Sweet James spent $44.7 million on TV ads in 2024, ranking James Bergener fourth in the nation for expenditures on commercials.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
Berg Injury Lawyers of Alameda is one of many personal injury law firms blanketing Bay Area airwaves with commercials.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
The weather changed a bit last week — April showers that turned into downpours. The spring sunshine turned gray. It was just as well because I was under the weather myself with an ailment that was irksome but not serious. It kept me inside, a bit like the big pandemic of 2020 when everybody had to stay home and find a way to pass the time.
I picked up Amy Tan’s marvelous “Backyard Bird Chronicles,” eager to learn about the wildlife in my own yard. It had been a grand spring, with lots of migrating birds and plenty of crows and ravens circling in the blue skies. But the birds seemed to vanish in the wet weather. Even the local owl had gone silent.
The other book I was reading turned out to be boring, the news in the paper was all bad, and the social media reminded me of a talkative kid I used to know who never shut up. So I turned to binge-watching television — old movies, Netflix, baseball and the local news. It was a discovery. The advertising on TV was scarier than the news stories. It was a bit of a window into the real culture of our time.
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There was all the usual stuff: the perky young woman in red who wants me to drive a Toyota, the insurance people who want to be my neighbor, the smart kid who grew up to be a genius at home repair, the guy who makes junk disappear, the man who fixes broken garage doors, even on Sundays. And did you know that this is Jack in the Box’s 75th anniversary?
Commercials for the Law Brothers, who started in Los Angeles and spent $13 million on TV ads in 2024, are a common sight on Bay Area airwaves.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
But what really got me was the avalanche of ads for personal injury attorneys, ready to fight injustice 24 hours a day all at no cost to you. I began to feel that on television at least, the world is full of accidents, or illnesses, or mishaps of some kind. And somebody’s to blame. Sue them. One ad shows the usual car crashes, and even a kid simply falling down. The implication: He should sue his mother.
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If you think these personal injury ads are all over TV, you are right: According to the nonprofit American Tort Reform Association, law firms spent $2.5 billion on legal advertising in 2024 in the United States — more than twice the amount spent advertising pizza.
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When you tune in Bay Area stations, the first TV lawyers you see are Sweet James, then maybe the solid-looking Rich Barnes of the Barnes Firm, or a man from Jacoby & Meyers who talks about the firm’s long history, or then maybe two goofy-looking guys, Shawn and Shervin Lalezary, who appear to be the class cutups from law school. Sometimes they pose atop big rigs, sometimes with crashed cars. Then comes the punch line: “We’re the Law Brothers!”
There are others — Jesse Chrisp, the Walkup Firm, Alameda-based Berg Injury Lawyers (“Get Berg!” is their motto) and plenty more, including Anh Phoong, who specializes in billboard advertising. Phoong, who started in Sacramento, became famous with ads featuring her in a slinky outfit with an unforgettable slogan: “Something Wrong? Call Anh Phoong.”
Sweet James spent $44.7 million on TV ads in 2024, ranking James Bergener fourth in the nation for expenditures on commercials.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
The Tort Reform Association says injury firms spend $541 million a year on billboards and ads on buses in public transit stations. Most of the rest goes to TV ads. One local TV ad in the Bay Area complained about “billboard lawyers” as if the practice was vaguely unethical.
But all the advertising seems to have one big theme: The world is full of victims preyed on by cheapskate insurance companies.
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Sweet James, whose actual name is James Bergener, says he got his nickname because he spends a lot of time with his clients.
In his ads, Sweet James strides across the TV screen and gives free legal advice: What you do first after an accident is important. “Call Sweet James,” he says. The phone number, 800-900-0000, translates to 9 million. Sweet James might sound like your typical Southern California fast-talker — he’s based in Newport Beach (Orange County) — but the Tort Reform Association says he spent $44.7 million on TV advertising in 2024, which ranks fourth in the nation in injury firm TV ad rankings.
The top spender in the legal advertising field is Morgan & Morgan, a Florida firm that set the pace with TV spending — $218 million in 2024. Advertising paid off. Morgan & Morgan has 100 offices and 1,000 lawyers.
Jacoby & Meyers is the pioneer in the TV ad business, spending $27.2 million on commercials in 2024.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
But the pioneer in the TV ad business is Jacoby & Meyers, which started in 1972 with a single office in a San Fernando Valley shopping center. They threw a big grand opening party and invited the media and gave interviews about their services. The local bar association objected on grounds that this was advertising, and advertising legal services was unethical.
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But in 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court, acting in an Arizona case, threw out the ban on legal advertising, ruling that it was commercial free speech protected by the First Amendment. The next day Jacoby & Meyers took out an ad in the Los Angeles Times, and right after that it became the first personal injury firm to advertise on television. Now Jacoby & Meyers has 150 offices, including one in Oakland, and employs 300 attorneys.
They spent $27.2 million on TV advertising in 2024, according to Tort Reform Association figures. The Law Brothers, who started in Los Angeles, spent $13 million. They work on accidents, wrongful deaths and even dog bite cases.
Any lawyer will tell you that it pays to read the fine print. You have to be quick to read that on the bottom of the television ads. But one for Rich Barnes of the Barnes Firm says he is not licensed to practice in California. Rich Barnes practices in Buffalo, N.Y., and the firm has offices in New York City as well as San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and San Diego.
Another firm’s fine print, common in lawyers’ TV ads, notes that the people shown are not real clients. They are actors.
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Commercials for the Law Brothers, who started in Los Angeles and spent $13 million on TV ads in 2024, are a common sight on Bay Area airwaves.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
Does advertising pay? I found a remark attributed to Brooke Goff, who has a big practice in Connecticut. “If you do not advertise, you will be eaten by people like me.”
The next advertising frontier is social media. Just last month, I looked up a story on the internet involving a fatal crash in Marin. The post was linked to an ad for the Law Brothers.