The legal chatter is full of the promise of Artificial Intelligence to revolutionize the practice of law. It can write your letters, your briefs and your website, they say.
But there’s a catch here (other than the fact that AI sometimes makes stuff up, including case law, out of whole cloth.): ChatGPT and its ilk write without nuance, warmth, or texture.
Those of us in consumer-facing legal practices can do so much better. And need to do better.
The power of your human voice
Most of our clients know little about the law and have never hired a lawyer. The law is a scary unknown. Worse yet, their limited knowledge of the law often comes from online pro pers or AI that not only lacks the human touch but is subject to being horribly wrong. See my early foray into AI.
Our legal training didn’t help us to be accessible to a world of clients that are stressed, ill informed, and intimidated by lawyers. Instead, we learned to write for judges and other lawyers who share our vocabulary and analytical approach.
So, my plea here is to write your own material in your voice. That’s the voice and vocabulary that you use with clients, face to face. Whether your client-facing communications are your blog, your YouTube script, or the explanatory material you provide clients, cultivate an approachable and human style. The strengthen connection with clients that results nets you better info for the schedules and better reviews at the end.
How it worked for me
In 1998, I started writing about bankruptcy for the lay public on that newfangled thing called the internet at BankruptcyinBrief.com. I tried for a neutral, dispassionate tone. It took about 5 years and 150 posts on BinB to decide I needed a freer, warmer style. I had things to say that didn’t fit the model I had adopted. BankruptcySoapbox.com followed.
On Soapbox, I allowed myself to express opinions, complexity, and uncertainites. I illustrated my point with client stories (suitably disguised). I used the word “I” and often addressed my audience as “you”. There was even gentle humor. It was liberating and, from the traffic that followed, engaging.
People would walk into my office (back when) with a handful of pages printed from the website, already sold on the proposition that I was the lawyer for them. They felt they had a sense of me as a person.
It is my conviction that lots of less-than-stellar lawyering has its origin in the emotional distance between lawyer and client. Clients who are not comfortable in their relationship with their lawyer don’t offer up the ugly facts or ask the troubling question. In online bankrutpcy forums, I see countless debtor questions that begin, “I’ve met with a lawyer, but ….” and out comes some lacuna in their understanding or an utter distortion of applicable law.
That human connection can be nurtured in the stuff you write for the client world and the tone you adopt there.
So, no matter how efficient AI appears to be in generating content to support your practice, don’t miss the profound advantages in writing your own material, in your own, human voice. The more you do it, the easier it gets. As you get better, you can invoke your own “WayBack” machine, and rework your material. Even your earliest efforts will be better than AI.
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