Navigating the Future

 Top Challenges for Law Firms in the Coming Years

Want to stay ahead in the game? Stay here and learn how to overcome the most pressing challenges law firms face in the coming years. 

With rapid technological advancements, the legal industry is experiencing a significant transformation. As such, law firms are facing a host of challenges that are not only impacting their operations but also changing the way they practice law. From technological innovations to evolving client expectations, law firms must overcome several hurdles to stay ahead of the curve.

To be more specific, research finds four primary changes are happening in the legal industry: 

1. The rising prevalence of remote work offers greater flexibility but also leads to work-life balance concerns.
2. The “Great Resignation” phenomenon
3. High demand for legal services
4. The effects of inflation and the potential for an economic recession 

In the coming years, law firms will encounter various challenges and opportunities that will impact their ability to deliver services, win new business, and remain competitive. Let’s look at some of the top challenges law firms will face in the coming years, as well as proven strategies to navigate the uncharted waters with ease and confidence.

The Top Challenges Faced by Law Firms Today and Tomorrow

Balancing Work and Life

One of the significant challenges that law firms will face in the years to come is maintaining a healthy work-life balance for their associates. 

The rise of remote work and flexible schedules has increased the ability for lawyers to work from home or outside of traditional office hours. Still, it has also led to blurred lines between work and personal time. This can lead to burnout, stress, and mental health concerns for lawyers who struggle to disconnect from work. 

1. Balancing Work and Life
   

   One of the significant challenges that law firms will face in the years to come is maintaining a healthy work-life balance for their associates. The rise of remote work and flexible schedules has increased the ability for lawyers to work from home or outside of traditional office hours. Still, it has also led to blurred lines between work and personal time. This can lead to burnout, stress, and mental health concerns for lawyers who struggle to disconnect from work. Law firms should learn how to prioritize work-life balance to attract and retain top talent and ensure their lawyers can provide quality legal services to clients. 
   Discover Tips for Balancing Work and Life in Law

2. Cyberattacks and Cybersecurity
   

   Did you know that cyberattacks are happening right now? Studies show that ransomware attacks take place every 11 seconds. Because many firms offer their services with the help of digital assets, it’s a good practice to understand the dangerous side of cyberattacks and, ultimately, take action to protect their firm and clients.
   Read Over the Ultimate Legal Cybersecurity Protocol

3. Increased Competition
   

   Today, over 1 million active lawyers are in the country, reflecting a 6.6% growth from 2012.  This increased number of lawyers has led to heightened competition in the field.Some may decide to lower their prices, but this is a trade-off. While law firms may not be able to prevent rivals from undercutting, you can still take several actions to sustain a high level of profitability. For example, you can develop a plan to ensure you have the best of the best legal intake process. 

4. Talent Attraction and Retention
   

   On the one hand, with new market entrants and evolving client expectations, law firms must attract and retain the best legal talent to remain competitive and maintain their market position. On the other hand, the legal industry needs more skilled talent due to various factors, such as aging baby boomers retiring and firms losing retention. Studies show that the legal sector is growing, but firms risk losing 125% of their associates over a 5-year time frame. And why’s that?In today’s legal ecosystem, law firms continue to face many talent-related challenges, including associate attrition, the implementation of hybrid working systems, increasing competition, attorney burnout, and a renewed emphasis on work-life balance. Thus, law firms must adapt to these new expectations to attract and retain top talent.

5. More Technological Solutions
   

   Many lawyers resist change and may be skeptical of the benefits of legal technology. Additionally, investing in legal tech entails a significant investment to adopt and integrate it within the firm. While there may be a learning curve, you can adopt AI to transform your law firm for the better. For example, LawEval, the only hassle-free all-in-one legal platform, is helping firms become data-driven by housing their entire digital investment and visually showcasing the data in the most appealing way.

Explore LawEval

Chance Favors the Prepared Minds 

These challenges seem daunting, but they also represent significant opportunities for law firms that can adapt and embrace change. By prioritizing work-life balance, investing in employee development, and adopting legal technology, law firms can improve their overall efficiency and enhance the quality of their legal services.
If you’d like to keep an eye on new trends, challenges, and opportunities or want to look into your firm’s status –  feel free to schedule a 1-1 with us.

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The Power of Connections

How to Build a Strong Legal Network for Your Law Firm

Discover actionable tips to help you build a solid legal network and grow your law firm.

While legal knowledge and experience are undoubtedly critical to success in this field, networking can significantly impact a law firm’s growth and sustainability. 

Research shows that around 79% of Americans agree that networking is vital to their career progression. The majority of U.S. small business owners typically network online.

There are many reasons why law firms look to expand their reach with both professionals and potential clients. Here are some of the top reasons to do so:

1. Referral Opportunities: Building strong alliances and connections can lead to referral opportunities, generating new revenue streams.
2. Increased Visibility: Expanding your network and reach makes it more likely that potential clients will find you when they need legal services.
3. Access to new (and perhaps better) markets: Forming alliances and partnerships can provide access to new markets and client bases that you may not have been able to reach otherwise.
4. Industry insights and best practices: Networking can help law firms stay up-to-date on industry trends, best practices, and emerging legal issues.
5. Competitive advantage: Building a robust legal network can provide a competitive advantage by differentiating your firm from others in the market and showcasing your expertise and reputation.

