Wondering what I was being charged with, I opened it.
Dear Doug:
Ohio is home to many outstanding colleges and universities. I am pleased to introduce you to one that is very unique: Lourdes College.
So they used lawyers as a scare tactic to get me to open the letter. And it has nothing to do with lawyers. They are using their name to send out college ads. What fools. Now not only am I gonna throw away the letter, I won’t even think of it. I’ll dissuade people from going!
What was it, 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name? Is this a common occurance?
Maybe it’s a new trend in university marketing. A few weeks ago I got a letter from a law firm I’d never heard of. That turned out to be a letter asking me to give money to a university I went to. I sent that letter to the bin.
I hate these sort of tactics. At work, I used to get lots of junk mail (and would open it). However, I always had to pull out the checks to process them first, out of courtesy to our accountant and because they had to be walked a few blocks away to a different building. Junk mail that looked like checks always made me mad. I’d usually sort it with the regular mail, but those always went squarely in the trash bin.
I guess I can see the lure of such a tactic, but this sort of nonsense always makes me very hostile – why would you want to make a potential client hostile towards you by misleading them?
I think Lourdes is a catholic college. You should email them & complain about the letterhead & say you were thinking about attending until you rec’d this lawyer envelope. And further, with all the news about priest pedophiles, you really don’t want to associate, etc. You can also complain to the state bar or equivalent about how lawyers are misleading people like you. I don’t know if it’s illegal to do that, but if it’s inappropriate, they would send the lawyer a letter. Then that lawyer would start shaking when he/she sees the return address!
Perhaps it is the college’s way of showing that they have successful alumni? I know some colleges send recruitment letters from cooperative alumni who have had good careers. One problem with reaching prospective students is that some of them make extremely unsophisticated judgments about colleges. They assume that a big football team with TV coverage means it’s a good school. You would not believe the ludicrous crap I heard students say to me about colleges when I worked in admissions. Perfect example: “Kenyon? I’ve never heard of it. Ew, and it’s in OHIO? Must be some sucky school.” Or substitute Oberlin. Or change the state and they say the same thing about Occidental, Macalester, Agnes Scott, Harvey Mudd… I could go on.
Some lesser-known schools fight an uphill battle being recognized for their quality. And some of them, like it or not, do it by sending mail from alums using the letterhead of the alum’s business.
Yeah, it’s a tactic befitting underhanded weasels, but keep in mind that if an attorney really wants to talk serious business with you by mail, it will be a registered letter.
My brother is a high school junior, and after taking his SATs has been deluged with the college junk mail. Amongst the interesting pieces he’s received, one was from Channel 17 in Wayne, PA (don’t even know where the hell that is). One of the news anchors there had apparently gone to a tiny school outside Philadelphia and HIGHLY recommended it to anyone (so highly recommended he showed me the letter and I forgot it 10 minutes later )
He also got one from Don Shula, which goes to show if you’re going to use advertising, make sure you use famous people!
Are you sure it was just a form letter? I’ve been an “alumni ambassador” for both my college and law school. It’s a volunteer job that involves contacting high school seniors that have expressed interest in the school and offering to talk to them about it and share my experiences.
When I sent out letters to the students (whose names and addresses where supplied by the school) I always sent the letter on my firm letterhead. It’s a little more impactful than a crayoned message on the back of a Mickey D’s bag, don’t you think? Usually the people I wrote to were interested and most at least gave me a phone call to discuss the school.
Before you slam the law firm for whoring itself out as an advertising agency, consider that the guy may have been an alum trying to contact you based on some interest you may have shown in the particular school.
Umm if you’re sending out one of those letters shouldn’t you identify yourself as an alum at some point? Ya know so the person who gets the letter has some bloody clue as to why some random lawyer sent him a letter about a college!?!?
When I helped do this I was told to include my graduation year and major… So the person who got the letter had some idea who I was, when I went there (if my understanding of the campus is recent) and what department I knew the most about.
Just sending a letter without at the very least identifying that you’re an alum would make for something very confusing…
No interest in the school prior to the letter. Haven’t even heard of them before. And another tipoff is it wass addressed to “Doug”. The important stuff I sign with “Douglas.” Every scrap of college junk mail save one has had the former name. I actually opened and read the one addressed to me with Douglas.
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