“If it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true.”

I ALWAYS keep that old saying in mind when considering any aspect of my personal injury or malpractice cases. Over the years, being extremely suspicious of something that sounds too good to be true has saved my bacon more times than I can count.

Just this past week, my suspicious instinct for self-preservation saved me from the most sophisticated Internet scam I have ever seen. What is amazing about this scam is that it is specifically targeting law firms.

And lest you think lawyers are too smart to get victimized by a simple Internet scam, think again — I am told that at least 22 law firms have fallen prey to this scam with each of them losing $300,000 to $400,000. That’s right, MORE than $300,000 each! And there is no recourse for these duped firms.

So let me tell you about the scam so you can make sure you don’t fall prey to this scam.

It starts innocently enough. You receive an E-mail from a woman who has been terribly hurt in a New York City accident. The woman tells you she is Korean and was working in the US in NYC at the time of her injury.

She says that the insurance company (MetLife in my case) has offered her $400,000 to settle her case but they are now jerking her around about paying because she has moved back to Korea due to her injuries and disability. She says she just needs a US attorney to receive the settlement check and then send her the funds in Korea.

Well, I am so used to insurance companies jerking people around for every reason under the sun, that that part of the story is entirelyplausible. Even though my instinct was that this smelled funny (and I told my wife that), I decided to play along and see where this would go.

I emailed back and said I would be happy to help but would need documentation of the settlement and additional information.

To my surprise, I was then emailed settlement documents that looked totally legitimate. They were professionally done, grammatically correct, and notarized. Not the kind of thing you normally see with the typical Internet scam where there are tons of misspellings and atrocious grammar. The documents identified a MetLife Adjuster with both a phone number and e-mail address for him.

So, I decided to continue to play along to see what would happen next.

I emailed the adjuster after checking that the E-mail was actually going to a MetLife domain. I truly thought that would be the end of it. But knock me over with a feather, I got an E-mail back from the adjuster

saying that he would process the $400,000 check and send it to me. I thought sure…..

The next day, I received a $400,000 MetLife check via FEDEX. The check (see the posted photo) looked totally legitimate and was drawn on a CitiBank account. I was amazed and was beginning to teeter on the edge of believing this actually might be legitimate. But that’s when I received a phone call from the US Postal Inspector. They asked if I had received a $400,000 check. I told them I had and they said that they were glad they had reached me before the check had been cashed or any funds had been transferred.

I was told that so far they were aware of 40 checks for $400,000 sent to lawyers and of those 40, 22 had already wired funds of more than $300,000 each out of the country. For those unfortunate lawyers, there is no recourse because the funds were now outside the US.

The Postal inspector explained that the CitiBank check did in fact have correct routing numbers for a MetLife account so that when the lawyer presented the check to his bank, that bank would honor the check because it looked to be legitimate. It would only be several days later when CitiBank rejected the check that a lawyer would learn of the scam. If the lawyer had already wired the money out of the country, they were totally out of luck.

So, a word to the wise: If it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true!” And another word to all attorneys: Wait until a check has CLEARED before disbursing any funds even if that means you have to wait 7 to 10 days. Better safe than sorry!

Thanks for reading,

Jim

_________________________________

James B. Reed
NY & PA Injury & Malpractice Lawyer
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
Mailto: jreed@zifflaw.com
Office: (607)733-8866
Toll-Free: 800-ZIFFLAW (943-3529)
Web: www.zifflaw.com
Blogs: NYInjuryLawBlog.com and
NYBikeAccidentBlog.com

Last year, I wrote a few posts on the NY Injury Law Blog about the risks of social media/networking for personal injury plaintiffs. In my posts “Experienced Attorney Warns: Protect Your Personal Injury Case by Being Smart About Social Media” and “Don’t Let Facebook Torpedo Your Client’s Case!” I warned readers about making missteps on social networking sites and undermining their personal injury cases. Insurance company attorneys deliberately pose as “friends” to infiltrate your social media. They can look for photos, messages, or other information that gives them ammunition to shoot down your case.

But I may have been guilty of some “glass half empty” thinking when it comes to social media such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, I’ve recently realized.

What to remember: Your posts on Facebook are not always private. Your tweets on Twitter will reach more readers than you may realize. When you file a personal injury lawsuit, the opposing side’s attorneys are going to find a way to tap and use all the information they can to undermine  the case against them – YOUR CASE.

