Rogge Dunn

A Dallas attorney has lodged a fraud suit against the online legal marketing company FindLaw, alleging he was duped into thinking they would create a unique website for his new law firm but instead provided one that was “cookie cutter” and “unimaginative.”

Rogge Dunn, a civil litigator and principal of the Rogge Dunn Group, alleges in recent petition filed in a Dallas County Court of Law that he was prepared to hire a different company to create a new website for his firm, but a FindLaw salesperson talked him out of it, claiming its competitor had created few websites for attorneys while FindLaw had created thousands of them.

“FindLaw also promised to develop a unique and individually customized website for Dunn and his law firm, Rogge Dunn Group P.C.” the petition alleges. “The website that FindLaw gave to Dunn contained basic, unimaginative images and stock language. FindLaw uses a generic 'cookie cutter' approach for hundreds of attorneys nationwide. The website provided is anything but unique, or customized to Dunn's law practice.”

Dunn also alleges in the lawsuit that once an attorney stops using FindLaw, the company “flips a switch” that essentially removes the benefit of the 12 months of search engine optimization (SEO) already paid for.

In an interview, Dunn said that he was forced to push back the launch date of his new law firm three weeks because the website FindLaw created for him was not acceptable.

“It had cartoonish images like a phone for scrolling information,” Dunn said. “I handle multimillion dollar cases, and it looked like a website for a solo practitioner who handles small cases.''

Dunn said he was later told by FindLaw the changes he wanted make to his website could take months.

“When you hire somebody and you have a launch date, and they provide a service that substandard and then say it's going to take 60 or 90 days to fix, that's unacceptable,” Dunn said.

Dunn said he found another web developer to create a website for his firm that launched on April 23, but is still paying on the $45,000 deal he made with FindLaw.

“I want them to do the right thing and refund me for the services they didn't provide and reimburse me for the expense I incurred paying another website developer for what FindLaw couldn't do and couldn't do on a timely basis,'' Dunn said.

A spokesperson for FindLaw did not return an e-mailed request for comment.