Walk into most law firms with an idea that has any personality in it - a real story, a specific joke, a website that sounds like an actual person wrote it - and someone reaches for the fun sucking gun. Sometimes it's a partner. Sometimes it's nobody in particular, just a feeling in the room that this seems risky. The justification is always the same: what if a client sees this, what if bar counsel sees this, what if it looks unprofessional. Most of the time, none of that holds up. It just feels safer to shoot it than to find out.
Start with the audit → Email Russell See ServicesThere are real advertising rules for lawyers. Almost none of what the fun sucking gun shoots is actually one of them.
Somebody in the room - a name partner, an office manager, sometimes just a version of yourself with a lower risk tolerance on a Tuesday - has the authority to say no to anything with a pulse. It doesn't require a meeting. It requires one raised eyebrow at the draft, and the interesting version quietly dies before anyone outside the firm ever sees it.
What it teaches: most creative decisions in a law firm die in a single unrecorded moment, not a formal review.
Massachusetts, like every state, actually does regulate lawyer advertising - misleading claims, improper comparisons to other attorneys, that kind of thing. Real, specific, worth respecting. What usually gets shot instead is a personal story, a sense of humor, or a website that sounds like a human being. None of that is what the rule was written about.
What it teaches: know the actual rule well enough to stop treating every idea with personality as if it might be one.
The safe version doesn't feel like it costs anything, because the cost never shows up as a line item. It shows up as a call that never came in, from someone who scrolled past a beige website that looked exactly like the last four they'd already seen and felt nothing about any of them.
What it teaches: the safe choice isn't free. It's just paid in a currency - phone calls that never happened - that nobody ever bills you for directly.
Norm Macdonald got fired from Weekend Update for refusing to drop the O.J. Simpson jokes a network executive wanted gone. He didn't get fired for being unfunny - he got fired for being exactly specific enough to make someone with a fun sucking gun uncomfortable. He's still, by wide agreement among people whose opinion on comedy actually matters, one of the best to ever do it. The safe version of that material never existed, because a safe version of a genuinely specific bit usually isn't a joke anymore. It's a memo.
The firms competing for "trusted, aggressive, professional" are competing for three adjectives every single competitor already claims. Nobody's shooting the idea that would actually be remembered - they're just not sure it's allowed, and nobody checked.
This site is the counter-example on purpose. A page about kangaroo jerky. A jury that acquitted a woman a nursery rhyme still convicts. A defense that hinged on a car dressed as a fictional evil robot. Fish sticks served in tuxedos. None of it violates a single actual advertising rule - I checked, because I'm the person who'd know. It just required someone to not reach for the gun. Every firm has an idea sitting in a drafts folder right now that got shot for a reason nobody actually verified. Most of those ideas were never against the rules. They just made somebody nervous, and nervous was enough.
Most of what gets vetoed in law firm marketing was never a real regulatory problem - it just never got checked. I know the difference.
Start with the audit → Email Russell