The day after the Washington, D.C., Metro crash killed nine people and injured another 76, Andrew Alpert decided to try an experiment. The partner at Upper Marlboro, Md.’s Meng & Alpert bought the rights to www.metroaccident.com and set up the domain name to redirect users to his firm’s Web site.

“I wanted to see whether I would get a reaction,” Alpert said. He did, although perhaps not the one for which he was hoping. “The reaction I’m getting is from other lawyers mostly,” he said.