One of the many lawyer ads off the Mobile, Alabama TV channels...
Sometimes I wonder about the character of a city based on
who you see on billboards and other ads there.
It
doesn’t hold true for all cities, but some I remember.
Take the Phoenix area for
example. There seemed to be billboards,
ads in magazines, big-assed ads in the Yellow Pages for Plastic Surgeons. Did that say something about the people of
Phoenix or the Plastic Surgeons who lived there?
Same
thing with the Pensacola, Florida/Mobile, Alabama metro area except Lawyers
were their thing there. Lawyer ads on
the billboards, lawyer ads on the TV, lawyer ads on the side of buses, lawyers
with their own cable TV shows, lawyers with their own radio talk shows. Again…did the abundance of these
professionals speak of the population or that a lot of lawyers like to live by
the beach?
The TV ads were lively: Lawyers standing on top of 18-wheelers… “Been
injured by one of these?” Another lawyer
calling himself “The Alabama Hammer,” saying he’s been taking on bullies since
he was a kid or showing him on a hunting foray blowing the head off a deer “to
bring you the big bucks.” Get it? Bucks?
Deer?
How do
you know a lawyer is all that and a bag of chips just based on an ad on TV or a
billboard or the side of a bus?
I thought
back over the years about trying to find a good lawyer.
The first time I ever needed a
lawyer it was one of those things where my mom and dad called up a friend of
theirs and he went to court with me and my buddy Catfish. It was one of those teenage things where the
two of us just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The case was dismissed and my folks got a
bill for 200 1973 dollars. I say 1973
dollars because I reckon that would be about $3200 in 21st century
bucks.
The next time I needed a lawyer I
opted to go with the guy who took care of legal business for the county where I
lived at the time…he seemed like a nice guy.
That’s where I made my mistake.
Nice guy lawyers don’t necessarily
win cases.
Another time a buddy of mine recommended
a lawyer in the county seat. I even
asked my buddy to come with me because I wanted to make sure I remembered
things. Lots of times when I get
stressed out details escape my notice.
I wanted to see an attorney because
an ex was hassling me a bit and I wanted to see if anything could be done to
legally make her stop.
For 50 of my hard-earned dollars
Mr. Attorney listened to my tale, sat there for a minute and basically said
there was nothing to be done.
“What you need to do,” said Mr.
Attorney as he leaned back in his chair, pulling his hands away from each other
so there was about 12 inches between each palm, “Is introduce your ex to a dude
with a THING about this big. That’ll
take her mind off you.”
Well, I reckon that was funny. All three of us laughed. But I still imagined 50 of my dollars easing
into his wallet.
There was this one time I had no
family, no friends to make a recommendation for a lawyer. I thought I came up with a pretty good way to
find one.
It was
when I was a stranger in a strange land; I had just landed in West
Virginia. I had taken a new job and
didn’t know a soul in town. Then lo and
behold I needed an attorney for a small civil matter.
I did
what any media person would do…maybe: I
decided to do an on-the-street survey.
I took
to the streets of the small town and stopped folks as I walked along: “Excuse me, could you tell me who you think
is the best attorney in town?”
I
must’ve asked about 20 folks. Some
people shied away from me, others answered me with a question like, “Why do you
want to know?” But I got about 12
recommendations and of those 7 or so were the same guy. I had my attorney. Nice guy too, all I needed was an official
looking lawyer-type letter sent off. He
didn’t charge me a thing.
Of
course nowadays I know nice guys aren’t what you want in some cases. You want the successful ones. How do you find the successful ones?
What
was that line I heard? “Hire the lawyer
who has the most toys.”
-30-
I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I've written lawyerly-sounding letters (never claiming to be a lawyer) for friends of mine who didn't feel like they needed a lawyer, but wanted to worry some dirtbag into doing the right thing. I wrote the letter; they signed their name. It usually works.
ReplyDeleteI even got on the phone for someone when they fell for one of those "we have a warrant out for your arrest, but you can wire us money to fix it" scams. I calmly told the guy that's not how things actually work, that I knew he wasn't with the IRS (and even if he was, "taxation" is still a scam), and that I knew his name wasn't "Richard"... he screamed "You are not a lawyer!" and hung up and never bothered the person again.
Ah, fun times...
Hey Kent....Bravo for your engaging IRS pretenders. Not everyone knows how the IRS actually contacts you....it it's by mail....you go to your mailbox, there's the letter and all your innards fall to your butt. Thanks for stopping by!
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