Update: At some point after I wrote this post, Shpoonkle took down the blog post I discuss below. I suspect that one could pick apart many of the posts on the site in the same fashion, but I simply don’t have time to do so.

Shpoonkle is a reverse auction site for lawyers, where clients post their legal problems and lawyers bid to provide the cheapest solution. The site was founded by a recent New York Law School graduate who couldn’t figure out what to do after law school. Above all else, this little web project is an awful idea with a terrible name. And now, a new blog post on the Shpoonkle website provides reason to question the competence of the people behind this project. I suspect folks using Shpoonkle are meant to be comforted by the fact that the managers of Shpoonkle are lawyers. But apparently, lawyers they ain’t.

A number of people a lot smarter than me have already torn this idea to shreds, but it’s worth quickly going over why this is such a bad idea.  Eric Turkewitz, for instance, notes that the site is likely to attract underqualified lawyers that do affirmative harm to a client’s case. Meanwhile, it presents significant ethical concerns:

[C]lients may be seen to have waived their attorney-client privilege by making the information available in such a fashion. They haven’t contacted one lawyer, they have contacted every lawyer in the database that can access the information and who have not agreed to represent the potential client. What if this was a slip and fall in a restaurant, and it just so happens that the restaurant lawyer can access the information also? Now what?  Now the information that the client distributed to, potentially, hundreds or thousands of mystery lawyers, may be anything other than confidential.

Scott Greenfield theorizes that Shpoonkle could lead to the de-professionalization of legal services:

That many people are incapable of affording quality legal services is a given.  Lawyers are expensive, and the need for legal assistance has, unfortunately, become pervasive in everyday life.  People take a huge risk not obtaining counsel.  They take a huge risk in obtaining counsel at bargain basement rates.  It seems like there’s a huge risk no matter where they turn.

The need to resolve the overarching problem, that quality legal counsel is financially out of reach to many, is a problem, and the legal profession has yet to make any serious effort to come to grips with it.  The solution of flooding the market with lawyers of dubious merit and even more dubious ethics isn’t the solution, but neither is bizarrely-named schemes that encourage lawyers to do anything necessary to score a case from some detached name on the internet.

I could post more, but there’s no need to keep piling on.

I return to the topic of Shpoonkle because of a new post on the site’s blog. The post, titled, “Stop and Strip! The Terry Stop,” butchers the law of stop and frisks in three easy steps:

1. Suggest the post is timely by generating a nonexistent “debate.”  The Shpoonkle post begins:

Considering the panic mode most citizens feel after the terrorists’ attacks, the debate on whether or not this stop and frisk policy is unconstitutional or over-the-top rages on.

Ummm … no. I think most moderately educated folks would agree that a Terry stop is no longer a point of constitutional contention. It’s kosher. Let’s move on.

2. Wildly misconstrue the case. Let’s learn all about Terry v. Ohio from Shpoonkle:

Stop and frisk is street talk for search and seizure which is a law police officers can use under the Fourth Amendment. It is important to know that authorities can only do this to a private citizen if there is “probable cause.

Probable cause means the police can frisk you if they have reason to suspect you of being dangerous. … Authorities are only allowed to frisk your outer clothing and if they feel a bulk that could be weapon, that’s the only time, they can search under your jacket or coat. …

…

Crime prevention saves lives. This is the basis of the term, “Terry stop” because the decision to allow stop and frisk was confirmed after a police officer was accused of stepping over the line when he frisked a man named Terry in 1963 in Ohio. The police officer was found not guilty.

Wow. Putting aside all the bad writing, let’s try and figure out everything that’s wrong with this analysis.

• First, a Terry stop does not require probable cause. That’s the entire point of such a stop; if the police officer had probable cause to believe the person has committed a crime, he could simply arrest the individual and perform a search incident to arrest. But the Terry stop allows an officer to (a) stop the individual if there is reasonable suspicion to believe that the person has committed, or is committing, a crime, and (b) frisk the individual if there is reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed and presently dangerous. In other words, something less than probable cause is needed.
• What’s more, Shpoonkle misunderstands what probable cause means in the first place. In the arrest context, it would mean that there is a fair probability based on common sense judgment that a crime has been committed. I don’t even know where Shpoonkle got its definition.
• Sphoonkle almost gets it right when it comes to the “bulk.” If an officer encounters an object during the frisk that could be a weapon, he may take it out for further inspection. That is not to say, however, that anything under a person’s coat becomes fair game whenever there’s a bulk. Think of it another way: a bulk in one pocket does not open up a search of all the other pockets (at least not until an arrest occurs).
• “The police officer was found not guilty.” Ummm… what?! That doesn’t even make sense. How can.. a police officer … be found not guilty when he’s not a … *head explodes*

3. Apply the case in clumsy analysis. So what does Shpoonkle think the import of the Terry case is?

Since then, the Terry stop has been used time and again to help authorities justify a stop and frisk. Many crimes have been prevented but there have been flukes as well. You really can’t expect the authorities to be 100% right. They’re human and can make mistakes. The police have to be careful not to be abusive when frisking a person. They must also be willing to defend probable cause when questioned.

I don’t even understand what the blog writer is trying to say here. Police make mistakes? So ce la vie if we have a few extraneous searches? And this is a person who you want to help you find a lawyer?

… If this kind of critical analysis is indicative, Sphoonkle is going to be a piece of sh—poo.

-Michael