Wonga has raced into the lead in the RollOnFriday Legal Employer of the Year competition after branding its in-house lawyers "soulless".

Twitter user Brandy_Snap posted a spoof Wonga advert which showed one of the lender's geriatric puppets in a debtor's prison, captioned with the non-Wonga-approved slogan, "Your soul is ours". Wonga took a dim view of the joke and got its in-house lawyers to serve a take-down notice on the tweeter, accusing him of "unauthorised use of all or a substantial part of a copyright work" because "Earl's face has been doctored onto a painting". Specifically, a painting showing the felt pensioner shitting in a bucket because he borrowed money at a representative annual interest rate of 5,853%.

 
  Earl's Progress

Wonga's heavy-handed tactics backfired when Brandy_Snap posted the take-down notice on Twitter and it went viral. It was particularly bad news for Wonga paralegal James Johnson, who was bashed by everyone on the internet for being named on the notice as its author. Wonga, living up to the parody ad's characterisation, promptly threw him and his colleagues under the bus, tweeting, "What can we say? Our lawyers are a soulless bunch and take the protection of our brand very seriously".

RollOnFriday asked Wonga if its lawyers were happy to be described by their own employer as lacking the unique, incorporeal essence which makes us human. It didn't say, but admitted, "we were a little heavy-handed", and confirmed it would not be pursuing the notice.
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Comments

Anonymous 22 April 14 01:20

...who are heavy handed and hang their lawyers out to dry with their dirty laundry...