But, and this is a big BUT, you CAN put social media to work for you – to find the best personal injury attorney. Because of the very wealth of details social media can offer on any given person, I’ve warned you to protect your privacy online. At the same time, don’t be shy about using it to YOUR ADVANTAGE.

I use social media to market my practice and the Ziff Law Firm. I encourage people to become a fan of the Ziff Law Firm on Facebook, and to follow me on Twitter - JimReedNYLawyer.

I write on the NY Injury Law Blog to share information about safety and legal issues in New York and Pennsylvania – for readers it’s also a good spot to get a feel for where I stand on some issues, and the standards I set for myself.

I track other attorneys’ blogs to keep up with new developments myself – an inspiration for this post was “Use Social Networking Tools to Find Out About the ‘Players’ in Your Trial” from TrialLawyerTips.com by Jackson and Wilson, Inc.

Here’s a great quote from the post: “What you need to understand is that the amount of information that can be found about someone using social networking searches is almost unlimited.”

Jackson and Wilson were writing from a “lawyer to lawyer” point of view, letting fellow attorneys know of the options for researching opposing counsel, jury members and court officials through social media online. I think Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, etc., are a great resource for legal clients as well. The last word: When it comes to social media, use it to post carefully and research thoroughly.

Thanks for reading,

Jim
_________________________________________

James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com
E-mail me at FreeReports@zifflaw.com for two free books:
NY Car Accidents and NY Car Insurance Secrets YOU Need to Know.

I want to pass along some BIG news that is wonderful for everyone: Google is now offering FREE access to a huge amount of U.S. law through Google Scholar.

Why is this a big deal? Because historically law firms have had to pay incredibly high rates to gain access to online case law via services such as WestLaw and Lexis. The Ziff Law Firm currently pays more than $6,000 a year to Lexis! I have been longing for the day when we can eliminate that cost.

(Google has been developing Google Scholar for years now – it’s “a freely-accessible Web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature” according to Wikipedia. The beta version was launched in late 2004, and now the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals from many of the world’s scholarly publishers.)

Here’s the official Google Blog post, “Finding the laws that govern us,” regarding their new service.

How it works (basically!)

Know how to use Google? You’ve got the concept, then! Go to the Google Scholar home page and select the radio button for Legal opinions and journals. You can search by the names of the parties in a particular case or the type of decision. Not only will Google Scholar return the results for a specific case you are looking into, it will offer links to associated cases for your further research.

While Google’s current offerings don’t match all the features of Lexis yet, it is only a matter of time until we can accomplish all we need to do for FREE.

And that’s the way it should be – information wants to be free.

A postscript on Google

Google is continually coming up with new features. I came across this post on the iPhone J.D. blog, a resource for lawyers who use iPhones (as I do!). Follow this link to a great post on using Google on your iPhone and some speculation on what might be available from Google in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney

Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

E-mail me at FreeReports@zifflaw.com for two free books:
NY Car Accidents and NY Car Insurance Secrets YOU Need to Know.

I have written before on the NY Injury Law Blog about the dangers of giving away your privacy online with social media. Sloppy postings on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other social sites can easily undermine personal injury cases – and believe me, insurance companies are well versed in any techniques to weaken plaintiffs’ cases.

The following guest post from Virginia injury lawyer Ben Glass provides a very clear outlines of the Do’s and Don’ts of using social media for people who want to protect their privacy and their personal injury cases. I’m reprinting it here with Ben’s permission. Here is Ben’s Guest Post:

Warning for Clients About Social Media

FACT – While initially people were quite guarded about what photos they posted online and who has access to them, people are gradually becoming more exhibitionist. Your friends may have photos of you, that can be searched by your name, on their pages. In other words, your own privacy settings cannot protect you entirely.

FACT – The courts have ordered injured plaintiffs to produce their Facebook pages to the insurance company lawyers.

FACT – Evidence from Facebook has been admitted in Ontario Courts and is used by the police and the traditional media.

FACT – Every insurance defense lawyer has a law clerk on Facebook who is looking for their opponents’ pages, profiles and pictures on Facebook.

So, does that mean you have to withdraw from the 21st century and avoid social media? As your lawyer, I would like to say, well, yes. Avoid it like the plague. However, as a human being, I recognize that may not be possible. So, what steps can you take to protect yourself?

Step One: Take a critical eye to your social media sites to see if there is anything you would not want the insurance company lawyer to see. Remember that the insurance company will not know the context of your photos or comments. They won’t know if you swallowed a bottle of pain killers to get through that party.

