Last year, almost a year ago, I posted this commentary about the Allied Injury Group’s TV ad that embodied all of the horrors the legal profession used for a century to ban lawyer marketing and advertising (thus forgetting about the First Amendment thingy, you know, just like today’s progressives..). In the process, I managed to make an unethical mistake, mislabeling the slimy law firm involved and calling it the Allied Law Group, a non-slimy law firm that was none too pleased. I apologized profusely to the representative of that firm who called to ream me out and made the correction pronto.
The main thrust of the original post was that the ads seemed to present the silly character giving the pitch as a lawyer, and no matter how unlikely that seemed it was a bright line ethics violation as misleading advertising.
This morning I saw the firms’ new add, which dropped at the end of March. That notice, with chase lights running around “not a lawyer,” appeared a few second in.
Good. We ethicists have to take our meager victories, however rare, to maintain our sanity.
I’m amazed by this commercial. It’s “Amos and Andy” level stuff. Isn’t it insulting to black people?
No more so than “The Simpsons” is insulting to white people. Making fun of dumb and silly people whatever the ethnicity or color is a foundation of comedy. The Woke would have us forsake it all. Fat people, bimbos, nerd, fools, snobs, Valley girls, bikers, horny guys, gays, bald people, speech impediments like Daffy, Sylvester, Porky and Elmer,butch women, jocks, the French…all taboo for jokes.
Bite me.
But this is a commercial, not a stand-up comedy routine. As an advertiser, do you really want to insult your target demographic and their adjacent fellows? This is more a commonsense question than an ethical question. I’m just confused by this marketing strategy.
“I’m just confused by this marketing strategy.”
Every comically imbecilic marketing strategy starts out as some (presumed) Whiz Kid Guru/Wunderkind’s “edgy/inclusive/brilliant” brainchild; to wit:
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/06/30/tiktok-01-f985e041abc7e29993d239e395db5951db9897bf.png?s=1100&c=50&f=png
PWS
Du-Oh!
It apparently “works” as Harry Reid might say. Just like a lot of objectively terrible local used-car ads and furniture add “work.” In marketing, the goal is to get attention. Silly, strange and even obnoxious sometimes does the trick.
A typical “ambulance chaser” ad. One seems to see them in every major media market for personal injury firms. “Bankruptcy mills” could probably do similar ads. But what is Mr. “Not a Lawyer”‘s relationship to the Allied Injury Group? Does the new version of their ad (which unfortunately there wasn’t a link to in your post) make that clear? Is he a non-attorney employee of Allied Injury Group, or an actor hired just for the purposes of the ad?
But this one is such an outlier. This guy is a combination of Johnny Cochran and Steven A. Smith on steroids.
It’s a satire of a car wreck lawyer’s TV commercial. Why? I have no idea.
Did you check the link to the original post? The 2025 ad was there, and I wrote, “In case you couldn’t figure it out (I had to check myself), the spokesperson calling himself “Your Favorite Attorney” is an actor, indeed a stand-up comic named Shaun Jones… The fact that the spot is funny (at least to non-lawyers and non- ethicists) doesn’t make it more ethical. Sure, the character is an obvious nod to “Seinfeld’s” huckster lawyer “Jackie Chiles,” a character evoking O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” lawyer Johnny Cochran of “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” fame. It may not be obvious to everyone, however; indeed, any viewer inclined to engage a law firm that presents itself this way probably has a tough time remembering “first socks, then shoes.” …Who is this ad trying to appeal to? It’s it’s blacks, and I fear it is, what a degrading stereotype the firm has chosen to do it! On the old “Amos ‘and ‘N’ Andy” TV show, there was a slick black lawyer named Algonquin J. Calhoun, played by Johnny Lee.