The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a tactic employed by plaintiffs’ attorneys to increase the number of clients in various mass litigation suits: targeted campaigns featuring television commercials, social media ads and digital advertising seeking litigants in personal-injury and product-liability cases against corporations and the federal government.
The WSJ article notes that these types of advertisements have increased exponentially in recent years. According to the firm X Ante, in 2023, more than $160 million was paid for nearly 800,000 mass litigation television advertisements. As cases are moving forward through the court system, there tends to be an increase in ad spending. Recent commercials have focused on potentially contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, baby powder, weed killer and exposure to chemical-based firefighting foam – just to name a few. Television isn’t the only space where these legal ads play. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that in 2023, more than $106 million was spent by the 10 biggest digital legal advertisers.
This increase in advertisement campaigns is occurring at the same time as the number of civil cases in the federal court system has grown as well as a rise in third-party investors funding mass litigation. You can read WSJ analysis here.