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Instead of dashing to the scene of an accident, lawyers in need of clients dash to blog posts about accidents.

There are computer programs that find blog posts about, say, motorcycle deaths and then drop comments that seem to be from an ordinary person sympathizing about the death and dropping a link to a website offering to help you with legal claims. I know this because I just got a comment on an old post of mine ? "The mystery of Bob Dylan's motorcycle crash." It contained some key words like "very seriously injured" (in the phrase "not very seriously injured") and "ambulance" (in "no ambulance was called to the scene") and "died" (in "he would have died if" he hadn't, after the accident, changed the way he lived).

This morning I discovered the comment ? already deleted ? from "John" ? who sounds like a caring individual: "I feel very sad to know about the cause of Bob Dylan?s death...." Now, the program didn't quite work the way it was supposed to, because the accident happened long ago, Bob Dylan didn't die, and, however much I may love Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan is not one of my loved ones. So I'm not the target of the material that follows about the nature of motorcycle accidents and how "it is best to look over your case with a personal injury attorney beforehand to see if you have a strong case for a accident death claim."

But I can see how the comment is meant to work. It's supposed to appear on the genuinely sad blog posts written by people who have suffered a terrible personal loss and are touched that a stranger would say "I feel very sad to know about the cause of [name]?s death...."

Full post as published by Althouse on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).