Step Two: Check your privacy settings. Most sites allow you to block certain people altogether from seeing that you even are on the site. Block the opposing lawyer and his/her clerk. Keep in mind, however, that there will be law students and others whose names you won’t know, so this is not foolproof.

Step Three: Search your name in the search field to see what comes up and make sure it is acceptable.

Step Four: While you are at it, do the same thing on Google and You Tube. Make whatever adjustments are necessary.

Step Five: Don’t accept friend requests or answer emails through social media from people you do now know. On Facebook, if you send a message, you grant the receiver access to your profile for a certain number of days. That is a common device to get access to your profile. Keep in mind that because of the lawsuit process, the opposing legal team knows a lot about you and could send you an email that might make you think you know each other.

If you are in doubt about whether or not your pages are acceptable, speak to your personal injury lawyer about it.

- Ben Glass, Virginia personal injury lawyer. Check out Ben’s website, BenGlassLaw.com, for more of his advice about personal injury law and protecting your case.

Thanks for reading,

Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

Social networking sites can sink cases, and attorneys MUST warn clients of the risk.

Consider the numbers:

• Facebook has 120 million members.

• MySpace, 70.5 million.

• Twitter, 7 million.

• LinkedIn, 8.4 million members.

Those figures will climb just during the time it takes to me to write this post. I haven’t even mentioned – yet – emerging sites such as Wikia, Zimbio, and Multiply.

With membership numbers like those above, and more online communities emerging, the Internet is about making connections, not keeping life confidential.

Personal injury attorneys need to ask clients if they participate in social networking, and caution them about the exposure it may give to their private lives and personal information. Your clients need to understand that information posted online is NOT PRIVATE.

Many people do not realize that if you have a Facebook account, the default privacy settings allow people who live in your region to see your page, EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.

What does this have to do with personal injury law? It is SOP to alert plaintiffs to the possibility that they may be surreptitiously video-taped outside their homes. Have your clients considered if they want EVERYTHING they post online to be viewable by the insurance company’s legal team? OF COURSE NOT!

Plaintiffs in personal injury actions need to know that not only may their public profiles be viewed on such sites, but even private, restricted sites areas could be accessed.

Tell clients to think before they post, or Tweet or update …

An excellent article by Robert S. Kelner and Gail S. Kelner, “Trial Practice Social Networking Sites and Personal Injury Litigation” examines recent decisions about “intrusive adversaries” online. Some of the highpoints of that article are below:

By assuming other personas online, some insurance investigators have made connections with plaintiffs with the sole purpose of gaining access to private information and undermining their case. The Philadelphia Bar Association Guidance Committee called such subterfuge “inherently deceitful” and “unethical.” It is not the same as being monitored outside one’s home – as in the now seemingly quaint practice of video surveillance. Investigators may observe and record in public, but not by trying to pass themselves off as other people.

Legal Challenges to Cyber-Snooping…..

More and more, however, courts are being called upon to determine the access defendants’ legal representatives may have to plaintiffs’ personal information on social networking sites. Some judges have deemed it improper for plaintiffs to be contacted, even openly, in attempts to gain access to their private sites, “Such a request raises tension, familiar in personal injury lawsuits, between plaintiff’s desire to retain some measure of privacy over his personal affairs and defendant’s claim that it is entitled to prove for relevant discovery,” as Kelner and Kelner write.

Although adversaries may not be able to pose as “friends,” there are other means to access information online, and the legal issues become more complex as additional parties become involved.

Defendents’ legal counsel can try to:

• Contact the company that created or hosts the social networking site to try and access plaintiffs’ details directly.

• Ask for access to stored communications on the computers of plaintiffs’ connections, i.e. they may seek to obtain copies of e-mails sent to other people.

As a personal injury attorney, I don’t want anything to do with representing dishonest people. The point of this post is to be warn your clients about what they post on so-called “private” social-networking sites. Tell them they need to be totally honest with you, but that it is important to be aware that insurance companies will use EVERY means available to weaken a personal injury case against them.

Thanks for reading,

Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
NY & PA Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529

mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com

http://www.zifflaw.com

You’re being watched.

At least, you are if you have a Facebook account – as only a bazillion or so people do. And I don’t just mean watched by your Facebook “friends.” You could also be offering your life and habits up to people who don’t have your best interests at heart.

Most people don’t realize this, but if you have a Facebook account, the default privacy settings allow people who live in your region to see your page EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.

What does this have to do with personal injury law? If you have a personal injury case, you might want to be very careful about what you post to Facebook. Stop and consider – do you want everything you post to be viewable by the insurance company’s legal team?

