It was announced in the Legal Times that the founder and the CEO of Jaffe PR, Jay Jaffe, passed away at the age of 68 last week. The firm was based in Washington after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 1977 of the Bates v. State Bar of Arizona case. The decision made it legal for law firms to market the services they provide to the public.
“We are deeply saddened by Jay’s passing and will greatly miss his passion for living a life of learning, his innovative and bold style, and his many stories full of insight and humor,” Vivian Hood, an executive vice president at Jaffe PR, said in a written release. “He was an industry trailblazer who helped shape the way that law firms today communicate and manage their public reputations.”
The President and CEO of Levick Strategic Communications, Richard Levick, said that he was saddened when told that Jaffe passed away. The two first met in the decade of the 1990s. they men worked together on an advertising campaign with the name “The Human Side of Genius” for the former law firm Howrey.
“If you look at law firm advertising, he really introduced it to the profession,” Levick said in an interview with the Legal Times. “Jay’s brilliance was seeing the opportunity of the market and he recognized early on what was most important for law firms to do at the time. He took people who tend to be extremely slow in adapting and got them to see the importance of change.”