Lawyer fights online legal referrals
NORWICH, Conn. - A Norwich bankruptcy lawyer, Zenas Zelotes, has filed more than 550 ethics complaints in 47 states, possibly setting the stage for a major change in how legal services are marketed online.
He claims improper referrals are being made through Internet sites run by Total Attorneys Inc. of Chicago. Referrals obtained through sites such as totaldivorce.com and totaldui.com breach rules against for-profit lawyer referral services, Zelotes says.
Connecticut’s chief disciplinary counsel, Mark DuBois, found probable cause against five of 12 attorneys named by Zelotes. He said the case raises “fascinating issues’’ about the use of technology in marketing legal services.
“I feel like the traffic cop who has to defend the 35-mile-an-hour speed limit to a guy who has invented a car that goes 200 miles per hour,’’ DuBois said.
That inventor is Kevin Chern, a Chicago lawyer who is president of Total Attorneys Inc.
“We’re trying to do good things for consumers and improve access to the legal system,’’ he said.
Like DuBois, Wick Chambers, chairman of the Connecticut Bar Association’s ethics committee, sees technology clashing with codes of a profession steeped in tradition. “Internet advertising is a big issue for us,’’ he said, adding that what is particularly thorny is the idea of legal services being marketed by a party other than the law firm itself or referrals being made by parties outside the legal profession.
And a 1957 Connecticut law makes it a felony to pay for referrals to a lawyer or accept such a payment. Chern characterized Zelotes’s actions as “anticompetitive.’’
