The 950-lawyer firm's $3.5 million campaign, scheduled to launch on n Monday, is believed to be the first nationwide TV advertising ever tried by a major corporate law firm. At a time when most of the public still associates lawyer TV ads with sleazy soliciting by personal-injury specialists, Brobeck's campaign is a bit of a gamble. But its pitch is just the latest and boldest example of how once-staid corporate law-firms are trying to sell themselves at a time when a glut of lawyers and sophisticated clients has made the law business more competitive than ever.

"We are letting a little air in," says Mr Burkey Belser, whose Washington, DC, ad firm, Greenfield/Belser Ltd., has worked with more than 200 law firms over the past several years. Not that long ago, he says, the idea of big-time lawyers advertising would have been "laughable," and "a smear on the profession."

Today, taking advice from their clients, a growing number of firms are adopting Madison Avenue-style techniques, seeking to "brand" themselves in the marketplace, just like makers of corn flakes or toothpaste. Instead of dull ads in legal journals, they are bankrolling image campaigns and developing their own corporate logos, nurtured through glossy ads in tech and personal-finance magazines, radio ads and airport kiosks.

A big Winston-Salem, NC, firm, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, has built a print campaign around a bulldog, to send a message that the firm is a tenacious though approachable advocate. Osborne Clarke, a venerable UK law firm with offices in California, has unleashed a sleek jungle cat as part of an image makeover to offset a perception of centuries-old stodginess. San Francisco's Morrison & Foerster runs a surfer ad as part of a series touting its Internet savvy.

Among corporate clients, however, the jury is still out. Until recently, many dismissed such ads as silly. But that is starting to change, according to Mr Michael Roster, general counsel of Golden West Financial Corp., a big thrift in Oakland, California, and chairman of the American Corporate Counsel Association, a trade group for in-house lawyers. He says legal ads can be a useful barometer in sizing up a law firm. He says he is most persuaded by images that indicate an understanding of the high cost of legal services and the importance of not running up a big bill.

For much of the legal profession, self-promotion through advertising still requires something of an attitude adjustment. Most major New York firms, for instance, don't advertise at all, seeing it as lacking dignity, or as unnecessary, given already huge franchises. Among those that do advertise, there is hand-wringing among some partners over whether the dollars are well-spent and whether their firm's image is being compromised. Whether legal advertising survives the latest economic slowdown-many of the ads are being generated by firms with hard-hit technology clients-is another question.

Nonetheless, big-firm advertising has become suddenly respectable. Says Mr Paul Schwartz, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. "Very, very good firms are no longer bashful about advertising." Lawyer ads were considered unethical and, in some states, illegal, until 1977 when a US Supreme Court ruling established legal advertising as a form of constitutionally protected commercial speech. Today, firms are finding that ads can also be effective tools of promotion. Besides catching the eye of potential clients, some firms see ads as helping to attract top-shelf lawyers, by making the workplace seem interesting or innovative. Firms also use ads to create an image after a big merger, or to differentiate themselves from peers.

Brobeck has been as media-savvy as any big firm since it hired as its marketing chief three years ago a former J Walter Thompson ad executive with a background in consumer products like breakfast cereal and paper towels.

Since then, the firm, once primarily known for its scorched-earth trial tactics, has undergone an image makeover, assiduously positioning itself as a leading specialist in the needs of high-tech clients. Along the way, it has been among the first to launch ads in non-legal publications, and use its Website as a marketing tool.

Last year, with so many other law firms doing ads, Brobeck figured it was losing its marketing edge. "The question became, 'How do we step out of the pack again,'" says Mr Tower Snow, the firm's chairman. TV seemed like the logical next step. He fully expects other firms to follow suit and do their own TV ads. "Law is subject to the same laws of economics as any other business," he says. "Having a great product is not enough. Image sells."

The Wall Street Journal