Lawyers sell a service, they don't advertise a physical store, so they want to attract as much of a variety of clients as possible. Billboards are an effective way to do this, according to Dave Westburg, co-founder of the outdoor advertising news website Billboard Insider. And not all cities wanted to limit their advertising in the 1960s, nor are they inclined to do so now, according to Joseph Schwieterman, a transport expert and professor at DePaul University.
For this reason, there are lawyers who say that “we will represent you where you live, but we will help you in a market where you may have been harmed,” explained attorney Howard Ankin.
And encouraging name recognition makes it more likely that clients will choose that lawyer when they start looking for him.And then they'll buy a banner (or a dozen, or a hundred) to advertise their services in Illinois and Indiana. According to Bager, as advertising on local press, radio and television stations has been decreasing the audience and the number of listeners, it is increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach people on a large scale. The legislation proposed this year in Pelican State builds on the important work done in previous legislative sessions to address the advertising of legal services. These so-called “billboard” attorneys spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year advertising their legal services for accident victims.
Three law firms represented nearly 70% of all television commercials for local legal services in the state: Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers, Morris Bart Personal Injury Attorneys and Gordon McKernan Injury Attorneys. Allen said he is proud of his ads, but even he has been surprised by the number of lawyers who have imitated him. So Curious City contacted lawyers and advertising experts to find out why so many lawyers want to advertise there. A higher rate of drunk drivers means a higher rate of car accidents, and a higher rate of car accidents means more publicity from personal injury attorneys to capture those claims.
These factors include everything from the effectiveness of advertisements to the types of clients these attorneys are trying to reach. So he wrote to Curious City to ask why so many lawyers seem to advertise their services on this stretch of the road. If one lawyer is doing something that seems to work, others will follow, said Attorney Ankin and other attorneys Curious City spoke to. The billboards included advertisements for attorneys specializing in medical malpractice and family law, but the vast majority were advertisements for attorneys specializing in personal injury.
