Fight among Georgia lawyers over client solicitation reaches high court

Illegal client solicitation by some personal injury lawyers and their staff is a big problem in Georgia. On that much, stakeholders agree.

But who is to blame? And what should be done about it? Those questions reveal a rift in the local legal industry.

Now, the Georgia Supreme Court is being asked to step in.

Some Georgia personal injury lawyers, backed by the statewide organization that represents them, want to be able to sue competitors accused of illegally soliciting clients. They say prosecutors and industry regulators seem unable or unwilling to address the widespread issue.

Soliciting an injured person to be a litigant is illegal in Georgia and a violation of professional conduct rules for lawyers. But the practice has become pervasive because no one wants to do anything about it, according to the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association.

The group is asking the state Supreme Court to allow a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, filed by personal injury attorney Shane Lazenby, to proceed against rivals he accuses of illegally soliciting clients.

“Ultimately, this will help to protect clients from manipulation and abuse and guard the reputation and integrity of the legal profession,” the GTLA told the court.

Lazenby, of Gainesville, claims the dozens of attorneys and firms that use so-called “runners” to gather information about and pressure potential clients into signing up are taking millions of dollars in business away from him and other ethical operators.

Georgia trial attorneys say the bad actors among them use a range of tactics to get hired, including faking affiliations with hospitals and police departments and offering cash and gifts.

Competition has increased to the point where one Atlanta-area personal injury law firm paid its “chief runner,” who was not an attorney, $4.8 million annually to solicit clients, Lazenby alleged. That firm, Guardian Law Group, denies the claim.

Matt Cook, another Gainesville personal injury attorney and one of Lazenby’s lawyers in the litigation, said he’s not seen the current level of “rampant, widespread, unabashed, out-in-the-open” soliciting in his 30-odd years of practice.

“We are standing on the sidelines, not willing to violate the law, watching these unethical and illegal runners steal business from us,” Cook told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Many, many, many small firms have suffered tremendously and have gone out of business trying to compete honestly.”

The equivalent of baseball’s “steroid era”

Improper solicitation of clients by some personal injury lawyers is not a new problem or one that is unique to Georgia, where it has recently come to a head.

It tends to be most prevalent in vehicle wreck situations where information about the people involved quickly passes through many hands, including medical, auto repair, insurance and law enforcement staff.

“I’ve heard stories about cards getting passed out at the scene of a wreck—that’s how quickly these folks will get involved,” Lazenby told the AJC.

Fed up with what he called the State Bar of Georgia’s deliberate indifference to the problem, Marietta personal injury attorney Darl Champion resigned as the chairman of its committee on attorney-client solicitation in October. In the resignation letter he published online, Champion said the committee’s work was “symbolic at best.”

Champion told the AJC the state bar’s unwillingness to investigate complaints of improper solicitation, let alone discipline members for it, reminds him of the “steroid era” in professional baseball when players were generally not tested for banned performance-enhancing drugs.

“It’s sort of become an open secret that this rule is just not enforced,” he said. “It creates this kind of snowball effect where people are like, ‘Oh, well, I need to do this to be competitive.’”

State Bar President Christopher Twyman disagrees. He told the AJC the state bar shares the concern about solicitation and takes seriously any potential rule violations or harmful conduct. He said he is limited in what he can reveal publicly about its enforcement work.

“Our committee was designed to be a part of the solution,” he said. “We relied on its leadership to help us craft solutions and other ideas.”

Ivy Cadle, the state bar’s immediate past president, said it is a complex situation that has the attention of some state lawmakers. Cadle said it can be hard for injured people to recognize improper solicitation and for prosecutors and the state bar to dedicate the necessary resources to building “what is basically a big white-collar case.”

As technology develops, so, too, must the conversation about what constitutes improper solicitation, he said, noting it could include the common use of website chatbots that purport to assist users seeking legal help.

“From a developing law standpoint in 2026, this is going to be another hot topic to look for,” he told the AJC. “I expect you’ll see statutes come out that will change the way that these acts are categorized or considered.”

The remedy to this problem lies with the Georgia General Assembly and the state bar, the Georgia Court of Appeals said in November when ruling Lazenby’s legal claims can’t stand.

Will opening the floodgates help?

If taken up by the state Supreme Court, Lazenby’s case could create the path for any Georgia lawyer seeking damages from a competitor found to have improperly solicited clients.

Lazenby sued Atlanta personal injury law firm Cambre & Associates, its leading attorneys and a paralegal he accused of being a “runner” for the firm in March 2024. He sought to represent a class of plaintiff lawyers across Georgia that he says were denied the opportunity to compete fairly for business.

Cambre & Associates rebuffed the allegations and sought to dismiss the suit, but Gwinnett County State Court Judge Carla Brown let it proceed. Her decision was then overturned on appeal.

“Mr. Lazenby aims to create a novel legal framework (through the judiciary) wherein personal injury lawyers may sue to cancel other personal injury lawyers and drive them completely out of the legal marketplace,” the law firm said in court filings.

Cambre & Associates’ lawyers declined to comment on the case.

In its ruling, the Court of Appeals said Lazenby’s claims — including that he and lawyers like him have been injured by the defendants’ violations of Georgia’s racketeering and privacy laws — are “too attenuated and speculative” to survive.

“Lazenby’s inchoate expectation of being employed by accident victims who were contacted by the defendants in the manner alleged is insufficient as a matter of law to state a cause of action,” the court said.

The case could be revived by the state Supreme Court if it decides to step in.

Its decision will influence the result of a second lawsuit Lazenby filed, against Guardian Law Group, which is pending before the same Gwinnett judge.

In that case, Lazenby accuses the Sandy Springs firm and its leaders of paying their “chief runner” a $4.8 million salary as part of their aggressive soliciting strategy.

Craig Kunkes, a lawyer representing Guardian Law Group, said it denies the claims. He said Lazenby has never had any interaction with the firm’s leaders and knows nothing of their business practices.

The firm pays for marketing and advertising but does not use runners or solicit clients in any unlawful way, Kunkes told the AJC. He said the firm supports efforts to address improper client solicitation and has confidence in existing oversight by the state bar and law enforcement.

Letting lawyers sue rivals because they think clients are being solicited is not the solution, Kunkes said.