Fact: You’ve been involved in an accident and are now sitting at home recuperating. You turn on the TV to watch mind-numbing daytime television (apologies to all those who do this on a regular basis) and notice that there is a lawyer commercial after every single TV break. You finally realize that you need an attorney to help solve your legal problems that were caused by your accident. But each lawyer ad that you see says pretty much the same thing. How do you decide which law firm is right for you just by watching these 30 second lawyer commercials?

The bottom line is that you can’t and here’s why:

Most lawyer commercials are 30 seconds long. In those 30 seconds, they don’t have the ability to explain to you how they can help solve your legal problem. An attorney’s goal in creating a 30 second message is basically to catch your attention so that you might pick up the phone and call them immediately after watching the commercial. Practically every personal-injury commercial gives you the same information. Ask yourself whether these overly-used common phrases help you distinguish one lawyer from another when watching these television commercials:

‘Injured?’
‘Been in an accident?’
‘We can help’
“Over 60 years combined experience’
‘You may be entitled to a cash award’
‘We fight for you’
‘The insurance companies are afraid of us’
‘We know the judges’
‘Call me now’

If you watch any daytime TV, these phrases should be so ingrained in your head that they are all mind-numbingly useless. None of this information helps distinguish one lawyer from another. If every lawyer is shouting out the same message, how do you, as a consumer, use that information to make an educated decision about which lawyer is really the right one for you?

Unfortunately, in those 30 seconds lawyers do not have the ability to explain to you how they can help solve your legal problem. Those truncated commercials don’t give you free reports that explain what they can do for you and what they have done in the past. Those commercials do nothing more than shout at you and tell you to call them. Importantly, they never explain why you should pick up the phone to call them.

The next time you see a lawyer commercial, and ask yourself why you should call that attorney. Does that lawyer answer the question of why they are the right lawyer for you? 99.9% of the commercials don’t answer that key question. They may be the right lawyer for you. Then again, they might not.

Your goal as an injured victim searching for an attorney is to become as educated as possible to determine which lawyer is the right one for you. Only by becoming educated will you be able to make proper decisions about which lawyer to hire. I will tell you that I have been a practicing lawyer for over 21 years handling accidents and medical malpractice cases here in the state of New York. I study lawyer commercials and lawyer advertisements, and I find it difficult, if not impossible, to answer the question of why one particular law firm should be called simply based upon their 30 second television commercial. If you can find a compelling reason to call one law firm over another based solely on their television commercial, then I congratulate you.