“DumpMySpouse.com”
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw
I drove up I-75 from the Detroit area to Charlevoix yesterday, and was listening to the baseball game somewhere near Flint (WTRX, 1330-AM, part of the Detroit Tigers Baseball Network*) and heard an ad that I have to admit caught my attention. I’ve debated whether I really wanted to give this lawyer the free advertising that this post would entail, but what the heck. I leave to Mike and Alan to tell me technically whether there’s a professional responsibility issue here; I can’t decide if the lawyer is doing a public service or not.
It was a pretty standard divorce lawyer’s radio ad (“When Matrimony Turns to Acrimony”), but what caught my attention was that the URL for the website was “dumpmyspouse.com.” It went by quickly, so at first I thought that was the URL for a law firm, and that seemed pretty squirrelly to me. Would you really be doing a service to your clients by sending out communications to the courts, lawyers, and the public with your e-mail as “joe@dumpmyspouse.com?” (I should add, by the way, that I looked at this particular lawyer’s online resume, and he seems to be a fully qualified, upstanding guy.)
I was wrong, however, about the website. “Dump My Spouse” is not a law firm, or a law firm’s URL. It is a private referral service, obviously originated by this particular Flint lawyer. It has a map of the state of Michigan with all 83 counties outlined, and you are supposed to click on a county to find a lawyer who is part of the “Dump My Spouse” referral network. You can register to be part of the network. I wasn’t going to click through all 83 counties, but I clicked on a random sample and, as far as I can tell, this Flint lawyer is still the only member of the network, which may answer the question posed in the preceding paragraph.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
* When I’m in Michigan, I get to watch my beloved Tigers to my heart’s content on Fox Sports Detroit, but this pleasure has been sullied somewhat by the fact that 1-800-CALLSAM, the quintessential wee hours cheap advertising personal injury law firm of my professional youth in the Detroit area, has obviously prospered to the point that it is now the major sponsor of the ballgames, including the CALLSAM Post-Game Report. I think it even has one of the advertising spots right behind home plate, so that you get to watch Justin Verlander aim his slider at the right side of the M in alternate innings. By the way, just to make it clear that I’m an equal opportunity curmudgeon on this issue, I would get almost as disgusted (note the Latin root by the way) when I’d be listening to “All Things Considered” on NPR, and find out that it was underwritten in part by Silk & Stocking, the biggest law firm in town, and one to whom I was sending thousands of dollars of our legal business, with some goony slogan like “It’s an Uncertain World: Be Advised” or “We Know the Territory.”