Episode #270 – Plaintiff Attorney Social Media Promotion

In this episode of The Litigation Psychology Podcast, Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. dives into the rapidly evolving world of plaintiff attorney advertising and specifically how it’s exploded on social media. While traditional ads like billboards and cheesy daytime TV spots are still around, many plaintiff firms are now taking a totally different approach online. Bill explains how these firms are using TikTok, Instagram, and X (formally Twitter) to push out videos that aren’t focused on big verdicts or settlements, but rather aimed at shaping public opinion and, ultimately, juror attitudes.

Bill breaks these videos down into five key themes: 1. Anti-insurance messaging, where attorneys warn viewers not to speak with or accept offers from insurance companies because “they’ll screw you”; 2. Humanization of the plaintiff firm, posting behind-the-scenes office tours, staff intros, and even lighthearted content like dance videos and trivia to show they’re just regular, likable people; 3. Educational content, where attorneys explain litigation terms and legal processes in simple, friendly language; 4. Do’s and don’ts videos, like checklists for what to do if you’re injured or filing a claim; 5. Intra-plaintiff firm competition, where attorneys differentiate themselves by claiming superior trial skills over “billboard lawyers.”

Bill notes that what’s most interesting is that these videos and messages are rarely about huge payouts but instead they’re about fairness, trust, and credibility. And it’s working. Plaintiff attorneys continue to build successful practices and jurors see these videos, and consciously or not, they come into the courtroom with biases that can be hard to shake. Bill points out that the defense bar and insurance industry are completely missing from this space, leaving the messaging one-sided. Lastly, Bill asks the questions: should the defense start countering this? And should voir dire include questions about social media exposure to these types of messages?

Full Episode Transcript

[00:14] Bill Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. I am Dr. Bill Kanasky and boy am I knocking down the coffee this morning. Yeah, baby. I’m telling you right now, if a doctor told me, “No, you can’t drink coffee anymore. You’ll die if you keep drinking coffee.” I’d be like, “Okay, well, I guess call a funeral home. I’m not going to stop drinking coffee.” It could be the greatest thing ever. Really? Can you imagine going without coffee? And for you non-coffee drinkers, I I have no idea what in the world is wrong with you. It’s the greatest thing in the world. However, this is where coffee gets screwed up. If you’re like my family, they put so much junk into it. Like, it’s not even coffee when they’re done. It’s like a milkshake or something. It It’s It’s loaded up. It’s I just drink black coffee. Folgers. You can’t go wrong. The standard f— this is how remember growing up my grandmother would make coffee every morning. I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house growing up. First thing I smelled when I woke up this Folgers coffee. Don’t need all this fancy stuff. It’s the greatest thing in the world.

[01:40] Bill All right. Now that I got my coffee rant uh out of the way, uh is everybody being healthy? Talked about that on the last couple podcasts. I’m very, you know, summertime’s here. Working on the beach bod, okay? Make sure you’re physically active, guys. Got to get the workouts in. You don’t need a lot. I mean, you don’t need a lot. I mean, hell, if you just walked most days of the week, you see a lot of good results. But you know me—think it’s resistance training. That’s where it’s all at. So, attorneys, claims people, anyone else listening, get moving. Get to the gym. My home gym is rocking. Oh, I’m telling you, for the third time, that hack squat is no joke. Wow. I’m still kind of walking like a baby deer this week. Uh, man, that’s that works. It’s not for the—It’s not for the faint of heart, I’ll tell you that. Gee.

[02:52] Bill All right. Today’s podcast, uh, this is something I said uh, at the end of the podcast with Dr. Wood and I, but I want I want to jump into this more. Uh, the Rockville podcast, which by the way, you know, Steve Wood went mosh pitting in at Rockville. I was stuck at home. I was stuck at home. That’s okay. I had to take care of my son. For those of you and and many of you have reached out. Thank you so much. Uh we’re like on week five post-op here. He’s doing physical therapy. Uh he has two appointments a week, but we do it at home every day. And uh I got to tell you, this kid, he’s he’s going to be 17 here in a couple weeks. He’s uh good attitude, but boy is this brutal. This is brutal. I mean, he’s working hard, staying motivated. Um but man, devastating. Devastating knee injury. It really, really sucks. So, we’re all hanging in there. So, thank you. Thank everybody for your uh support and reaching out. That really means um really means a lot to me.

