In this week’s episode, we continue debating what ChatGPT can and can’t do for your law firm. Grace and Liel revisit one of the hottest topics during the National Trial Lawyers Summit in Miami and share updates on the general consensus among legal marketing experts and law firm owners.
Google’s earnings call was mainly focused on sharing updates on their efforts to integrate ChatGPT functionality and user experience into their platforms, which can mean that soon we may see a new update to the way the world’s most used search engine showcases search results.
Lastly, we get an update on the latest major mass tort to hit the market, hair relaxer, and we also discuss the downfall of Camp Lejeune cases demand, what are the reasons behind it, and how to see beyond the hype of new mass torts now that the industry has evolved into a new era.
Welcome to our conversation.
Resources mentioned in our episode:
- Sundar Pichai confirms Google is working on an AI search feature
- OpenAI releases a tool to detect AI-generated text
- ChtatGPT Plus
- Bad PR, thanks to Camp Lejeune campaigns
Enjoy the show? Subscribe and leave us a review! Don’t forget to send us your questions and comments at ask@incamerapodcast.com.
Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] During Google’s fourth quarter earnings call, Sundar Pichai confirmed plans to bring AI powered search features to the public, even though it is not clear how and what this means for users. One thing is clear Chat GPT put Google under pressure. I’m Liel Levy, co founder of Nanato Media and author of Beyond Se Habla Español How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. And this is in camera podcast, where we predict a new AI driven search results page in 2023 at least in better. Welcome to in camera podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversation. Grace. Welcome back. So nice to see you here. This starts feeling normal now.
Grace: [00:01:06] Yes. Well, it feels like we’re back in the groove of the day to day.
Liel: [00:01:11] 100% because I saw you last week in person, which is always fantastic. It’s always fantastic. I had so much fun with you and your team. And now we’re here recording the episode. And like, this is the frequency that I’m used to seeing you and talking with you because this new thing where we can go sometimes three weeks without talking, it’s weird. It it has not yet settled, even though that we’ve been in this configuration for a few months now. But yeah, as I was saying, so nice to see you.
Grace: [00:01:39] Same here. And you know, everything at NTL was really nice and it was really, really cool to see you across the street at your, you know, your own little event that was going on. And I.
Liel: [00:01:49] Yeah, Thanks for coming.
Grace: [00:01:51] That I got to see you.
Liel: [00:01:53] Yeah, no, that was great. And I really appreciate that you have created a time for that because I know you had a tremendously busy event, so why don’t we start there doing a little Rick up there? Grace Because, I mean, honestly, you know, as, as, as an attendee to, to, to the events that we’re under, under your brand name starting from the fire talk with Mike Tyson, that was tremendous. I will tell you one thing, Grace and I told you that on the day of the event, I’ve never seen ever seen a legal conference presentation so well attended. I mean, that was insane. So for those of you who were not there as as you probably recall from other conferences, usually the way that the organizers layout the area of the presentations, they do so in a way that in order to get to the main ballroom, you need to go through an exhibit or whole well, in order to get to the Mike Tyson thing, you kind of like had already to start figuring out your way towards the interior of the ballroom halfway through the exhibit or whole like there was already a traffic jam in the exhibit or hall of people trying to get inside the ballroom, which is not the common thing. Usually you get easily for any presentation at any time into the ballroom right away. And so that was quite remarkable.
Grace: [00:03:22] Yeah, the spillage was interesting, right? I mean, I I’m trying to manage the event and I’m walking Tyson down. I had to separate from him because I had to make sure that other things were going on on the other side. Like you said in the exhibit hall, I couldn’t get to Tyson from the exhibit hall, so I had to literally go out into a service hallway to with the security guard to be able to get to the front. That’s how packed it was. It was insane. That was definitely crazy. It was really cool. Yeah, really cool.
Liel: [00:03:53] Yeah, it was. And I’ll tell you something Grace. The conversation was really, really nice. I mean, the first the first part, you know, he got to talk a little bit about criminal justice and such, which was very interesting. Obviously, for me, my favorite part was the question and Q&A with the with the audience, because I think by that point he was really opened up and what a character he is, right? Like no filters. And it was so fun, so real and smart. I mean, smart, right? Like real life lessons from a real champion. It was it was very, very, very much one of the highlights of the event. But it doesn’t end there. Then you took us all into great journey across. I don’t I don’t know Miami well enough to know exactly where did we departed from or such. I think it was Where was it? Was it Bayside Belle Harbor? Where were we? A boarding and departing from Bayside.
