What law bloggers think of attorney's Super Bowl ad | A new blog from Above the Law
More than 4 million people have watched Savannah, Ga., personal injury attorney Jamie Casino’s local Super Bowl Ad on YouTube. In the two-minute opus, the onetime criminal defense attorney tells how he no longer represents “villains” since his brother’s fatal shooting two years ago.
New York City Personal Injury Law Blog’s Eric Turkewitz has some issues with the ad. For one thing, he thinks using his brother’s death for commercial advantage is in poor taste.
But “the most important issue: he will diss his former criminal defense clients today, and claim to have been in their employ, what will he say about his current clients tomorrow?” Turkewitz writes. “How do you trust someone who will rip into his prior clients? This isn’t just a question of being fickle in his choice of practice areas — anyone ought to be able to move around for a multitude of reasons — but calling them ‘cold-hearted villains?’ … There isn’t really any excuse for trashing your clients, to whom you owe a fiduciary duty and duty to preserve secrets even after representation is done.”
At Lowering the Bar, San Francisco lawyer Kevin Underhill took a look at Georgia Model Rule 1.6, which requires a lawyer to keep confidential any information he gains during his representation. “Luckily for Casino, however, he doesn’t mention any particular client, so I doubt this could be considered a breach of confidentiality,” Underhill writes. “Personally, I would be more concerned about the reaction of the cold-hearted villains themselves than I would about an ethics charge, anyway.”
Underhill admits that he watched Casino being interviewed on HuffPost Live and thought he came across as “pretty sincere.”
That Casino seemed likable was a big takeaway for Law and More’s Jane Genova. The ad is a mashup of tactics that, put together, “create an impression of Casino as someone who can get thing done for you. Now, isn’t that what you want in a personal injury lawyer?” Genova wrote. “Casino is the kind of guy we certainly want to have a beer with. We want to know him better.”
Catch the Redline
We overlooked Above the Law: Redline last week when it was less that 10 posts strong. But Breaking Media CEO explained the concept—being headed up by Above the Law managing editor Elie Mystal—both at Redline and Above the Law last week.
“Above the Law has established itself as the go-to place for lawyers and law students who want an inside look at the practice of law and the lives of attorneys,” Lerner wrote. “With Redline, we’re going to draw on that knowledge to highlight the law behind today’s news for a broader audience. Whether it’s the latest celebrity scandal or the next outrageous campaign speech, there’s usually a law or lawyer somewhere influencing what is happening. Redline will cut out the jargon, so you won’t need a law degree to have an informed opinion and participate in the debate.”
So far, there have been stories covered at Redline that have not been covered at Above the Law; and there have been stories covered slightly differently on both platforms. For instance, here are the different takes on Quinn Emanuel’s $2,000 travel offer to associates from both Above the Law and Redline.
