have sufficient capital for a continuous advertising campaign and to handle additional cases, then it is much more economically advantageous for you to have an exclusive TV advertising campaign and you will want to have the ability to increase your advertising budget whenever you want. If you brand a good 1-800 vanity phone number in your TV commercials, you can compete against lawyers spending millions of dollars with an advertising budget as little as $8,000 per month. To find out what makes a 1-800 vanity number good, read my article “Vanity Phone Numbers, What are they worth?”. The only way to avoid the lottery effect of sharing group lawyer advertising is to have territory exclusivity for your entire TV broadcast market, known as a DMA. If you have market exclusivity, you will receive all calls including crank calls, hangup calls, small cases, medium cases, and the few large cases.