Grace: [00:04:53] That was bayside.
Liel: [00:04:54] Yes, Bayside. Yeah. Okay. So you took us from Bayside into a great and fun yacht sailing trip into seeing the Miami skyline, which was tremendous. What a beautiful view. But if that wasn’t enough, then you guys just. Just went all out with that tremendous and very lively band that was playing throughout the entire thing. And I was really wild. Grace I mean, I’ll let you explain a little bit more about the band, but I mean, there were from New Orleans and it was just amazing, the music. And you did not stop there, but you also hired professional Mardi Gras dancers that just would not rest until every single person on the boat was dancing. So I you know, Grace, I usually stay by the sidelines and just just watch and enjoy myself. I was in the dance floor. That’s how that’s how things went on. And it was just so much fun. It was so, so, so, so good. I really enjoyed it.
Grace: [00:05:54] I’m so glad because, you know, the same thing happened with my husband. He doesn’t. dance ever. And he just was having such a good time. And the the dancers dragged him onto the floor like they did with you. And everybody just danced and had a really, really great time. I’m going to share with you, I think maybe if I’ll put it in the notes, actually, I’ll share the the video that our new videographer that we hired on that day. Oh, by the way, she started that one day at the Tyson interview.
Liel: [00:06:26] Oh, my God.
Grace: [00:06:27] Her name is J.L. She’s fantastic. She created a great onboarding. Right. Talk about start date. No.
Liel: [00:06:33] Yeah.
Grace: [00:06:34] Yeah, She was fantastic. I have to tell you, she created this three and one half minute video of all of the stuff that went on and she split it up in the most in the coolest way with Tyson at the front and then, you know, then walking on to the boat in the back half. And you can get the feeling of that the Mardi Gras dancers in the front and just everything. And so I’ll share it with you and I’ll share it with everybody today or on our episode notes. But it just like the feeling that everybody got and being able to go out and then come back and be docked for another hour and then go out for only another half hour, you know, I think it gave the feeling to everybody that was there what we want, which was you’re not going to get stuck on the boat. You you know, you’re going to be able to enjoy Miami. You can enjoy food and drinks. And the people, though. And it just it couldn’t have gone better. And it really.
Liel: [00:07:28] It was yeah. I mean, honestly, Grace, logistically, logistically wise, it was very, very well thought of. You know, you really open up opportunities here for people who had plans later on in the night to be able to attend for people who actually wanted it to attend the opening party at the national trial lawyers that they could do so and then attend your party. I mean, from that standpoint, you guys really, really, really created a very well organized event. I’ll tell you, I rode the shuttles from the Loews to to the port. Everyone who was organizing the people at the hotel to get them into the buses. And they were amazing. They were so friendly. Like really, really, really everyone stood up for the to the occasion. It was it was really excellent. And I’ll just want to add something else before we move on. The food and the drinks and all of the little details, guys, that you that you thought of, like when you got after to the port and you had an espresso machine there with I mean, come on. And I was like, yeah, that was yeah, that was five star all the way. It was tremendous. It was really, really good. Very well thought of. And people loved it. Loved it. Nobody left that party feeling hungry. That’s one thing for sure. And yeah, it was crazy how many stations you had there. It was insane.
Grace: [00:08:47] Yeah, there were three completely different stations barbecue, Mexican and Italian and the food and the drinks to go with it. Right. Because they had run punch, they had tequila, they had whatever you wanted to drink to.
Liel: [00:09:04] Yeah. Now it was it was it was tremendous. It was really, really great. And it was really so nice also to see attorney at like having so much fun and enjoying himself and really kind of like becoming the soul of the party, right? Always party. So it was fun. It was really, really nice. Now, Grace just moving on and talking about NTL It was it was, you know, it was great to be back at the lows. I think nobody for a moment I, for one, saw, my gosh, I wish we were back at the Fontainebleau. I don’t think that that crossed nobody’s mind. So that was great. I personally just like the closeness of everything, how easily you can get from the business of law Room into the main session room. And so I want to share a little bit about what I experienced going on, particularly on the business of law process citations, those that had to do with the digital marketing Grace. And, you know, it did not surprise me, but it certainly impressed me how much people are really questioning. How digital marketing is going to be affected by Chat GPT. Like it is very much in everybody’s mind. And there were a lot of questions, a lot of questions towards the panels in the presentations, people already proactively addressing the impact of such and such.
