Law Society hires firm to identify ‘claims harvesting’ sites

The Law Society of Ireland has hired a media monitoring firm to help identify “claims harvesting” companies taking out press advertisements, The Irish Times reports.

The Society is attempting to clamp down on websites which harvest personal information from potential litigants and sell them on.

Ken Murphy, director general of the Law Society, said: “One of the difficulties is finding out who exactly is behind the advertising. These are the investigations that have been under way and one of the key aspects of is a degree of anonymity.

“But we are doing it quite determinedly and IT expertise is being utilised to identify who is behind the advertising and also to identify if a solicitor’s firm is behind them.”

Solicitors who are involved in claims harvesting can face High Court action from the Society’s regulation of practice committee.