We did it so you wouldn't have to. To generate law firm taglines, we experimented using ChatGPT. It's the AI writing tool that has been getting much attention of late. And guess what: they are not bad. Seriously. See the lists below, and judge for yourself.
We ran two prompts through ChatGPT. For each, we added the word "brief" because without that, ChatGPT generated lots of unwieldy 10-word taglines. Here are ChatGPT's taglines, unedited by humans:
“Brief corporate litigation law firm taglines”
- Navigating complex corporate disputes
- Solutions for your business conflicts
- Experience. Expertise. Results.
- Resolving your corporate legal challenges
- Defending your business interests
- Effective representation for corporate litigation
- Innovative solutions for corporate legal disputes
- Your business deserves top-notch legal counsel
- When business conflicts arise, we have your back
- Smart strategies for corporate legal battles
“Brief client-focused law firm taglines”
- Putting clients first
- We care about your legal needs
- Experience the difference of our client-focused approach
- Your legal matters are our top priority
- Trusted legal guidance tailored to your unique needs
- Client satisfaction is our ultimate goal
- Empowering clients with smart legal solutions
- Your success is our success
- Partner with us for personalized legal representation
- Results-driven legal services designed for you
The Verdict
Are they all winners? Nope. We found most to be a bit flat. But a few of them are actually rather good. But each has one big problem: they are just empty words.
Achieving Tagline Magic
Classic taglines such as “Just Do It” (Nike), “I’m Loving It” (McDonald's), and “Think Different” (Apple), if applied to different companies would have fallen flat. However, here we are still talking about them decades later for two reasons:
- Truth: The taglines reflected a meaningful truth about those companies and their products.
- Substantiation: The words were substantiated in a way that deeply connected with people.
If your tagline expresses a meaningful truth and is substantiated, you’ve got tagline magic. Without those things, you’ve got empty words.
“The Power of Collaboration”
Imagine a law firm that was considering using the tagline “The Power of Collaboration.” As many firms think of themselves as collaborative, we would typically try to dissuade a firm from adopting such a generic tagline unless it met the two key criteria mentioned above:
- Truth: The partners honestly believed that the firm was unusually collaborative and that this characteristic reflected an underlying truth about the firm.
- Substantiation: They could substantiate the claim of being unusually collaborative. Substantiation could include
- Examples of the firm’s processes to maximize collaboration
- Client stories illustrating the firm’s collaborative nature
- Client testimonials describing the firm’s collaborative nature
- Photography capturing the firm's being collaborative
- Videos driving home the message of collaboration using both visuals and spoken words.
A lot of law firm taglines don’t satisfy these criteria. As a result, they are simply an assemblance of words that sound nice but don’t meaningfully resonate (internally or externally). Consequently, they eventually end up being seen as marketing clutter and are often phased out shortly after their introduction.
Is a tagline important?
Here’s the thing – you don’t need to have a tagline. Because most law firms do lots of things for many types of client, it is seldom possible to craft a tagline that is memorable and can achieve consensus among the partners.
For such firms, there are often better ways to communicate your value, such as “Silent Positioning.” You can read more about that in a whitepaper we wrote called, Market Positioning for Law Firms.
Taglines can be powerful.
If your firm is intent on having a tagline, that’s great. It will probably take time to reach consensus on a worthy message. However, if done right, taglines can be an extremely powerful way to communicate your firm’s message – and distinguish it from lookalike competitors.
And if you do choose to write a tagline, it can’t hurt to check out ChatGPT before you bring in the professional brand experts. It’ll help to get the creative juices flowing. And it’s fun!
Image Credit: We generated the robot graphic (which appears at the top of the page) using DALL-E, the AI image generation tool created by OpenAI. We entered the prompt “robot lawyer typing at computer” into DALL-E and it generated this image, among others. See some of the outtakes below.
