Alongside Charlotte Karila Vaillant of Signe Distinctif, I had the pleasure of speaking at the 18th edition of Campus as part of a series of seminars for lawyers focused on artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Campus is one of the largest annual training gatherings for lawyers, organized by the Paris Bar Association. Campus 2024 took place from October 9 to 11 at the Jardin d’Acclimatation.
This event offered more than 80 training sessions, both in-person and online, covering all areas of law, allowing lawyers to stay up-to-date on legal and regulatory developments and share their experiences.
Our training session, entitled “Improving Visibility and Developing Your Clientele with AI Marketing,” was part of a series of presentations dedicated to improving the use and implementation of artificial intelligence tools by law firms.
AI, Prompt & Law Firms: How to Optimize Artificial Intelligence
The training highlighted the importance of understanding how artificial intelligence tools work and how to organize interactions with them, particularly through LLMs (Learning to Manage Legal Objects).
Learning how to use “prompts” is essential, just as mastering search tools in legal databases or on the internet is. A prompt consists of instructions or a series of data provided to an AI system, which uses this information to generate responses or create content in text, images, or other media formats.
Bar associations offer a number of professional guides for lawyers, providing important details and advice on communication and advertising, related ancillary business activities, social media and best practices, and, more recently, documentation related to artificial intelligence tools. While highly praised by many colleagues, there is currently no dedicated service within bar associations to support legal professionals in developing effective communication strategies and providing certified tools for law firms.
This is largely due to the lack of specific expertise within bar associations in marketing and communication. Furthermore, the wide diversity of lawyers’ activities, their structures, and their marketing objectives significantly complicates the standardization of support procedures.
AI Marketing & Law Firms: Find the tools that suit your needs.
Marketing AI is essentially still generative AI that improves and automates marketing strategies and actions. It allows law firms to prepare or refine their marketing strategy: identifying prospects, profiling clients, conducting competitive analysis, and more.
These content creation tools, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), automate and enhance the visibility of law firms on their websites and digital platforms where their clients are present.
Ultimately, these tools help attract and convert clients, prospects, and internet users through personalized outreach campaigns or targeted advertising.
The existing digital tools for developing and deploying a brand were also presented. This is indeed a crucial element in the visibility strategy of law firms.
Lawyers & Social Media: Preparation & Caution
Lawyers’ use of social media should only be part of a well-defined marketing strategy that includes:
- Identifying the type of content to be offered, the target social media platforms, the desired audience, and the services offered.
- Reflecting on the motivations behind these posts: legal information, networking, firm promotion, recruitment, etc.
Too often, lawyers embark on preparing and producing content in complex formats—podcasts, videos, image carousels—without anticipating the time and resources required, sometimes resulting in disappointing outcomes. This is because they haven’t first determined whether the target audience will be interested in and receptive to this type of content and format.
The training provided an opportunity to reiterate the importance of understanding the specific characteristics of social media and the risks of lawyers’ communication transforming into influence-based communication.
By imitating the practices of commercial influencers, lawyers may violate legal and ethical guidelines regarding communication and advertising through a race for audience reach, content distortion, competition outside of their professional lives, and a gradual blurring of the lines between private and professional life, among other things.
