Abstract
In 1977 the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers could not be prevented from advertising their prices for routine services, thus outlawing a long standing restriction imposed by the legal profession on its own members. This decision prompted a ferocious controversy (even for lawyers) over the proprieties of advertising legal services, not to mention the effect that “marketplace ethics” might wield on the delivery pricing, and quality of services offered to the great lay public.
This article looks at how legal consumers are affected by the kind of high-volume, low-priced delivery of routine services that can only be offered profitably through aggressive marketing. Then it discusses how one firm used segmentation strategy and a consumer orientation to introduce the clinic concept on the East Coast. Finally, some implications of the immediate future of lawyer marketing for marketing professionals are analyzed.
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References
John R. Bates and Van O'Steen v. State Bar of Arizona, 53 L. Ed. 2d810 (1977).
Money, September 1978, p. 5.
Steven Y. Roberts, “A New Breed of Lawyers Born of Advertising,”New York Times, November 11, 1978, p. 26.
James Porter, “Deregulation of Professional Advertising: An Empirical Analysis of Marketplace Effects in the Legal Profession,” in Douglas K. Hawes and Robert D. Tamilia (Eds.)Developments in Marketing Science, Vol. I, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Academy of Marketing Science, Chicago, May 7–20, 1978, pp. 1–5.
Timothy J. Muris and Fred S. McChesney, “Advertising and the Price and Quality of Legal Services: The Case for Legal Clinics,”American Bar Foundation Research Journal, Winter 1979, Number 1.
Daniel B. Moscovitz, “The Great Ad Venture,”Juris Doctor, September 1977, pp. 15–25.
Christopher Gilson, Linda C. Cawley and William R. Schmidt III,How to Market Your Law Practice (Germantown, Md.: Aspen, 1979), pp. 11–12.
See, for example, “Paying Less for a Lawyer,”Consumer Reports, September 1979, pp. 522–525 and Joel Makower, “How to Buy a Lawyer,”The Washingtonian, November 1978.
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Gilson, C., Berkman, H.W. The client as consumer: Marketing the law, clinic-style. JAMS 7, 428–441 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02729690
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02729690