Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.
Three billboards near the intersection of Main Street and Bonanza Road advertise the services of lawyers. Two of the signs -- one for Ed Bernstein, the other for the law firm Bourgault & Harding -- make an everyday pitch for personal injury attorneys.
The third billboard boasts a mystical, almost Zen-like message. Beneath the words "Nevada Lawyers" and against a blue-tinged backdrop of an American flag hovers the slogan "Making the law work, for everyone."
Yeah, right, Kevin Beveridge fumed.
"They're bloodsuckers," Beveridge said of lawyers. "That sign doesn't change their image. It's just like all the other attorneys who have billboards. They make money off people's suffering."
Harsh. But that's exactly the kind of withering opinion the Nevada Bar Association wants to change with a three-pronged public-relations crusade designed to hose off the muddied image of lawyers.
The organization recently launched a five-month, $160,000 promotional campaign comprising billboards, radio and TV public service announcements and informational pamphlets. The signs and broadcast spots turn up in Las Vegas and Reno, while the association makes brochures available statewide through a toll-free telephone number.
The multimedia effort seeks to both diminish public distrust of attorneys and to raise the bar's profile as a legal resource, according to Clark County Deputy District Attorney Ann Bersi, president of the organization's board of governors.
"We're trying to generate more confidence in the profession and the state bar association," she said. "We want people to know we're here."
The idea for the campaign sprang from a national conference on the justice system that Bersi and other members of the Nevada legal community attended in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.
The gathering spotlighted two nationwide surveys that revealed deep-rooted skepticism of attorneys and the courts, as well as the public's pervasive belief that the richer the clients, the better their representation.
Bersi said the bar's newly minted motto -- "Making the law work, for everyone" -- aims to counter the perception that only money buys adequate counsel. The catch phrase serves as the centerpiece of the group's first-ever media campaign, anchoring the public service ads and the 20 billboards in Las Vegas and Reno.
"We're trying to make it clear that anyone can have access to the state bar association and its services no matter what their income stream," she said.
Las Vegas attorney Bob Dickerson, a former president of the state bar, noted that Nevada lawyers donate hundreds of hours of pro bono work to low-income clients every year. Yet their good deeds go unnoticed, he said, obscured by lawyer jokes, the depiction of amoral attorneys in TV shows and movies and the indelible stain left by the O.J. Simpson trial.
Combine that onslaught with people's personal experience -- one party in a courtroom clash invariably walks away a loser -- and the rationale behind the bar's ad campaign becomes apparent, Dickerson said.
"The average person out there thinks a lawyer's job is to yell and scream at everything and to be litigious," he said. "It doesn't work that way. Lawyers are there to represent people's interests."
Maybe so, but good luck finding anyone who seconds that altruistic view inside the car repair shops and furniture stores clustered near the Main-Bonanza intersection.
The billboard that elicited Beveridge's scorn stands above Econo TV and Furniture at 626 N. Main St. The 30-year-old construction worker minded the store earlier this week while the owner, a friend of his, ran an afternoon errand.
"I've never had a high opinion of attorneys, and (the sign) isn't going to change my opinion at all," Beveridge said. "I can understand that they might be trying to improve their image, but they still take advantage of people that are vulnerable."
Unlike Beveridge, Richard Schwartz, 42, once needed to retain an attorney. After that painful experience, which Schwartz declined to elaborate on, he hopes to never so much as brush up against another lawyer.
"Basically, I think they're all nothing but low-down thieves -- just like politicians," said Schwartz, an automotive tool salesman. "It's upsetting to know that if you're an average, hard-working individual, you can't afford to hire good attorneys."
Dickerson and Bersi doubt that one glimpse of a billboard will convince passersby that lawyers are people, too. Enter the TV and radio ads, Bersi said.
"If people are driving around town and listening to the radio and they hear a public service announcement, and then they see the billboards, (the message) will have an impact," she said.
In theory, anyway. Ruben Tagle's business, Unique Precision Automotive, sits across the road from Econo TV and the bar's billboard. Despite the sign's insistence that lawyers work for everyone, Tagle said they represent no one but themselves.
"In general I have the same opinion as everybody else -- they take advantage of you, they don't care about you," he said. "A billboard isn't going to change anyone's mind."
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