A lot—probably most—of the personal injury lawyer billboards and TV ads you see—ALL. THE. TIME.—are from lawyers who don’t live here.
The state bar makes us say where our “principal office” is on all advertisements.
Some lawyers—if they do it at all—try to get around this by muttering their city name at the end of their TV ads or writing it in fine print at the bottom of their billboards.
Others claim to have an Austin office or a 512 phone number, but when you drill down to the bottom of their gobbely-gook website, it says “by appointment only” (that’s lawyer-speak for “I don’t have an office and will come to your house or meet you at Starbucks”).
We think that’s dumb.
My father-in-law—an old-school, small-town, Texas trial lawyer—has a shirt someone gave him that says “A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge.”
It’s true.
Any lawyer knows—or should know—the law.
That’s what law school and the bar exam is about.
But a GREAT lawyer knows the judge. And the court clerk. And the baliff. And the staff attorney, and the sheriff’s deputies manning the metal detectors at the door.
Because that’s how you win cases—it’s personal.
It requires someone who lives here.
There are a lot of great Austin lawyers. We’re proud to work with them. You should hire them (we’d love it if you hired us too).
But out-of-town lawyers who are paying lots of money just to advertise here should stay home.