I got a call from someone the other day who was upset that her attorney hadn’t called her back since she signed up with him.  She gave me his name, and I looked him up. It turns out this person isn’t a lawyer.  I then referred her to a top Chicago car accident lawyer, and the case is on the right path.

The real story is that the guy who she hired was someone that got a hold of the police report following her accident and called her out of the blue.  This is called being an ambulance chaser, and it’s illegal, as well as unethical, and just plain scummy.  He works for a law firm and likely gets paid per lead.

It’s a big scam, as his firm does a ton of TV advertising, and he uses that as his pitch when he calls these victims.  That firm doesn’t even handle the cases, but instead refers them to another firm.  This woman, and presumably most of their clients, have no idea what’s going on.  When she fired them, this scumbag threatened her and then threatened her new attorney.  It’s all being reported to the proper authorities and hopefully these guys get busted.

I hate ambulance chasers.  They prey upon victims of accidents and lie to them. They break the law.  They make honest lawyers look bad.

It’s competitive to get good cases, but that is no excuse for breaking the law.  If someone is going to call you out of the blue to try and get you to hire them, they know what they are doing is wrong.  They may justify it in their head some way, but facts are facts, it’s illegal.  If they’d break the law to get your case, they’d just as easily sell you out.

The good news is that their are tons of honest lawyers out there who will truly fight for you and do it the right way. They won’t make false promises about how much they are going to get for you and they won’t show up at your door step or hospital bed.  In the long run, an ethical, experienced attorney who gets cases the right way will get more money for you and do a better job.