Liel: [00:10:41] But there seems to be a lot of unrest. Some people are seeing it as great. I will never have to write down a piece of content ever again. Particularly, that was the mindset, I believe. So some of the attendees, but I can certainly tell you that the consensus of all of the experts that got to talk about this is that hold your horses. It’s not necessarily going to be as game changing as you think because it’s not as good as you may think it is. Right. So from that standpoint, what you and I were mentioning here on our previous episode pretty much resonated with what I’ve heard there. That’s that’s the standpoint of the professionals Grace. But I wanted us here to kind of like just be a little bit more objective here and look at it from a consumer standpoint and try to understand, you know, true that Chat GPT it is not going to be able to create as good as content as the one that will researched and well experienced professional legal content writers are going to be able to create. Right? Like we are not disputing that. But what I’m trying here to get your opinion on Grace also is like, will this AI new way of interacting with platforms may, in a way or another change the way that we go about consuming information from places like search engines.
Liel: [00:12:06] And I’ll tell you why, because one of the things that actually got talked about by Sundar Pichai, which as you all know, is Google’s CEO during their earnings call last week, is that they’re working hard on implementing similar solutions as Chat GPT inside their platform. So the first thing here, the heat is on. They’re feeling the pressure. Google is understanding and is actually feeling a lot of pressure of having to up their AI game at a consumer level, right. You know, Google’s been calling themselves as an AI driven organization for four, six, seven years now. But the reality is that from the consumer standpoint, for users to really be able to touch and feel this AI interface, it’s not necessarily out there in the way that Chat GPT is, right, where users actually go and put up commands and then they get stuff created for them. So Google is basically saying we are getting there, we are working on that. It’s a very, very fast changing environment and so we need to stay on pace and make sure that the products that we put out there are good. So in other words, they’re saying a lot of it is going to be on betas for the first few months and then eventually it’s going to start getting released.
Liel: [00:13:37] Now, Grace, why is there so much pressure here from the Google side? Well, it’s because of the way Microsoft is already hinting that they will use Chat GPT in some way or another to interact with Bing. Right. And the world right now is in love with the idea of changeability. It’s kind of like. Finally, the promise that we’ve all been hearing since we were children that computers will be able to talk back to us and do things for us like this now feels very real right now. This really feels like finally we’re getting use of artificial intelligence at the most basic level that we want it to serve us. And so the excitement is there. People obviously find this very useful. And then at the same time, now Microsoft is seeing here a tremendous opportunity of saying, well, we can use you, we can find a creative way here of tying the chat experience into the search engine experience and increase our market share against Google, because Bing’s never been able ever been able to really increase their market share against Google. And this seems to be kind of like their their goal, their golden ticket at it. So, Grace, tell me what what are your thoughts?
Grace: [00:15:02] I’m I’m skeptical as I’ve always been, truthfully. You know if we’re going to speak objectively, you know I ran Chat GPT four, the version current version with my developers and we actually tried a couple of things with it. I wanted to see what it could do. I wanted to see what it can’t do, and I wanted to see if I could use it for anything like my purposes. Right? So I mean, look, when it comes to frequently asked questions and things that you kind of have standard language and verbiage that you use as a firm, totally do it. Put it in there, use it. You know what I mean? That’s that’s what that, to me is what it ultimately is for especially now. Right. Maybe in another decade. Maybe maybe even in another five years, maybe not a decade, it will be that much better. But no matter what and I look at this the same as like I looked at the metaverse. I don’t know if anybody on this podcast remembers when we were talked about the metaverse and Facebook. I said, I don’t think anybody’s going to go. And so far it’s happened that way. People bought money, you know, bought projects, bought buildings, quote unquote, shoes, all kinds of stuff, and put all this money into the metaverse. And I’m like, virtual reality is not there yet. I feel the same way about chat. Gpt four No matter what they want to say about it, the same people are going to be all over it as we’re all over chat GPT one and those are the people that don’t quite understand what it is. They use the words of artificial intelligence, they use the words of AI, they like chat bots and they combine all of these terms into the concept of something is going to do it for me so I don’t have to. That’s never going to happen. It just won’t. You always need a person to look at something and truly confirm that that is correct. You need a set of eyes to.
