Embracing technology is vital for law firms that want to increase their client base and revenue. This article highlights the importance of law firm technology and how to leverage it to obtain more legal leads for your firm. If you have questions about using technology to improve your legal marketing, Forward Lawyer Marketing is ready to help you.
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The legal field has changed dramatically in recent years as more firms turn to legal technology to support and expand their businesses. As of mid-2021, $1 billion in private funds has been invested in companies focusing on legal technology. More law firms realize the importance of gaining on the legal competition by investing in technology. Several reasons that law firm technology is vital are:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many more law firms began to use technology to meet with clients remotely. Freeing up attorney time can make a huge difference for most law firms, meaning they can spend more time working on cases. They can also focus their expertise on getting the best results for their clients.
The law field is always aware of safeguarding legal documents and client details. Many attorneys were paper-based in the past, but this was risky in terms of losing records or having them destroyed in a fire.
Today, cloud-based information solutions allow attorneys to work remotely from anywhere. When implemented correctly, cloud-based software can offer a high degree of information security above paper-based systems.
There have been huge changes since the pandemic in how consumers are willing to work with attorneys. In 2018, a Clio’s Legal Trends Report survey discovered that only 23% of legal consumers would consider working with an attorney online. But by 2021, 79% of legal consumers said they would do so.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and technology-assisted review (TAR) have significantly changed legal discovery protocol. Artificial intelligence software can look for patterns in massive data sets to allow category coding that may streamline legal document reviews. This change can reduce the time, effort, and number of lawyers needed for a manual document review.
Similarly, TAR may focus on and expedite the legal review process by choosing keywords and assorted metadata to find and tag critical legal documents. Law firms using AI and TAR can make discovery faster and less expensive. When less lawyer time can be spent on discovery, attorneys can work more on more critical legal tasks, such as devising the best legal strategy for a case.
Legal technology has also helped to encourage flexible work schedules, telecommuting, and other ways to work. Many attorneys can now access their law firms’ systems from home to link to clients, and colleagues, and produce billable hours from almost any location.
Being able to work remotely and flexibly is especially critical to younger attorneys. Many do not want to sacrifice their personal lives and spend endless hours in the law office. Their expectations differ from the older principals and partners who usually run law firms. Firms that want to attract the newest and best legal talent must use technology to provide employees with a more flexible work schedule.
Embracing technology is essential for growing law firms. Below are several ways that technology can be used to increase legal leads and grow your firm:
AI can be used for legal marketing by performing predictive analytics. With machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence can review data on earlier client behavior and estimate future outcomes. This may help your attorneys pinpoint potential legal clients and target legal marketing more efficiently.
For instance, if an attorney analyzes data from previous cases, she can find patterns suggesting a possible new client. This might include client demographics, case type, and past client behavior. Using this data to produce a highly targeted marketing campaign could boost the chances of finding new clients.
Artificial intelligence can study data on your clients’ behavior and preferences to create personalized messages that will appeal to possible clients. With tools such as machine learning and NLP, lawyers can devise targeted marketing strategies.
Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence, including Tars, Drift, and Mobile Monkey are growing in popularity in the legal field. Chatbots are a fantastic use of legal technology because they offer clients and prospects support anytime, answering common questions and offering information on popular legal services. With natural language processing, legal chatbots can immediately grasp and respond to questions from clients and consumers.
Chatbots give lawyers a critical tool for converting a legal prospect into a paying client. Giving consumers fast and convenient access to legal information can help you build trust with current and future clients.
Social media is not new technology, but many law firms still need to pay more attention to the importance of the power of many social media platforms. Leveraging the power of social media is a critical networking tactic that many high-growth law firms use.
A 2022 social media report found that 90% of attorney respondents stated that their law firms are active on one or more social media channels. If your law firm lacks a social media presence, it is easy for consumers to miss you and go to other firms. Forward Lawyer Marketing can manage your social media presence and help you obtain more legal leads.
Law firm principals should encourage their attorneys and legal professionals to use social media platforms to connect and communicate with clients and others in the field. But on the law firm side, you also should use your corporate social media profiles to improve brand awareness in your community. It also is essential to consider which social media platforms to use, depending on your business and market:
Engaging with your legal audience is vital for an effective legal marketing strategy. So it is unsurprising that many high-growth law firms rely on video marketing as a critical pillar of their legal strategy. Many marketing sources say that video is more important than blogs and infographics as the top media type for content strategy. Video has many outstanding benefits in all fields, including legal.
For instance, video offers tremendous flexibility; your marketing team can upload it to YouTube, embed it in a blog or vlog, and share it on Facebook and Instagram. You also can boost your Google organic search position with dynamic video content.
Google views videos on your website or blog as a powerful indicator of helpful content and may give your site a small bump in the algorithm. YouTube, the second-most visited website after Google, is also vital in search engine rankings. YouTube behaves as a type of search engine itself. If you create video content and optimize the titles and descriptions, your law firm will be even more visible to possible clients.
It is nothing new to point out that your law firm should have a website optimized for modern mobile devices. By now, most Internet searches happen on smartphones; we are more than 10 years into the era of smartphones and tablets.
We point out that mobile technology is essential for staying ahead of your legal competition because some law firm sites still need to be more mobile-friendly. If your law firm website can be more mobile-friendly, it will positively affect your law firm marketing.
Not having a mobile-friendly site could penalize your law firm even more in the future. Google will eventually change how it indexes websites from focusing on PCs to concentrating on smartphones. This means if your law firm does not have a mobile-friendly site, your website may not appear in some Google searches.
Today, Google’s preference is that your law firm has one website that scales automatically to the device it is on. This is what being genuinely mobile responsive means. If that is what your site is, you are in good shape. But if your site is not there yet, you should invest in website design and development to make your legal web presence 100% mobile-friendly.
It is clear that technology offers progressive law firms more digital marketing opportunities than ever. Following the law firm technology tips outlined in this article will help you obtain more legal leads and build your brand. But if your law firm would rather focus on legal work than marketing, our law firm marketing professionals can help you. Call Forward Lawyer Marketing today at (888) 590-5947 for a free marketing consultation.
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