While it’s clear that both online and offline networking is effective, we’ll show you a few clever ways to grow your business with your digital assets. 

The Best Ways Firms Can Build a Strong Legal Network

1. Launch a Client Referral Program: A client referral program can effectively generate new business and build your network. There are many strategies around legal referral programs, but we’ll start with 3 pro tips:
   • Define the program (incentives, rewards, requirements, etc.) and make it easy to refer clients back to you
   • Don’t be afraid to promote the program and ask clients for referrals.
   • Focus on providing excellent customer service and let it speak for itself. You’ll want to deliver a service worth referring to.
2. Collect and Share Client Reviews, Testimonials, and Verdicts: Positive reviews, testimonials, and verdicts from satisfied clients can be a powerful tool for building your reputation and attracting new clients.
   Discover the Best Ways to Request and Acquire Reviews
   
3. Create High-Quality Content: Creating informative and engaging content not only helps establish you as an expert in your field, it also helps attract prospects and retain existing clients. If you have been investing in digital assets, e.g., blog posts, a podcast, social posts, webinars, etc., then we recommend you focus on content recycling.
   7 Clever Ways Firms Can Recycle Content
   
4. Use Case Studies: Case studies can be a powerful tool for several reasons, but overall, they build trust because they showcase what you can do for clients. Some clients may want just a quick overview of your results, but others will be interested in the journey (the case) and the destination (the results). There are no right or wrong answers here, but case studies should include the following:
   • The situation
   • The solution
   • The results
5. Join Powerful Alliances like Mastermind Groups: Joining a mastermind group, or other industry alliances, can provide opportunities to connect with other professionals and gain valuable insights and knowledge. These groups can also lead to referral opportunities and other business partnerships. We’ve covered everything you need to know about legal alliances in our LAWsome podcast below:
   
6. Join Legal Directories: Listing your law firm on legal directories can improve your visibility and help potential clients find you more easily. Consider listing your firm on local, regional, and national directories that cater to your practice area. Some include:
   • FindLaw
   • Justia
   • Avvo
7. Use Banners and Advertisements on Relevant Pages: Consider advertising on relevant websites, such as legal directories or other industry-related pages, to increase your visibility and reach more potential clients.
   For example, personal injury firms can list themselves on the Accident Data Center, a comprehensive resource where prospects look for up-to-date and accurate information on recent accidents across the United States.
   

Building Bridges in Business 

In conclusion, building a strong legal network is crucial for law firms to grow their business, generate new leads, and increase their client base. By implementing actionable networking strategies such as the ones mentioned above, law firms can expand their network and reach to connect with potential clients and other industry professionals.

However, building bridges in business is about forming authentic relationships, helping others, and being a valuable resource for clients and other professionals in the legal industry.

If you want to get the most out of your marketing assets, learn more clever strategies, and build bridges together – we’re here and ready to help.

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Why Your Law Firm Isn’t Getting Enough Calls and What To Do About It

Many law firms experience problems with low online visibility or a poorly optimized website–or both. Here’s what to do about it to get more leads and clients. We’re including a FREE Assessment!

As the industry grows, law firms are facing increasingly fierce competition. The American Bar Association found that the number of lawyers in the U.S. has grown by 6.6% from 2012 to 2022, and there are now over 1.3 million active lawyers in the country.

To stay competitive, many law firms are investing in digital marketing services to ensure they are positioned in a unique way to reach people in need of legal services. Thus, optimizing your online presence as a law firm is an essential marketing strategy in today’s competitive landscape.

But many lawyers and law firms are missing the mark and, therefore, missing out on prospective clients. This isn’t a good thing as research shows the number of people in the United States seeking legal assistance over the last two years has risen above the levels of 2019–take a look: 

While competition may be fierce, remember that the clients are still up for grabs. If you feel like you’re missing out on calls and cases, we’ll explain the two main reasons why this may be happening and what you can do about it.

The Two Main Reasons Why Your Firm Isn’t Getting Enough Calls

You need a strong online presence to compete in the marketplace today, but many firms struggle with two challenges:

1. Low Online Visibility
   

   You can’t help prospective clients if they can’t find you! Low online visibility is one of the main reasons law firms are not keeping up, and it can be due to a few reasons:

   -Lack of a—or a poor— digital marketing strategy
   -Weak online presence with an unoptimized website
   -Poor use of paid advertisement opportunities
   
   If you have a low online visibility, prospective clients simply won’t be able to find you when they are looking for a lawyer or law firm. This, of course, impacts your ability to bring in new clients to the firm.

2. Poorly Optimized Website
   

   The second major challenge law firms face with digital marketing is a poorly optimized website.

