0:00:00.6: Hey, Aaron.
0:00:01.2: Hey, Josh.
0:00:02.0: What do pornography and lawyer TV commercials have in common?
0:00:08.0: I think I'm on the wrong podcast. I don't know.
0:00:11.8: Both have been the subject of First Amendment constitutional challenges which have been decided and evaluated by the United States Supreme Court.
0:00:24.4: I've heard of them.
0:00:26.8: Here is the other thing. Which is relevant because we're here to talk a little bit about maybe predatory advertising and marketing tactics by personal injury lawyers.
0:00:39.5: Yes. And we have talked about lawyer advertising before. I bring this to us this topic, I brought it to you earlier. Predator marketing is what I try to call it. And my thought was, I had this thing ringing in my ears and in my head from visiting with a neighbor. I was walking my dog. He's asking me what I did. I told him I love my job. Told him what we did. I kind of added, we're trying to create a counter brand to some of these billboard guys and TV guys that are putting out some bad messages. And he said, "Oh, you mean like..." and then he named a specific lawyer. And then he just took a second and his eyes narrowed and he's like, "That guy is a predator." And it occurred to me that no other business on earth would test out their marketing on a group of people and have them give feedback that says, "You seem like a predator," and then them go back and be like, "No, we like it, though. We'll just keep it."
0:01:45.1: It's working.
0:01:45.5: It's working. And so then that brings me to the question of why. It must be working. I mean, we're seeing it everywhere. So why does it work when a lawyer stares off into the distance at his destiny while a narrator explains how he will descend upon opponents like an eagle and just tear their heart from their bodies and squash them?
0:02:18.7: Why do you think it works?
0:02:21.0: Well, so have you seen the movie My Bodyguard?
0:02:27.6: No, I have not, but I'll add it to the list.
0:02:29.7: All right. Add it to the list. It's a precursor to all the '80s high school movies. I never have seen it either. I went back and kind of watched the trailer. I remember seeing the trailer as a child.
0:02:41.5: It's like TL; DR. Just watch the trailer.
0:02:44.4: Yeah, just watch the trailer. You'll get it.
0:02:47.2: Basically, CliffsNotes.
0:02:50.0: Basically. And then I watched the trailer and then I went deeper into all these lists about this movie. And it's a pretty interesting movie. It's about a kid in Chicago.
0:03:00.2: Allegedly.
0:03:00.8: About a kid in Chicago.
0:03:01.6: According to the trailer, every movie's interesting. But go on.
0:03:04.2: He's a smart aleck. He's a bit of a character. He shows up on his first day in this school and when they ask a question of the bully character, he makes some quip, just sort of makes a little tiny joke slightly at the bully's expense.
0:03:24.2: Okay.
0:03:24.7: This turns into the bully following him around, having little conversations with him about how you don't know when it's gonna get you, but it's coming. This bully is played by Matt Dillon.
0:03:37.8: Harassment.
0:03:38.8: Harassing.
0:03:39.0: Matt Dillon begins to harass this boy.
0:03:40.3: The kid solves the problem initially by finding an even bigger kid who happens to be kind of reclusive and weird. Nobody really understands this big monster kid. But the main character goes and talks to him and is like, "Look, I'll pay you. Be my bodyguard." This takes off into the whole narrative. And then the bully eventually gets a counter bodyguard, by the way. This is insane.
0:04:06.3: All right, and even bigger kid.
0:04:08.1: There's a motorcycle involved.
0:04:09.8: All right.
0:04:10.3: What you need to know is that, speaking of test audiences...
0:04:13.5: Well, I think I already know what I need to know. I think what I know is that the trailer spoiled the movie for you. Like, what was even the purpose of watching the movie at this point then?
0:04:23.0: I don't even know if you should watch the trailer now that I've explained it.
0:04:26.8: It's like done.
0:04:27.7: Honestly, you're good.
0:04:28.2: This is a great movie.
0:04:29.3: Yeah, I think so, too. It was one of... It wasn't his first, but it was like Matt Dillon's second movie.
0:04:37.8: All right.
0:04:37.9: He is a tiny child, even though he's supposed to be the big bully.
0:04:40.1: Okay. All right.
0:04:42.3: Which means Matt Dillon's the bully.
0:04:43.5: Okay. All right. Okay.
0:04:44.6: Matt Dillon showed up on set in character. Members of the crew, throughout shooting, members of the crew continually complained to the producer about his conduct.
0:04:56.3: Wow.
0:04:56.4: Because he refused to get out of bully character.
0:04:58.1: All right.
0:04:59.7: He was going around just being rude and mean to everybody.
0:05:03.1: Okay. An early Daniel Day-Lewis.
0:05:04.5: Yes.
0:05:06.0: Okay.
0:05:07.5: Which is all to say, he's Matt Dillon.
0:05:09.1: All right.