[03:55] Bill Let’s get into this topic of um and uh plaintiff attorneys. Good morning. Uh because we’re going to talk about you this morning because what I’ve seen on social media is really incredible. Let’s talk about attorney advertising. So, the traditional advertising that’s absolutely still around because I see it and hear it every day. Um, during the daytime, mostly daytime, uh, particularly in the morning, you’re seeing, you know, kind of your standard plaintiff attorney commercial, starring the plaintiff who won x number of dollars or got a big settlement and they thank the attorney. Right? That’s kind of like standard operating procedure for TV commercial. And that uh we’ve all seen all the billboards or or advertise, you know, advertise uh men’s uh plastered across buses and you know, stuff like that, park benches, whatever. That’s kind of the the traditional uh plaintiff attorney advertising model.

[04:58] Bill However, um something’s really changed here over the last year and I um and thanks to the algorithms on social media, you know, once you start watching something, you get more and more and more of that, right? And so, uh I’ve been checking out, you know, plaintiff attorneys on social media and very very different approach and I think, um I think this is um I’m going be very clear here based on what I’ve seen, this is my hypothesis. I think this is a coordinated campaign to influence public slash juror opinion. And there’s two things going on here, two themes to all this. Number one is I think they’re vilifying the insurance industry because many of these things I’m seeing on social media really directly go after the insurance industry. Okay? So, we’ll talk a little bit about that. And then secondly, which comes as a surprise, but I got to tell you, I’m I’m I’m actually impressed. Hats off. They’re trying to humanize the plaintiff’s bar.

[06:08] Bill Okay. Now, it comes to no surprise. Uh jurors—see jurors don’t like attorneys, period, defense or plaintiff. But there’s a plaintiff attorney stigma, particularly the billboard guys and stuff like that. A lot of eye rolling there. A lot of those commercials too on TV are just cheesy. God, really, really bad commercials, right? Really bad commercials. Um, and so there’s this kind of like ambulance chasing stigma around this and they’re trying to get rid of that. So, let me kind of tell you what’s going on. I broke this down uh to what I’ve observed in four categories on this kind of social media campaign, which I I I think is is is going to be highly effective if this keeps going. And it’s been going on for months and months and months, probably about the last year. And I see more and more of it. And I see this across the country, okay? Cuz remember like with the TV commercials and the billboards, you only see those locally and those will change locally. Well, you know, you go on TikTok or X or Instagram, you know, anywhere in the country, you’re going to see this stuff.

[07:14] Bill So, um, so we’ve kind of like they’ve gotten out of the hey, I can get you, you know, call call me, right? I can get you the biggest verdict or biggest settlement, blah blah blah. They’ve gotten away from that, okay? And uh they’ve taken on uh a couple different themes here. Number one is don’t get screwed by your insurance company. So, the whole theme with all these is hey, if you get into any type of accident or if something bad happens, don’t talk to the insurance company and don’t take a nickel from them. They are going to screw you. It’s the number one way to get screwed. So, I’ve seen a million of these TikToks on uh X on Instagram, and that’s the theme of, hey, the worst possible thing you can do, okay? If you’re been injured in any way, shape, or form, is to talk to the insurance company, number one, and number two, don’t take one nickel from them because they’re going to lowball the [expletive] out of you. Okay? That’s the theme here. I’ve seen this over and over and over. And uh that’s probably if I had to rank order what I’m about to go over that’s probably the number one um from a you know how often it’s that’s probably the number one message coming across is really saying you listen these insurance companies are greedy. They will do everything and anything they can uh to screw you over and the last thing you want to do is settle with them. You need to—you need to call an attorney.

[08:42] Bill Okay, that’s the main message here. Now, just recently, I think it was uh Josh Hawley. Hawley, is that his name? Josh Hawley. Uh and a congressional hearing. I think he had the CEO and some higher-level execs from Allstate. Uh there’s a congressional hearing and he was cross-examining these insurance people and oh my, now this was on like coverage from like storm coverage and stuff like that, right? Let me turn this phone uh to silent. There you go. And he’s just rip—on national TV just ripping these insurance company executives on how they’re screwing the American people on coverage. Now again mostly talking about like you know storm damage and stuff like that but it—it doesn’t matter because that type of negativity towards the industry uh is very very negative. Okay. So that’s kind of kind of area number one I’m seeing.

