Stephen Colbert’s ThreatDown recently included a law firm’s ad that included, yes, bears. In the ad, a bear is holding a small child, as if to suggest that the firm has struck the right balance between, I suppose, bloodthirst and coddling. The fair and balanced ad critique from a WSJ law blog reader:
“As long as Bingham is allowed to advertise with a bear holding a baby, personal-injury lawyers should be able to do whatever they want.”
Clever as the ad is, it really is no different than the woman who morphs into a tiger for an ad I’ve seen in Louisville. It’s not much different from the ads featuring another local plaintiff’s attorney lifting a car. That ad, I believe, is syndicated among dozens of lawyers across the country.
I wonder, though, if Bingham thought to include the standard disclaimer at the bottom of its ad, “Not an actual client. Also, bear is not a member of the bar.”
(crossposted at catallaxy.net)
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My favorite line was Colbert’s: “I hate to imagine what happened after the flash went off and startled it”.
I’m only surprised that they didn’t make the usual disclaimer to satisfy the animal rights people: No bears were hurt in the making of this commercial. Of course in this case they would have had to add: However a few babies were unavoidably mauled.
^^^^ Not related!
Weren’t there a few cases mentioned on this site about 18 months ago where lawyers were getting ethics violations for portraying themselves using bulldogs? yet somehow, appearing as a baby-toting bear is a-ok with the bar? I am so glad I dropped out of law school, I was never going to understand the legal mind.
“The #1 Threat to Respectability for Lawyers: Lawyers”
Here in West Virginia, we have a commercial where a talking cartoon dog tries to convince accident victims to call a certain plaintiff’s firm because they’ve got “heavy hitters”
I’ll take your bear commercial anyday, at least it makes sense.