   In one sense, this can be about the attractiveness and usability of your site. It’s important to have something that’s easy to navigate so that prospective clients can find everything they need.

   But even more important is having an SEO-optimized website—a site that’s built in a way that search engines can find it. Without optimizing your site for search engines, clients may not come across it.
   
   

Law Firm Digital Marketing Solutions

If you want to address both of these problems, it’s important to take a holistic look at your entire digital marketing strategy. Think of your marketing as an ecosystem – it has to work together.

Here are steps you can take to resolve both problems:

1. Create a digital marketing strategy: If you haven’t sat down to develop a strategy, it’s the first step you need to take. Spend time determining exactly what your problems are and what steps you need to take to improve. This should be revisited on a regular basis so you’re always staying on top of necessary changes.
   
2. Develop a comprehensive website: Focus on building something that’s aesthetically appealing, easy to navigate, and regularly updated with relevant and high-quality content. And, if you are going to invest in an expensive web-design, you’ll want to ensure you’re in the hands of the best.
3. Focus on SEO: To boost visibility and optimize your site for search engines, develop a comprehensive SEO strategy. This means incorporating keywords into your website, regularly adding new content, and following SEO best practices. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into legal SEO, click here for the full guide.
4. Invest in paid advertising: One useful way to boost visibility immediately is to pay for online advertising. This strategy can help put your law firm at the top of the search engine page results so clients can easily see you. In our LAWsome podcast we’ve covered the impact of legal advertising. Take a look:
   
5. Stay updated with trends and data: The beauty behind legal marketing is that everything is measurable, and that, ultimately, the numbers don’t lie. We’ve previously covered the best 8 ways law firms can use data to grow their business. For example, law firms can use their data to improve customer processes, find gaps and highlight what’s working.

Solving Your Law Firm’s Call Dilemma

Digital assets are an investment, and you deserve to get the most from them. If you’re not getting enough new calls and clients, check to see if you’re experiencing problems with either one of these two major issues for law firms:

• low online visibility 
• poorly optimized website.

While we hope these tips and tricks help you navigate the uncharted waters that business can be, the first thing’s first – find out how well your firm’s SEO is performing. 

Take the FREE SEO Assessment for Law Firms 

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Never Lose a Lead With LawEval

Leads are the lifeblood of a law firm’s growth. Learn how to keep a watchful eye on your leads and convert them into paying clients with ease.

Why are leads so important? In short, without them, it’s really challenging to maximize revenue. and studies show the majority of marketers find this the most important goal behind any digital investment.

Leads are an indicator that your process for building trust, credibility, visibility, and overall interest is working! But acquiring leads is only half the battle. In order to increase value, keep up with the competition and innovate, law firms must take advantage of their entire marketing asset; this includes looking into the analytics and data.

Previously, the American Bar Association found that “firms do not appear to be paying much attention to analytics data available to evaluate the effectiveness of their online marketing efforts.” But, luckily that is changing. 

The Top 10 Reasons Firms Track Leads

Today, more firms are becoming data-driven as they are increasingly aware of the benefits and impact of data analysis. This correlates with the fact that there is a greater adoption, with a total of 68% of law firms using legal analytics– that’s a 7% increase over a year. One powerful platform making a mark for all legal professionals is LawEval.

Navigate LawEval

Why do Firms Invest in Tech Tools Like LawEval

The beauty of a legal analytics platform like LawEval is that it uses the data that you already have.

But what makes LawEval different from the rest? 

LawEval was designed from scratch by a team of engineers exclusively for law firms, and by a company that exclusively caters to law firm marketing.

It comprises 3 powerful tools:

1. The performance monitoring tool
2. The leads tracking tool
3. The data analytics tool 

For example, do you want to know how many leads your firm had during X month? You’ll be able to view this in seconds. Here’s a sneak peek: 

Explore the LawEval Modules Here

The Benefits of Using LawEval 

With LawEval your firm can expect: 

1. Less time worrying about their ROI because you’ll have a better understanding of why the ROI is the way it is, and what direction to take to increase it. 
2. Peace of mind knowing that you can log in any time to check the health of your digital assets, the life-cycle of the leads, and the website’s current rankings. In other words, simply sit back, relax, and let those notifications come to you directly! 
3. Full control and visibility. Because the numbers don’t lie, you’ll know that what your marketing team tells you coincides with the real-time results you’re seeing. 

In the LAWsome episode ‘Law Firm Business Disruption, Tech, Data, and the Future of Law,’ America’s “techiest” lawyer, Anthony Johnson notes that tech tools like LawEval also provide law firms with:

1. The freedom to focus on the most important elements; the client, the consultation role, the interactions, and most importantly the client journey. 
2. Added value, and ultimately, you can expect to charge more for that value.

The Features Behind LawEval 

Each module has its own set of features. For example, with the Analytics module, you can look into traffic, rankings, and more. This module alone offers data, metrics, and analytics from more than 70 different vendors! Here’s another sneak peek: 

All in all, LawEval’s 3 powerful modules are:

1. Designed to be super easy to read and easy to navigate.
2. Designed to cater to those who only have a minute to check them, as well as those who want to see every detail about their digital assets, lead sources, and marketing campaigns.
3. Designed to be versatile and robust so that when a LawEval user wants to add a new feature, there’s a team of high-skilled developers supporting their integrations. 

