Internet Lawyer: Consumer Advocate or Devil’s Advocate?
Some cannot understand how one can simultaneously represent some of the biggest Internet info product marketers while attacking others for unethical conduct. A public relations stunt? Loose cannon? What the heck is going on?
To understand the what, you’ll need to learn the why I’m about to share with you for the first time.
My grandparents and great-aunt instilled old-fashioned ethics in me from childhood. They grew up during the Great Depression and spent their working lives as blue collar employees. To them, “get-rich-quick” meant the stock market crash of 1929, massive unemployment, and doing without.
If I could sum up their views on how to live, it would be these words: “Do what is right.”
Have I always done the right thing? Of course not.
Like you, I’m human and have made mistakes (and hopefully learned enough not to repeat them).
But doing what is right is the goal post that I aim for each and every day.
Is there a conflict between representing “big gurus” and doing what is right? Not if the goal of those gurus is also to do the right thing.
Do these clients make mistakes? Of course. They’re human too.
And if there comes a time where a business decision is made to profit from knowingly doing wrong to customers, that’s where the attorney-client relationship quickly comes to an end.
Some claim that I’ve been too harsh on certain marketers who have engaged in fraudulent and deceptive business practices. But there is a difference. Those marketers who I’ve publicly criticized for such misconduct have not made a mistake. They’ve chosen a way of doing business that is designed to profit by taking advantage of others.
Exposing these Internet scams is done because it is the right thing both for consumers and honest online business owners who shouldn’t be tarnished by association with the so-called “guru” marketers.
This holiday season will be a tough one for me. My grandparents have passed away. In recent years, my great-aunt has been the sounding board that invariably answers “do the right thing.” Now terminally ill, I’ll be visiting with her for the last time this Thanksgiving.
I hope that in the coming years, I live up to her expectations to do what’s right. If that means offending some scam artists masquerading online as gurus, so be it.
Do old-fashioned ethics have a place in the way we do business with each other on the Internet? Absolutely.
That’s why a group of Internet marketers committed to doing the right thing has just formed the Internet Ethics Council. If you’re truly committed to treating your customers with courtesy and respect, you’ll want to join us. To learn more, click here.
FTC Fools: Nonlawyers Misinterpret New Advertising Guidelines
Why are some online business owners sabotaging their livelihoods by playing Internet lawyer without the education or experience to do it right?
To be sure, some have been smart enough to read my free special report called How to Comply with the New FTC Compensation Disclosure Guidelines (PDF file).
What have others done? Here’s a sample of some of the irrational behavior.
1. Some claim that nothing has changed, i.e. the stick-your-head-in-the-sand no-worries ostrich approach. The legal analysis is nonexistent. It is all emotion-based “logic” with some good third party unverified rumor that an Internet marketer’s fourth cousin’s husband who is a divorce lawyer said not to worry about it. Ridiculous.
2. Some try to sell product by piking anonymous lawyer documents that any real lawyer would get disbarred for drafting. I was in stitches when I saw a certain copywriter piking forms supposedly prepared by a lawyer (no name provided) that wouldn’t have protected an online business in any way shape or form since at least 2005. Wonder how many people are dumb enough to believe it.
3. A variation of #2 is the auto-generated form from a non-lawyer’s website that when you look at the document makes you wonder if it was randomly generated text. My 13-year-old could draft something better.
4. Better than the above 3, but still not the right answer, is to try the brutal honesty technique. This method involves drafting a disclosure that looks like something a website owner should be talking about to a priest in confession rather than revealing online. The material connections disclosed at best are embarrassing, at worst legally inadequate, and somewhere in between are those where the entrepreneur has revealed so much that you can literally track down every site he owns if you want to identify his business model and clone it (i.e. a gift to the competition). Transparency has its place. But not to this extent.
If you read the special report, you’ll understand why each of the above examples is fundamentally flawed. Don’t believe unreliable chat in forums and blog comments. Seek the advice of your Internet lawyer and know that the answer you get is the right one. Your online business is too important to guess what the Federal Trade Commission means with the new guidelines.
Before I get flamed, let me make it clear that there are a few marketers out there who “get it,” i.e. they have (presumably with the advice of legal counsel) figured out what the FTC wants. But that is the exception to the rule.