Liel: [00:17:13] So, Grace, here is the thing. One thing that you’ve mentioned there, which seems to really be kind of like one of the best case uses of Chat GPT and these type of technologies, that ability of of asking questions, get responses right, like to be able to get that conversational way of finding answers rather than, you know, right now you can go into a search engine, put up a search query, and we know now that people are transitioning into writing more conversationally to Google. Some people are using voice rather than typing in order to dictate their queries to Google. And so it fits very well that a technology like Chat GPT that actually writes back to you in a very normal and humanlike way is actually just collecting data from the Internet and giving you a concise answer to what you’re looking for. And that’s where I’m more focused when it comes down to are we going to be able to stop writing content or not? I for me, it’s kind of like it’s it’s a no brainer. Human created, thoughtful and well researched content. It’s not going to be beat easily. And I don’t think that’s something that is at stake right now. What I do think is at stake are up to a certain extent, and that will potentially see some way of evolution is the way in which we interact with search engines.
Liel: [00:18:41] And one of the things here that seems to be actually being tested, right, is a search results page by Google where you type in a query and instead of getting the traditional search results page, you’re now going to get a modified search results page, which we know that it changes every other month. Right. But now instead of actually seeing results right away or ads right away, you’re going to have kind of like a bubble with text in. It created a charge GPT answering to your query, followed by more questions that relate to the topic. So people also ask sort of thing, right? And then buy organic search results. So just think about how much less visibility organic search results are going to have. Now with that being said, where will Google source the information that it’s actually using to present their little bubble with an answer and will Google site to that source? And so, again, I see it from this standpoint. AI finds and sources its knowledge from the web. So who do you want to be as a business, as a law firm, you want to be Who is educating? AI must.
Grace: [00:20:10] Source.
Liel: [00:20:11] That’s exactly. Exactly. And that’s the way I think law firms should see it. At least those who are, you know, really thinking strategically and investing on creating content built to rank on the search engines. They shouldn’t be all from the start and thinking of it as a.
Grace: [00:20:30] Replacement.
Liel: [00:20:31] Strategy. Yeah, for strategy with limitations, I think it will continue to have a tremendous amount of.
Grace: [00:20:37] Oh, no, I completely agree with you. And I think people forget this part of it, which is content is king in the way that you structure it. So remember, it’s structured snippets. This is basically taking information from different structured snippets around the global web. So if you continue to follow the same process in terms of correctly putting structured snippets, optimizing the content, you do put thoughtful content content that people don’t want to bounce off of. You’re going to come up most likely in that group that you’re talking about that shows up before the organic searches anyway. So, yeah, no, I, I agree with you and especially not using Chat GPT four to create that content because it’s going to do that. It’s going to pull from the original sources, not the person that’s copying the sources that they are copying. So this is a perfect thing that you said honestly, because this is it’s a tool. Again, it’s a reminder that this is a tool. It can help you do research. It can help you figure out where things are and it can help you craft a well thought out blog or articles.
Liel: [00:21:47] Yeah, and I think, you know, rather than using it for very big tasks like that, use it for for more simpler shit, right? Like getting help to write your social media posts and that sort of thing. Right. I think that’s a better case point. To use this now, Grace, this is this is the part that I love the most about having this conversation. Is that open? AI So the same company that recently partnered up with Microsoft and that is behind Chat GPT just recently launched a tool to detect AI generated text. All right. So and this is this is the best part of it all because we you know, we were talking about this and everyone is talking about it. It’s like, listen, machines will eventually like the same the same algorithms that are writing these texts are going to be able to break it down and understand whether it is being created by a human or by a machine, even though even though this technology is built for it to sound and look and feel like it’s been human created, there are still some patterns that these algorithms can decipher and kind of like grade the text by by a level of likelihood that it was written by a machine or that it’s been reading by written by a real person. And so these these and this is extremely important right now for any law firm that is commissioning all of their creative work outside either to agencies, content writers that are writing the content for them is that you should take your content there and put it through this tool.
