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 One fictional criminal pauses while climbing out a window,
carrying a laptop to say "Thanks Dan," to the camera, while a pair
of men carrying handguns offer a similar message before pulling ski
masks over their faces in the three-minute, 27-second ad posted on
YouTube by criminal defense attorney Daniel Muessig.
Muessig, a 2012 University of Pittsburgh Law School graduate, then
makes his own pitch: "Trust me, I may have a law degree, but I think
like a criminal."
The spot has been viewed more than 80,000 times since Muessig posted
it on Thursday, and the 32-year-old attorney said he believed the
tongue-in-cheek approach would appeal to possible clients.
"I wanted to connect with my potential clients in a way that people
from my generation could understand," Muessig said in a Friday phone
interview. "I wanted to give people something that would be
memorable and entertaining."
Tom Loftus, spokesman for the Allegheny County Bar Association, said
he found the ad "insulting to Pittsburgh lawyers and lawyers across
the country, who take great pride in their profession."
He said he worried that the video could be misinterpreted: "There
could be kids watching it, or people who don't even understand what
tongue-in-cheek means, and what they'll see is: if you commit a
crime this attorney will get you off without any explanation."
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Muessig defended the spot but said he would take it down if law
enforcement or a legal professional organization asked him to.
"It's a send-up of the cartoonishly amoral Jewish criminal defense
attorney," he said. "The criminal justice system is broken, it
creates a system where we are basically putting people on a conveyor
belt to prison. If you want to get your ire up, get your ire up
about that."
(Editing by Scott Malone and Richard Chang)
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