The Facebook flaw

I was made aware of this Facebook issue by attorney Jason Lee Paris. A a friend of his who is a defense attorney told him how she had participated in a case where the plaintiff claimed severe mental and physical problems. The plaintiff claimed he: “had no life, cannot do anything, doesn’t go out of the house except to the doctor or to work, is depressed, is physically limited, used to love to dance and play sports and now does neither at all anymore, has not gone outside the state of New York since his accident, etc etc.”

This defense attorney then changed her county of residence on her Facebook profile (Wonder if that was unethical conduct on the part of this lawyer?) so that she could secretly view the plaintiff’s Facebook page without being his “friend” – and lo and behold: There were recent photos of the plaintiff dancing at a wedding in Puerto Rico and playing soccer last summer. He’d also posted lots of information about his activities and feelings. His case was blown by his own Facebook profile.

This plaintiff was dishonest, and as a personal injury attorney I don’t want anything to do with representing dishonest people. In fact, I tell my clients, I can always deal with the truth but a single lie can kill an otherwise good case.

The point of this post is to be totally honest with your injury lawyer because it is important to be aware that insurance companies will use EVERY means available to weaken your personal injury case.

Check the Privacy settings on your Facebook account (find them under Settings on the right side of the top toolbar). You can fine-tune them to make sure the people you trust get to track your life – NOT the people you don’t.

Thanks for reading,
Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

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How often you you get to put attorneys to work for you – for FREE?

Here’s a golden opportunity to tap into the legal expertise of the attorneys at the Ziff Law Firm. We created this blog and the ZiffLaw website to share information with current and potential clients. It’s a new line of communication with the community we serve.

Here are some ways you can put this blog to work for YOU:

Subscribe to our blog

When you visit the Ziff Law Firm’s NY Injury Law Blog, you can subscribe via e-mail or RSS feed. Just click on the orange “Get Blog Updates” button to choose the means – from AOL to Windows LIVE – by which you can receive the latest blog entries as soon as they are posted.

E-mail us directly with your questions

Don’t be shy. We welcome your e-mails and will do our best to answer your questions. Each name links to an online biography, where you can read more about our practice specialties, our credentials, and what we are like as people.

• James B. Reed, Personal Injury, Medical Malpractice and Legal Malpractice: jreed@zifflaw.com
• Adam M. Gee, Personal Injury and Malpractice: agee@zifflaw.com
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• Christina Bruner Sonsire, Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice: csonsire@zifflaw.com

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You can read and download past editions of our print and electronic newsletters, aptly named “Legal News YOU Can Use!” Each issue is packed with information – we explain local issues as well as the big trends in jurisprudence.

Our newsletters can also be your invitation to informative seminars hosted by the firm, and/or discounts on legal services. Click on the title to find out about subscribing.

Don’t forget about the Search box

The NY Injury Law Blog contains more than a hundred entries by Ziff Law attorneys. We write about local events and big legal issues. We answer your questions or share challenges that came up in our practices. There’s much more, too. To find exactly what you may be looking for, use the “Search” pane and type in keywords for the topic that interests you. For example, personal injury, medical malpractice and insurance settlement all bring up informative results.

Talk back to us

We are lawyers. We like to exchange ideas (OK, I’ll admit it, we LIKE to talk talk talk). Tell us what you think about the posts we make. You can say thanks for the information – a pat on the back is always welcome – or let us know why you disagree. Let’s get a conversation going. It’s one of the ways you can get real value out of the NY Injury Law Blog.

Thanks for reading, Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

The Elmira Police Department has a great new feature on their website that could make a big difference in how the public interacts with and perceives the department.

“Daily Activity Logs” allow anyone with Internet access to look at the last two weeks of Elmira Police Department incident records. The department has always had a daily activity log, a record of all incidents reported a 24-hour period beginning at midnight. With this new online service, the logs are available to view online for 14 days.

What’s on the log sheet

1. The incident blotter number - a reference anyone can use when calling the department to share information about the incident or to find out more.
2. The date and time the call was received.
3. Type of call – whether it was a traffic stop, a disturbance, larceny or other type of incident.
4. The number of the responding police unit.
5. The location of the incident.
6. This is very important – how YOU can report suspicious activity by calling 271-HALT or visiting www.271halt.com.

I applaud the Elmira Police Department’s effort to involve the public by sharing more information. Sharing these day-to-day details so quickly with the community will serve to make more residents a part of the effort to control crime in Elmira. Part of the department’s stated values is “achieving excellence in our services in our citizens through community-based, proactive policing.”

