In the spirit of a claim by members of the Virginia State Bar, that
word of mouth would "regulate" this industry I found several sites that allegedly posted reviews of service.
I decided to try an experiment to add a negative experience and low rating to these businesses. The results seem to indicate a pattern of avoidance, control all negative messages about a business or institution. One has to wonder why the legal profession has such a bad reputation....
The first site I found was legal forum
martindale.com. I actually thought that they may be a delegate of the Virginia State Bar's "Task Force" since I found them through the article titled
A lawyer's misdeeds spur state bar to revisit proposal. The second site was
Yahoo, I thought that this company would not be preferential and would post all reviews, allowing the business to behave as an adult and handle the bad publicity it generated through poor service. I entered a description of our experiences with a negative review. My "reviews" have not been added as of January 25, 2009 - no contact has been made to identify the reason for not posting the review either.
A third site I found was one called
InsiderPages, it did allow a review to be posted for one of the attorneys that I had retained. It did not allow a link of reference material to be added to the post.
I remember through the years attempting to do similar entries to no avail, at the time though I was suffering from
Sleep Apnea and did not record the posts or even where I was posting. Just trying to get the message out. Now I am documenting these "review sites", an interesting experiment in how these people are controlling the message. I wonder how much they are paying to cover up the poor service that they are providing ?
Let's add the Virginia State Bar change in
2000 for context.
Code of Professional Responsibility to the
Professional Guidelines and Rules of Professional Conduct and letters from the Virginia State Bar that identifies that it does not ensure the diligence of its profession. As I have stated we have had at least ten attorneys, nine of the ten executed questionable diligence our collection indicates a population of 90% "bad apples". What does the Virginia State Bar do to identify the "good apples" so that a client has a chance at competent representation ?