There we go.

Kevin M. Hagerman, advancing the discussion via venn diagrams since, oh, about three minutes ago.

Well known local lawyer.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62xreSr25uI&feature=relat ed

It doesn't identify a type. It identifies the qualities in a lawyer that make the term ambulance chaser applicable.  SEEKING CLIENTS AND ENCOURAGING THEM TO SUE instead of waiting for a client to contact them. That defines a subset of lawyers unless you think that there is a specific field of law that is based solely on seeking out clients and encouraging them to sue.

Emery:

What lawyer doesn't seek clients?  And if the lawyer feels there is a case worth persuing what lawyer doesn't encourage a potential client to sue?  The defintion makes no distinction Emery because the term does not make one.  If a patent has been infringed, the patent holder may want to sue.  Generally the patent holder already has an attorney so there is no call for the attorney to really advertise, though you better believe that patent lawyers make pitches for business and big firms advertise their patent business in business trades and the like.  Tort lawyers are no different, but their client base sure is.  Generally, tort lawyers represent people on the lower end of the economic scale who would not have a call to have an attorney on retainer.  The term is directed at ALL tort lawyers, and the term is intended to make them look bad.

AL's quote seems to be about ambulance chasers being used interchangably with lawyer and it has some rhetorical merit but no real merit. Geoff seems to think that there are reputable tort lawyers that are not ambulance chasers so trying to hang him with the supposed broad brush of the site he quoted seems to be somewhat less than useful. (Sort of like tying Obama to Jeremiah Wright's sermons and his communtiy organizng wth William Ayers  is said to be less than useful.)

Al quoted the site Scott linked which attacks all personal injury/tort lawyers.  Did you notice in any of the "jokes" referenced where a distinction was drawn as to certain kinds of personal injury lawyers or was it directed at all personal injury attorneys?  Are there reputable tort lawyers?  Yes.  Most of them. 

That's completely untrue.  "Ambulance chasing" is not allowed as it violates Rule 7.3 of the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct. "

Completely untrue? The restrictions cited are justified by the presumption that direct contact offers of legal services might lead to intentional or unintentional unethical misrepresentations. 

Even then, the pursuit of business in itself is not wrong. And these restrictions seem to give people with little understanding of the law a severe disadvantage. I can understand the ethical concerns of the rule, but the idea that a person (unless already represented) must always seek representation that they may not know they need or might benefit from,  rather than being offered it, seems contradictory to a lot of other principles in law.

Why should it be that the victim of negligence (for instance)  is required to have a level of understanding of the law sufficient to fully understand that they are entitled to some sort of satisfaction, as well as the qualifications to know what kind of lawyer they need and where to find them in order to invoke their rights?

The rule seems to prohibit a lawyer from informing a person of their legal rights unless already contracted to do so. This analogy may be a bit of a stretch, but it's sort of like telling a doctor that he can't help somebody who is critically injured until they specifically ask him to.

When people talk about ambulance chasers they are generally referring to personal injury, or tort lawyers, without drawing any distinction as evidenced by the definition Scott provided. 

Geoff, maybe you like these definitions better?  They point to the opposite conclusion from what you state.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ambulance%20Chaser