Jun 12, 2023
ChatGPT, the leading generative AI platform on the market, has taken the world by storm since its launch in late 2022. Since its inception, other AI platforms with similar applications have popped up, including Bard from Google, the new Bing from Microsoft, Grammarly’s new AI-powered tool for writing, ChatSonic, YouChat, and Jasper. Indeed, the competition for a dominant position in AI is so fierce that companies involved in creating parts for AI-powered platforms, such as NVIDIA, are experiencing massive surges in their market valuation.
Early users across different industries have touted it as a platform with much potential for research, writing, and public access to information, including early legal users. Now that people have had some time to explore the platform, better understand the opportunities and challenges, and heard general warnings regarding AI as well as specific trouble lawyers have gotten into using ChatGPT, there is a better understanding of how it can be used effectively.
Lawyers using ChatGPT are in agreement on their assessment of the final products you get as responses to legal questions; at best, they are “workable rough drafts” that at times may need significant revisions and, naturally, have to be checked for accuracy, not only because it is known that ChatGPT may provide inaccurate information or misattribute quotes, but because ensuring accuracy in your legal advice is part of upholding the rules of professional conduct that all lawyers need to abide by.
Today we’re expanding on our previous overview of ChatGPT to bring you more specific ways to use the tool in your immigration practice to save time. Let’s take a look.
There are a few ways in which ChatGPT can help you with client communications:
This includes frequently asked questions and steps to take for specific case filings, for example, and addressing particular situations that may come up via email, whether you are responding to an immigration official, a client whose expectations are not being met, or any other response where wording may matter. You can give ChatGPT the specific query you need a response to for a first draft, and then revise that draft with your voice or specifics of the case, or you can write the first draft yourself and use ChatGPT to rephrase it, e.g., by making it “more friendly” or to have any other attribute you’d like.
One of the reasons it’s important to share your knowledge on social media as part of your immigration law firm marketing strategy is that it helps with generating leads that may become future clients. Social media content, however, invites comments and questions about your content, and responding to these comments and questions is key to building a strong immigration law firm brand. However, responding to social media, especially if you have a large following, can become incredibly time-consuming. That’s where ChatGPT comes in - you can use it to draft answers to frequently asked questions on social media or even plug in a chatbot that leverages ChatGPT to reply automatically, to continue to engage with your followers and ultimately get them to reach out to your law firm for a full consultation.
Following up with inbound client inquiries is crucial to signing new clients. Thus, a timely, tailored response to each inquiry is essential in letting potential and current clients know that they are important to you, especially in time-sensitive situations. However, this time-consuming process may take you away from your caseworker if you must draft every follow-up response from scratch. You can create a “follow-up response bank” on ChatGPT for more general follow-up responses, or, like with drafting social media replies, input the prospective client’s inquiry, get a first draft response, make final edits, and send a tailored reply in a fraction of the time.
Marketing and advertising is crucial to building your immigration law firm brand, attracting new clients, and keeping them. But because law school doesn’t include marketing and advertising training, and because hiring a full-time marketer may be out of reach, using technology to assist with growing your brand is a great solution. ChatGPT can help you draft non-”salesy” marketing copy, whether for a billboard, a social media campaign, an industry conference or an in-person event. As with everything ChatGPT creates, you would want to review and revise it as needed to make sure it’s accurate and reflects your law firm correctly. But as a first draft, ChatGPT can be excellent.
Because ChatGPT learns from large swaths of information available on the Internet, it has access to legal language, research, opinions and other legal text. This knowledge allows ChatGPT to “know” how to write using legalese. As an immigration lawyer, therefore, this means that ChatGPT can help you revise and sometimes rephrase your own immigration filings to make them more readable, take on a different perspective or point of view, or achieve any other goal you’d like.
Some lawyers are already doing this. In the immigration context, here are some examples of what ChatGPT can help you with:
Depending on your specific area of immigration expertise, consider how you can use ChatGPT to revise other kinds of written documents. Remember, you can use ChatGPT to create a first draft, and then work off that draft. Or, alternatively, you can use an existing draft of a document and ask ChatGPT to reword it from another perspective, to reformat it, to summarize it or otherwise manipulate it to meet your needs.
Of course, as stated before, if and when you do use ChatGPT, at the end of the day, the final product is coming from you, so always remember to review everything before finalizing and giving it your stamp of approval.
While ChatGPT is an amazing tool to help you with marketing, communication and other drafting, it’s important to have fundamental tools and processes in place to streamline your firm from beginning to end. That’s where Docketwise comes in.
Docketwise is the #1 immigration law case management platform on the market. It was designed by immigration lawyers for immigration lawyers, and helps streamline and automate everything from client relationships to immigration forms and case management, allowing you to focus on the most important aspect of your practice: supporting your clients.
From an entire library of immigration forms to client questionnaires in multiple languages to an industry-leading set of API integrations, we help you stay current on all your cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build, manage and scale your firm.
If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below!