As Deputy Police Chief David Gardner said in the WETM story “New Elmira Police Service” (also pasted below), “Our community is our eyes and ears.”

Thanks for reading,
Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

New Elmira Police Service

Reported by: Naveen Dhaliwal
Last Update: 3/12 8:05 pm

ELMIRA – A new Elmira police web service will now allow you to keep a closer eye on what the department is doing.

There’s a new section on the police department’s website called Daily Activity Logs.

Every time an officer is sent to an incident they write a report or a log. Each log is assigned a blotter number. If anyone wants more information, they can request it through the police department using that number.

Officials say this service will reduce the workload for officers. They are also hoping people will step forward and provide more information to help their investigations.

“Our community is our eyes and ears. There’s usually between six and eight officers out there on the streets at any given time, but it’s a city, so we can’t be everywhere at the same time,” says Deputy Police Chief David Gardner.

The daily logs will remain on the website for two weeks.

You can find them at: www.cityofelmira.net/police/blotter.html.

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It’s that time of year when many of us are setting goals and making plans for what we hope will be a successful and prosperous 2009. It’s very tempting to set goals that are so lofty that you just know you will never achieve them. I suggest that rather than create a master plan that is so ambitious that you know it will never get off the ground, consider taking “baby steps” to achieve big changes in 2009….

This isn’t to say that you can’t dream big, it’s to say that you need to break the BIG dream down in to a series of realistic and achievable baby steps that will ultimately culminate in achieving the big dream.

Let me use myself and my law firm as a brutal example. For years we kicked around the implementation of many types of technology– electronic files rather than paper files, computer trial presentation, digital dictation, voice recognition software, video depositions, etc.

Without fail, not one of these great technology “ideas” got off the ground until we decided to just bite the bullet, quit screwing around with the “thinking” about the idea, and just dove in to the implementation of the new technology by taking the first “baby step”. Sure, just diving in occasionally resulted in some mistakes, but those mistakes often showed us the way to an even better solution.

Let me use the implementation of our “paperLESS” office system as an example. 5-6 years ago we decided to try to convert the inefficiency of our paper-based file system to a digital-based system. At the time, scanners were expensive, scanning software was clunky and confusing, and our staff thought we were nuts to change from the tried-and-true paper file system with which they were so comfortable. Realizing this was going to be an uphill battle if we rolled out the scanning system to the entire office, we decided to just roll it out to two of our personal injury paralegals who were enthused about the idea. Long story short, after working out some of the initial bugs, these two paralegals LOVED the new electronic files (no more hunting for paper files or documents!) and slowly but surely every paralegal, secretary and lawyer in the office was clamoring for a scanner for their own desk. Now, every shred of paper in the office is quickly converted to an electronic file and we no longer rely on the paper file.

The bottom-line is that we could have researched/debated/discussed this conversion to digital files to death or we could just take the baby step of putting a scanner on someone’s desk and letting them run with it.

Guess how we do it now in our office whenever we want to implement a new technology? Yep, gotta love those baby steps!!

Thanks for reading.

Jim
_______________________________________________________
James B. Reed
NY & PA Injury and Malpractice Lawyer
jreed@zifflaw.com

For our lawyer readers of this blog, a recommendation for a VERY useful tool– CiteGenie.

For those of you who are using FireFox as your browser, I recently discovered an awesome free Add-On called CiteGenie. It lets you cut and paste from Westlaw directly in to a Word document and it automatically pulls over all the citation info in Blue Book perfect form!!

This saves tons of time when you are researching because you can just cut and paste the good quotes and the citations are all there for you to use.

CiteGenie not only works for legal citations but also for other information that you cut and paste from the web—it brings over the website information and also lists that information in the proper Blue Book format.

I highly recommend CiteGenie. Here’s a recent review: http://www.llrx.com/features/citegenie.htm

You can find this Add-on at: http://www.citegenie.com/download_stable.html

Jim

_________________________________________

James B. Reed, Esq.

Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney

Ziff Law Firm, LLP

303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902

Tel: (607) 733-8866

Fax: (607) 732-6062

Toll Free: 1-800-943-3529

Email: jreed@zifflaw.com

Web: http://www.zifflaw.com

Visit the New York Injury Law Blog at: http://www.NYInjuryLawBlog.com

Email me at FreeReports@zifflaw.com for two free books concerning NY

Car Accidents and NY Car Insurance Secrets YOU Need to Know.