[09:36] Bill So what happen—so like for example on TikTok you’ll have a attorney um you know sitting at their desk or whatever. Um another thing that they’ve done is they’ve gotten away from like you’ll see them like walking in the park, and they’ll be holding their phone taking a video like, “Hey I’m—I’m just a regular person here. I’m a human being. I’m trying to help you now. Don’t talk to the goddamn insurance company.” Right? So, they’re coming across in this very um unique way uh which I find very intriguing. But a lot of anti-insurance messages: hey, they’re going to screw you. Don’t get screwed. Call us. We will protect you. Now, nowhere in that me—this is the key. Nowhere in that message does it say, “Hey, I’m going to get you this crazy verdict or I’m going to get you this crazy settlement.” Okay? They’ve kind of avoided that. It’s: I’m—I’m going to give you fairness because if you go through them, it’s not going to be fair. Okay? That’s kind of area number one that I’ve seen. Massive campaign.

[10:36] Bill Number two, this is—this is I didn’t see this coming. Many of these plaintiff law firms are posting uh things on X and again TikTok, a lot of TikTok that really have nothing to do with litigation. They’re they’re almost like law firm commercials showing how human they are. So, I’m seeing TikTok videos where, you know, somebody’s walking around the law firm like, “Hey, meet our legal secretary, right? Here’s our paralegal. Oh, here’s—here’s uh Sally and John. They’re two—they’re the founding partners.” And just kind of talking about everyday life and how much they love their job and um they come across really friendly and professional and um there’s really nothing in the video that addresses verdicts or settlements or wrongdoing or negligence or money. It’s just, hey, we’re—we’re—we’re a close-knit firm. We care about people and we’re and we’re pretty fun. And it shows these folks having fun.

[11:50] Bill Now, I did see a ridiculous one yesterday. So, all this has limits, right? I sent—I sent it to my colleagues like, “Oh, God.” And it was uh uh a popular plaintiff attorney and he’s at his standing desk like I’m standing right now and the camera’s behind him right looking at his screen and it’s a Zoom meeting with him and his staff and they’re playing just a really really terrible song—by the way a very terrible song—and like they’re all dancing. They’re all dancing. That that’s the video. It’s the attorney and his staff on Zoom and you can see them on Zoom on the screen and they’re playing like some song and everybody on the screen’s dancing and the attorney’s dancing and the whole theme of the—whole theme of the video is: hey we have fun here at Miller and Miller Law. That’s what it was. Type of music it was—boom boom—is that club music? See I’m too old for this. That’s all I heard: boom boom boom. Boom. Boom. And the dude’s trying to dance. By the way, he was—he was awful. It was terrible dance. See, I don’t dance cuz I know I’m terrible. Like this guy—really really bad. But you know, the whole theme is, hey, we’re good people. We have fun.

[13:13] Bill Okay, now let’s—why is this message so important? Think about um witness testimony at trial, right? How important likability is. Likability. Listen, if jurors like your witness, they’ll believe anything they say. Anything, right or wrong. So, the theme here is, hey, we’re—we’re—we’re fun, likable people. You can trust us. And they’re not even talking about the law. They’re not even talking about lawsuits. They’re not talking about injuries. They’re not even talking about money. The whole thing is about, hey, we’re a good crew here and we have fun and we do a good job for our clients. It’s incredible. It’s really incred—I mean, the other ones that aren’t so quite cheesy, the—the dancing one was really over the top. It was—it was—I burst out in laughter. But the other ones were like someone’s holding their phone and filming and kind of walking around the office. And again, it’s like, “Hey, meet our paralegal, Debbie. Debbie, tell us a little bit about—” and Debbie kind of talks. Okay. And then they walk to the next room. “Oh, here’s, you know, here’s our nursing expert.” And they talk to the nursing expert. Then they go into the partners. Hey, blah, blah, blah. And everybody’s kind of working. They stick their head up and it’s all very friendly and it’s all kind of like they’re like get-to-know-you videos to show, hey, we aren’t these cheesy people and the commercials are bu—like we’re real people and we—and we care and we’re—and we’re fun and we’re just like you. Um, I find that very intriguing. I find that very intriguing.

[14:52] Bill Okay. I’ve seen a couple of these at the same time where they’re doing like trivia, like going from attorney to attorney is like, “Okay, attorney Jones trivia question.” And attorney Jones like, “So, Attorney Jones is at his laptop working, right?” And then he looks up, “Oh, hey, how are you?” Okay. And like the paralegal’s taking the video: “Attorney Jones, trivia, right? Who won Super Bowl 37? Do you remember?” “Attorney Jones, let me think about this.” And he gets it right or he gets it wrong. And that’s—that’s the whole message. So, the whole message there is I think there’s stig—there’s a stigma to the plaintiff bar which they’re trying to get away from. And I think a lot of this is what they’re—what they’re trying to do. And I—I’m going to tell you right now, don’t get mad at me. Don’t shoot the messenger. I think they’re doing a good job of it. You should go search some of these videos. The problem is then they keep popping up, but then you know you can forward through those.

