Why personal-injury lawyer billboards are so prevalent round Philly
You may not have heard the title James Helm, however should you dwell within the Philadelphia-area you’ve seen his face, normally on billboards or SEPTA buses.
A grinning Helm is normally seen holding a toy prop resembling an inflatable cellphone or sack of money, over a yellow background, the phrases “CALL TOP DOG” wrapped round him.
Helm is a fixture, if not a logo, of the rising phenomenon of billboard promoting for personal-injury attorneys throughout the Philly area.
Noticing a development, one reader requested Curious Philly, The Inquirer’s discussion board for questions in regards to the metropolis and area: Why are there so many billboards and commercials for private damage attorneys? How is there sufficient enterprise for thus many alternative corporations?
To reply these questions, we have to have a look at a bit of information and dive into some historical past.
How frequent are lawyer billboards?
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. There are quite a lot of private injury-attorney billboards, and there may be motive to imagine the quantity is rising.
In 2023, WHYY’s BillyPenn categorized the billboards on the stretch of I-95 between Philadelphia Worldwide Airport and the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. They discovered that 20% had been promoting attorneys.
This 12 months, Philadelphia Journal performed the same overview, counting 63 lawyer advertisements between the airport and Cottman Avenue, which the journal dubbed “Philadelphia’s personal Private Damage Alley.”
In fiscal 12 months 2021, SEPTA generated simply lower than $400,000 in promoting from regulation corporations. The company projected that quantity to be $1.6 million in its 2025 funds — a 400% improve.
Philadelphia isn’t alone.
The American Tort Reform Affiliation, a bunch that advocates for limits on civil verdicts and earlier this 12 months declared Philadelphia the highest “judicial hellhole” within the nation, discovered that regulation corporations spent in 2024 an estimated $2.5 billion on advertisements, in all mediums, nationwide.
The Philadelphia media market made the top-10 lists of spending on authorized promoting in digital and radio, in line with the affiliation’s evaluation.
And among the many high spenders are some acquainted names. On the high of the American Tort Reform Affiliation’s checklist is Morgan & Morgan, of Jawn Morgan infamy, which spent $218 million in 2024. TopDog is eighth on the checklist for that 12 months with $27 million.
How did we get right here?
The reply to this query requires some historical past.
The regulation occupation has strict moral guidelines across the solicitation of purchasers, and till the Nineteen Seventies lawyer promoting was banned.
Opponents of promoting argued it could hurt professionalism, that advertisements are inherently deceptive, and that it may have a damaging impact on the administration of justice.
However in 1977 the Supreme Courtroom lifted a ban on lawyer promoting, ruling that it violated attorneys’ First Modification proper free of charge speech.
Many attorneys had been reluctant to splash their faces on billboards for the subsequent couple a long time, till John Morgan modified the sport. That’s how he tells it at the least.
It began with the Orlando Yellow Pages. Morgan offered the now-archaic cellphone e book to generate profits after faculty. Within the Nineteen Eighties, after graduating from regulation college, he referred to as his previous employer and requested to take an advert on the again of the Yellow Pages.
“If somebody picks up the e book a sure manner, there’s a 50/50 likelihood that they are going to see my advert and by no means open the e book,” Morgan mentioned.
On the time, he says, his advert was the one one for the lawyer within the Orlando Yellow Pages. His cellphone didn’t cease ringing.
In 1989, Morgan began promoting “in earnest,” he says, bombarding one market after one other with advertisements — together with Philadelphia. His regulation agency now has greater than 1,200 attorneys with places of work nationwide, and he turned a billionaire.
Morgan seen that after he started shopping for billboards and different advertisements in a area, different attorneys adopted.
Morgan & Morgan turned an attractive instance for different attorneys hoping to develop their corporations, mentioned Kyle Hebenstreit, the CEO of Follow Made Good, a West Palm Seashore promoting agency that caters to legal professionals.
“Morgan & Morgan is considerably of a playbook,” Hebenstreit mentioned. “You possibly can construct a nationwide follow should you’re simply actually aggressive about it.”
(Morgan is a founding father of Follow Made Good however offered the enterprise in 2022 as he entered markets through which he competed with promoting purchasers, Hebenstreit mentioned.)
Why billboards and buses?
The problem with promoting for private damage attorneys is that there isn’t a set demographic that’s extra prone to have a declare, Hebenstreit mentioned. Anybody might be injured in a automobile accident, for instance.
Billboards are a comparatively cost-effective approach to get a agency’s title in folks’s minds.
And as soon as some attorneys have their title and face on a billboard, Hebenstreit mentioned, others may simply be copying that method.
However not each agency is leaping the bandwagon.
You received’t see Kline & Specter billboards on I-95. Shanin Specter, the agency’s co-founder, mentioned that the message they wish to convey is extra nuanced and a tv spot, for instance, is a greater match.
“We wish to say what there may be about us that makes us totally different,” Specter mentioned. ”That isn’t prone to a fast billboard message.”
Are there sufficient circumstances for all of the promoting legal professionals?
Regardless of issues that lawyer promoting would result in an increase in lawsuits, the variety of circumstances filed within the Philadelphia Courtroom of Widespread Pleas within the 4 largest personal-injury classes has declined in recent times.
The most important decline has been in motor-vehicle accident circumstances, which dropped from 10,218 lawsuits in 2017 to eight,300 in 2024, in line with courtroom knowledge. And slip-and-fall lawsuits declined from 4,049 to 2,938 in the identical interval.
Medical malpractice circumstances, alternatively, noticed a 50% improve, which is attributed to a rule change that allowed extra lawsuits to be filed in Philadelphia.
Simply because billboards are in all places doesn’t imply that they’re efficient. Promoting is way from a precise science, Morgan mentioned.
“Half of my promoting is working,” the lawyer mentioned. “I simply don’t know what half.”
Plus, not each agency on a billboard really litigates. TopDog, as an illustration, directs customers to a “native counsel,” whereas Helm is the “promoting lawyer,” in line with the positive print on the billboards.
The person behind TopDog is predicated in Arizona, although he’s licensed to follow regulation in Pennsylvania. He declined to be interviewed for this story. The agency’s web site says it “maintains at the least joint accountability for many consumer recordsdata.”
Specter views promoting as a part of growing entry to justice. Many individuals don’t have an lawyer’s quantity of their Rolodex, and promoting will help those that had been harmed discover an lawyer, he mentioned.
“The billboards could also be an imperfect manner of offering a gateway to Philadelphians into the authorized world, however they’re higher than nothing,” Specter mentioned.
Curt Schroder, the chief director of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, sees the billboards as making a more-litigious society. Many advertisements reference huge payouts, and a few even function greenback payments. Attorneys “dangle the opportunity of riches in entrance of individuals,” he mentioned, luring individuals who wouldn’t in any other case name a lawyer.
“Nowhere is it written within the regulation or in any other case that each damage or each fallacious has to end in a lawsuit,” Schroder mentioned.