If you’d like to fully dive in and explore the features, you can do so here:

Download the Ultimate LawEval Handbook

What Law Firms Think of LawEval

As LawEval rolls out to the entire law firm market, the pioneer firms opting for LawEval have their take on it: 

Takeaway: Get Ahead With LawEval 

You deserve to have answers to your questions – especially when money’s involved. And luckily, your marketing data has had these answers all along!

If you’d like to walk through LawEval together, look into data management practices, and overall improve your business performance  with the help of experts – feel free to schedule a 1-1 with us.

 

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The Best Ways Your Firm Can Use Data to Grow Its Business

Data is perhaps one of the most powerful assets that you probably already have! The question now is, how do you make sense of it? Find all answers here. 

A study found that by 2025 the standard will be smart workflows and seamless interactions between humans and machines. This means the majority of employees will leverage data to optimize every aspect of the work. 

While it’s clear to see data is, and will continue to be, one of the most powerful assets, the question now is, how can you make sense of it all? 

In its initial stages, data can be messy because for one, it’s raw and undefined, and two, it’s usually stored in a repository known as a data lake. Typically, the majority of businesses are drowning in their own data lake; meaning there are enormous amounts of raw data that isn’t being utilized, and this is where businesses fail to scale.

However,  a data lake is not the same thing as a data warehouse. Here’s a quick look at the differences between the 2:

 

The challenge that many businesses face is not of how to gather the data, but really more of how to structure and analyze that data to make sense of it. 

Because a business strategy is only as good as its data usage, it’s important you make sense of all your data, and you can do that regardless of your analytical acumen. Let’s quickly look into how data propels firms forward and how you can make sense of your existing data set. 

Where Do Data-Driven Firms Excel? 

The firms that are realizing and taking advantage of their analytics excel in 5 key areas that others aren’t. 

1. Finding value – Pinpointing areas of opportunity and growth is much easier when they are backed up by internal and external data findings. 
2. Planning campaigns – Because the numbers won’t lie, it’s easier to prioritize the right trade-offs that ultimately, drive more customer value. 
3. Activating the omnichannel journey – Businesses align the customer experience with touchpoints that are driving the most conversions. 
4. Empowering the services – With numbers, it’s easier to monitor the entire progress of all your campaigns. In addition, data supports front-line services by giving clear insights into what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t.
5. Improving and getting better – No business is perfect, but the beauty behind the numbers is that they offer insights so you can make necessary changes over time. 

See it in action here:

The Best Ways to Leverage Data for Law Firms 

The best of the best data analysis goes beyond just acquiring facts and figures. An overarching strategy is key if you’re looking to grow confidently and consistently. 

To make the most of your data we recommend the following: 

1. Prepare for Change
   

   You’ll often hear that you should “become data-driven,” but what does that mean, exactly? It all starts with the culture at a business. Studies show that around 91.9% of executives point to culture as the greatest impediment to becoming data-driven. 

   Ultimately, this means firms should prepare for change. Nowadays, everyone in a business should use some form of data to drive their decision-making. You can start by sharing victories, case studies, and verdicts with your staff to help expand and deepen their understanding.

   We’ll go over two ways you can instill change in your firm. Let’s go over them.

2. Practice Data-Driven and Data-Informed Leadership
   

   A cultural reset of a business usually starts at the top. So how can you lead by example?

   Leaders have two options: data-driven or data-informed. 

   • Data-driven leaders begin by looking into the facts and figures to either prove or disprove a hypothesis. In this type of leadership, there is no fear if the data proves the theory is wrong.
   • Data-informed leaders use selective amounts of data to better justify the actions taken – regardless of the findings. 

    The main difference lies in the value given to the data. In a data-driven culture, decisions depend a lot on the numbers and metrics, AKA the quantitative input. In a data-informed culture, there are other “human” factors taken into consideration, like intuition, past experience(s), judgment and any qualitative input.

3. Decide On the Metrics
   

   What are you interested in measuring? For starters, anything related to leads, cost per lead, and conversion rates are important metrics to consider, but overall, it’s best to look into the entire sales funnel from awareness all the way to a conversion and acquisition.

   Claim Your Marketing Metrics Checklist 

4. Treat Data Like a Product
   

   Today many keep their data in data lakes, which is often messy, with no real ownership of the data. By 2025, it’s believed data will be a product that’s backed up with dedicated teams working behind your entire digital monitoring process, from embedding data security to data engineering and self-service analytical tools. 

   Like with any product, if you treat your data as a product, you’ll be able to add new features and respond to user feedback and changes in the market with ease and confidence. (More on this in the last pointer.)