[15:56] Bill Okay, so we got anti-insurance. We have the hey, we’re good and fun people. Please trust us. Now, another one that’s just popped up is um—plaintiff firms are posting videos on social media that are um—they take the educ—the the education like the teacher role. And so, I’ve seen a lot of these. Again, they’re highly effective. And uh again, they’ll have somebody with the camera being like, “Okay, you know, attorney Jennifer, um can you explain to our audience um what—what is discovery?” Like what what is discovery? And then attorney Jennifer goes, “Oh, discovery? Well, this is a process or it’s early on in the case and you know, we exchange it. We blah blah blah blah blah blah depositions.” And they go on this kind of like here’s how a lawsuit works and it’s really—they’re really good. They’re really really good. And then to get even deeper into that, some of these questions are um kind of very very specific like uh um “So if a witness has to sit for a deposition, what advice would you give them?” Okay. Well, number one—this is then now the attorney starts talking, right?—Well, number one, like you always want to tell the truth. Okay. blah blah blah. And so, they’ve taken this very like educational type of videos to educate the general public on kind of how lawsuits work in general.

[17:27] Bill And then uh several more specific videos on, you know, what does this mean? What does that mean? Okay. And um again, don’t shoot the messenger. I—I think they’re doing a really good job at this, you know, and some of them are even kind of case specific to you, whether it be car crashes. I’ve seen many of them on medical malpractice and it’s like okay well what do I—you know the question is something like, “Well what should somebody do if they think they’ve been harmed by a medical provider?” Okay well here’s the fir—and they—they give you like a checklist of things that you should—you should do right? So it’s—it’s um—it’s very interesting to see uh this slant. So, we got the educator and then here’s the last one. Here’s uh 404. Um, and it’s kind of like—it’s almost a little bit about—it’s a good transition from the last thing I just talked about is they—they’re many of these plaintiff attorney videos. Um, they’re providing kind of like a dos and don’ts checklist. Like here’s what you should do. Here’s—So I saw one the other day. It’s like: listen, if—if you’re filing a claim, do not post anything on social media because here’s what’s going to happen, right? Like you don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this. Here’s what you should do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they provide this um checklist.

[18:44] Bill So again, that’s um it’s kind of a different form uh of education because it’s talking about the dos and don’ts, but all of this—I mean all of this, right, is um is—is aimed at um the jury pool. Okay? And I’m serious. If you see some—I saw a plaintiff attorney commercial this morning here in Orlando and it’s like you cringe. You cringe, right? So, they put some lady up there and her husband. She’s got three teeth. He’s got four and you know—”Dan—Dan got us $250,000.” And it’s like you’re watching this going, “Who in the world would hire Dan?” I like—it’s just a terrible cheesy cheesy cheesy commercial, right? And then you’ve seen all the billboards. Some of them quite creative by the way. But a lot of billboards are cheesy too, right? And so that’s kind of where the whole like ambulance chasing thing comes in.

[19:50] Bill Oh, number five. Oh, let me talk—I forgot about this one. Lot of videos here. Okay. Is plaintiff attorneys—this is where the competition is coming in—uh differentiating themselves between each other. So, couple videos I’ve seen recently is uh they’ll have a plaintiff attorney sitting at his desk and he’ll say like, “Listen, you—you got to—you got to hire the right attorney. These bill—I saw this yesterday.” He goes—something I’m paraphrasing—”Um most attorneys like you see on the billboards and the commercials, they never go into a courtroom. They just settle everything. I’m the court—you—like—you want your maximum recovery, okay? You need a trial attorney. You don’t’ want one of these billboard people. You need a—somebody that knows the courtroom, that knows how to communicate with jurors, okay? And—and that’s what we do here at Johnson Law.” And so, I’ve seen a couple of those, you know, popping up um where they’re trying to um more market, I guess, against other plaintiff firms um to show that they do things differently. So, I—I find that uh intriguing as well.

[21:05] Bill And then some of these you’ll see some combination of factors like they’ll get into the education and then at the end they go ahead and just they trash the insurance industry, right? Um, now, so I went on a search to see what—are are any defense attorneys out there putting out pro-defense messages? I did a search and I don’t have it in front of me. I—I found—I found one attorney. She’s a civil defense attorney. She’s like 32 years old and um talking more defense stuff, right? I couldn’t find anything else. So, from a public relations standpoint, um, the Plaintiff’s Bar has gotten all in on this type of stuff on social media. I haven’t seen a peep either from the defense bar except for this one attorney and really nothing. I guess I have to dig deeper maybe, uh, really not much from the, um, the insurance industry.

