If you’re overwhelmed by Legalweek hot takes, you’re not alone. But I’d like to offer one
I’ve been thinking about a lot since leaving New York. I won’t belabor the change of
venue (better, modern facilities) or the change in the commute between
hotel/show/events (long and generally unpleasant). Instead, I want to focus on the
exhibit hall—specifically the booths—and, even more specifically, the booth messaging.
In my 20 years(!!) of attending this show, the exhibits have never been so lovely. They
were all sleek, well-designed, and welcoming. But the booths, and the messages they
featured, were all…the same.
Of course, most centered on or mentioned GenAI. Not a surprise. What was a surprise
were the nearly identical value props everywhere, many with eerily familiar wording as
you walked the hall. Even the booth designs themselves were sometimes hard to tell
apart. There are a lot of very talented marketing people in legaltech, and they work with
lawyers, all of whom traffic in creative, unique, and eloquent words. So, why did the lack
of differentiation hit me before I reached the second aisle?
“Well, everyone is talking about GenAI” was my first thought. It is, after all, one of the
most seismic inflection points that the legal profession has ever experienced, and the
resulting change has been compressed into an unbelievably short timeframe. So, of
course, it would be the focus of most of the exhibits. Mystery solved. Moving on.
Until, as I was walking down 39th Street, avoiding the horse mess and construction, a
colleague sent me a report that she’d run through AI to see what it might do with a
design we were working on for a client. And it struck me that it bore an undeniable
resemblance to another design that someone else had sent me weeks before (and by
resemblance, I mean almost identical.) These were completely unrelated subjects and
formats, and from entirely different marketing teams. And yet, the similarities were eerie.
So, it occurred to me that maybe GenAI itself really is causing this lack of differentiation,
but not for the reason I originally assumed. How many of the smart, experienced
marketing professionals in our space felt the need (or the pressure) to “run this through
AI” before finalizing their booth graphics?
I spend many hours discussing AI with clients, and I know that it really shines in
situations where you can standardize processes and apply it to large datasets. When
these situations exist (as with eDiscovery), the technology saves incredible amounts of
time and energy by sifting through data to inform strategy in a way that humans simply
cannot.
I’ve also read a lot of legaltech marketing from a wide range of vendors selling a wide
range of products and services, and have felt for a while that things are getting a tad
repetitive.
But it wasn’t until I saw it in action in one room that it became clear: legaltech marketing
is experiencing an unintentional homogenization. Is this the result of a mature market
that is favoring efficiency over creativity? Or is it Claudification?
Josie Johnson is Chief Client Experience Officer at Blickstein Group, where she designs
and executes marketing programs that produce brand equity and generate revenue for
legal tech companies, alternative legal service providers, and innovative law firms.