5. Track Consumer Behavior
   

   What’s resonating the most with your audience(s)? What’s resonating the least? You can look into the “tops and tips”. For example: 

   • Web Analytics: Collecting data from your websites such as page views, session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate helps in understanding consumer behavior and making data-driven decisions.
   • Social Media Analytics: Analyzing the behavior and engagement of law firms’ social media followers helps in understanding their preferences and creating targeted campaigns.
   • Surveys and Feedback: Gathering feedback from clients through surveys or directly through feedback forms can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences.
   • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) data: Analyzing the keywords that potential clients use to find the law firm online helps in understanding their search behavior and making informed decisions on content creation and optimization.

6. Enhance Your Current Campaigns
   

   Data helps in creating more personalized marketing campaigns for different segments of clients. This leads to higher engagement and conversion rates, as clients feel that the firm understands their needs and preferences.

   If you are investing in digital advertising, then you’ll also be able to have more precisely targeted advertisements, as you’ll be ensuring that the right message is delivered to the right audience, at the right time.

7. Boost Your Cybersecurity
   

   We’ve previously spoken about cybersecurity and how to keep your firm and clientele data safe from attacks. But, we cannot stress this enough: data plays a pivotal role in your cybersecurity. For example, it can help out with: 

   • Threat detection: By analyzing large amounts of data from various sources such as network logs, intrusion detection systems, and security devices, organizations can detect potential security threats in real-time.
   • Vulnerability and incident response: In case of a security breach, data analysis can help organizations respond quickly and effectively by providing crucial information such as the scope, origin, and impact of the attack

8. Invest in a Legal Data Management Dashboard
   

   If you’re looking to help support the development of data literacy across your entire firm, have improved data visibility, automate data collecting and reporting, and more, then chances are you should invest in a data management dashboard.One of the most powerful dashboards in the legal market is LawEval, which was designed from scratch by a team of engineers exclusively for law firms. It offers 3 powerful tools, which include a performance monitoring tool, a leads tracking tool, and a data analytics tool

   Discover How to Get Ahead With LawEval

    

   Takeaway: Secure the Data, Secure the Business Strategy 

   By adopting a data-centric approach to decision-making, your firm can effectively drive the most value with time. The key is, to begin with, small initiatives like the ones stated above. 

   If you’d like  to learn more about data management and data analytics tools and improve your business performance with the help of experts – feel free to schedule a 1-1 with us.

 

 

 

 

 

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How AI is Helping Law Firms Improve Efficiencies

Explore how AI is revolutionizing the legal industry and why it’s time for law firms to embrace this game-changing technology.

In the legal industry, the adoption of AI technology has been slow, but its impact is already being felt as it transforms the way law firms operate. From streamlining mundane tasks to providing more efficient case management, AI is helping law firms improve their overall efficiencies and better serve their clients. 

We’ve previously touched on the topic of law firms adopting AI to transform their business. But, to briefly recap, the hype around AI is because of one of its subsets – machine learning. As opposed to simply mimicking, this computing model is trained by humans to learn based on data input. Afterward, it learns to look for patterns in the data to draw conclusions.

This model under AI is helping law firms in 4 main areas: 

1. Mergers and acquisitions – Investing in all-in-one platforms e.g. reporting, analytics, payments, etc.
2. Legal procedures – Researching keywords and examining papers.
3. Contract reorganizing – Locating, examining, and grouping contracts.
4. Legal document analysis – E.g., reviewing documents for discoverability.

By embracing AI technology, law firms can not only improve their overall efficiencies but also provide a higher level of client satisfaction. 

Before diving in and explaining the different ways law firms leverage AI, we’d like to briefly review the ethical considerations for law firms.

Ethical Considerations of AI in the Legal Profession

Because humans build machines, and no matter how objective we try to be, there is an inherent bias in the systems. This poses very real and concerning questions like:

• If an AI-driven system produced false, or worse, biased information, who is responsible: the lawyer or the tool? 
• Do attorneys need to disclose the use of AI in all cases? 
• Is it necessary to train staff on data and disclose this information? 

The reality is that the legal profession is part of a rapidly-evolving technology. As of now, we don’t understand the full impact of such tools in law. However, it is here to stay, and many are already navigating their professional and personal lives with it.

The Top Ways AI Helps Law Firms 

In the LAWsome episode, ‘The Top Legal Tech Tools and Tips for Law Firms’ Chez Tschetter stresses the importance of automation. As he said, “Anything you can do to automate and move to billable time has a dramatic impact on the overall earnings of a particular firm.”

Thanks to automation firms are improving efficiencies in:

1. E-Discovery

   E-discovery, or the process of discovering and producing electronic data relevant to a legal case, can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor for law firms. But, many are automating their discovery in the following sectors:

   • Data Categorization: Quickly categorize vast amounts of electronic data into relevant and irrelevant categories, reducing the time for manual review.
   • Duplicate Detection: Identify and eliminate duplicate data, reducing the amount of data that needs to be reviewed.
   • Keyword Searching: Quick search through vast amounts of electronic data using specific keywords.
   • Predictive Coding: Learn from the review decisions made by lawyers, allowing the technology to more accurately categorize data as relevant or irrelevant.

