Law Store Sells Fla. Legislation to Clients
Lots of attorneys and public relations executives help corporate clients lobby federal and state legislators for new laws. But Margaret Kessler had a different idea.
The south Florida marketing pro has set up shop as a one-stop service for consumers who think there ought to be a law about something. For a several-thousand-dollar fee, the Law Store’s attorneys will draft a bill and the company will advertise it and get the needed petition signatures to put it on the ballot, reports the Voice of America.
Kessler portrays the concept as a service to consumers, for whom it would otherwise be much more difficult to get a proposed measure on the ballot. “It’s the most democratic way of doing things,” she says.
But at least one expert is skeptical. By making it easy for individuals to put proposed laws on the ballot, the Law Store is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money and potentially enact pointless laws, says Dario Moreno, a Florida International University political science professor. “I mean, lets face it, this is a publicity stunt. It’s a way for a lawyer to make a little bit of extra money and it’s really not going to help ordinary people.”
Kessler is no stranger to controversy over her promotion of unusual concepts in the legal arena: a few years ago, she was in the news for another marketing scheme she had developed. By filing lawsuits “of moral and ethical value,” Kessler argued, Total Market Resource Multimedia could get a lot of good publicity at minimal cost, the South Florida Business Journal reported in 2005.
