Chatbots for Lawyers: The Art of Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is a key part of promotion for any business, including law firms. As technology improves, new methods of conversational marketing arrive, including chatbots. Chatbots can be an excellent tool for lawyers as they help bring in new clients and keep existing clients happy.

How Chatbots Can Help Lawyers

Take some time to understand how chatbots can make an impact on your law firm. Chatbots can bring in more lucrative clients by ensuring if a potential client shows interest, they get a response right away. Additionally, chatbots will let your team focus on the important aspects of your firm, such as the cases instead of client management.

Depending on the type of law you practice, chatbots can pose additional benefits. If, for example, you are a plaintiff working on a class-action campaign or mass-tort one, a chatbot can help you inform former clients in a timely manner with minimal resource consumption.

Start by Determining the Purpose of Your Chatbot

Once you decide to use a chatbot for your law firm, your first step should be to figure out what the purpose of this chatbot is or what goal you are working towards. Do you want the chatbot to help you improve leads or do you want it to streamline the onboarding process by collecting basic client information? Should the chatbot give clients standardized information at key points?

When figuring out the goal behind the chatbot, make sure that you do not misuse it. For example, while you could use a chatbot to gather the basic information before an initial client meeting, you should never replace that meeting with a bot conversation. Some common functions of chatbots for lawyers include lead generation, client service, and gathering information.

Choose the Chatbot Location Based on Client Presence

There are many types of chatbots available, including for Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Skype, and Alexa. You want to choose the location for your chatbot based on where you get the most traffic. Ensure the location you choose for your chatbot is where it is most likely to interact with potential clients.

Consider Bots for Surveys

In addition to assisting clients with basic tasks, you can also use chatbots for surveys or other type of marketing research. If, for example, you have a website chatbot, consider asking what legal specialty or service a website visitor needs help with, using a few multiple-choice options. You can get a great deal of information from chatbots if you know how to use them correctly.

Let Clients Know It Is a Bot

While you want your chatbot to take over some of the more time-consuming functions of an actual person, it is definitely a bot and not a person. Let people know this right away so they do not feel as if you tricked them. After all, no one will hire a lawyer that they cannot trust. Something simple like small print letting users or visitors know it is a bot is enough.

Takeaway

Chatbots for lawyers can help generate leads, gather client information, and provide your clients with additional help in a timely manner. Once you decide on the goal of chatbots for your law firm’s website, you can get started. If you need help implementing a chatbot strategy for your firm, contact us for help.