Kansas City, Missouri-based Shook, Hardy & Bacon wanted to get information on practice area expertise out to current and potential clients while differentiating itself from the torrent of material generated by its competitors. Print may not be quite dead, but many think that video is the future. Shook agrees.

In a new series it calls "60 Seconds of Legal Science," the firm is offering quick video takes on topics ranging from dietary supplements to voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The concept is basically a series of "explainer" videos, similar to the Khan Academy, which is what the firm based its format on.

Shook, primarily a litigation firm, often works with clients in life sciences and other industries that are complex and can be difficult to understand, such as blockchain, biologics or VOIP. In order to showcase its attorneys' expertise in these areas (the firm said roughly a third of its lawyers have "hard science" backgrounds in computer engineering, pharmacology, data science and the like) while not getting lost in the technical weeds, it created a series of roughly one-minute videos giving a high-level overview of the topics.

Kim Rennick, chief client development and marketing officer at Shook, said the campaign was modeled after product marketing.

"Most of our clients are product companies," she said. "We needed to show them that we understand how they work."

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The videos are produced in-house and narrated by an attorney in the practice area of the topic being explained. Animation and basic graphics accompany an audio track, and the short videos close with a picture of the Shook attorney that narrated the piece. The videos typically take between two weeks and a month to produce, Rennick said.

The firm says it has found some initial success with the campaign. A video explaining blockchain and narrated by Shook IP attorney Keith Bae garnered 22,000 views on Twitter and 29,000 on LinkedIn, Rennick said.

She said the firm didn't really have a benchmark for what constitutes success for the campaign in terms of clicks or views, but it has been pleased with the results so far.

"There was a firm, much larger than ours, that did a video campaign on YouTube," Rennick said. "The videos were good, but they were only getting 15 or 30 views. We are doing something right."

The product-style video campaign is not going to replace the firm's more traditional marketing methods, such as client alerts, white papers and partner speaking engagements, Rennick said. But the firm does view them as another weapon in its marketing arsenal.

"This gives our attorneys a way to show how they would explain a very technical matter to a jury," she said. "That is very valuable."