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About Southern California
Jacoby & Meyers,
Personal Injury Lawyers

Serving Los Angeles, San Diego
and Southern California

Personal Injury Lawyers San Diego
Len Jacoby, founder

Jacoby & Meyers:
The Concept

Recognizing the need for a full-service law firm devoted to handling the legal problems of middle-income people at fees these clients could afford was easy. The problem was to create a law firm that could efficiently handle personal legal problems--divorce, personal injury, bankruptcy, criminal defense, and other matters. Such a firm would have to accommodate a volume clientele in order to charge reasonable fees, and still be able to deliver quality legal services.

The solution was an innovative combination of specialization, a systems approach, and legal assistants. This required a restructuring of the traditional general practice law firm. First, we developed detailed written systems for handling each type of case we would accept. The systems approach expedited the progress of a case and allowed for more efficiency and quality control.

Also, we utilized a high degree of specialization. Lawyers staffing the individual offices were experienced Family Law practitioners. In addition, we employed lawyers whose practices were devoted to a particular area of the law, such as Bankruptcy, Personal Injury, or Criminal. These lawyers handled cases in their area of expertise for all the offices in their locale. Because of this approach, our clients received the services of lawyers with specialized knowledge rather than the services of general practitioners, as was usually the case with traditional firms. Again, this specialization resulted in increased efficiency and quality.

And, as the offices grew, the roles of the paralegals increased. They routinely helped interview clients, draft letters and documents, used the Jacoby & Meyers systems to prepare the paper work necessary to a particular case and, generally, handled any other tasks which did not require the full attention of an lawyer. Their assistance freed lawyers to supervise the work of the paralegals and attend to matters requiring the skills of a lawyer.

Further, detailed office management procedures were developed which were impractical or unavailable to small law firms. This systematic approach to internal office management enabled each branch of Jacoby & Meyers to accommodate a volume clientele. It allowed each office to operate at maximum efficiency and it gave the managing lawyers the tools necessary to manage a busy office while practicing law.

Our approach was to open multiple neighborhood offices, each maintaining the personal and professional atmosphere expected of a successful law office that is part of its community, while at the same time enjoying the resources and benefits of a larger organization.

These innovations enabled Jacoby & Meyers to be a full service law firm capable of handling most legal problems which middle-income people were likely to have. And they made it possible for us to provide quality services to a volume clientele at reasonable fees.

Jacoby & Meyers: Innovations

  • Created standardized management and legal systems for delivering quality legal services to high volume clientele.
  • Spearheaded landmark Supreme Court case Jacoby & Meyers vs. California Supreme Court, opening doors to professional advertising.
  • First law firm to advertise on television.
  • Located branch offices in retail shopping centers, Saturday and evening appointments, and first to accept credit cards for payment of fees.
  • Set standard fees for basic services and gave a written estimate of the fee, in advance.
  • First multi-state, multi-branch law firm to specialize in personal legal problems.
  • Vastly expanded the role of legal assistants, enabling them to conduct interviews and prepare documents because of the detailed preprinted interview sheets, pleadings and other forms.
  • Jacoby & Meyers preprinted forms led to the development of form pleadings and judicial council forms now used by the court system.

Jacoby & Meyers: The History of Lawyer Advertising

Before mid-1970, lawyers and other professionals were prohibited from advertising by the rules of their professional associations. Advertising was considered unethical and any public communication, whether paid advertising or just open discussion, about a professional's own practice was considered advertising.

(Also, at the time, any form of open competition was considered demeaning because a "profession" was not a "business." In 1973, the president of the American Bar Association condemned Jacoby & Meyers for trying to run a law firm as a business. We replied that the practice of law is a profession, but also a business, and if law firms would implement the efficiencies of a well run business, they would be able to serve more clients at lower cost without sacrificing quality. The next president of the American Bar Association referred to the Jacoby & Meyers concept as "the wave of the future.")

The opening of our unique and innovative law firm in September 1972 drew the attention of a consumer advocacy group. The president of the group scheduled an open house and invited the press.

The response was overwhelming. Representatives of every television and radio station and major newspaper in Los Angeles attended. Within days, we were interviewed by newspapers across the country, and by Time and Newsweek, and other national magazines. And, over the next several years, representatives of bar associations visited us from Canada, Great Britain, France, Australia, Taiwan, Korea and other countries.

And, within weeks of the open house, the California State Bar charged us with violating the rules prohibiting advertising because we had granted interviews to the press.

The charges against us included advertising and solicitation, even though we ran no paid ads, using the name "Legal Clinic of Jacoby & Meyers," because a lawyer was only allowed to use "Law Offices of," or "Law Firm of," and accepting credit cards for payment of fees, because the per cent we paid the company was considered fee splitting with a non-lawyer. Hard to believe today, but it's true.

The Bar responded by amending the charges to include this well-attended press conference. We responded by holding another, this time on the steps of the State Bar building. We did this to dramatize what we believed was the Bar's attempt to stifle our freedom of speech. We believed that the public's right to be informed of worthwhile new concepts was paramount to an association's rules of conduct.

This became a national, in fact, international debate. During the following few years, while our case dragged before the disciplinary committee (we lost,) and was appealed to the Board of Governors (we lost,) and appealed to the California Supreme Court (we won,) the debate changed from our right to talk to the press about newsworthy concepts even if it included discussion of our own practice, to whether professionals should have the right to commercially advertise their services.

During this period, we were visited by young lawyers from around the country who wanted to learn more about our concept and wanted help establishing their own "legal clinics," as the concept was then called.

Two such lawyers were Van O'Steen and John Bates from Arizona. They started a firm modeled on ours but were unable to generate the volume clientele they needed to operate efficiently. They decided to test the Bar rules against advertising and placed an ad in the Phoenix newspaper.

The Arizona Bar filed the expected charges and the lawyers had their case removed to the Federal Court.

In May 1977, the California Supreme Court ruled in our favor, Jacoby v. The State Bar of California, protecting our rights of free speech and the public's right to be informed. A month later, the U.S. Supreme Court banned prohibitions against professional advertising in Bates v. Arizona State Bar, freeing doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals to inform the public of their services through paid commercial advertising.

We immediately placed a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times and had the first lawyer television ad in the country running on Los Angeles stations that summer.

Bar associations around the world changed their rules. Our concept proliferated and lawyers around the world opened offices based on our model and started advertising.

Today, all law firms pay close attention to law office management-a long way from when the president of the ABA said, "the practice of law isn't a business"-and most utilize some form of the systems and case management approach we created.

Most important, the average person is a much more knowledgeable and better informed consumer of legal services, with greater access to the legal system.

And, after more than 30 years, we're still here to help.

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