Legal Marketing
A Slew of Lawyer Ads Follow Hepatitis Outbreak
Posted Mar 5, 2008, 10:05 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Lawyers responded quickly after Las Vegas shut down an endoscopy center accused of reusing syringes and infecting at least six patients with hepatitis. They rushed to place ads seeking clients on the airwaves, in newspapers and on the Internet.
One lawyer is seeking clients on Craigslist, the Las Vegas Sun reports. Another lawyer who spurns TV commercials took out a full-page ad in a Sunday newspaper with the large-print headline: “Outrageous.” On TV, ads are “squeezed between Dairy Queen and Cheerios ads and sandwiched between the segments of local newscasts,” the newspaper says.
The Nevada Bar Association told the Sun that within minutes of breaking news about the clinic’s woes, several lawyers phoned to inform the bar they intended to advertise. And the ads are apparently having an impact.
Lawyer Ed Bernstein, a pioneer of lawyer advertising in Vegas, says his office is getting about 500 calls a day from concerned patients of the clinic, which may have put as many as 40,000 patients at risk of hepatitis or HIV infection.
The Las Vegas Sun column concludes the lawyers “are satisfying a colossal and possibly unprecedented need” since the clinic investigation could spur one of the largest class action suits in state history.