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Is Your Lawyer on YouTube?

No? That might be a good thing according to law firm marketing guru Kevin O’Keefe. According to O’Keefe, Lawrence Lebowitz, vice president of Marketing at the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby found out the hard way that not all publicity is good publicity. Waxing philosophic on the best way to comply with the letter of the immigration law, while circumventing its spirit, Mr. Lebowitz told a roomful of potential clients how to prevent qualified Americans from getting jobs, while at the same time obtaining green cards for foreign workers.

While that kind of talk may go on more often than we would like to think, this particular bit of advice was captured on video and posted online by the law firm itself. After seeing the video, Lou Dobbs and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley got involved. Cohen & Grigsby wiped the egg from its face and pulled the video, but not before the Programmers Guild, an organization dedicated to higher wages and better working conditions for software programmers, highlighted the most damning excerpts in their own YouTube video.

I understand the need for law firm marketing, but lawyers should be cautioned to observe restraint when it comes to offering advice which so clearly violates the spirit of the law. If you still feel the need to offer such advice, at least tell your audience that most other law firms would not advise you to so openly skirt the spirit of the law. I mean I appreciate your desire for online self-immolation in front of tens of thousands of YouTube fans, but at least have the common decency to offer me a fireproof suit before you light the match.

Brett Trout

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