0:05:10.8: If you know the rest of his career, he turned into this great Hollywood actor.
0:05:12.7: He's fantastic. Yeah.
0:05:14.6: Yeah. He's Matt Dillon. And when they showed this movie to test audiences, there was a problem.
0:05:22.1: Okay.
0:05:23.0: Everybody loved Matt Dillon.
0:05:24.8: All right.
0:05:26.7: So when you're trying to make a movie about an underdog defeating a bully, it's not great when the audience loves the bully.
0:05:37.3: You know, it's usually not a good sign.
0:05:39.9: Especially the teenage demographic that they were shooting for.
0:05:43.0: Unless you change the name of the movie to The Bully.
0:05:47.0: Yeah.
0:05:48.0: Make him the protagonist.
0:05:49.0: Yeah, if you change it to The Bully Prevails.
0:05:51.4: Right. Okay.
0:05:52.4: Then you're good, but otherwise it's a problem. So they went back and tinkered with the movie. They took out a bunch of scenes that they felt were making Matt Dillon more compelling, or making him compelling. That made him even more appealing to the teenage demographic. So the worse he got, the more the teenage demographic who were testing this movie liked him.
0:06:15.9: What does this say about society?
0:06:18.3: It says there's somebody who wants an eagle to come down from the sky and rip the heart out of a mouse in front of them.
0:06:27.2: Yeah, right.
0:06:27.9: And that's just life.
0:06:29.4: Yeah.
0:06:29.8: Maybe. I don't know what it says about personal injury advertising, but there's something going on, and as amateur psychologists, we're here to get to the bottom of it.
0:06:40.5: Well, I think maybe the lesson to be learned there is, people want to be represented by somebody in some instances who they believe is going to be very, very aggressive and bully their way into getting the outcome that they want. And that is the purpose of the way these commercials are oftentimes portrayed. I mean, you look at a lot of the taglines and it's like, "This is what we're going to do to them. This is what we're going to do to them."
0:07:21.1: And there's nothing wrong, per se, with that message. And really, frankly, in our experience, I would actually argue that there's nothing wrong with having an advocate who's super, super aggressive. Oftentimes that's actually what is needed in order to accomplish what we need to accomplish for our clients. So it's not the concept of wanting someone on your side that has that sort of personality to go and do that thing to bash the skulls for you. I think the problem is that oftentimes it's being represented to you that that's what you're gonna get.
0:08:10.3: You choose to go down that path because you think that's maybe the type of advocacy that's coming your way. And maybe you subsequently or later learn that that's not exactly how the business is structured. And that person who you think you're hiring off the TV screen isn't the person who's coming down to represent you. And you end up just kind of being a cog in a wheel of a big machine, where you actually end up being sacrificed.
0:08:45.7: It's almost as if the personality that's being portrayed in the commercials, which is a do-what-it-takes, don't-care-about-collateral-damage personality, is kind of a problem when it comes to making the right choices for their clients in terms of staffing and all the things that make, for example, our clients walk away super happy, in part because we're a little less cutthroat than we could be with our clients, right? Like, if we wanted to, we could squeeze every single dime and advantage out of our own clients if we were ruthless, right? So that same ruthlessness that's being sold to people sometimes turns out to be just their personality.
0:09:35.3: Yeah.
0:09:35.9: And then when they're...
0:09:36.8: And the values.
0:09:37.6: And when you're doing business with them, they're ruthless with you.
0:09:40.4: Correct.
0:09:40.5: Which can be a problem. And then...
0:09:41.6: Yeah, they're not your bodyguard. They are still the bully.
0:09:47.2: Right. And then someone has to go get a bigger bully and everyone's just got contracts out everywhere. But what I was thinking was, this is a maybe what's wrong with that. But in terms of why it happens, why do people gravitate towards that? I do think there is a connection that people make in their minds between ruthlessness and effectiveness.
0:10:10.5: Yeah.
0:10:10.7: And that's, it's understandable. If you look at... This is a strange reference to make, I guess, but if you look at the sort of Christian faith, for example, they've got the Jesus who is going to be peaceful in every way. And then you've got this kind of the dad character behind him, the sort of fire and brimstone God that's talked about in the First Testament, or the New Testament... Sorry, Old Testament. And between the two, people are comfortable. If only one of those was put forward, who knows, maybe people wouldn't be comfortable with it. They would say, "Well, I want someone who is peaceful, is caring, is compassionate, but I also want someone who's ruthless and aggressive and demanding." It's almost as if we need both.
0:11:11.3: Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because at the end of the day, at our organization, at FVF Law, we're always hyper, hyper focused on our values. And we have found that you can have outstanding values related to how you treat not just your clients, but everybody that's on the team, like a family. You can have values of honesty and transparency and education and advocacy without sacrificing that last part. Advocacy can be one of the core values. You can have people and a team of people who are outstanding at their trade, at the practice of law, that are also kind and decent and wonderful people. You don't have to sacrifice one in order to get the other.