Liel: [00:23:24] Okay. As far as I know, it’s not costing money right now. It has to have at least 1000 characters, which is really not much. It’s about 250 words. And then you will get a result that will tell you whether whether it’s very unlikely, unlikely on clear possible or likely that the text has been created by AI machine. So. There will be false positives, right? That something that was indeed written by a human. May be showing up as possibly written by AI. But the bottom line is that here, at least in an example that I’m seeing here, that it got tested, a real piece of content that was used, that was created by the real person was graded as very unlikely. So seems to be working. And again, these are not the definitive tools that you should be using and just thinking like, okay, I passed it through it. It’s, you know, there is other things that you can do, passing on things through copy scape and such. Right? All of these steps are important in, in confirming the validity and the quality of the content that you’re creating.
Liel: [00:24:36] But the bottom line, where I wanted to come here to make a point is that it’s not like if or not, Google will know where we be able to decipher between quality content and AI content. Yes, of course it’s going to happen. It’s already happening, right? So even the mother company that created this technology themselves are already making available the same technology to give more transparency to the whole world about what’s getting created in their platform and what isn’t. So that’s where I see our standing. Great tool, great way to create some some content for your social media, to get inspired, to get some ideas flowing. But at the end of the day, you know, to say the least, you’ll have to line at it. You’ll have to source the information that you’re actually putting in there, and then you’re still going to have to make sure that whatever you’re writing is actually whatever you’re generating or you’re getting out of these tools is holding ground against where you’re going to try to position it. Right. Because it’s not about whether Chat GPT rights use something nice or not. It’s about whether it’s competitive enough for what is in your market available. So, you know, there is a lot of factors there.
Grace: [00:25:52] Well, I like I like what you said about that, though, because actually I immediately saw a use for our purposes. As a matter of fact, now that you said that, you know, we have a phenomenal content writer. She writes long form content. And recently we asked her to start taking her content and creating blurbs for social, as a matter of fact. So this is probably a perfect tool to use to feed the full article that she did ask for, you know, oh three line of summary, right? That’s optimized for social and it should be able to do that. So that’s something that like it’s coming from her original content it’s perfect.
Liel: [00:26:32] 100%.
Grace: [00:26:33] 100%.
Liel: [00:26:34] Love that example. Yeah, love that example. And this is exactly what this can be used for, right? Here’s another thing we’re going to end up here. We it looks like we turn out having a primarily Chat GPT here centered conversation. But here is kind of like the the new face also of this. So, of course, now that there is a lot of money being invested here in this technology and such, corporate corporations can no longer hold back from monetizing on it. So what did recently launch is the paid version of it at $20 a month. Now you get access to chat GPT without limitations. And some of you may be asking, wait a second, what do you mean, limitations? I thought it was free. I was able to use it and didn’t have to pay at all. Well, obviously, since it’s gained so much popularity now, there are certain times that the platform is at capacity and you may not be able to use it or access it when you need it. So with this paid membership, you actually get guaranteed access to the platform and to be able to use it. So, you know, I think it was we all saw it coming and as more functionalities get added to it, the rates for usage are going to increase and this is not going to be a free ride forever. I mean, forget about it. It was for a very long time a model that was being trained and learned. And sometimes the best way of accelerating that process is by making the tool free.
Liel: [00:28:05] But trust me, with an investment on 100 million, $1,000,000,000 behind it, there’s there’s a lot of expectations here from a lot of corporations that want to capitalize on this, like now today. So that’s where we’re standing with Chad, Djibouti. So it’s not your enemy, but it’s not your solution for all of the things that you’ve not been able to figure out yet. So sorry if we’re both bursting here, a bubble dream that you had on that Grace. Let’s turn the page here, because there’s so much happening in the mass tort world that you’ve brought up here. Have relaxer a couple of weeks ago. And honestly, like since you brought that up and after being in NTL, now I see her relaxer everywhere. Everywhere. Ah, everywhere. Everywhere. It really feels that over the past three weeks, things have really exploded. I really feel I really don’t know if it’s because just people are now more aware about my mass tort. The legal industry is more involved in mass torts as a whole. Consumer attorneys are more overall involved in the whole idea of mass sports. And that’s why now every time a new mass tort emerges, there’s more hype because there’s more people actually talking and paying attention to it. But but I will say that the hair relaxer mass tort is really seem to be. In a lot of firms radar. So what can you tell us about that and maybe other mass torts that we’re not talking enough about? But things are happening.
