Ken Hur : Madison lawyer who built cult following through advertising dead at 87

George Hesselberg of the Wisconsin State Journal reports this morning that longtime Madison lawyer, Ken Hur, has died.

Traveling from Notre Dame up to Madison for Badger football games in the mid-70’s, my friends at UW would rave about Ken Hur and his television ads. College kids in Madison talked about Hur as much as they did about Monty Python, the then raving UK television comedy.

And why not? Hur, on the heals of the Supreme Court decision in Bates vs Arizona allowing attorney advertising, offered the opportunity to “talk to a real lawyer for 10 bucks” at his Madison Legal Clinic. And Hur had a myriad of ways to spread the word about him.

• He had an airplane fly over Badger football games pulling his name on a banner.
• He had a parked crunched car with the message painted on it “Sideswiped? Call Ken Hur.”
• He had a hearse with “No Frills Wills” on the doors that he parked by the Camp Randall football stadium on football Saturdays and on State Street, lined with college shops, restraurats, and bars.
• He parodied a local jeweler’s television ads by surfacing – all 300 pounds of him – out of a pool with a pearl necklace on.
• He told television viewers to call him at 1-800-FLORIDA as that is where he’ll be if they call him enough.

Hur knew he’d be called out by the Wisconsin Bar Association, but that was part of the attraction. It got him even more exposure among a loyal following of folks who didn’t have the most respect for authority. 1975 Madison, recall, was only 7 or 8 years removed from the Vietnam War protests.

I never viewed Hur as a blight on our legal profession the way I view much lawyer TV and Internet advertising today. Hur parodied the profession and, with his legal clinic, made the law accessible to people who couldn’t afford a lawyer.

I’m not alone in my favorable views of Hur. I exchanged emails this morning about Hur’s death with Will Hornsby, Staff Counsel with the ABA and author of Marketing and Legal Etgics. Will and I have exchanged stories about Hur over the years, both looking favorably as to what he brought to the law.

photo credit: L. Roger Turner, 1979