It is a lawyers professional responsibility to “do no harm” to their client. In this case, due to the clear negligence of her attorneys, Megan Welter is getting barraged with negative publicity over her efforts at removing negative articles from Google. This is commonly referred to as The Streisand effect.
According to Wikipedia: The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware something is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread the information is increased.
Not only did Kelly Warner fail at achieving its mission to censor the internet, they have caused a new wave of negative publicity that is harming its client’s reputation even further by the day.
Enter AVVO
One of the articles that Kelly Warner attempted to remove from Google as part of their injunction was listed on AVVO, The Lawyer Rating Website. UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh originally broke the story on The Washington Post here, which caught the attention of AVVO attorney Paul Alan Levy.
