If you’ve driven any major American highway lately, you’ve probably noticed it: mile after mile of giant faces staring back at you, promising mountains of cash if you’ve ever been hurt, wronged, or simply inconvenienced. Lawyer billboards have taken over the American roadside — and now, one of the advertising industry’s own is calling it out. Gino Sesto, founder of DASH TWO, a digital and outdoor advertising agency based in Culver City, California, has had enough.
His recent essay “There Are Way Too Many Lawyer Billboards, And They’re Ruining The View,” is a candid, insider indictment of how personal injury law firms have flooded the outdoor advertising market — and what it says about the broader lawsuit culture driving that spending.
A recent drive from Los Angeles to Wyoming pushed him over the edge, where he says roughly 80% of the billboards he passed were personal injury attorneys promising paydays to anyone willing to sue.
“These obnoxious ads lack the spark, strategic thinking and creativity that make outdoor advertising work… Lawyer billboards are trashing the outdoor ad industry, and it really needs to end now.”
Coming from someone who has spent decades helping brands communicate effectively in outdoor spaces, that’s not a casual complaint — it’s a professional verdict.
The numbers behind the billboard boom are striking. According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, legal services topped the outdoor advertising charts in 2025, with industry spending reaching $650 million — more than double what it was in 2021 and a staggering 260% increase since 2017. Personal injury giant Morgan & Morgan ranked as the second-largest outdoor advertiser in the country last year, trailing only Apple. The second-place advertising category — hospitals and clinics — didn’t even crack $400 million.
Billboard spending has more than tripled between 2019 and today, clustering around the places most likely to yield clients: hospital corridors, courthouse exits, and the high-traffic commuter routes where accidents — and potential plaintiffs — are most common.
The visual result is what Sesto calls “Personal Injury Alley” — a 21-mile stretch of I-95 between Philadelphia’s airport and New Jersey that packs more than 60 attorney ads into a single corridor, averaging three lawyer billboards per mile.
He reports counting ten legal ads back-to-back on the 405 in Los Angeles, and describing the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City as a blur of firm names all delivering the same message: were you hurt, and can we get you paid? The saturation isn’t accidental. Firms purchase unsold “remnant” billboard space directly from vendors at discounts of up to 75%, flooding corridors with low-cost, low-creativity ads that no professional agency would be proud to claim.
“I once saw a lawyer’s face pasted onto the Statue of Liberty,” Sesto wrote. “Another used a ‘size matters’ joke like a bored teenager. Honestly, it’s embarrassing.”
What Sesto is describing on America’s highways is the physical manifestation of a lawsuit culture that is costing ordinary Americans far more than an ugly commute. The same billboard attorneys clogging the interstate are the ones driving up insurance premiums for small businesses, flooding courts with marginal claims, and — as we’ve seen in cases from New York City restaurants to Texas small businesses — pushing the cost of litigation onto consumers, employers, and communities that can least afford it. But these billboards aren’t just an aesthetic nuisance, they are advertising infrastructure for an industry built on volume litigation, not justice.
Sesto concludes by calling out the thin ethical line many of these billboard lawyers walk in their advertising:
“I can imagine these ads becoming illegal again someday. Plenty of these billboards walk a very thin ethical line. Every firm claims it can win you more than the next one, often preying on people when they’re most vulnerable. The massive promises they make seem almost impossible to keep.”
America’s highways shouldn’t look like a personal injury firm’s waiting room. Lawmakers who are serious about lawsuit reform should take note: the billboard explosion isn’t just a symptom of bad taste. It’s a sign of a legal ecosystem badly in need of reform — and the public, one billboard-lined mile at a time, is starting to notice.