For the Defense - Vol. 8, Issue 4 - 18

are exploring AI-enabled tools for a variety of functions, including
marketing and business development, and more tools are rapidly
being developed specifically for use in the legal industry.
When I asked ChatGPT what it would tell readers of For The
Defense about uses of AI in legal marketing, it suggested the
following (verified, condensed, and reworded by me):
*
*
*
Conducting market research on competitors, market
trends, and client hiring behavior.
Analyzing historical data to predict potential legal
issues on the horizon and anticipate client needs.
Generating high-quality content for websites, blogs,
and social media (interestingly, ChatGPT stopped
there and did not mention other potential content,
including articles, alerts and newsletters, award
nominations and submissions, presentation and CLE
materials, and other marketing content).
*
Providing real time assistance to website visitors,
using chatbots and digital virtual assistants to answer
frequently asked questions, schedule appointments,
and collect contact information.
* Qualifying leads using chatbots to pre-screen
prospects.
* Managing social media, including scheduling posts
and analyzing engagement data.
* Automating and personalizing email marketing,
including segmenting email lists to target specific
clients, as well as analyzing engagement data.
* Automating responses to client requests using
chatbots and digital assistants for 24/7 availability
and client engagement.
*
Analyzing data for insights on marketing campaigns.
Interestingly, ChatGPT also suggested the following uses for AIenabled
tools:
* Using predictive analytics to assess cases based
on historical data and legal precedents to predict
case outcomes, improve legal strategy, and inform
settlement negotiations and trial tactics.
* Using AI to identify which cases are more labor
intensive for resource allocation.
*
*
Streamlining case management.
* Reviewing legal documents and conducting legal
research.
Conducting and facilitating e-discovery.
* Automating case management tasks including
scheduling, sending calendar reminders, and
managing case files.
*
Streamlining billing, including tracking billable
hours, generating invoices, and payment reminders.
All great potential uses for AI tools in the legal industry-but not
legal marketing. I asked the program several times to revise the
response, including asking that it stick to legal marketing uses and
even pointing out that some of the information it had provided
was wrong, but to no avail. Every iteration of the draft article
include non-marketing uses for AI.
18 For The Defense l Vol. 8, Issue 4
It was almost as if the AI was trying to convince me how great it
was. (Or maybe I'm ascribing human traits to the program.)
Benefits, Limitations and Risks of AI-Enabled Tools
While my experiment with the public version of Chat GPT is, by
no means, the definitive exploration of AI's uses in legal marketing,
it does highlight some of its benefits and drawbacks. In general,
AI-enabled tools can help law firms leverage data for insights
and personalization of marketing efforts, automate routine or
repetitive marketing and business development tasks, and help
optimize human and technology resource allocation.
In marketing communications and content, in particular, AI can
be helpful for sparking creativity-suggesting topics and themes,
conducting research, providing an organizational framework, or
giving you a starting point from which to craft your own content.
Text-based AI tools exist that can assist in developing shorter or
simpler pieces such as blog or social media posts from longer
content, as well as scheduling and tracking analytics on social
media.
AI tools can offer time savings by automating other routine tasks,
even some client-facing interactions, if you and your clients can get
comfortable with chatbots or digital assistants as intermediaries.
The benefits include 24/7 responsiveness and client service; the
downsides include the lack of person-to-person engagement,
which may be off-putting to some people, and limitations on what
these virtual stand-ins can handle (who among us hasn't been
frustrated with our interactions with the automated chat feature
on e-commerce or finance sites).
If you've followed any of the wider business and general
circulation coverage on the foibles of AI, you're probably already
aware that inaccurate and downright false information is one of
the biggest potential problems of using AI-enabled tools. This has
significant consequences for lawyers, as evidenced by the cautionary
tale of the lawyers representing a personal injury plaintiff against
an airline for injuries he allegedly sustained as a result of being
hit with a metal refreshment cart. The lawyers used ChatGPT to
conduct legal research, which they then used in a legal brief on
a statute of limitations challenge by the airline. The problem was
that the cases they cited did not actually exist. When the airline's
counsel questioned the cases in the brief, the lawyers went back
to ChatGPT to confirm the cases were valid, and the AI program
reportedly provided fake decisions. When neither the court nor
opposing counsel could find the cases on Lexis or Westlaw, the
lawyers confessed to using the AI tool, which they claimed they
thought was a new, super-powered search engine. Ultimately, they
were sanctioned by the court, not to mention suffering a great
deal of embarrassment and reputational damage.
Using AI to do legal research and generate substantive content
for thought leadership and branded content such as alerts, articles
and presentations carries a similar risk of embarrassment and
reputational damage. So, it's imperative that AI-generated content
is reviewed and edited by lawyers to ensure accuracy. Beyond
accuracy, using AI to generate content-whether substantive
content or marketing copy for a website, professional bios, award
and ranking submissions and the like-can often result in generic
For the Defense - Vol. 8, Issue 4

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