0:12:13.0: And I think something that we've talked about and come back to time and time again, not just in this podcast, but in the development of this organization from the beginning, is, how do you give people what they deserve? How do you give them radical transparency and radical honesty and radically effective advocacy while still running a business? And the answer is, you adhere to your values, you establish those values, you do the thing that you say you're gonna do, you do it extraordinarily well, and then you let your reputation support the business.
0:12:54.4: So have a lot of cattle and some hat? Is that what you're saying? I'm just translating for Texans out there.
0:13:04.9: Have the appropriate amount of cattle for the appropriate amount of hat. Some good cat-hattle... Hat-cattle balance is kind of the way to go.
0:13:16.9: Got it. Yeah.
0:13:17.9: But when we opened this podcast, when we started talking about it, it is interesting for people to understand, I think, the history of, well, how did it come to be? How did it come to be that we have this inundation of TV lawyer advertisers, every single commercial for every single show that we watch? Why? And it is an interesting history, and really, it did ultimately come down to the United States Supreme Court dealing with it. For a very, very, very long time, starting in the early 1900s, lawyers couldn't advertise.
0:13:55.6: The American Bar Association prohibited completely lawyers from advertising at all, with the idea that it should be a lawyer's reputation and standing in the community that should be the primary driver of their business. So you didn't have TV ads or you didn't have, at that time, newspaper ads or anything like that advertising lawyer services. And it actually wasn't until the late 1970s when a small shop out of Arizona put an ad in a newspaper and it got shut down by the Arizona State Bar, and they challenged it.
0:14:36.0: It went up to the United States Supreme Court under a First Amendment freedom of speech challenge. And the United States Supreme Court decided that as long as the advertisement is truthful, then it's constitutionally protected. But then again, that now kind of raises the question about what is truthful. What are you saying versus what are you demonstrating? What's the innuendo of the advertisement? And I think that's kind of where it's become a little bit of a slippery slope about, "Well, we're not doing anything dishonest." It's like, yeah, but...
0:15:16.6: Well, we do have a lawyer in Houston who I don't... Not only will I not name him, but I don't know if I can name him on a family podcast because he has a last name that is a body part. And he is very fond of some really kind of, edgy is not even the word.
0:15:37.9: Crude.
0:15:38.3: Just super crude billboards and radio ads. And when I looked into it, because I was curious if the bar allows that kind of thing, and essentially they would rather not, except the First Amendment does protect it, as you said, if he's not saying anything that is demonstrably false or that claims to have a status that they can't demonstrate. So, for example, if you said, "I'm the best trial lawyer in Texas," The bar would not let you... They just wouldn't let you say that because that's impossible to prove, sort of, because it kind of depends on what you consider the best.
0:16:21.9: Right.
0:16:22.8: So, I'm glad you brought the court back into this because it was going a little sideways.
0:16:31.1: Well, I think we always just encourage people who you choose to represent you is a big decision. Because the problem is if it goes sideways after you've signed the agreement and then you decide that you don't like that lawyer or they're not providing you the services that you believed they were gonna provide you, if you feel misled or if you feel lost, that you've become just a number in the organization, detaching from that law firm is hard. It's hard. The way that the rules are in Texas and trying to fire one lawyer and hire another lawyer isn't as easy as you might think it would be. You technically may have the right to do it. You probably do have the right to do it in some instances, but it's not easy. There are hurdles...
0:17:23.7: It's not easy. It doesn't look good.
0:17:24.9: It doesn't look good. And it's really, really important before you make that decision that you be really thoughtful about who you're choosing and maybe peel back a little bit behind the facade. Go and learn a little bit more about them. Learn about their community involvement. Learn about what they're doing to give back. Learn about what other clients are saying about them, their experiences, their outcomes, and their results, rather than just making an assumption based on what you're seeing on the television.
0:17:57.4: Yeah, and try to get to know them a little because there's a lot of these questionnaires that you can get online or through AI that will tell you, before you hire a lawyer, be sure to ask them about this and be sure to ask them about this and what is their plan for this. And lawyers will sit and give you answers to all those questions. It doesn't mean you're going to know, at the end of all those questions, how many kids they have, whether they volunteer at the Little League, or whether they have a hobby that they care about that shows that they're a dynamic and balanced person that a jury would actually like in trial. So, it's important to just get to know them.
0:18:31.6: Yeah.
0:18:32.7: Anyway, I hope that helps people with the subjects of pornography, free speech, bodyguards, and...
0:18:43.4: Matt Dillon.
0:18:44.2: And psychology, and Matt Dillon above and...
0:18:46.8: Of course. Of course.
0:18:47.3: Above all, for sure.
0:18:47.8: For sure. Yeah.
