Alongside the outdated but still alive Nigerian letter scams, and actually in first place, lawyers receive several times a week solicitation emails to participate in legal directories with various pompous names like who’s who in…, legal so many in this or that, corporate this or that, mergers and acquisitions this or that, and you name it – but which are actually also a kind of a scam outside of one or two blockbusters. The emails invariably start with a « Dear first name », as if the sender, whom you’ve never met, knew you. You are invited or told that you are among the few who will have the privilege of submitting a page in that directory, for an amount which is not inexpensive as usually in the range of hundreds or thousands pounds, as those scammers nearly all operate out of the UK. There is a time pressure to make you buy with the indication of a short deadline before publication. You are told that you will have one or a few free copies (great!) of that heavy directory, that it will be sent worldwide to thousands of important people in the legal profession or in your client base, giving you therefore a fantastic exposure. You are told as an incitation that some of your competitor law firms have already submitted pages – which will make you look like you’re not in if you don’t. And on some occasions the scam goes as far as to making the law firm and whichever readers if any believe that there is a quality assessment associated with the inclusion of a law firm – where this is exclusively a paying outfit.

The truth of the matter is that this is a… scam: nobody ever reads those directories, and certainly not the addressees who receive it for free and unsolicited. So in short just because they send it out unsolicited to thousands who have not asked to receive it, and will at best put in on some shelf where no-one will read it, at worse throw it away right away, there is no added value – apart for the own business of those editor scammers and the printing, packaging and shipping industry. I’ve never had anyone, client or lawyer, ever tell me he found or chose a lawyer in any such directory (apart from the Martindale which has been around for ever and which subscribers pay for). So how is this possible? Lawyers are conceited and the mere perception that this will make them known, or allow them to be alongside others including prestigious ones, or precisely risk not be alongside those others, does the trick – and so goes the scam. Tons of papers are circulating worldwide in lawyers directory scams which nobody asks for and nobody reads. Real bad. So I have a standard reply letter to the « Dear Jenny » or « Dear Nigel » who wrote to me being so friendly that this is great, that I am glad that they chose my Firm to be included in their directory, that our policy is that we are paid ten thousand pounds if they want to use our goodwill to make some money, and that I am gladly waiting for their check and will submit our page. Strangely enough, Dear Jenny or Dear Nigel never write back.