How lawyers' TV ads became a billion-dollar industry
CBSN
If you've turned on a television in the past four decades, you've seen attorneys advertising ad nauseam. Given just how prevalent they are, it's hard to imagine that there was a time when legal ads were illegal.
"In the old days it was unethical to advertise," said Texas attorney Jim Adler. "The bar could come after you and take away your law license. And it was also a crime."
When Adler opened up his own firm in 1973, he wasn't allowed to advertise for new clients. But that all changed four years later.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.