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The Best Law Firm Ad?

November 6, 2009

Blade was recently asked to opine on the most memorable law firm ad. His first thought was that by InujuryLawyers4U, but not because it is good. Quite the opposite, in fact. The ad is infuriatingly smug and grates even with the sound turned down. Now wonder it was voted most irritating ad of 2007.

Next up Brookman’s Ditch the B*tch! ad sidled into view. In 2001, posters appeared in men’s toilets of upmarket London restaurants featuring a packed suitcase underneath the slogan, but lest anybody think that sexism pure and unadulterated was afoot a visit to the female loos would reveal another set of posters, this time showing a woman lying facedown on a bed with the slogan “All men are b*st*rds!”. Memorable, certainly, but the slogans lingered far more than the name of the firm, which Blade only discovered thanks to a google search.

An ad which never appeared jostled for attention. Blade recalled that many years ago three thrusting young media lawyers contemplated setting up their own law firm. Their names were Marc Watson, Keir Ashton and Alex Wade. The latter is known to readers of this blog and various newspapers as a writer; Watson (once described as “the best-looking man in London”) is high up in the BT behemoth while Ashton is a senior counsel with Bloomberg. The name of their putative firm? ‘WAW’. The Watson-Ashton-Acronym was simple and would yield the slogan: “If you want Law, go to WAW.”

Perhaps this one sounds better than it looks, which is not the case with what might just be the best slice of law firm marketing ever. Ever mindful of the good work undertaken over at Legal Blog Watch, Blade salutes a recent post on the Florida firm of Finebloom & Haenel. Not only does the criminal law firm have an excellent domain name (www.fightyourcase.com) and a whizzy website featuring lawyers who walk on and chat about their work, it also has a car with a lighted vehicle wrap that has been installed on only 30 vehicles in America. Founder David Haenel drives the car to key locations at night and says that “people roll down their window in traffic and ask about the car or tell of a friend who might need their help.” This mobile if flashy advertising tool has led to the expansion of the firm and a fair bit of media attention.

The ad might not go down so well in the UK, but if you saw it, you’d remember it.