People seem to be receiving letters once again from Metropolitan Executive and Professional Registry inviting them, as leaders in their industries, to join the Registry. I have been contacted by a couple of librarians (strangers to me) who were researching this company to see if they were on the up-and-up. They had found my earlier inquiries archived from the CALL listserv and wondered what my findings were back then. See: CALL-L Archives -- August 2002 (#47).
These were my conclusions at the time:
- while this may be a legitimate company, the usefulness of their product is negligible for the purposes of a lawyer wishing to market him/herself;
- the initial cost to sign up may be free or nominal, but then there are additional costs for purchasing things like press releases;
- only those who are in the registry have access to the registry. They state that this is for "privacy" purposes, but what good is listing yourself in a private directory if the purpose of signing up is for advertising?
- from the examples of press releases and mentions I found around on the web, those signed up for the registry were not necessarily the people to whom the lawyer would most want to market him/herself. It therefore seems to function more like a virtual, disparate private club than a useful directory.
To flesh this out a bit, here are examples of how people have used their listings to market themselves:
http://www.douglasmccoy.com/coach.html (mentioned at least a couple times)
http://www.asoulmate.com/html/news.html (second to last item on page)
http://www.newyorklimousine.com/
http://www.multicompgroup.com/history.html
Finally, I should mention I was personally given the honour of an invitation to join the Registry myself a number of years ago. Back before I had done anything like sit on committees or be in any way considered a "leader" in my profession. That doesn't make you skeptical, does it?
Sept. 30. 2006 - at this time comments for this post are closed. I thank everyone for your comments. I encourage you to start your own blog or chat forum on this subject if additional discussion is desired. - Connie
