Traditional law firm names often are as straightforward as business titles get.
They simply identify the firm’s current or founding partners — the people who provide the services to clients.
But that’s not always the case in Nevada. And when a firm’s name isn’t a string of surnames, knowing who is working for you can get complicated.
Take the case of Half Price Lawyers. After that business shut down in February, clients learned that Half Price Lawyers had been licensing the name to a local attorney. Today, however, Half Price Lawyers has been relicensed by a different attorney, Mark Coburn, and is back in business.
So, when you do business with an established law firm, how confident can you be that the lawyers who established it still are there or that the lawyers you are working with will remain there? The answer is: “It depends.”
The rules of the State Bar of Nevada regulate law firm names and forms of legal advertising. But the rules don’t cover every possibility, and the Half Price Lawyers situation is only one example in which clients may not receive what a law firm’s name might lead them to expect.
The bar’s most straightforward rule is potentially the most helpful to consumers: Typically, when a firm is named after a lawyer, that lawyer must actually work for the firm and must be licensed to practice law in Nevada.
Of course, there are exceptions. A firm may continue to use the name of a dead lawyer as long as that lawyer was working for the firm at the time he or she died. That’s why Lionel Sawyer & Collins was able to continue using the name of founder Grant Sawyer, even though he died in 1996.
However, now that Lionel Sawyer & Collins closed, no other law firm will be able to use Grant Sawyer’s name again.
Also, the rule that attorneys must be licensed to practice law in Nevada was changed by a 1999 lawsuit brought by Arizona law firm Lewis and Roca. Because of that suit, multistate firms today, such as Lewis and Roca, may use the same name in Nevada as they do in other states, even if named partners are not licensed to practice here.
And even when named partners are licensed in Nevada, it doesn’t mean they must live here. For example, personal injury attorney Glen Lerner practiced law in Nevada for many years and still is well-known for his extensive advertising on billboards and television. However, though Lerner remains associated with the Nevada firm that bears his name, Lerner moved to Arizona several years ago and runs a separate firm, Lerner and Rowe.
Generally, though, when judging a law firm by its name, if a firm is named after an attorney or attorneys, that at least guarantees those attorneys are associated with the firm in some way. The same cannot be said for firms with generic names.
Some states require all law firms to be named after lawyers in the firm to ensure customers know exactly whom they’re hiring. Nevada once subscribed to that rule but abandoned it decades ago. So today, many well-established local firms use generic names such as Half Price Lawyers, the Defenders and the Firm, which have no permanent connection to the attorneys who work there.
Take, for example, the Defenders, which gained a great deal of publicity in 2010 when CBS first started airing a television series of the same name, starring James Belushi and Jerry O’Connell playing fictionalized versions of real Las Vegas attorneys Michael Cristalli and Marc Saggese. Today, the Defenders law firm continues to operate and advertise heavily in Las Vegas, but the name was bought by the Richard Harris firm, and neither Cristalli nor Saggese works there.
This is not to say generic names are entirely unregulated. They still must conform to advertising standards set by the Nevada bar, which include requirements that names be factually accurate and may not state or imply that the firm can achieve results by unethical or illegal means.
However, the rules are subjective and therefore are trickier for the bar to apply evenly. In the case of Half Price Lawyers, for example, the bar required the firm to prove the name was factually accurate by providing documentation to show its prices really were half the cost charged by other firms.
However, the bar appears to have been less consistent in enforcing the rule against implications about unethical or illegal methods.
In the past, the bar has moved quickly to remove billboards advertising lawyers with slogans such as “Sharks? You bet!” Meanwhile, the Firm shares its name with a popular media franchise that includes a best-selling John Grisham book, a movie and a TV show about an evil law firm run by the mafia.
Staff at the bar did not respond to a call for comment.
Ultimately, despite the efforts of the Nevada bar to protect clients and the reputation of the legal industry, given the high stakes involved in many legal matters, anyone hiring a lawyer would be well advised to take a few minutes to check the credentials of the specific lawyer working on the case, regardless of the firm for which that lawyer works. The State Bar of Nevada website lists past public reprimands and disciplinary actions, and the Better Business Bureau lists consumer complaints filed against lawyers.