Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: MySpace.com -- A Place for Friends... and Law Offices

We’ve seen a lot of interesting law firm websites in our time, but the MySpace page for the “Law Office of Mark Meisinger” is in a class of its own [hat tip to The Young Texas Lawyer]. The Law Office is “single,” and interested in “Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends.” Appropriately, the current mood for the Dallas-based Law Office is “adventurous:”

According to the “About Me” section, “representing those who mess with Texas” means taking on clients charged with DWIs, drug possession, probation violations, and traffic offenses. Other important bits about “The Law Office of Mark Meisinger:” it used to be a juvenile delinquent, it was a member of Phi Delta Theta, it has worked “with all kinds of different government agencies, and it “interned for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District Of Nebraska and prosecuted several federal cases.”

When we first came across it, we doubted that the MySpace page would effectively attract prospective clients, but Meisinger is quoted in a post on Criminal Defense Lawyer saying that it does:

“The people I’m going after [as clients] are on MySpace,” says Meisinger, who graduated from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb., in 2004, and office shares at Gioffreddi & Associates in Dallas. “A whole bunch of people who party, who drink, whatever, those are the people on there who want to be my [MySpace] friend… I have gotten cases off there [MySpace]; there’s no doubt. One month, I got four DWIs off of there. It’s way more than the phone book’s doing for me.”

So… the screw-ups on MySpace are the clientele he’s targeting. Nice. He also friends hotties, judging from the posts on his wall:

Sponsored

T-shirts(!) and more, after the jump.


The Law Office advertises in other creative ways, like on festive T-shirts (available in two styles no less: baby-T and spaghetti straps!)

At first, we thought maybe this whole thing was kind of a joke, but the advertising appears to be completely serious:

Sponsored

Texas never ceases to amaze us. The Criminal Defense Law Blog has a post dedicated to the MySpace advertising trend among Texan lawyers, and quotes Meisinger:

Cross and other Texas lawyers with MySpace pages that advertise their firms say it’s a legitimate way to reach prospective clients, particularly younger people who aren’t likely to look in newspapers or in telephone directories for a lawyer…

Mark Meisinger, a 28-year-old criminal defense lawyer in Dallas, says his prospective clients are on MySpace… [P]romoting his practice through MySpace is inexpensive advertising, because his only cost is the time he spends networking on MySpace and managing his page… “I’ve been licensed two years now. I don’t have money to throw into the phone or TV ads,” he says. “It works out perfect for me.” In comparison, Meisinger says, he pays $700 a month for his Yellow Pages ad.

While Meisinger sees MySpace as a viable advertising outlet, Facebook is apparently not an appropriate place to whore out his firm. His profile on the latter is set to private.

Law Office of Mark Meisinger [MySpace via Young Texas Lawyer]

Mention in Texas Lawyer Magazine [Criminal Defense Law Blog]