My college buddy Walter has led a very Forrest Gump-like life. When he was a wee lad, his parents were friends and neighbors with Tom Cruise’s parents, and Walt has a picture of Tom attending one of his childhood birthday parties. As a high school senior, Walter somehow wound up in the opening scene of the movie Stripes, as one of the kids who stiffs Bill Murray on the cab fare (Walt’s the one who gets in first).

Walt went to Trinity High School in Louisville, Kentucky, and one of his classmates was Darryl Isaacs. Later both of them were roommates at University of Kentucky Law School. I met Darryl (a.k.a. “Big D”) back then, when I was visiting Walter for the weekend. Darryl doesn’t go by “Big D” anymore… now he’s known as the “Kentucky Hammer” or “The Hammer” or the “Heavy Hitter” and he’s the prototypical “flood the market with advertising” personal injury lawyer (sometimes referred to as “ambulance chasers.”) I drove our oldest son from Cincinnati to Purdue University yesterday for a campus visit. We were on the interstate in Indiana for roughly 300 miles round trip, and I spotted at least 20 billboards for Darryl. Some were within 100 yards of each other on opposite sides of the road.

His approach must be working. His firm now has offices in Indiana and Ohio in addition to Kentucky. Also, the production values on his commercials have really gone up. Here’s one from 2008 – note the blur of the NBA on the basketballs:

And here’s his much-more-polished regional ad from this year’s Super Bowl:

I know our society is too litigious as it is, and “The Hammer” probably isn’t helping matters. Attorneys like him are often the basis for jokes like this:

But I also know that Darryl has proven the effectiveness of advertising, and the Texas Law Hawk had better up his game, because he got served by “The Hammer.”