Attorney Advertising and Changes in the Demand for Wills

Removing the ban on attorney advertising in 1977 was expected to improve consumer access to legal services. To test that proposition, we collected data on the ratio of estates probated without a will to estates probated with a will for the period 1974–1989 in one metropolitan area. It was expected that during the advertising period (August 1977 to December 1989) the time series would exhibit a downward trend statistically different from any trend component in the series prior to the advent of advertising and that the systematic behavior of the series would also change after the introduction of advertising. The intervention analysis of the ratio time series revealed that the behavior of the time series did change in 1977, consistent with the hypothesized effects of advertising on the demand for wills.