On Tuesday (30 June), The Global Legal Post is hosting a live webinar in association with video production company Tin Pan: How Video is Transforming Legal Communications. We asked two of the panellists: Byfield director Alex Novarese and leadership communications consultant William Brewster, former global head of communications at Clyde & Co, to reflect on some of the topics due to come under discussion.
How effective is video as a means of communicating a law firm's brand and culture?
William Brewster: "The question isn’t whether law firms should use video – they must – but whether they are producing anything that will help them stand out from the pack. The differentiation challenge that all firms face doesn’t disappear with video.
What cuts through is the same thing that has always cut through: an interesting story, told well. It’s not just how you say it, it’s what you say."
Thinking about other sectors, are law firms making the best use of video? How can they improve?
Alex Novarese: "There is some good work being done. You see some creative things. Success boils down to two things: firstly, understand how to play to the medium, using motion, strong visuals, decent editing and production values, considering pace and economy in keeping with format.
Secondly, keep front-of-mind what clients want to know about, what will be helpful, rather than what you want to talk about. It’s about what people want to ‘buy’, not what you want to sell. If you are going to cheat and add a third: don’t be boring!
Many of these issues are interesting – fascinating even – if you can find a means to strip away the jargon and get to the intellectual and human heart of the issue. Sometimes lawyers are very good at taking high-impact topics where law-meets-risk-meets-policy-meets-commerce, that they could make very engaging informally over a drink, and making it sound very dull."
Brewster: "Law firms, on the whole, still underestimate what B2C marketing figured out years ago. First, that you shouldn’t be afraid of creating an emotional reaction. The fact that we sell serious services to serious people doesn't mean your communications have to be emotionless.
Second, don't be afraid to entertain when the time is right. Treat your audience as human beings, not just automaton buyers."
What types of video content deliver the greatest return on investment?
Brewster: "ROI depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve. The research is very clear that short-form video drives awareness and reach. But if you want to convert, longer content consistently outperforms it. Spend time being crystal clear about what you are trying to achieve and where video sits in the marketing mix and you’ll improve your ROI as a result."
Novarese: "ROI is a funny one in the context of law firms and where marketing and content marketing specifically sits in the BD process. Strong material can get you business directly – a client told me recently about a video that ultimately generated a multi-million-pound consulting job and they just did it because they thought it was interesting.
Sometimes partners don’t like to acknowledge wider impacts, helping an instruction come in, but I’ve been told by partners about campaigns generating work. But tracking that is a lot harder to do in some contexts.
Some of it comes down to what tool you are using for the job at hand. Is this a brand-awareness or positioning exercise? Are you aiming to do lead generation? Does it sit in the training wheelhouse like a webinar? Then you adjust tactics accordingly.
As a very broad observation on content marketing, whether video or digital media or print, it often makes sense to hard-wire in an in-person element, either directly or as follow-on that puts a potential buy and sell-side in the same room. I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more than it does. Sometimes there are silos between marketing and events activities."
If you were advising a law firm to invest in just one area of its video strategy in 2026, where would you tell it to focus and why?
Novarese: "I’d recommend central investment in rich-media production in general, spanning podcasts and video. You should probably be doing a 90/10% split on audio-to-video. Audio is better for sit-back engagement and long-term audience building, video works better for branding, short bursts and high-impact campaigns and firm-wide messaging.
A few good people, tools and facilities and some decent external support where needed – you should get a lot of value out of that investment if you’re a sizeable law firm."
Brewster: "It’s not glamorous, but I'd point law firms towards YouTube, and the reason is AI. Large language models are increasingly sourcing and referencing video content in their answers, mostly from YouTube.
A well-structured, clearly indexed educational video about a practice area (not slick, not expensive, but genuinely useful) can help. It serves many purposes that make the investment worthwhile: it reaches potential clients researching potential counsel, the LLMs now acting as their first port of call, internal comms, and trainees who need to learn about the firm.
Right now, I’d say: get ahead of the rest and feed the LLMs."
What impact is AI having on law firm video content?
Novarese: "Honestly, I haven’t gotten into that too much yet. The general approaches to AI-generated avatars have been pretty poor. The last thing you want is something that makes your lawyers look even more unnatural. I suspect the real positive impact will come around editing, production and image generation. Providing the input content is in solid shape – and that’s quite a big if – on paper, AI should be a big help."
Brewster: "Video is now cheap and fast to produce, which means feeds are full of it, and audiences are developing immunity. The firms that will stand out are the ones brave enough to go in the opposite direction: less slick, more honest, more human. On LinkedIn specifically, I think the crash, bang, wallop thought leadership trailer has had its day. What actually works, and LinkedIn's own research backs this, is real people saying interesting things in a considered and natural way.
The challenge for law firms is that their lawyers are not tech bros, influencers or entrepreneurs, and they shouldn't be filmed as if they are. Play to their actual strengths: intellectual depth, clear thinking, professional credibility. That's what their clients come for."
Any other comments?
Novarese: "Institutional law firms operating B2B models should cast their eye over the fence once in a while and get a sense of what retail-orientated counterparts are doing, because there is a sharper eye on hitting potential clients in some of those markets.
The biggest digital audiences in the UK legal market are firms with substantial B2C profiles. I refuse to believe large City law firms couldn’t pick up a few lucrative tricks there."
Brewster: "Even the best video is only ever watched by some of your audience and fully watched by fewer still. That's not an argument against making it, but an argument for using it as part of a wider strategy and alongside other tactics.
This matters especially for internal communications, where there's a persistent and overly optimistic belief that a well-produced video will land a difficult message across a whole organisation. It won't. Video can be the most compelling part of an internal campaign, but only if the campaign is actually a campaign, supported by conversation, by written content, by management reinforcement."
How Video is Transforming Legal Communications takes place on Tuesday, 30 June from 11 am-12 pm. The live webinar is moderated by Sadie Baron, chief marketing officer, TLT, and also features Ed Blum, creative director and founder, Tin Pan, and Laura Klysz, global head of marketing and communications, Simmons & Simmons. Click here to register.
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