Lowering the Bar

The Law Accordion to Hanson Bridgett

Would your managing partner wear lederhosen for a marketing video?  If not, maybe you work at the wrong firm.

To celebrate a name change and its 50th birthday, the firm now known as HansonBridgett has put together the video below, which shows a group of lawyers at the firm marching down Market Street here in San Francisco as part of a band.  Managing partner Andrew Giacomini, who also plays bass drum in the video, said the firm "called on the creative skills of people who work here" to put the project together.  Here's what they created:

What does it mean?  I don't know (but I like it).  No one knows.  "That's the beauty of it," said partner Garner Weng in a press release on the firm's website.  "If you're wondering," Weng said, "there is a specific message we were trying to deliver -- but it's a secret."  I'd guess that at least part of the message is, "it doesn't suck to work here," and that is something that should not be underestimated.

Management of Skadden Arps, I think the ball is in your court.  What are you willing to wear?

Link: HansonBridgett LLP
Link: The firm's press release about the video

"Heavy Hitter" On the Ropes

The Nevada Bar Association said earlier this month that it had received a complaint against personal-injury lawyer Glen Lerner, and that it was investigating.  Lerner is extremely well-known in Nevada, largely because of his ridiculous TV commercials, which have shown him (among other things) spinning like the Tasmanian Devil and dropping a giant phone on litigation opponents.

He was featured here some time ago after the state bar told him to stop calling himself "The Heavy Hitter," saying it implied a guarantee of success, and he threatened to sue.

The bar seems to have backed off on that one -- the Nevada Supreme Court changed the state rules last year, saying that the First Amendment precluded rules against "bad taste" -- but Lerner may have a bigger problem with this complaint, which involves his failure to show up for a client's trial date.  Lerner was scheduled to represent his pool cleaner, Mario Lino, in a trial that was supposed to start on January 22.  Lerner did not show up, saying he was out of state on "sabbatical."

Lino is charged with murder.

Lerner had told the prosecutor that he would not be returning for the trial, and said "if the judge wants to sanction me, she can sanction me."  (She does in fact want to sanction him.)  Lerner told a reporter he had tried to work out a deal with the prosecutor, or at least a continuance, but did not get either.  Solution: don't show up.  "The judge is probably fuming," he admitted.  "But what could I do?"  Well, "you get on a plane and you fly back," suggested the judge (in Lerner's absence), but could only re-assign the case to the public defender.  Lino (right), who faces life in prison for murder, plus a possible concurrent sentence for that haircut, said that no one from Lerner's office would return his phone calls.

Lerner told the reporter that he's been on "sabbatical" for several months, during which he has been writing a book and "re-examining" his life.  "I've been living the life of a rock star for so long," he said, that it was time to unwind and think about things a bit.  That's why he had not had time to prepare for the murder case.  He claimed that by not appearing for the trial, he was acting in his client's best interests.  That is probably a true statement, but not the way he meant it.

This Nevada law blog (which has a separate category devoted to Lerner), has a clip of his most recent ad, which depicted a young Glen Lerner representing the victim of a bully in a schoolyard dispute.  In the "dramatization," the young Lerner forced the bully to hand over his shirt and bike as compensation for a bloody nose.  In real life, of course, the adult Lerner did not show up for his client's murder trial.

Link: Las Vegas Review-Journal (Feb. 6 story on the bar complaint)
Link: LVRJ (Feb. 11 story on the Super Bowl ad)

Attorney Billboard Stating: "Life's Short. Get a Divorce" Lasts Just One Week

An all-female law firm in Chicago that specializes in domestic law drew fire (and new business) over the past week for putting up a billboard downtown that features the slogan, "Life's Short.  Get a Divorce." 

The billboard also has a couple of racy pictures, apparently suggesting that the people in the pictures are out there waiting for you if you would just get that divorce and live a little.

Corri Fetman of Fetman, Garland & Associates told ABC that "Law firm advertising is boring . . . Everything's always the same.  It's lawyers in libraries with a suit on and the law books behind them.  They don't say anything. . . . So we wanted to try something different."  And there are no suits involved in this ad, that's for sure.

Other attorneys who work in the same field criticized the billboard, saying it trivialized divorce.  They were also quoted using terms such as "grotesque," "undignified," "offensive," "absolutely disgusting," "bizarre," "a disappointment," and "the Academy Award of bad taste."  So there are some ethical domestic-law attorneys out there -- well, either they're more ethical or pissed that they didn't think of it first.

And it was effective -- Fetman also said that calls to their firm have gone up dramatically since the billboard went up last week.  This week, however, the billboard was taken down, after a city alderman who lives nearby claimed that the firm did not have a permit for the billboard and ordered the building inspector to take it down.  Fetman and Garland claimed a due process violation (although First Amendment might be more like it).  "We own that art," she said.  "I feel violated."

A bar complaint has also been filed, but an expert was quoted as saying that the bar committee rarely takes action on attorney advertising because of the constitutional issues involved, unless a clear misrepresentation is involved.  Example: recently it disciplined an attorney who was advertising on a local Polish-language radio station with an ad that featured "jungle noises" and then a voiceover in Polish saying "I am the lion of the courtroom."  And he might have been lion-like, but it turned out he had never tried a case.

Link: ABC News
Link: CBS News

The 'Heavy Hitter' Will Sue Nevada Bar For Right to Keep Slogan

The State Bar of Nevada has dared to challenge Glen Lerner, a Vegas lawyer who advertises himself as "The Heavy Hitter" in his television ads.  Apparently, they told him to stop using the phrase, saying it was misleading to consumers because there may be heavier hitters out there.

"The bar told me by calling myself 'The Heavy Hitter' it was false and misleading because it was stating I'm the only heavy hitter," said Lerner.  "It's beyond ridiculous."

"Beyond ridiculous" is an ironic phrase for Lerner to be using, given the nature of his ads.  According to the report, some ads show Lerner "spinning like a human tornado [I prefer "Tasmanian devil"], generating cash for his clients," while others show him cutting checks for his clients as an announcer screams, "Gooooooooaaaaal!"  Yet another shows, for some reason, a giant phone falling on an unsuspecting litigant.  "They said it created anxiety," Lerner said.  "Does the average person really believe a giant phone is going to land on them?"  Probably not.   Although if I hired him I would not only expect, but demand, that he spin like a Tasmanian devil while generating cash for me.

Lerner says he will sue in federal court to protect his First Amendment rights to free speech.  I haven't analyzed this yet, but actually there are a fair number of cases on point and he probably has a pretty good argument.

Goooooooaaaal!

Lerner's website, which still uses the term "Heavy Hitter," has a short video ad (none of the above, unfortunately), along with details about Glen.  Among other things, it notes that he "got accepted" at Harvard, Dartmouth, Stanford and Duke law schools (although he actually went to Tulane), and that he has worked as a Teamster and a garbageman "to better understand many of the people he would someday represent."

CourtTV.com
GlenLerner.com