CBS News recently ran a headline ‘ChatGPT bot passes law school exam’. Minnesota University Law School professors gave ChatGPT (a bot that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate relevant responses from simple prompts) the same tests as their students. According to the professors, they graded the tests blindly as part of their regular class grading process. While the bot didn’t do well in essay questions, it excelled in multiple-choice questions scoring a C+, a passing grade. 

ChatGPT and other AI tools have exceptional capabilities that have continued to transform how people work and do things across multiple industries and disciplines. AI has been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency and accuracy across all industries. On the marketing front, specifically, there’s widespread adoption of AI in PPC advertising, content research, gathering customer insights, and personalizing website experiences, among other uses. 

While the legal field was initially hesitant, recent years have seen increasing adoption of technology in marketing and across the entire firm. A survey on the legal industry’s AI software market projects a growth of 29.17% between 2018 and 2028, with North America holding the largest market share.

What Is Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a machine’s or computer’s ability to simulate human intelligence to perform tasks such as translating languages, decision-making, speech recognition, and visual perception. Examples of popular AI tools include Google Translate, AI-enabled diagnostic tools, Alexa, and Apple’s face ID software.

While AI software cannot equal human intelligence, it’s no match when it comes to speed. AI tools can analyze vast amounts of data in real time and provide insights that would be impossible to obtain using human effort. Generally, employing artificial intelligence in marketing and other disciplines leads to great efficiency and accuracy. 

Overview of AI in Legal Marketing

The adoption of AI in the legal industry has increasingly gained popularity. There are multiple AI tools and technologies specially designed to automate different legal processes, including document management, legal research, due diligence, electronic discovery, litigation analysis, electronic billing, and more.

Legal marketing has also benefited immensely from automation with tools such as AI-powered virtual legal assistants powering real-time communication. Statistics indicate that website optimization is the biggest digital marketing strategy for law firms. Installing a live chat allows website visitors to engage with the firm and obtain information in real-time. Besides enhancing the accessibility of legal services, AI-powered virtual assistants are highly accurate in simulating human-like conversations, leading to better client experiences.   

From powering communications to content research and curation, AI-powered paid advertising, and predictive analytics, AI can optimize your legal marketing in many ways. In the following section, we will discuss in detail the future of AI in legal marketing, specifically the opportunities and challenges it presents.

Opportunities and Challenges of AI in Legal Marketing

The growing AI-powered technologies and tools offer law firms opportunities to optimize their marketing, reach more target audiences, and improve client experiences. From increasing personalization to optimizing conversion, enhancing customer relationships, and improving analytics, incorporating AI in marketing can turn around a firm’s digital strategy.  

Below are some of the opportunities AI offers, which you can leverage to optimize your legal marketing:

• Predictive analytics – AI helps lawyers analyze past data and use it to predict future outcomes and develop more targeted marketing strategies. 
• Chatbots – Live chats or chatbots offer law firms an opportunity to provide website visitors with real-time communication, enhance their experience, and boost conversions. Yet, according to statistics, only 6% of lawyer websites have the live chat feature. With the increasing advancement in chatbot capabilities (personalization and accuracy), incorporating live chat technology should be every law firm’s priority.  
• Content research and curation – While there are tools for automating content creation, AI-generated content is highly generic. However, AI is immensely beneficial in generating topic ideas, researching, and curating content. 
• Personalized marketing – According to McKinsey, personalization helps drive repeat engagement and loyalty. 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and they get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. AI enables you to deliver personalized marketing experiences to clients fostering better engagement and loyalty.  
• Lead generation and qualification – AI allows you to automate lead generation by analyzing client behavior and then targeting potential leads based on the insights. You can also score leads with the help of AI tools (i.e., analyze lead behavior and their likelihood to convert) for targeted marketing.   
• Programmatic advertising – AI powers programmatic advertising by analyzing client demographics and behavior to optimize paid ad targeting on services such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Advertising, etc. 

Challenges Facing AI Implementation 

Despite the opportunities AI offers to legal marketing, there are challenges accompanying its adoption, including:

• Limited IT infrastructure – AI relies on extensive amounts of data to generate accurate results. Implementing it requires the support of robust IT infrastructures, which can be expensive to set up and run, especially for small firms.  
• Proving return on investment (ROI) – Even in larger firms with budgets to set up a strong IT framework to support AI, getting buy-in from the decision-makers can be challenging, especially when there’s little information to prove ROI.  
• Lack of human touch – As much as AI increases efficiency and boosts lead generation through automated communication, it still lacks the human aspect of empathy, which is necessary when interacting with clients seeking legal services.  
• Potential bias – If the data used to train AI is biased, it could perpetuate the biases in its responses. This can be counterproductive to a law firm and increase its liability exposure.   
• Privacy concerns – Cyber threats affect every industry, including the legal. While AI has superior self-learning technology to recognize potential threats, the risk of new attacks is ever present.  

Key Takeaways

• Despite the potential challenges of AI implementation, the technology presents law firms with immense opportunities to optimize marketing, reach more audiences, and improve ROI 
• AI tools offer law firms increased efficiency and accuracy 
• Website optimization is the biggest digital marketing strategy for law firms 
• AI powers marketing personalization, which according to McKinsey, helps drive repeat engagement and loyalty