TO WIT: LAWYER OF THE AIRWAVES
Once upon a time there was a lawyer who was just like you or me. Well actually he was not particularly clever, so he wasn’t really too much like me. Maybe more like you.
And if the truth be known, he was not very smart. “The Statute of Limitations”, he told a client “stands in the harbor of New York City and only lets in so many immigrants.
Business was not good for him (so far, so good), and one day during a lull that had persisted since the Christmas before last, he said “I think things are slowing up.” He knew that he was talking to himself, but absent that, he had no occasion to speak at all.
In an effort to generate some business, he went through all of his closed files and began sending out birthday cards to some of his long-time clients. Most of them came back with a note of “thanks anyway” from the lawyer handling the estate.
Next he volunteered for the Speaker’s Bureau of his local bar, but he found himself speaking mostly to elementary school classes. He liked it, but as he told his wife, “I can’t afford to wait for those delightful children to grow up and get run over.”
One day during office hours, as he was watching reruns of “George of the Jungle”, (I said he was dumb, not worthless) he saw a commercial. IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE, it said, and, even though he was in his office, he began to think. “Unprofessional”, he thought. “Gauche”, he thought. “Lucrative”, he thought, and so he did.
At first he started slowly, a discrete three-color ad in the local newspaper. The only response was a bill for the ad.
Undaunted, he rented space on a billboard facing the emergency room of the local hospital, but aside from getting a few write-in votes for judge in the next municipal election, he got no response at all. “The response might have been better”, he said, still to himself, “if only so many prospective clients who passed by the billboard weren’t unconscious at the time.”
He decided to try radio. “You’ve got to jazz it up a bit if you want to sell the product”, said the account executive while eating his hot dog. “Let me think on it.”
The spot began with a full piece orchestra and a female choir. “Oh, I’m a lawyer and I’m okay, I sue all night and I sue all day, I love what’s right and I love what’s true, Give me money and I’ll sue for you.” Using his own voice for the voice over, he said “Trouble with taxes? Don’t pay ‘em. Got an injury? Milk it. Opposed to nuclear disarmament? Come see me. I’ll make it right, just…for…you.”
Soon he had a bunch of divorce cases, some workmen’s compensation cases and a class action injunctive proceeding against the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Flush with success, he jumped into television. He looked dead straight into the camera and said “Don’t like busing?”, holding up a gold-plated gavel in one hand and a little toy school bus in the other. “I can help.” Smash went the gavel, shattering the bus into fifty pre-arranged pieces, a bit of staging that was lost on everybody. “Don’t like your landlord? I can help.” Smash went the gavel, shattering a doll sporting a houndstooth suit, spats and a gold stickpin. “Don’t like your doctor?” Smash went the gavel, shattering an entire set of little itty bitty golf clubs.
The response was even more gratifying than his radio spot. He engaged an advertising firm to handle his growing account. First they proposed a one-minute spot showing four of his associates, each dressed in three-piece suits, running a mile relay, each runner symbolically representing some facet of the law, like anti-trust, merger and acquisition, the every day stuff. He liked the idea, but had to scrap it when he couldn’t find four associates who could do the mile in sixty seconds. “Lawyers just don’t run like they used to”, he said. He settled instead for the soft sell alternative that had him stare into the camera and say “And I’ve got pleadings left to do, And miles to go before I sue, And miles to go before I sue.” And the response was tremendous, save for a few colleagues who were frosted at his blatant commercialism and the success it brought him.
He became very rich and famous, and the ABA made him head of a section. He lived a long and healthy life, his kids got into good schools and never used drugs. He was widely respected by all, and, get this, he even gave money to his church.
MORAL: There isn’t any. I really wanted to fry this guy in hell, honest-to-God I did, and I know that you did too, but my hands are tied. Maybe next time, huh?
© 1984 – S. Sponte, Esq.