Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: 'Midsize Is the New Big'

We want you here as long as it makes sense. — Fictional Firm Chairman
What does that mean? — Fictional Junior Partner
It means you’re here until you’re not. — Fictional Firm Chairman

Those are lines from a bit of YouTube fantasy porn for BigLaw attorneys frustrated by the way their firms are treating them during the economic downturn. The video ends with the junior partner telling the chairman that he feels unappreciated and that he’s leaving.
If you can’t play with the BigLaw boys, then move along.
A legal marketer in New Jersey was hired by an unnamed mid-size firm to create a video to help with the firm’s lateral recruitment. It features a young BigLaw real estate partner, named Steve, meeting with his firm’s chairman to seek guidance. The chairman, who calls the partner Gary throughout the meeting, is not especially sympathetic to the younger lawyer’s recession-induced crisis:

JUNIOR PARTNER, STEVE: I’ve worked so hard to build something here. You wiped the floor with me for eight years as an associate. I am a partner now. I have a book of business, and yet I feel… lost.
BIGLAW CHAIRMAN: Do you have any idea how much billable time we wasted during this conversation? How long were you outside my office lurking like a wolverine of sorts?

According to the marketer Micah Buchdahl, the firm wasn’t a fan and declined to use the video. Check it out after the jump.


The mid-size firm decided the video didn’t send the right message for attracting senior associates and partners from the BigLaw ranks. Notice the blurred out logos in the background of the video via On The Record:

No wonder the firm turned it down. According to On The Record, the mid-size firm wanted “edgy,” but Buchdahl gave them whiny.

When he screened the ad for the firm’s management committee, they were “horrified,” Buchdahl said.
“Using the word ‘hate’ wouldn’t do the word ‘hate’ justice,” he said.
It wasn’t even the expletive that got them, he said. No one cracked a smile during the whole four-minute video.

We laughed, but we would be laughing harder if a mid-size firm had actually attached its name to this.
Midsize is the new Big [YouTube via On The Record]
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