2. Legal Research

   Legal research can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Here are a few ways automation helps law firms:

   • Predictive Search: Predict what a lawyer is searching for and provide relevant results based on previous searches, saving valuable time and resources.
   • Case Law Analysis: Identify patterns and relationships, providing lawyers with valuable insights into legal precedent and potential outcomes.
   • Contract Analysis: Analyze contracts and identify key terms and clauses, allowing lawyers to quickly find relevant information and negotiate terms more effectively.

3. Document Management and Automation

   Electronic document storage eliminates the need for physical space. However, without proper guidelines, locating specific documents can be a challenge, and fortunately, AI helps with that too:

   • Contract Generation: Pull relevant information from previous agreements and insert it into new contracts, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.
   • Document Classification
     
   • Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Extract text from scanned documents and convert it into digital text, allowing lawyers to handle large volumes of data with more ease.

4. Due Diligence

   This typically entails reviewing a large number of documents, such as contracts. Here are some ways AI helps law firms with contract review.

   • Contract Comparison: Compare multiple contracts and identify similarities and differences, allowing lawyers to quickly spot key provisions.
   • Contract Summarization: Summarize long and complex contracts into shorter, more manageable documents, reducing the time and resources required for manual review.
     
   • Contract Classification: Categorize contracts based on their type, jurisdiction, and other relevant factors, making it easier for lawyers to find and review relevant documents.
   • Contract Redlining: Identify different versions of contracts, allowing lawyers to quickly spot and address potential issues.

Improving, Revolutionizing, Transforming, Innovating 

It’s clear to see that AI is revolutionizing the legal profession and transforming law firms for the better. As AI continues to evolve, it is likely to have an increasingly significant impact on the legal profession, and it is essential for law firms to embrace this technology to remain competitive and meet the demands of a rapidly changing landscape. 

If you’re looking for more information regarding the best legal AI tools, click here. 

And if you’re looking to learn which AI tools best match your digital assets or simply want to ask more questions, schedule a 1-1 with our Senior Marketing Advisor. 

 

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Your Firm’s New Secret Weapon: LawEval

Clean, organized, and real-time data is one of the most important assets behind your entire firm’s success. Find out how to transform your firm with data you already have! 

A study on legal analytics behavior found that more than half of lawyers (66%) believe data makes them better and more informed lawyers. However, the majority of lawyers still need more exposure to data tools, as almost half (46%) of non-users are unfamiliar with available products in the market.

Before diving into the best part, let’s take a look at why data is so important for law firms today.

With the help of data, the most innovative firms are gaining competitive insights, learning from case assessments, etc.

Overall, they are moving forward with the help of data-driven decisions rather than gut feelings. Take a look:

As you can see, metrics provide law firms with a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to make informed decisions that drive business growth. To join in on the conversation and help you become a data-driven law firm, we’re launching one of the most powerful legal analytics tools in the market.

Introducing LawEval

Like any breakthrough, it all began with an idea. For Consultwebs, it was no exception. It started with the following in mind: offering a single standalone service that continuously monitors a law firm’s digital presence, and this is where LawEval comes in. 

LawEval is the one and only hassle-free all-in-one platform offering real-time data growth insights. specifically designed for all a law firm’s marketing needs. 

Why is LawEval noteworthy?

Explore LawEval

The Analytics Module: Visualize Your Real-Time Growth

The Analytics module helps maximize your marketing dollars by tracking traffic and visitors. This is a central place where you can easily manage your marketing campaigns and digital ad spends. It offers data, metrics, and analytics from over 70+ vendors. 

Here’s a quick overview: 

Some features you can expect include:

• View paid campaign results from Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LSAs, and YouTube Ads 
• View real-time traffic and visitor data from Google Analytics and other data providers
• Access monthly reports so you can see your progress toward your targets
• And more!

We’ve got a gift for you! If you are part of the Consultwebs community, the Analytics Module is available for FREE if you’ve got an SEO or Digital Advertising contract.

The Performance Monitoring Module: Keep Track Without the Headaches 

There’s no need to go about your day with zero answers to important questions like: “How’s my website doing?” or “Are all contact forms working?” 

With the performance monitoring module, you’ll have hassle-free 24/7 monitoring of your entire digital investment. For example, you can have instant access to your firm’s page speed both on mobile and desktop, here’s a quick overview:  

Some features you can expect include: 

• Monitoring your online presence 24/7.  
• Keeping track of your site speed and performance around key pages as well as overall
  averages through grade-level testing. 
• Viewing historical archives of screenshots of your websites taken multiple times per day. 
• And more! 

The Leads Module: Improve Your Case Acquisition 

Your entire marketing ecosystem is working hand in hand to get you more leads. But do you have answers to critical questions like “How many leads did I receive last month?” or even more specific, “How many leads did I receive last month and where are the majority of the leads coming from?” You can have immediate answers with the leads module. Here’s an overview: 

Some features you can expect include:

• Real-time conversion and data from virtually any marketing channel (Google, Facebook,
  etc.) 
• Tracking the flow of leads from start to finish
• Monthly reporting and trend alerts
• And more! 

