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Our Personal Injury Lawyers, Ourselves
There’s a human-interest story I can’t help but think about whenever I see an ad for a personal injury lawyer on TV. It came out in 2015, according to its Wall Street Journal law blog dateline, but it has lodged itself into the crevices of my brain in the five years since it was published.
It featured a normal family in Louisiana and normal two-year-old boy named Grayson Dobra. For his first birthday, Grayson had a normal Mickey Mouse birthday party theme. But for his second birthday, his mom chose a theme more aligned with Grayson’s passions: Morris Bart, a personal-injury lawyer in Louisiana whose ubiquitous ads (“One Call, That’s All!”) are all but unavoidable throughout the state. Grayson loved Morris Bart’s ads so much that he watched them on YouTube when they weren’t playing on TV.
For Grayson’s birthday, his mom ordered a cake with edible photo frosting featuring Morris Bart in a suit. He got a cardboard cutout of Morris Bart and a child-sized Morris Bart t-shirt as gifts. And after Grayson’s mom emailed Mr. Bart’s office, they personally sent Morris Bart keychains, an autographed picture, and a New Orleans Pelicans shirt with Bart logo on the back. “We have the cutout and the signed photo on his dresser, and he frequently tells Morris Bart good night and gives him a kiss,” his mom told BuzzFeed at the time.
