Law firms. Awards Season

• Author: Lyle Moran
• Pages: 20-21

Business of Law edited by

VICTOR LI

victor.li@americanbar.org

LAW FIRMS

Awards

Season

Awards are great marketing tools

and can demonstrate expertise,

but they’re not all created equal

BY LYLE MORAN

Lucy Davis of Davis Law

Group in Seattle is not an at-

torney. In fact, she is ineligible

to sit for the bar.

That’s because she’s a poodle. Nev-

ertheless, that didn’t prevent her from

being honored as a Lawyer of Distinc-

tion in the personal injury  eld in 2017.

After receiving the payment required

for membership and its associated ben-

e ts (which at press time cost $475 per

year for the lowest tier of membership ),

Lawyers of Distinction sent Lucy a

plaque naming her one of the top 10%

of attorneys in the country and congrat-

ulated her on Twitter.

It did so even though the webpage

Davis Law Group submitted with

Lucy’s application made it clear she was

a dog, mentioning she had received a

“Juris Dogtor” and was a member of

the King County Bark Association.

Ian Waldron, Davis Law Group’s

director of operations , says the goal of

submitting Lucy for Lawyers of Distinc-

tion membership was to test whether

there was any research being conducted

by such groups prior to distributing

awards. In his opinion, this incident

exempli es how many of the growing

number of entrants in the legal awards

industry seem more focused on gener-

ating revenue than identifying the best

lawyers and  rms in their  elds.

According to Waldron, “There are

organizations that have a higher bar for

what it takes to get a good impression

out there, and that is being cheapened

by this type of activity.”

Cheryl Bame, the principal of Los

Angeles-based Bame Public Relations

and a former journalist , agrees there

has been a proliferation in the legal

industry of what she considers to be

“bogus awards.”

She says honors falling into that

category are those offering to recognize

attorneys only if they agree to pay the

organization hundreds of dollars for

items such as a plaque, a pro le on

the company’s website, a press release

announcing the award and a logo the

lawyers can put on their own websites,

among other things. These solicitations

are typically made directly to attorneys

by marketing companies that don’t

undertake any sort of vetting process

before doling out honors.

Photo illustration by Sara Wadford

20

ABA JOURNAL | JUNE–JULY 2020