LawEval: One Search and Done

When there’s money involved, you deserve to have answers to all your questions at all times, and that is essentially the beauty of this powerful legal analytics platform – one search and done. 

If you’d like you can take a deeper dive and discover more benefits and features behind LawEval:

Claim Your LawEval Handbook Here

If you’d like to learn more about reporting strategies, and digital assets, or simply want to have a 1-1 with a legal marketing advisor – we’re here, let’s talk. 

The post Your Firm’s New Secret Weapon: LawEval appeared first on Consultwebs.

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The Top Marketing Metrics You Need to Track Your Firm’s Success

Do you want to know which of your digital assets yields the highest ROI? The answers are all hidden in plain sight–right behind your metrics. Stay with us to find out which metrics you should be tracking. 

According to the Legal Analytics Survey Results 2022, more than half (68%) of legal professionals are using legal analytics. Between 2021 and 2022 that number increased by 7%,  take a look:

Law firms are currently leveraging data for business and the practice of law. 

In the business of law, here are the top 3 ways law firms use data: 

• • 68% of firms use data to pitch or demonstrate expertise to clients
  • 50% of firms use data to build competitive intelligence and evaluate new business
  • 29% of firms use data to price their services and bids 

In the practice of law, here are the top 3 ways law firms use data: 

• • 80% of firms use data to build competitive intelligence on judges, parties and opposing counsel 
  • 73% of firms use data for case assessment 
  • 63% of firms use data to determine case strategy 

From these figures it’s clear that the smartest firms are those that are constantly delivering and growing–are using data to predict their entire strategy, from competitor analysis all the way through case assessment. 

Measuring success in marketing is crucial, but with so many metrics available, it can be overwhelming to determine which ones truly matter for a law firm. The good news is, we’ve got you covered. In this post, we dive into the top marketing metrics that every law firm should be tracking to stay ahead of the competition and reach their business goals. 

Let’s begin. 

The Top Marketing Metrics for Law Firms 

The beauty behind a digital marketing investment is that everything is pretty much measurable. But, to help you keep your focus, here are some of the most relevant metrics: 

Leads: MQLs and SQLs 

This is perhaps one of the most important marketing metrics you need to keep an eye on. Leads, or lead generation, is a good indicator of your future revenue. Leads are paramount because they’re the ones that are taking the jump from being a prospect to a possible case. 

As a lead moves through your sales funnel you can broadly categorize them in one of 2 ways: 

1. Marketing qualified leads – This is a lead that your legal marketing agency designates as most likely to become a customer.
2. Sales qualified leads – This lead is past the nurturing stage and is ready to talk to your firm, client services, sales team, or whomever is in charge of your lead intake process. 

Cost Per Lead

There are lots of factors that figure into  pricing, and thus it usually varies from firm to firm depending on the practice area, legal jurisdiction, level of competition, etc. But, as you invest in more digital assets, you’ll want to know how much a lead is costing you.

The basic formula goes like this: 

 

To get the best response, it’s best to calculate this using a set period of time, e.g. monthly/quarterly, and it’s also best to separate by campaign type, e.g. LSAs campaign, Google Ads, email newsletters etc. 

Traffic Sources  

If driving customer traffic to your website is a top priority, it’s important to understand the sources of your website traffic and how to maximize each channel for optimal results. To get started, you want to know where the majority of the traffic is coming from.

Because all roads should lead to your website, we’ll focus on web traffic metrics.

1. Direct traffic: Users arriving at your website via a browser bookmark or typing the URL directly. 
2. Organic search: Users arriving at your website through organic non-paid marketing. Most likely, they’re coming in from a search engine like Google. 
3. Paid search: Users arriving at your website via paid advertisements. 
4. Referral traffic: Users arriving to your website from an external website that linked a redirect back to you. 

Bounce Rate 

Besides keeping an eye on traffic, you’ll also want to keep an eye on at what point you are losing traffic, and this is where knowing the bounce rate comes in handy. This is the percentage of visitors that looked into one of your pages but eventually left without interacting or visiting other pages. 

Here is the basic formula to get this percentage:  

If this sounds like a headache to calculate, worry not. There are all-in-one platforms like LawEval that are designed for law firms looking to get immediate answers like these. With this incredible platform, you can get a compiled overview of your real-time traffic and visitor data from Google Analytics.

Learn About LawEval Here 

ROAS – Return On Ad Spend 

If you are investing in legal advertising, then it’s important to track the ROAS. This metric measures the revenue you get per dollar spent. It’s pretty much the same as the ROI except it’s specific to your advertising costs. 

For example, if you have a ROAS of $5 you’ll have a ratio of 5:1. That means that your firm is generating ≈$5,000  in revenue for ever ≈$1,000 spent. Because marketing is quite dynamic, the ROAS may change with time, depending on seasonality, level of competition, and quite a few other factors. However, as a best practice, the more relevant your messaging is, the ‘better’ your return will be. 

