why do they want to make work so hard???
So, apparently, in order to do due diligence in trying to find defendants, lawyers now should google them (and join facebook and twitter and all that other crap--see later comments as to why I think this is not worth my time).
As a test, I googled myself using the correct spelling of my name. In twelve google pages, I didn't appear once, not even when I added on my state. I finally got some not so useful results with my middle initial.
Without the middle initial, I did find that I'm an author, a singer, a dentist, a doctor (several actually), a murdered seventeen year old, an actress (who appeared on SPN!!!!) and several other things, including being a lot of dead people.
So...anyone trying to find me with my real name is shit out of luck.
Dropping the 'u' did make me appear as it's on my webpage for one thing, and also my church uses that spelling so I'm in some of their newsletters and the local paper when they used to provide information on Sunday services, as well as my brother's wedding thingie (I'm surprised my parents didn't have a cow that it was spelled "wrong".)
Laure Alexander, of course, pops up with my webpage first.
Of course, I'm not on facebook or twitter or myspace or linkedin or anything like that. My real name is NOT out there. I did show up on a few address/phone sites but I don't have a phone number and it just gave my hometown. That was with using my middle initial.
Also, there are at least three of me in this town--one lives two streets behind me. *snort*
Now, those are all free sites. I'm sure if you paid, you could find out stuff because I do actually own property.
My problem with using these social media things to find people is, the old House idiom, everybody lies. A client of ours started providing us with information gleaned from facebook about people they were collecting from. New towns they were living in, places they were working. We got information on about ten people.
None of them panned out. They hadn't updated, they lied, whatever. They weren't working at those places. They weren't living in those towns. They weren't going to that college. They hadn't moved home to mom's.
Waste of everyone's time.
Also, I believe you can make it 'friend only' like here on LJ? No one's going to friend back a law firm!
The example given (where a lawyer actually lost a malpractice case) was in a big accident case and their client was seen in a youtube video skiing like ten days after they were supposedly permanently injured. The claim was that a google search would have turned this up and the lawyer would have not filed suit. Okay, I understand that, but we collect small judgments on people who bounce checks and don't pay their rent. I already do property searches and search our own district court for new addresses on people and check with the post office. Even the court can't keep updated addresses on defendants. I'm pretty sure the court doesn't check facebook.
I also don't quite understand how to find people on facebook. A couple months ago I thought I'd look at my minister's page and there were like a hundred women with her name. Maybe you have to be friended?
I can tell you right now that every "me" on facebook is NOT me.
And never will be.
Oh, and you have to be thirteen. Wonder if my sister-in-law knew that when she signed my ten year old nephew up last year...
As a test, I googled myself using the correct spelling of my name. In twelve google pages, I didn't appear once, not even when I added on my state. I finally got some not so useful results with my middle initial.
Without the middle initial, I did find that I'm an author, a singer, a dentist, a doctor (several actually), a murdered seventeen year old, an actress (who appeared on SPN!!!!) and several other things, including being a lot of dead people.
So...anyone trying to find me with my real name is shit out of luck.
Dropping the 'u' did make me appear as it's on my webpage for one thing, and also my church uses that spelling so I'm in some of their newsletters and the local paper when they used to provide information on Sunday services, as well as my brother's wedding thingie (I'm surprised my parents didn't have a cow that it was spelled "wrong".)
Laure Alexander, of course, pops up with my webpage first.
Of course, I'm not on facebook or twitter or myspace or linkedin or anything like that. My real name is NOT out there. I did show up on a few address/phone sites but I don't have a phone number and it just gave my hometown. That was with using my middle initial.
Also, there are at least three of me in this town--one lives two streets behind me. *snort*
Now, those are all free sites. I'm sure if you paid, you could find out stuff because I do actually own property.
My problem with using these social media things to find people is, the old House idiom, everybody lies. A client of ours started providing us with information gleaned from facebook about people they were collecting from. New towns they were living in, places they were working. We got information on about ten people.
None of them panned out. They hadn't updated, they lied, whatever. They weren't working at those places. They weren't living in those towns. They weren't going to that college. They hadn't moved home to mom's.
Waste of everyone's time.
Also, I believe you can make it 'friend only' like here on LJ? No one's going to friend back a law firm!
The example given (where a lawyer actually lost a malpractice case) was in a big accident case and their client was seen in a youtube video skiing like ten days after they were supposedly permanently injured. The claim was that a google search would have turned this up and the lawyer would have not filed suit. Okay, I understand that, but we collect small judgments on people who bounce checks and don't pay their rent. I already do property searches and search our own district court for new addresses on people and check with the post office. Even the court can't keep updated addresses on defendants. I'm pretty sure the court doesn't check facebook.
I also don't quite understand how to find people on facebook. A couple months ago I thought I'd look at my minister's page and there were like a hundred women with her name. Maybe you have to be friended?
I can tell you right now that every "me" on facebook is NOT me.
And never will be.
Oh, and you have to be thirteen. Wonder if my sister-in-law knew that when she signed my ten year old nephew up last year...