Nov 28, 2023
I had the privilege of attending the first in-person LMA Tech West conference since 2019 here in Los Angeles, California. And the energy of innovation, excitement, and eagerness to learn was apparent from the second you walked into the conference.
The group at LMA Tech West 2023 was not only incredibly friendly and welcoming but also brilliant. The great thing about this event was its specific focus on legal technology, which means that everyone in attendance prioritized keeping their finger on the pulse of innovation.
This means that between the sessions on the agenda and the conversations with attendees between sessions and over networking breaks, it became very clear which technology and trends to keep an eye on as we head into 2024. Here are the top themes that emerged.
Data
Although data has long been a priority of firms, with the buzzword “data-driven” being thrown around liberally. However, as technology (and client expectations) evolve, data is quickly rising in priority even more.
Turning data into dollars
Intapp’s session dove into the topic of leveraging data to make a real impact on your firm’s bottom line. One major point highlighted here was the personality profile of a lawyer that can often cause a rift between them and the marketers that support them, as well as negatively impact their ability to win new business.
The solution, the speaker proposed, is data. While data is tricky to wrangle, when compared to content, because it’s owned by everyone, it helps lawyers be more proactive. Marketers are encouraged to organize (and enrich) their data in a way that makes it easy to quickly hand over data to their lawyers that can support the conversation they’re having with a prospect.
Often, this requires a process or technology update. Investing in a dedicated experience management system like Pitchly that makes it easy to access and activate your data will put you leaps and bounds ahead of other teams.
Using data to make decisions
The importance of data in making decisions for your marketing campaigns was also touched on in a session by Greenberg Glusker CMO Sheenika Gandhi and digital marketing strategist Jessica Aries. They took a deep dive into how to leverage tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Looker Studio, and your content distribution tools to prioritize the content you create.
Much of this conversation was about how to make it in a cookie-less world, a topic that’s increasingly relevant as many tools move away from cookie-based tracking.
In this conversation, they highlighted the importance of using UTMs to track traffic, how to set up actionable dashboards in GA4, and ideas for creating new content or updating old content. The overall theme was intentionality. As potential clients become pickier and pickier, the importance of creating extremely focused content backed by data is only growing more each year.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The theme that permeated the most sessions and one-on-one conversations at LMA Tech West 2023, however, was AI. Since the introduction of ChatGPT within the past year, firms are now beginning to embrace its efficiency-boosting possibilities.
Prompt engineering
For firms that are currently using AI in some manner, the importance of prompt engineering has become clear. In a session by Pitchly’s Jylian Ibsen, attendees were led through a practice of creating marketing collateral - whether that’s an email, social media post, etc. - by plugging personas and instructions into the tool.
As we worked through the practice, it was shocking how different outputs were for relatively similar prompts. Engineering these prompts was often iterative, continually providing more context, clarifying information, and giving feedback on what to avoid.
Setting standards and guidelines for AI
However, there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty around how to implement it responsibly to improve a firm’s processes.
In one session, when asked how many people used ChatGPT in some way, more than half of the room raised their hands. However, when asked how many used it for legal marketing specifically, the hands raised were a fraction of the number.
Many firms are curious about AI but are unsure of how to set standards around it. Taking into account security concerns, finding a balance between human and machine output, and content quality are all major topics of discussion that firms are still trying to figure out.
Overall, the sentiment that permeated the group was cautiously interested. I’ll be interested to see how AI in legal marketing evolves over the next year as the technology continues to be fine-tuned and firms figure out how to implement it most effectively in their processes.
The Legal Marketing Community is Poised to Innovate
The passion for innovation was undeniable in this group at LMA Tech West 2023. While law firms are not typically considered the most forward-looking institutions when it comes to technology, it’s clear that marketers are one of the main groups looking to change this.
As the world charges forward into what seems to be a new era of tech-driven change, I’m excited to see the ways that legal marketers - and professional services marketers as a whole cohort - continue to push the envelope.
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