• Total campaign revenue → The revenue brought in from the ad campaigns. 
• Total campaign cost → The amount of capital your firm spent on ad campaigns.

Customer Lifetime Value 

Previously, we published a blog on the marketing metrics based on the sales funnel and in it we mentioned a few metrics to accurately measure conversion rate. 

One of the metrics that was discussed is the CAC, the customer acquisition cost. This refers to the cost incurred by a business to acquire a new customer. CAC is a crucial metric for businesses as it helps them determine the efficiency of their customer acquisition efforts and whether they are generating positive returns on investment.

The formula goes as follows: 

• “Sales and Marketing Expense” refers to all expenses incurred in acquiring new customers, including advertising, salaries, benefits, and other related costs. 
• The “Number of New Customers Acquired” is the number of new customers gained during a specific period of time e.g. monthly/quarterly/annually. Using these two values, you can calculate the average cost per customer acquired.

Propel Your Firm Forward

The traditional mindset that marketing is ‘creative only’ is long gone. Today, the top marketing leaders and firms are using metrics to evaluate the success of their creatives. 

To begin with, if you’d like to dive into more marketing metrics and keep an eye on your entire sales funnel from beginning to end, we recommend you download this FREE printable checklist. 

Download the Metrics Checklist 

And if you’d like to learn more about data-driven platforms like LawEval, or simply want to know how to stay on top of your digital assets, we’re here to answer all your questions. 

 

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Become a ChatGPT Prompt Expert

If you’re looking to become an AI prompt expert on platforms like ChatGPT, then you’ve come to the right place. Read ahead and find out how to get the most from your prompts.

If you’ve been on the internet at all recently, you know about ChatGPT.

 ChatGPT, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is an AI (artificial intelligence) program launched in November 2022 by OpenAI. 

And within just a week of its launch, it crossed the 1-million-user mark, far surpassing other tech giants like Netflix, Instagram, and Facebook, which took 41, 10, and 2.5 months respectively to reach that milestone.  

It has been called the “calculator for writing,” as it is already getting rid of certain routine tasks to a degree. ChatGPT is capturing the attention and awe of users with its lightning-quick ability to produce high-quality written content. But it does have a few weaknesses. 

We’ve previously covered the potential and pitfalls of ChatGPT but let’s have a look at its limitations, too.

• Outdated data: ChatGPT relies on its knowledge bank of data up until 2021. At this time it cannot search the internet for new information from 2022-2023, meaning its results could be outdated. 
• No references: ChatGPT does not cite or source any references, so you will never know where it got the data, resources, or information it delivers. 

Becoming an AI Prompt Expert  

With these limitations in mind, legal professionals can still benefit from using ChatGPT. Here are some tips that’ll help you become an AI prompt expert:

Finish a Sentence 

You can prompt it to finish a sentence for you. For example:

1. “A legal business strategy is important because” 
2. After this, you can ask for a counterargument. Like, “On the other hand,” 

Play a Specific Role 

To give it better context, you can ask the bot to play a role. For example:

“You are a dog bite lawyer. Explain…..”

1. “I want you to act as….”
2. “Pretend you are ….”
3. “You are capable of….”

Summarize and Simplify 

Law firms deal with what feels like a mountain of paperwork and ChatGPT can help with that, too. 

1. Type “tl;dr” (“too long, didn’t read”) at the end of a passage; it will summarize it for you. 
2. Explain (complex concept/ term/ idea) but do it like ________. For example, “Explain billable hours but do it like Yoda from Star Wars.” This may sound like a complete joke, but….it works!

Do Keyword Research Like a Pro! 

If you need to find related terms you can do so like this: 

1. Generate X (10?) keywords for “Accident” 
2. Generate X (10?) long-tail keywords for “Accident” 
3. Find keyword ideas for the following text: (Paste Text Here)
4. Find *LSI keywords for…. 
   • Latent Semantic Indexing: words related to the main keyword. 

Do Content and Topic Research 

If you’d like to find topics and FAQs related to a keyword/topic, you can also do that. For example:

1. “Generate a list of questions on….(dog bite accidents)”

Tabular Forms and Tables 

1. Type “Create a tabular form with the following…”. For example: “Create a tabular form with the following legal jargon: 
   • Chapter 11
   • Chapter 13 
   • Chapter 9
     
2. For a table,e.g. on keyword and search intent,you can specify the following: “Classify the following keywords based on search intent in a table with the first column for keyword and the second for search intent: Add Keywords.” Here’s an example:
    

Most of these commands are based on simple, everyday English. You can review this list of examples for more inspiration. 

Takeaway 

The best way to get started with ChatGPT is to make an account and play around with it. Just remember to always verify the information and make sure it is accurate and up to your legal firm’s standards. 

ChatGPT can be very useful in helping create digital marketing content and copy. If you’re interested in knowing more about legal AI tools, how to incorporate them into your digital assets and more – we’re here to help. 

 

 

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