Lawyer Ads Blew Up During the Pandemic
In 2025, legal services topped the OOH advertising charts, per the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). The personal injury giant Morgan & Morgan (motto: “the fee is free unless we win”) was the No. 2 advertiser, trailing only the tech titan Apple.
Ad spending in the legal world has more than tripled since 2019, the final year before Covid hit. This fits right in with the pandemic-era lawsuit boom. As driving dipped and car crashes fell, firms needed a new way to pay the bills. People started suing over family deaths from the virus, nursing home outbreaks, catching Covid at the office and more. For seemingly any pandemic problem, lawyers promised, “you may be entitled to compensation.”
Over 25,000 Covid-related labor suits were filed in the two years after the first lockdown, according to Statista. Another 10,999 claims popped up regarding the Covid vaccine, plus 3,148 claims involving other countermeasures, like treatments that failed to work.
That’s a massive pile of cash for lawyers to go after. They want to find the folks most likely to file these cases. This creates the clusters I find so annoying. Personal injury firms stack a dozen signs in a row at specific hotspots to grab your attention. Common places for these lawyer billboards include:
Hospitals, where people get treated for accidents they can sue over
Courthouses, where people at criminal hearings might consider civil suits
Major commuter routes, where the majority of traffic accidents happen