Grace: [00:29:40] So, you know, hair relaxer is the kind of latest and greatest, to tell you the truth. You know, besides that, I’d say Tylenol is the other, you know, new kid on the block behind it, you know, because that came before. So, you know, those things are just kind of as they go along, the criteria changes. That’s really what happens. And right now, the hair relaxer, at least initially, I believe that they were going to accept endometriosis, which is not cancer necessarily. What it is, is cysts that develop in the female organ areas and the reproductive system. And so that was dropped, as a matter of fact, as one of the criterias. So they are saying that unless you had endometriosis with surgery, in other words, hysterectomy of any kind, whether it’s full or partial or whatever, then it would be considered. But that is one of the lowest tiers of what they believe is being caused by the hair relaxer. The others are ovarian cancer, uterine cancer. And forget what the third one is, but they’re all related to the endometrial cancer, not endometriosis gets really odd. It’s an unfortunate situation because in that area most women don’t know necessarily what cancer it was. The good, if you can think of any good of this, is that if you had cancer in that area, unlike with talcum powder, generally speaking, that cancer is acceptable under the criteria currently.
Grace: [00:31:13] What I mean by that is they do believe that there’s enough at the moment to link those cancers to the use of hair relaxer when you use it a minimum of four times a year. Now, those of you who don’t know anything about hair relaxer. What hair relaxer does is it literally releases and. Makes the proteins in the hair release and strips of those proteins, the chemicals relax the hair. And so when your hair is coiled and that’s what you use hair relaxer for, is to straighten your hair or relax it, which is the actual terminology used in that particular beauty industry. It breaks the bonds. So the protein bonds are broken in your hair. Now, the funny thing is I don’t you know, I’m not funny, but I think an interesting situation about this whole thing is that they knew back before, when they originally started and found hair relaxers, they used a lie. Lie is a chemical that is used in soap. It. They accidentally dropped it on their hair or somebody. It was actually a man that initially used this and found out that when he mixed it with this other chemical lye would break the bonds and his hair was straight. So for for quite a few decades, they used that particular version. Then Johnson and Johnson, as a matter of fact, came out with a safer alternative to the lye hair relaxer.
Grace: [00:32:48] Since then, those are the chemicals that they’re using in hair relaxers. They were purported to be safer and if not safe to use. Now, obviously, we know now that they’re linking it to cancers, they’re linking it to other situations. And anybody that’s used hair relaxer for a long time in their life, their hair starts to fall out. It starts to get brittle. It starts to not grow back. So these were kind of signs, unfortunately, that that product wasn’t something that was 100% safe. But if you weren’t told that, it wasn’t 100% safe, and it’s a product that is being put out on the market as safe, of course, you want to look beautiful, whatever beautiful means to you. And if hair relaxer as part of your beauty regimen, you use it very, very frequently. Because as your hair grows out and the roots, you’re going to use a hair relaxer again on your entire head to straighten it again. So it generally speaking, if you use hair relaxer as part of your day to day and your regimen, you’re going to use it more than four times a year. And so you’re going to constantly be putting this on your body. And absorbed through your bloodstream. So it’s kind of a crazy situation because a lot of black and Hispanic women use this a lot. I mean, I have lots of friends that have used hair relaxers.
