You might not have heard the name James Helm, but if you live in the Philadelphia-area you’ve seen his face, usually on billboards or SEPTA buses.
A grinning Helm is usually seen holding a toy prop such as an inflatable phone or sack of cash, over a yellow background, the words “CALL TOP DOG” wrapped around him.
Helm is a fixture, if not a symbol, of the growing phenomenon of billboard advertising for personal-injury attorneys across the Philly region.
Noticing a trend, one reader asked Curious Philly, The Inquirer’s forum for questions about the city and region: Why are there so many billboards and commercials for personal injury attorneys? How is there enough business for so many different firms?
To answer these questions, we need to look at a bit of data and dive into some history.
How common are attorney billboards?
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. There are a lot of personal injury-attorney billboards, and there is reason to believe the number is growing.
In 2023, WHYY’s BillyPenn categorized the billboards on the stretch of I-95 between Philadelphia International Airport and the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. They found that 20% were advertising attorneys.
This year, Philadelphia Magazine conducted a similar review, counting 63 attorney ads between the airport and Cottman Avenue, which the magazine dubbed “Philadelphia’s own Personal Injury Alley.”
In fiscal year 2021, SEPTA generated just less than $400,000 in advertising from law firms. The agency projected that number to be $1.6 million in its 2025 budget — a 400% increase.
Philadelphia is not alone.
The American Tort Reform Association, a group that advocates for limits on civil verdicts and earlier this year declared Philadelphia the top “judicial hellhole” in the nation, found that law firms spent in 2024 an estimated $2.5 billion on ads, in all mediums, nationwide.
The Philadelphia media market made the top-10 lists of spending on legal advertising in digital and radio, according to the association’s analysis.
And among the top spenders are some familiar names. At the top of the American Tort Reform Association’s list is Morgan & Morgan, of Jawn Morgan infamy, which spent $218 million in 2024. TopDog is eighth on the list for that year with $27 million.
How did we get here?
The answer to this question requires some history.
The law profession has strict ethical rules around the solicitation of clients, and until the 1970s attorney advertising was banned.
Opponents of advertising argued it would harm professionalism, that ads are inherently misleading, and that it could have a negative effect on the administration of justice.
But in 1977 the Supreme Court lifted a ban on attorney advertising, ruling that it violated attorneys’ First Amendment right for free speech.
Many attorneys were reluctant to splash their faces on billboards for the next couple decades, until John Morgan changed the game. That’s how he tells it at least.
It all started with the Orlando Yellow Pages. Morgan sold the now-archaic phone book to make money after college. In the 1980s, after graduating from law school, he called his old employer and asked to take an ad on the back of the Yellow Pages.
“If someone picks up the book a certain way, there is a 50/50 chance that they will see my ad and never open the book,” Morgan said.
At the time, he says, his ad was the only one for the attorney in the Orlando Yellow Pages. His phone didn’t stop ringing.
In 1989, Morgan started advertising “in earnest,” he says, bombarding one market after another with ads — including Philadelphia. His law firm now has more than 1,200 attorneys with offices nationwide, and he became a billionaire.
Morgan noticed that after he began buying billboards and other ads in a region, other attorneys followed.
Morgan & Morgan became an enticing example for other attorneys hoping to grow their firms, said Kyle Hebenstreit, the CEO of Practice Made Perfect, a West Palm Beach advertising firm that caters to lawyers.
“Morgan & Morgan is somewhat of a playbook,” Hebenstreit said. “You can build a national practice if you’re just really aggressive about it.”
(Morgan is a founder of Practice Made Perfect but sold the business in 2022 as he entered markets in which he competed with advertising clients, Hebenstreit said.)
Why billboards and buses?
The challenge with advertising for personal injury attorneys is that there isn’t a set demographic that is more likely to have a claim, Hebenstreit said. Anyone could be injured in a car accident, for example.
Billboards are a relatively cost-effective way to get a firm’s name in people’s minds.
And once some attorneys have their name and face on a billboard, Hebenstreit said, others might just be copying that approach.
But not every firm is jumping the bandwagon.
You won’t see Kline & Specter billboards on I-95. Shanin Specter, the firm’s co-founder, said that the message they want to convey is more nuanced and a television spot, for example, is a better fit.
“We want to say what there is about us that makes us different,” Specter said. ”That isn’t susceptible to a quick billboard message.”
Are there enough cases for all the advertising lawyers?
Despite concerns that attorney advertising would lead to a rise in lawsuits, the number of cases filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in the four largest personal-injury categories has declined in recent years.
The largest decline has been in motor-vehicle accident cases, which dropped from 10,218 lawsuits in 2017 to 8,300 in 2024, according to court data. And slip-and-fall lawsuits declined from 4,049 to 2,938 in the same period.
Medical malpractice cases, on the other hand, saw a 50% increase, which is attributed to a rule change that allowed more lawsuits to be filed in Philadelphia.
Just because billboards are everywhere doesn’t mean that they are effective. Advertising is far from an exact science, Morgan said.
“Half of my advertising is working,” the attorney said. “I just don’t know what half.”
Plus, not every firm on a billboard actually litigates. TopDog, for instance, directs consumers to a “local counsel,” while Helm is the “advertising attorney,” according to the fine print on the billboards.
The man behind TopDog is based in Arizona, though he is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania. He declined to be interviewed for this story. The firm’s website says it “maintains at least joint responsibility for most client files.”
Specter views advertising as part of increasing access to justice. Many people don’t have an attorney’s number in their Rolodex, and advertising can help those who were harmed find an attorney, he said.
“The billboards may be an imperfect way of providing a gateway to Philadelphians into the legal world, but they’re better than nothing,” Specter said.
Curt Schroder, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, sees the billboards as creating a more-litigious society. Many ads reference big payouts, and some even feature dollar bills. Attorneys “dangle the possibility of riches in front of people,” he said, luring people who wouldn’t otherwise call a lawyer.
“Nowhere is it written in the law or otherwise that every injury or every wrong has to result in a lawsuit,” Schroder said.