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26. A Legal Holiday: Using Electronic Greeting Cards to Position a Law Firm as Friendly

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, is a law firm with offices across the United States, many legal talents, and an expert stable of qualified lawyers. It turns out that the firm also has a sense of humor. For the holiday season, the law firm retained Wechsler Ross & Partners to design an electronic holiday card that poked fun at itself and its professional peers and that positioned the firm as friendly and contemporary—no easy feat among lawyers.

Why It Works

This is likely one of very few amusing holiday cards from lawyers on the planet, which makes it even funnier. In the card, the lawyers go through the wording for their holiday card, but shoot down all options for fear of offending or inciting legal action. Finally the group settles on “warm wishes,” which itself requires an asterisk to specify, among other things, that “the wish, whether warm, neutral or cold, is under no obligation to come true.”

“Humor is a delicate area for a law firm, which must carefully avoid offense,” says principal Dan Ross. Ross's objective in designing the e-card was to reinforce a warm relationship and inculcate positive feelings in an often-contentious profession. The e-card was sent to clients, prospects, colleagues, and peers, as well as posted to its website, with resounding positive response.

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