Liel: [00:34:14] What I’m seeing here is that I don’t probably one of the reasons there is a lot of interest. I think it’s also because of what you’re saying. You know, the popularity of the product itself and the wide segment of the population that actually is likely to have used these for extended periods of time. And according to social media right now, a lead of her relaxer is going for about $75 and Casey’s are signing up for about 500. So, you know, looking at it from a mass tort standpoint, this is very, very affordable. Very affordable. If this really holds its ground and it’s going to have potential but $500 for a signed case on a mass tort, it’s a really good I think we’ve not seen something that size for so low, I’m going to say here potentially since Zantac. And so obviously I could understand why there is so much interest in gaining right now sign ups while the costs are like this. Why? Because as we’ve seen time and time and again, once things started developing and start and things start, you know, the case on the product, on the mass tort starts becoming more solid. The demand just increases and then prices just skyrocket because there is less market share, there’s less cases to sign up and there’s more demand. And that’s kind of like the Camp Lejeune situation where you have leads going up for cases, going up for hours for as much as five, six, 7000. And actually, it’s surprising to say, but Camp Lejeune customer acquisition has also gone down. It’s now at 2237. And like three months ago, that was about 5000. So why do you think Grace that all from the sudden the cost per case of accomplishment is dropping?
Grace: [00:36:18] So it’s an interesting situation when Camp Lejeune. Right. I think that a lot of people kind of went out crazy before the bill even passed. Marketers anyway, not necessarily law firms because they weren’t allowed to and they didn’t want to do that.
Liel: [00:36:30] But I do want to correct ourselves there because marketers, it’s basically Wall Street, right? Because this is all this is all VC money that’s being passed on to marketers to just go and sign up.
Grace: [00:36:43] Case, Correct? Correct. So not necessarily the legal marketing companies themselves directly. It is funded by companies that know that they can make money off of it.
Liel: [00:36:52] Yeah, yeah. And, and with all fairness, then the marketeers, they need to have a prerogative on whether they’re going to be working with real lawyers that that are really trying to improve people’s lives or they’re just going to monetize in the in the most heinous way need that people have so.
Grace: [00:37:12] Right. Yeah right. And that’s why I think at our first podcast about Camp Lejeune. But when all the craziness started, we were both saying, you know, ethical versus unethical. And, you know, we are ethical marketers, ethical lawyers, and we believe that others should follow the same path. Obviously, they a lot don’t in some in some cases. And Camp Lejeune was one of those situations that got stuck in the crossfires. So what I think that is happening right now is there’s a lot of talks regarding the attorneys fees. Now, some attorneys don’t agree with me. They believe that this is this is BS, Right. And that there is no way that this is going to happen. What I’m talking about this what I’m saying is that 2% or 10% administrative fee or attorney’s fee that they want to drop it. So as most of you know, 30%, usually no less than 25% and upwards of 40% is what the retainer fees are. Right. That’s what usually the law firm gets. If it goes to litigation, it usually is 40 to 45%. If there’s no litigation. In this case, it’s just administrative forms. It can be as low as 25%.
Grace: [00:38:25] So what the courts or really Congress is saying is that they believe because this is an administrative play, quote unquote, they just have to file forms, get records, and they’re going to get the money, meaning the clients. They don’t believe that the attorneys should get 40% or even 30%. Yes. The conversation right now is that they believe that there should be 2% if it’s just administrative or meaning. They grab the information, they worked up the case and they file it. The attorney should only get 2% if it goes. The litigation. They have to go in front of a court, a jury, something, anything like that. Then they’ll give them 10%. I believe that that is causing a situation. And I also believe in conjunction with that that there’s just not that many out there. And I think that the attorneys or the other people that are truly going to be filing these cases realize that. So they’ve pulled back, they pulled out and the cost per case is dropped. There’s just not as many as they’re saying there are. And they believe that they’ve already purchased all of the cases out that there are available out there.
Liel: [00:39:37] Yeah, you know, we’ve been talking about that pretty much since November, is like how much is there left? Right. Like, how much is there left there? And I think what you’re bringing up here, what you’re raising here about the attorney fees and such. Yeah, that’s been talked about. And quite frankly, it’s been a big blow in the public opinion in terms of personal injury lawyers, it has not helped at all the perception of the business model that personal injury lawyers tend to have. And it certainly did not help the PR efforts of particularly big firms that are behind this initiative. So I think, you know, this is a very, very good reminder that when you’re putting yourself in a position where you are. Yes, trying to help veterans, but at the same time taking X amount of percentage out of their compensation, you’re not necessarily going to be loved by the entire population. So, yeah, I think, you know, Grace, especially especially when it comes down to veterans, I think this certainly should, you know, set a precedent as to how are these cases and situations and agreements of representation should be should be put together. Because in a move that you may think that you may be finding a golden nugget, you may actually be really damaging.
