“With billions pouring into legal tech, 2024 will be the year everything changed, and it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
For legal marketing, 2023 was a tough year. We lost too many industry trailblazers. The passing of Richard Levick, Burkey Belser, and Monica Bay remind us about how unique our niche is, and sadly, how old.
Levick, “father of modern reputation management,” pioneered high-stakes litigation and crisis communications. Belser, creator of the nutrition facts label, was a Big Law branding visionary and brought law firms’ missions to life in ads. And Bay, who played a pivotal role in the intersection of law and technology, celebrated law firms’ innovative practices in her editorials at The Recorder and Law Technology News, which later became LegalTech News.
Their legacies live on in the individuals they mentored, many of whom are today’s leaders. Yet, as we stand on the shoulders of these giants, the legal —and legal marketing — industry is at the precipice of significant change and disruption.
With the release of ChatGPT in October 2022 to the release of Google’s Gemini this past month, 2023 served as a transitional year. With billions pouring into legal tech, 2024 will be “the year everything changed!” and it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen:
Digital marketing will transform with the use of virtual and augmented realities. Already, courts have been experimenting with virtual reality to recreate crime scenes. Some of us are old enough to remember Second Life…that is like Pong compared to what’s coming — and the low-cost, high-touch engagement that new virtual realities will facilitate in the future.
AI tools will proliferate and profoundly change the way law firms serve and service clients. Many firms — and many individual lawyers — will create branded avatars and chatbots to scale their expertise and make it available 24/7. Similar to the new “all-AI” news stations, firms will broadcast their own news sections via attractive, multi-cultural “AI anchors.”
It was nice to see so many law firms come together to take a stand against antisemitism, and as the work product becomes more AI/tech driven (and performance becomes more commoditized), the personality of firms — their values and ethics, especially — will become even more important and integral to their brands, otherwise based on performance.
Our industry has evolved significantly, shaped by the visionaries who paved the way and the technology that promises to move us forward. As it continues to innovate and redefine itself, marketing success will require nuanced communication and continual, endless adaptation.
Have a very Happy New Year, and a successful 2024!