[22:06] Bill So then you know so then when you get into courtrooms and you see people have a lot of you know anti—right, anti-insurance um thoughts and feelings and irrational belief systems. It kind of makes you wonder right—have they been pre-programmed? Now the—now—now many jurors—see before all this happened many jurors still didn’t like insurance companies because quite frankly we’ve all been screwed by our insurance company in one way shape or form whether it be medical insurance, homeowners insurance—I mean you name it we’ve all—I mean all of us, okay. Um and that sucks and that’s kind of where all this started. Um but now I—I—I’ve seen this again this—it’s a coordinated um marketing campaign, right? It’s—well, it’s public relations really. Uh it’s less marketing more um—more um you know trying to set the narrative on kind of what’s going on in the industry to educate potential jurors um you know what’s—what’s going on out there and um I see these things. I’m on social media. I—I see them every day multiple times a day.

[23:21] Bill And again, don’t shoot the messenger. A lot of them, um, they’re really good stuff. I think—I think it’s working. I think it’s working. So, um, in Voir Dire, no one’s really ever talked about this is: are you asking jurors, you know, “Have you ever seen plaintiff attorney advertisements on social media? What did you see? Did you—did you like it? What was—what was the message? Did you—was this something that you liked? Did you comment on it and stuff?” I don’t think anybody’s asking that in jury selection, are you? Maybe it’s time to start asking that. But I guess the bigger question is to what extent, if any, can or should the insurance industry and the defense bar be trying to counter this message? I’ve seen—I’ve seen nothing, you know? I’ve seen nothing. I haven’t seen anybody come out on social media saying, “Oh, by the way, yeah, they’re going to take 40% of your money plus all the expenses. So, in the end, you’re getting about this much where we could have gotten you better money a hell of a lot earlier and saved you a lot of headaches.” Like, I haven’t—I haven’t heard that message. Um, so I don’t—I don’t know where this is going, but I thought it was important to kind of bring this up on a podcast. Um, kind of interesting stuff.

[24:41] Bill Um, I just want to share that stuff with you. So, short podcast today. Just want to get that kind of out there, get some discussion going on about it. But yeah, uh, go through social media. Uh, they’re very big on TikTok. Very, very big on TikTok. So, it’s all video based. And just, you know, go in the search bar, type in Plaintiff Law Firm or Plaintiff attorney, and you’ll see them all—all coming up. I saw one this morning. This guy’s really good. I saw—I saw one this morning uh where the guy walked through. He’s like, “Here’s how I cross-examine a defense expert.” Didn’t say anything about money. Didn’t say anything about, “Hey, I’m going to get you a lot of money or a big settlement.” Just said, “Here’s my—like here’s how I handle this situation.” Comes up at deposition. Comes up at trial. “I have to cross-examine an expert that the insurance company has hired to testify against you and your claims and here’s how I get him. Here’s how I zap him every time.” And he walks right through what he does to show, hey, I know what I’m doing here. Okay. So, very interesting stuff. I have not seen anything coming from the other side except this podcast.

[25:57] Bill That’s—that’s—I again go look around. You’ll see a lot of criminal podcasts out there. Criminal law. Any of the civil stuff is mostly plaintiff. Again, defense, civil litigation—I, you know, there’s—there’s a couple out there that don’t post too often. As you know, we post every Monday morning. Speaking of that, please uh on whatever platform you’re listening, YouTube channel, Spotify, Apple, whatever, iHeart Radio. Um, leave us a rating, leave us a review. We love to get feedback. Um, hope everybody’s going well out there. Dog days of summer are approaching, so it’s going to be hot as hell. Um, but uh, you know what? I’m kind of—I kind of like the summertime. I kind of like the summertime. The problem is my poor son is not going to be going to the beach. He’s not going to be—Now I—I think um he is going to be cleared eventually to get into our swimming pool. That’ll be key because he’ll do some of the therapy in the swimming pool. So, it’ll be, you know, 93 degrees out, sunny here in Florida. He can get into the pool. I can get in there with him, do some of the rehab exercises in the pool. I think that’d be a good thing, right? Have a little bit of fun, but he’s certainly not going to Daytona Beach and uh jumping in and out of the four to five foot waves on the beach. No, we’re not. That—that will lead to a second ACL and meniscus tear, which we want to avoid. So, all right, that’s the updates uh Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. I’m Dr. Bill Kanasky. We will see you next time.