Grace: [00:41:08] A little more than.
Liel: [00:41:08] Your own.
Grace: [00:41:09] Yeah, yeah.
Liel: [00:41:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Grace, thank you so much. You know, we can never have enough of neither marketing or mass torts spot. Our conversations have to come to an end because otherwise people will stop listening. And we don’t want them to abandon our shows because they’re becoming too long. So let’s stop it here while we are still able to come up with some very good. Take aways for these. Eh, you go first.
Grace: [00:41:37] So I want to take what actually the suggestion you provided during this call and I’m going to actually go back and use it now and that is use chat GPT four. Or to take the content you already create with thoughtful. Thoughtfulness behind it and help you craft these social messages and you can put them all kinds of ways. So if you need a little five second bit, you need a 32nd bit, you need a script, you need something out of you already have the content. So use the tool that’s there for your best for its highest and best use, in my opinion, is what you said Liel Let’s use it. I’m going to I’m going to turn around and I’m going to go send it to my my content creator right now. As a matter of fact, when we hang up here, because to me, that’s that’s a fantastic use of a system when you already have content to use it for. So look at chat for as a tool, as we said on the last podcast, but especially now that we gave you a good a. A good example. And I say, take it, use it. You guys spend a lot of money on content and this is something that can help you get even more content from the content you created.
Liel: [00:42:46] I’m going to go Grace. It’s kind of like also in this same topic, but I really like one thing that you’ve talked about during the conversation that was kind of like using the metaverse a little bit as an analogy of what’s happening with Cat GPT. And the reality here is what should be the case. Use of Chat GPT probably might be more extensive than the metaverse ever was. It is still hype, right? And at some point, a lot of us felt that, wow, the metaverse, right. I mean, you should open up your law firms in there, just advertise in there and such. And the reality is that meta has lost a crazy amount of money on their metaverse investments. People are not going there. The traffic is lower than it is in sites like MySpace. And so it’s really yes, it’s just not what the hype was about. It did not live up to the expectations. So, you know, just. Not saying here, do not ignore. What is the latest topic of conversation when it comes down to technology and marketing, but don’t necessarily jump on the back on the bandwagon of things that your your you know, you are just learning of for the first time. And it’s hard. And what we’ve seen time and time and again is that it’s still hard for things that have proven themselves to be legitimate with with, with the longevity that they’ve had to all from the start and lose their power and ability to benefit your your firm. Right. So whether that is your social media presence across multiple platforms, whether that’s your efforts to get your website to run through content and through a good and well thought of local search strategy and backlink strategy like those things continue to work. So we have a last one. Grace And of course it has to be about mass torts because mass torts is always in our minds what is going to be that one?
Grace: [00:44:49] Keep an eye on the marketing, just like we just talked about here, right? Because Camp Lejeune, as you said, the cost per case may have gone down. But is it worth getting in now? Probably not. So I think it’s important to to see not just the cost per case or cost per click or cost per acquisition, but also to understand the the status of the litigation. Yeah. And, you know, be ethical. And I feel like and I’m hoping this is true, that the people that listen to our podcasts, listen to our podcast because they are ethical people and they believe, like we do that their conversations that aren’t being had and they need to hear them and they need to talk about it.
Liel: [00:45:30] So yeah, and also remember Grace, I think, you know, the world has changed and the legal space is changing and nowadays there is a lot of money being dumped into a mass torts that was non existent before, right? And so right now, when there is a big hype on something, oftentimes it’s created by people that are just, you know, playing a game of like, let’s just buy it all and then whatever sticks, sticks. And that’s not being the traditional way. And so while you may be seeing, okay, this is hot, this is getting demand, we probably should be getting on it, It’s not probably because of the right reasons. So just be mindful about that. And as Grace is saying here, pay attention to the litigation. Right. Because the signs are there.
Grace: [00:46:16] Agreed.
Liel: [00:46:19] All right, Grace. Well, that’s great. And we’re going to be back just in a couple of weeks with another conversation. But until then.
Grace: [00:46:29] Take care. Liel, thank you.
Liel: [00:46:35] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe till your coworkers leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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