The day after the Bates decision, Jacoby & Meyers placed an ad in the Los Angeles Times. Two months later, they launched the first television advertising campaign ever conducted by a law firm.
Advertising made the difference between successful and stupendous. Jacoby & Meyers had added a second office in 1973, and a third and a fourth soon followed. But during the 18 months after the Bates decision, they opened 18 new offices in California. Jacoby and Meyers themselves were forced to give up the practice of law to run the business: "We canceled all our subscriptions to law journals and began reading business magazines," Meyers says. Meyers now oversees financial planning and advertising placement, while Jocoby is in charge of systems and internal operations. Mosten left the firm in 1976 to teach law, but now heads his own legal clinic, The Law Center of Mosten & Associates, in Los Angeles.
The firm's revenue in 1976, before the Bates decision, were $300,000. By 1979, they were more than $5 million, and there were 26 Jacoby & Meyers offices throughout California. The next step was across the country. In January 1979, they opened 11 offices in New York, largely at the urging of a new partner, Gail Koff, who now runs the New York branch.
"It was certainly a big gamble for us," says Koff. "New York's a very tough market, but if you can make it here, it gives you a lot of credibility. It will also make it possible for us to expand more easily. I think all of us have a drive to see this concept done on a national scale."
The partners are secretive about their plans for expansion, but expect to have 100 offices by the end of 1982, and admit that they're taking a close look at numerous metropolitan areas. One possible base for expansion was established in 1980, when the firm opened offices in seven Montgomery Ward stores in California. Clients could now shop for legal advice as easily as they shopped for curtains. (In one instance, a shoplifter arrested in a Montgomery Ward store demanded to see a Jacoby & Meyers attorney; the firm declined because of a possible conflict of interest.) There are now 27 offices in Montgomery Ward stores. More recently, the New York branch of Jacoby & Meyers has opened 10 offices in the Times Square Store chain.
The firm's 150 attorneys now see approximately 10,000 new clients each month. About half of the cases they handle are divorce or domestic relations, but clients range from teenagers charged with criminal trespass to an old woman who came in to a New York office because the Internal Revenue Service had found out that she was claiming her dog and cat as dependents. (An attorney sat down with the IRS and worked out a settlement.)
The firm's accessibility doesn't make life easy for its lawyers, who earn salaries ranging from $25,000 to $75,000. "I get the feeling that the bus from the mental institution stops at our door," one Jacoby & Meyers attorneys says. Another New York attorney, Susan Laufer, was nearly murdered while representing a Brooklyn cab driver whose family was being forced out of its apartment.
In the course of her investigation, Laufer discovered that the owner of the building was terrorizing tenants. "The owner or his sons would appear in the middle of the night and bang on the doors with baseball bats," Laufer says. "Three elderly people died in that building."
At one point, she says, the owner tried to bribe her. "He offered me $1,000 to drop the case, and said he'd send all of his legal business -- $20,000 or $30,000 a year -- our way." Instead, Laufer went to the district attorney and, at his suggestion, wore a tape recorder and a transmitter to her next meeting with the landlord and his sons.
"We'd been talking for about 15 minutes when they got suspicious," she recalls. "They ripped open my purse and dumped out the tape recorder and the transmitter. One of the sons shoved me up against the wall and put a knife to my throat. He told me, 'I'll cut your heart out. You try to do this to me and my family -- I'll cut your heart out."
Fortunately, the police kicked the door down and rescued Laufer. The landlord and his sons have been charged in a 91-count indictment, and are no longer allowed to live in or manage the apartment building.
With its characteristic flair for publicity, Jacoby & Meyers turned the episode into a full-page advertisement in the New York Post: "It's about time somebody finally stood up for New Yorkers," the copy read.
Despite the case load, recruiting attorneys has been no problem for Jacoby & Meyers. In 1980, more than 35,000 law degrees were awarded in the United States, but there were only 26,400 jobs for attorneys. "It's a buyer's market," says Gail Koff, who estimates that the company interviews 10 to 20 people for each position it fills.
On the other hand, there are signs of discontent, according to Forrest Mosten. "The experience and educational background of their lawyers is spotty," he says. "From the resumes I get, I'd also say they're having a problem with turnover. Part of that is inevitable -- they've been successful enough to create a bureaucracy and, as a result, the relationship with their employees has suffered." Other lawyers say that the attorney-client relationship suffers at Jacoby & Meyers because of the volume of cases each attorney must handle.
Some of the criticisms directed at Jacoby & Meyers are undoubtedly the result of the legal establishment's unwillingness to believe that mass-produced law can be good law. Some lawyers who have argued against clinic lawyers say their opponents were poorly prepared, but only a handful of the thousands of cases Jacoby & Meyers has handled have resulted in legal malpractice suits.
Perhaps the best answer to the critics is that the legal clinic was an idea whose time had come. Since the founding of Jacoby & Meyers, more than 700 legal clinics have sprung up. Few of them, however, have achieved the success of the original.
The toughtest competitor, rapidly closing in on the frong-runner, is Hyatt Legal Services, which since 1977 has grown from one office in Cleveland to a 61-office, 120-attorney business operating in nine states. The firm has most of its outlets in H&R Block tax offices; it plans to have 120 locations and 275 attorneys by the end of 1982.
Joel Hyatt, one of the founding partners, thinks that Jacoby & Meyers "has made some mistakes. They've had some difficulties in New York. They may have moved too precipitately then, but they seem to be consolidating now."
The partners shrug off all the criticisms, and point to their successes: They've set up their own in-house advertising agency, and they've developed a subsidiary that produces continuing-education materials for attorneys. The productivity of their attorneys has soared: In 1975, receipts per lawyer were $41,000; in 1977, they were $55,000; in 1978, $85,000; and today they stand at $100,000.Eventually, they say, Jacoby & Meyers will have a thousand offices nationwide.
They talk about almost everything but profits. When that subject comes up, they talk about the complicated nature of their business arrangement, claim that profits don't define a law firm in the same way they might another kind of company, and note that in any case, most of the profits are being plowed back into expansion. They do everything, in fact, but plead the Fifth Amendment.
They will, however, admit to profits of about 5%. But employees have indicated that they're more likely to be in the 20% to 25% range.
"Don't worry about us," says Meyers finally. "We're doing fine, just fine."
