Lindsay thinks she knows how to bail you out! Do you trust her?

By Ilia Papadimitriou

Lindsay thinks she knows how to bail you out! 

Do you trust her?

Lindsay Lohan is the new spokesperson for Laywer.com and she is now laughing at her own past. Lawyer.com decision to hire Lohan gained media’s attention and a tweet to Donald Trump to find a Lawyer via this company helped them to become a viral all over the world. Thus, was this choice a good or a pad public relations technic?  

Who is Lindsay Lohan?

She started her career very young, playing child roles since the age of ten and in 2004 she received her first MTV movie award. However, Lindsay is not Disney’s young talent and teen idol anymore. In 2007 she started having troubles with the law on several occasions, as well as, with drug and alcohol abuse. Since then she has been bailed out of jail numerous times, until 2015 when she had to complete community service. After all these years she has shifted through a lot of lawyers and public relations’ agents.

Did you know Lawyer.com?

 Laywer.com was launched in 2009. Gerald Gorman is the firm’s CEO and founder. If someone takes into account that the website has less than 2.000 likes on Facebook, they would think that the company is not very well-known. By reading the name “Laywer.com” you could imagine that this is a typical law firm that providing legal services. Instead, this website only helps you find a lawyer. It is like googling “lawyer near me” with the only difference that they ask you to describe your problem, so they can match you with a lawyer with the expertise to handle your case - not unlike Tinder.

Lawyer.com and LiLo

As mentioned above, Lindsay Lohan has an established know-how on searching for a lawyer. Considering she got away each time, she might even be good at it. The firm’s specialty is to connect people with lawyers. Is, thus, a spokesperson like Lindsay the right choice for the role? People having trouble with the law and searching for a lawyer may feel familiar with someone like LiLo. They might even feel relieved seeing her laughing out of prison and this may help them feel better with themselves. She is a celebrity who admits on a video for Lawyer.com that it was hard to find a lawyer and she asks people to trust her about that. On another video, she is even laughing at her past showing that with a good lawyer from Laywer.com anyone could get over troublesome past habits.

Almost a month after those videos were released, the news were reporting that the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, had problems finding a legal representation team. Lindsay grabbed the opportunity to recommend him Lawyer.com via Twitter as the solution to his problem. After all, is there a big difference between the two as clients?

Overall, is Lawyer.com good or bad in Public Relations?

Jackson andMoloney (2018), refer to the three dimensions of ethical public relations practice, i.e. societal responsibilities, truth-telling and the role of professional bodies. Lindsay Lohan told publicly the truth about her troubles in the past and based on her experience on legal services she advised people to seek a lawyer via this company. Instead of making a mainstream choice and hiring someone who champions, for instance, political correctness to advertise the firm, public relations professionals chose Lindsay and made her tell her truth to the world.

Additionally, by choosing Lohan as the spokesperson, Lawyer.com came to the spotlight. Schafraadet all (2016), wrote an article to explain the agenda building power of corporate press releases. They tried to predict whether a press release would gain media attention or not. They said that timing, elite organization, factors such as the element of surprise, catchy titles and photos, the topic of the press release and a CEO’s quote could trigger the media and gain attention. The press release that announced Lohan as the new spokesperson was indeed a surprise for the media and it was followed by a YouTube video on the company’s website, with Lindsay answering the question “Why did Lindsay Lohan join Lawyer.com?”. What could be catchier than Lohan promoting a matchmaker for legal services? What is more, the CEO of the company was also quoted in the press release. The media was more than interested in Lindsay’s next step and each time they say Lohan they also mentioned Laywer.com.

Howes and Sallot(2012) wrote an article about a spokesperson’s credibility and its impact. Usually people perceive customer testimonials as more credible than a company’s spokesperson. At Lawyer.com it is mentioned, in the same page with the press release, that Lindsay used company's service to find a lawyer, which could be perceived as a customer testimonial. According to the article, low-expertise business people think that a customer is more trustworthy than anyone else. This company is oriented towards people who have common legal issues and no expertise on legal services, so, a costumer with a big and well-known experience on offenses, like Lindsay, is the right choice.

About the author:

Ilia Papadimitriou is a Research Master student in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. She was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, where she completed her Bachelor studies in International and European Studies. She is mainly interested in Corporate Communication. She likes pink and she drinks tons of coffee. 

Howes, P., & Sallot, L. (2013). Company spokesperson vs. customer testimonial: Investigating quoted spokesperson credibility and impact in business-to-business communication. Public Relations Review, 39(3), 207–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.04.002

Jackson, D., & Moloney, K. (2019). “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”. A qualitative study of ethical PR practice in the United Kingdom. Public Relations Inquiry, 8(1), 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X18810732

Schafraad, P., van Zoonen, W., & Verhoeven, P. (2016). The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power. Public Relations Review, 42(3), 451–458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.11.014