In a ruling dated December 12, 2017, the Regional Court of Bielefeld ruled that the advertising of the legal tech provider „abfindungsheld.de“ was anti-competitive. Employees who have just lost their job due to a dismissal are led to believe by means of an online severance payment calculator that they can expect a severance payment of X amount. By opening access to legal protection via a calculation program, a certain guarantee of correctness is suggested, although no individual check has actually been carried out.

Abfindungsheld.de takes care of the severance payment free of charge and retains 25% of it

The business model of abfindungsheld.de is as simple as the business model of Spamkrokodil. You assign your own claim for payment and a legal tech provider takes care of enforcing the claim free of charge. In return, the provider retains around 25% of the enforced amount.

In the case of abfindungsheld.de, dismissed employees can turn to the provider in the event of an invalid dismissal and thus enforce any existing severance payment claim without having to bear the cost risk. The company abfindungsheld.de began advertising itself in mid-2017. The Association for the Promotion of Independent Professional Interests, namely that of the legal profession, filed a complaint against this advertising. In its opinion, the company advertised the examination and calculation of alleged or actual severance pay claims, the preparation of dismissal protection claims and the enforcement of alleged or actual severance pay claims without being authorized to do so. In addition, the advertising contained disparagement of legal activities and misleading statements at various points.

LG Bielefeld: Advertising by Abfindungsheld.de is misleading

In its decision, the Regional Court of Bielefeld followed the association’s reasoning and granted the application for an injunction. The advertising of the legal tech provider abfindungsheld.de was indeed misleading.

The benchmark for the misleading facts is the average informed and reasonable consumer who pays the appropriate attention to the advertising.

Advertising by abfindungsheld.de is misunderstood by the customer

In this case, the advertising was likely to mislead consumers. It created an anti-competitive incitement effect that induced employees to conveniently calculate their claims once using an online settlement calculator. The anonymity and the opening of access to legal protection via a calculation program suggest a certain accuracy of the result. However, the actually required individual examination of the termination has not yet been carried out.

This misconception on the part of the dismissed employee was reinforced by the fact that the company’s advertising made it clear that an action for protection against dismissal would be drawn up automatically, whereas in reality the legal proceedings would be conducted by the company’s partner lawyers. The Bielefeld judges considered this to be unclear and misleading advertising for the provision of legal services on the internet.

Further advertising measures by abfindungsheld.de also prohibited

In addition, the legal tech company must also refrain from stating that a lawyer is „expensive and time-consuming and associated with a high cost risk, high expenditure of time and stress„.