Did somebody say McLawsuit?
I’ve never noticed it with respect to McDonald’s, but KFC does not taste the same everywhere in the world. It’s not better, or worse, just slightly different. Maybe they have a stronger local sourcing policy.
I was going to mention Cochran. It’s a straight-up franchise operation.
Well, Johnny Cochran’s franchise may actually work.
Ask a typical American, “Who’s your doctor,” and he’ll immediately reply, “Dr. Jones.” Ask “Who’s your lawyer,” and most will say, “Um…”
I have never been arrested and have never needed a lawyer on the spur of the moment. Most middle class Americans are in the same boat. So, if an average guy DID happen to get arrested, and needed a lawyer, who’s he going to call? Whichever lawyer’s name he REMEMBERS, probably. He sure remembers Johnny Cochran, and that MAY be enough to get him to call the local Cochran franchise.
I laugh at the local TV and radio ads for lawyers who specialize in DWI cases, but hey, if I ever got arrested for drunk driving (purely hypothetical; I don’t drink and never have), who would I call? Probably one of those guys whose ads I’ve seen.
There was a fictional one on the old LA-Law tv show, Torts-R-US.
I’m curious - how does it work?
Since I’ve been watching that O.J. Simpson trial miniseries (I’m almost done), I’m leaning towards them specializing in Criminal Defense with the race card. St Louis would have been convenient for them as Ferguson is a suburb.
Just to be clear, I believe most American bar associations prohibit non-lawyers from being shareholders in a law firm. It’s why there are no large consolidated “professional services” companies in the United States.
Except for hospitals, medical clinics, McKinsey Consulting… but yeah. 
I don’t think that firm is a franchise, as the term is usually defined. It’s simply a firm withoffices in several (14) states. That’s unusual for a plaintiffs’ firm, but does not indicate any franchise arrangement.
The web site might not disclose it very clearly, but unless things have changed since 2014, I can tell you that it’s a network of unrelated law firms.that license the use of the Cochran trademarks.
Cochran Firm P.C. v. Cochran Firm L.A. LLP, 572 Fed. App’x 491 (9th Cir. 2014):
Looking at the list of Franchise Agreements available through the state of Wisconsin’s Department of Financial Institution’s website, I see not a single law firm among the over 3,000 companies listed, not even the ones mentioned in this thread as possible candidates.
As others have mentioned, standardization is an issue with 50 states and 50 sets of laws. The closest thing to a law franchise I can think that is operating today might be Legal Shield.
The other issue, of course, is there is little to franchise. When a person buys a franchise, they likely do it for one of two reasons: the information or the brand. You can’t franchise the law information - the purchasers have to earn their law degrees elsewhere, so there is little of value you can provide them on that service. The other is the brand - while there are famous law firms, I don’t know of any legal brands that are nationwide.
Hell, a third problem is that the franchisor is going to want to get paid - royalties, required purchase agreements, etc. A lot of the revenue opportunities that exist in many franchises wouldn’t exist under a legal franchise and hell, once you get down to it, all your franchisees will be lawyers who will eventually be suing you to get out of the franchise agreement, so why bother?
Thinking about it, a fourth reason: The VAST majority of franchise opportunities are a word that rhymes with “hams” and sounds like “scams”… lawyers are trained to read contracts, unlike the vast number of people who buy a franchise because they want to play barista for a few hundred thousand dollars or whatever. Any lawyer stupid enough to sign a typical franchise agreement is not a lawyer I want representing my interests!
The case I cited above is a trademark dispute between two firms using the Cochran name and one of the important facts is that the defendant had at one time a valid trademark licensing agreement under which he paid licensing fees to the trademark holder.
I don’t know whether that fits the definition of “franchise” that must be registered under Wisconsin law, but it seems to fit the general idea of a franchise arrangement.
Looking through both Wisconsin’s and California’s websites for franchise agreements, I can’t find a single law firm that franchises.
There are some paralegal franchisors, Legal Zoom, and “legal support services” firms such as Axzas… but no actual law firms that I’ve found.
However, the California website suuuuuuuucks, so it’s possible one slipped through and I didn’t see it.
Sorry, but not at all.
A Franchise Disclosure Document is a 200-1,400 page document specifying how you’re going to pay to how they are going to get paid… and everything in between, including the Franchise Agreement, processes, training requirements, etc, which includes verbiage about trademark usage.
I’m not going to research the lawsuit, but the bit that you quoted appears to be saying that the use of the trademark conveys the appearance of a unified law firm, but in fact, the Cochran Law Firm is not such a thing, not even on the Franchise level.
Same in Canada. No non-lawyers can have a financial interest in a law firm.
What about Dentons and Norton Rose? They’re global firms which have a presence in the US.
It’s the “consolidated” part that Acensray was referring to, meaning cross-professional. Those groups will have lawyers working for them, but as in-house. They won’t be providing legal services to the general public.
There can’t be a consolidated firm of accountants and lawyers, for instance, unlike in Europe where such arrangements are permitted.
This is pretty much it, and how I suspect that we sometimes end up with the “Random City” office of “Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, LLC” out of the clear blue.
Norton Rose Fulbright essentially bought a huge US firm- Fulbright and Jaworski. I suspect that when they did so, they basically gave all the partners a share in the larger company, and I also suspect that the ownership is a lawyer’s dream of complicated ownership and operation only as much as is legally necessary in certain countries.