A firm's law library at night: leather reporters lit amber by one lamp, a long reading table with two chairs side by side and an open brief.

First chair wins the case. Second chair wins the market.

The backgrounds that built this

Fortune 500 disciplines, applied to one category.

Strategy

Brand positioning and market intelligence, earned at the category’s top tier.

Work includes:
Creative

Advertising built on real data, not stock photos or legal templates.

Work includes:
Product & Media

Compliance-grade product and programmatic precision.

Work includes:
The Philosophy

Everything we make for a firm should be as honestly won as the cases it takes.

What it means

A case is honestly won through genuine advocacy: the attorney believed in it, worked it, earned the outcome. A brand, an ad, a website or a lead is honestly won the same way. The person on the other end saw something true about their situation and responded because it moved them, not because a headline manufactured a panic they didn’t feel.

Why it works

That difference shows up in the intake room. The claimant who was honestly persuaded arrives with accurate expectations. The intake call is confirmation, not damage control. Honesty is not a constraint on conversion. It is the mechanism that produces it.

What second chair prepares

Four things a firm’s growth runs on. Pick the one that’s costing you the most.

  1. 01Brand strategy
  2. 02Ad creative
  3. 03Website and intake
  4. 04Lead generation
  1. 01 · Brand strategyBrand strategy

    One story about your firm, told the same way by every vendor, page and ad.

  2. 02 · Ad creativeAd creative

    Your team runs the ads, or we do. Either way, ads you’d show a judge.

  3. 03 · Website and intakeWebsite and intake

    From the first click to the first call, with nothing lost between.

  4. 04 · Lead generationLead generation

    Advertising built on your market’s own numbers, every lead scored before it reaches your queue.

Each starts with a brief: two weeks, a fixed fee, and a plan that is the scope for whatever comes next.

See the services →
Why one team

Leads are rented. The rest of this, you own.

A lead vendor’s pipeline is a rental. The month you stop paying, it stops. A brand, a website, an intake path and a creative system are the opposite. They keep working the month after the invoice, and they’re worth more to the firm every year they’re in place.

That’s why the four sit together. Three are the assets a firm keeps. The fourth fills them, run by the people who built the other three, so the ad promises only what intake can deliver and the media is bought against numbers you can see.

What you own at the end
  1. 01Brand

    One document every vendor works from.

    Yours
  2. 02Website and intake

    Source, files and access, handed over.

    Yours
  3. 03Creative

    A system your team extends without us in the room.

    Yours
  4. 04Leads

    The market read, the account, the records. Nothing held hostage.

    Yours

One team, one number, and a firm that keeps what it paid for. Every build ends with a handoff. Files, source and access are yours.

Davis Ballard, Alex DuBelko and Sasha Zinshtein, the three founders of Second Chair
The team

Three founders. Forty years of combined experience.

Davis Ballard

Creative and strategy

18 years building advertising for the world’s most recognized brands.

  • Strategy and creative across Disney, Google, Samsung, NFL, NBA, Uber, The Macallan and Optum.
  • First employee at Vacation® sunscreen: 14 beauty awards and 300+ PR mentions in the first year, 27M earned impressions for the launch.
  • Compliance-grade creative for SEC-regulated fintech. Digital strategy for Stanford, Harvard and five enterprise healthcare institutions.
Creative & Strategy Systems

Alex DuBelko

Product and technology

Built TradeStation’s mobile trading platform: 1M users, 99.96% crash-free, 100% FINRA/SEC compliant.

  • Product and analytics at Compass: market intelligence tools across 22 real estate markets.
  • Private equity at Breakwater Management: financial modeling behind $550M+ in fund activity.
  • 13+ years shipping product across fintech, real estate, private equity and media.
Product & Compliance Systems

Sasha Zinshtein

Sales and media

Programmatic media across Bose, Coach, Diageo, H&R Block, Indeed, Tinder and PepsiCo.

  • Pioneered programmatic campaigns on Forbes, TripAdvisor and Rolling Stone when the major platforms were closed.
  • Sales and account management across ad-tech, financial services and architecture.
Performance Media

Three companies would struggle to assemble this combination. We built it into one from the start.

Start here

State your case. We’ll write the brief.

No hourly meter · Every phase priced first · Stop any month

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