Now, New Jersey legislators are considering bills that would force lawyers and other professionals to wait 30 days before contacting defendants and accident victims whose information was drawn from public-records searches.
Most states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, prohibit lawyers from soliciting clients in person or over the telephone but make exception for the mail.
"It's a consumer-protection issue," said State Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D., Union), a civil-litigation lawyer who sponsored the Senate bill. "We get calls from numerous people complaining about this. And it's not just attorneys; it's health-care professionals, investigators, chiropractors. It's a pretty unseemly practice."
The matter has been contentious within the legal community for decades, pitting questions of constitutional freedom against cleaning up the profession's sometimes "ambulance-chasing" image.
Bar associations in a number of states have fought to outlaw lawyers' soliciting, arguing that the practice demeans their profession.
Arnold Fishman, a Haddon Heights lawyer and trustee of the New Jersey Bar Association, said that though he opposed the criminal charges the bill calls for, he supported the overarching concept.
"Some of these letters are downright misleading," he said. "They talk about jail and consequences that couldn't conceivably apply with the charges they have. And the prices they're charging, they can't do anything but plead their clients guilty instead of mounting a real defense."
Although the legal establishment might want to clamp down, lawyers point out that there are no rules barring insurance-company representatives from accident scenes, where they can get victims to sign releases or give statements.
