Personal injury attorneys in Los Angeles seeking to boost their client leads have increasingly turned to freeway billboards to get their message out to captive audiences sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, recent data shows.
The Judicial Hellholes 2023-2024 report from the American Tort Reform Federation (ATRF) found that in 2022, California trial attorneys spent $183.2 million on local-services television ads, digital advertisements, radio spots and outdoor messaging. Industry observers say the trend continues to be more pronounced in the wake of the Covid pandemic. Courthouse News Service reported that billboard spending in the city of Los Angeles shot up 42% between the years 2019 and 2021.
The ATRF attributes attorneys’ growing attraction to billboards and advertising in other mediums to liability-expanding court rulings in California and “nuclear” verdicts from juries -- which, in turn, form a drag on economic activities.
The messages from the billboard attorneys tend to be minimalist in nature: The Sweet James Accident Attorneys urge drivers to “Call the beard of justice”; the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani simply say “Call Jacob” or “Anyone can fight. We win”; another attorney’s placard says, “Something wrong, call Anh Phoong”; and the billboards of attorney Juan Dominguez simply display his picture, the Spanish word for accidents, “Accidentes,” and a phone number.
Industry observers say the billboards produce results in an age when more and more television viewers are turning to streaming services and social media. And unlike pop-ups on a computer screen, a giant image of Larry H. Parker can’t be blocked on the 405 Freeway.
Steve Nicklin, senior vice president of marketing and analytics for the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OHAAA), said billboard advertisers are investing in media strategies that produce the results they desire.
“The growth in legal services out-of-home (OOH) ad spending is a testimony to the value the medium offers,” Nicklin told the Southern California Record in an email. “Among the top 100 advertisers in OOH media in 2023, five were law firms.”
Marketers using billboards and other OOH media have the ability to put a compelling message before the right audience at the right time, he said.
“OOH advertising offers big, bold, powerful storytelling, and a range of formats and unique locations that deliver larger-than-life impact,” Nicklin said. “.... The medium also delivers larger-than-life engagement that can’t be skipped or blocked and is never viewed by bots.”
The OAAA also reports that about 67% of consumers tend to recall seeing the ubiquitous OOH legal advertising, with an even higher percentage in urban areas of the nation. And more than four in 10 of those who see a legal services OOH ad or billboard will respond in some way, according to the OAAA.
The types of legal services ad “engagement” include talking with a friend or family members about the law firm being promoted, searching for more information about the attorney or attorneys, visiting the firm’s website, looking up law firm reviews online, following the firm on social media or making an appointment to see someone at the law firm, the OAAA reports.
And Nicklin reports that nine in 10 American adults have noticed an OOH ad in the past month, based on Morning Consult data, and 75% of U.S. adults have used their smartphone in some way after seeing the ad.
Attorneys across the legal services spectrum, not just accident attorneys, use OOH ads, he said.
The law firm Jacoby & Meyers set the stage for the acceptance of legal advertising by taking the issue to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in 1977 that a prohibition on lawyers from giving media interviews violated attorneys’ First Amendment rights. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that lawyers should no longer be barred from advertising their businesses.