• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 28, 2007

Lawyers’ ads may soon be as abundant as lawyer jokes. A deal between LexisNexis and online ad agency Spot Runner will allow law firms to create their own local ads using Spot Runner’s TV commercial-building tools.

The do-it-yourself ad service is offered through LexisNexis’s Martindale-Hubbell unit, which provides business development services to the legal community.

Law firms will able to choose from a library of pre-produced spots, covering various practice areas, which they can then customize. They can also use the Spot Runner platform to plan and buy TV time, targeting prospective clients based on demographic and geographic factors.

Spot Runner’s system has already been adopted by large real estate agencies, including Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, for agents to create local ads. Now it hopes to do the same for the legal profession. Martindale-Hubbell expects its partnership with Spot Runner to broaden the playing field for TV ads.

“For the most part, smaller law firms have viewed TV as unaffordable medium,” says Nicholas Karrat, senior director of marketing and alliances for Martindale-Hubbell. But at $499 for typical ad creative via Spot Runner, TV advertising comes within reach of solo practitioners and small firms, he adds.