Massachusetts lawyer James Sokolove is the biggest-spending legal advertiser, but he no longer tries any cases. Sokolove spent more than $20 million advertising his firm in 2007, but he refers all of his cases to other lawyers and takes a percentage of the recovery, Boston Magazine/ABA Journal report in a profile. Sokolove spent twice as much as the next-biggest lawyer advertiser, the magazine says, and his radio and TV ads run once every eight seconds. His firm is keeping tabs on some 10,000 referred cases, and the clients who sought him out have won or settled for more than $2 billion in damages, the story says.
“Despite his prodigious success and his omnipresent image as a bulldog attorney, Sokolove hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom in nearly three decades,” the story says. “Truth be told, he’s argued only one case before a jury; it was back in the early 1970s, and he lost. It wasn’t tenacious lawyering that allowed Sokolove to build a legal empire, but rather his prowess as a businessman and an innovator.”
Asked about his reputation as an ambulance chaser, Sokolove told a reporter, “Yeah, the best you’ve ever seen."
