The Business Of Law

Greetings readers, my name is Gabriel Miller, and I’m the General Counsel of Sokolove Law.  As the top lawyer for the largest marketer of legal services in the country, I spend a great deal of my time watching very closely the rules of professional responsibility across the country.  From time to time, I’ll weigh in here to comment on interesting happenings in the area of legal ethics.

Last week, law.com brought news that Connecticut outlawed the practice of hiring so-called “runners” to solicit legal business for personal injury lawyers.  The Law.com article had a great description of how the system worked:

“People known as “runners” would be on stand-by, listening to police scanners and waiting for an auto accident to occur so they could rush to the scene. Their job was to contact accident victims and steer them toward specific doctors, chiropractors and, often, personal injury lawyers. The runners would be paid for each client they delivered; sometimes the runners would wait in busy hospital emergency rooms and spot people waiting to be treated and then whisk them out with a promise that they knew a doctor who could see the person immediately.

Runners also obtained police reports and contacted accident victims at their homes. Connecticut trial lawyer, Kathryn Emmett also had heard from other trial lawyers that some accident victims were being encouraged to file insurance claims and lawsuits based on phony injuries”

Connecticut joins 9 other states who have outlawed this practice, punishing lawyers with up to a year in jail and fines up to $5,000 if they are caught hiring “runners”.

What’s really interesting about the law is that it brought trial attorneys and the insurance companies together on the same side of a political debate.  In fact part of the impetus for the law came from the Connecticut Trial Lawyer’s Association, whose members starting hearing about runners’ unscrupulous practices from their clients.

The practice is more common than one might think with lawyers in Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey having been convicted in recent years for violations of anti-runner laws.

Simply put, the practice of hiring runners, and other such actions give all attorneys, but particularly personal injury lawyers a bad name. There is a big difference between providing access to the civil justice system by educating people about their legal rights and options, and preying on people when they are the most vulnerable.

The Connecticut Trial Lawyers and their colleagues around the country are smart to support reasonable regulation to weed out the bad actors.

If you have a question about this or another topic on legal ethics and professional responsibility or if you know of a topic you’d like me to comment on, drop me a note.