Viral Customer Service || What Does Dobbs Have To Do With Law Firm Marketing?

Episode Notes

Transcript

Conrad Saam: Before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors:  Clio, LawYaw, Posh Virtual Receptionist and Nota.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Conrad, Happy 5th July as today is the 5th July that we’re recording this.

Conrad Saam: Yeah.  Good to see you.  I celebrated the Independence Day on the 2nd July because I felt like we’re a bit half the country that we were two weeks ago.  There’s a little math joke and politics mixed into one to welcome you to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

Gyi Tsakalakis: What are we talking about today?

Conrad Saam: As usual, we got a little news to cover.  We are going to talk about a case of exceptional customer service outside of the legal industry just to try and inspire everyone.  And then we’re going to inevitably talk about the Dobbs decision.  And A, I want you to rant on this because we’ve talked about this a lot.  We want a little bit of the Gyi rant, but then we’re going to tie this into marketing and talk about cause marketing and whether or not you should get engaged.  Until then, let’s have some music.

[Music]

Male: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing teaching you how to promote market and make fat stacks for your legal practice here on Legal Talk Network.

Conrad Saam: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.  Thank you for taking some of your time and spending it with Gyi and myself.  Let’s do the news.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Let’s go.

Conrad Saam: All right, Gyi, Bob Ambrosi, one of our favorite writers, maybe the original law firm digital marketing writer wrote about a firm called Mighty.  And I love this because it is positioning and branding done exceptionally well.  So if you would like to get a different flavor of what positioning and branding might look like in the legal industry, go to mighty.com.  Bob’s really highlighting this firm that has gone overboard about not being the typical billboard lawyer.  I think that’s their catchphrase Uneasy About Billboard Lawyers and they’re really trying to bundle a suite of services that go well beyond the legal realm to help people dealing with a personal injury.  It’s a completely different approach to marketing.  It is very antithetical, which I always like to the typical rah rah rah personal injury, we win more kind of approach and it is worthy of a look.  Even if you don’t love it, it may be very inspirational to you.  Gyi, State of Link Building came out from aira.net.  Talk to us about State of Link Building.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I think this is (00:02:54) newsletter.  We’ll make sure we have a link in there.  But great survey, great report on what folks are doing to actually build links.  And there’s a lot of good interesting stuff in there.  Content marketing, the general one tells tends to be top of the list.  But I think for me, interestingly and I think we’ll talk about this a little bit in the context of some of the PR stuff that we’re talking about later.  There’s a lot of other ways that people are still building links, whether it’s enterprise, small businesses.  And the other one that showed up on here that I still think is one of the big dirty words in link building is paid links and guest posting.  Both still very high on the list of what people are using.  And the answer is that it works.  There are risks, but anyway, it’s a good resource to check out.  If you’re an SEO person, I highly recommend you check out what’s going on with the State of Link building.

Conrad Saam: I was at the Arizona State Bar the other day.  Thanks to Lisa Bormaster for having me.  I did a talk on local search and one of the questions the most engaged and informed person in the audience asked me, “Hey, I heard that links don’t work anymore because I read a lot of this stuff.  Can you slap him straight for us Gyi?  Do links not work anymore?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I mean, if you’re a competitor of one of our clients, I hope you think that because again, I challenge anybody at any time.  Show me a competitive search query, especially lower intent lawyer business lookup.  The firms that are showing up have no links to their domain.  It just doesn’t happen.  Maybe you can show me some long tail queries, lower volume stuff.  But you’re talking about head terms, you’re talking about competitive search queries.  Those sites, they have links, period.  They work.  It’s Google still link based search engine.  I don’t think anybody at Google saying links don’t work.  There’s some nuance, of course, and I think some people are not doing a segment on this, but I think there’s some truth in the fact that the signaling that Google is using has matured.

So in which case is you might say, “Well, the power of links might be evolving, right?”  Because Google is taking another signaling.  But to say that links don’t work or links don’t matter, I mean your site is probably not ranking if you don’t have links period.

(00:05:02)

Show me a counter example, I wait for it.

Conrad Saam: You said we’re not doing a segment on it.  Let’s do a segment on it at a later date.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right.

Conrad Saam: Done.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Great.

Conrad Saam: Okay.  On the agenda and finally, this was really exciting if you have not heard of Leadferno, Gyi brought them up, I believe it was two episodes ago.  But Leadferno’s chat and texting functionality is now integrated directly into your Google Business Profile.  So Leadferno not a sponsor of this podcast, but we are pushing them anyway because the stuff works.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Stuff works.  And again, the story I always tell, it’s not necessarily a Leadferno story, but when we first started really diving into back at the time when it was probably like Google Local, it was always astonishing to me how many legal services consumer journeys end at the Google Business Profile page.  Whether it’s quick to call or click to chat.  And my view is we’re still on the front end.  I think that consumer behavior is moving in the direction more towards messaging and chat.  And so if you’re looking for something that you might not be doing right now to future proof, I might check that out.  There are some consequences to messaging through Google Business Profile because I haven’t checked this recently, but they were showing like competitors after you engaged, you turned on the chat and messaging feature.  But bottom line is it’s a way to reduce friction and to make it easier for people to contact your firm.

Conrad Saam: Unless you don’t respond to messaging and chat, in which case it is a great way to shoot your firm in the head.  And now it’s time for the Legal Trends Report minute, brought to you by Clio.

[Music]

Conrad Saam: Is your law firm falling behind in technology?  There has been a mass adoption of legal tech among firms of all sizes.  Today, at least 85% of legal professionals are using some form of practice management software.  Use of legal technology has dramatically altered client expectations.  The need for more flexible, convenient methods of interaction is here to stay.  It’s not surprising that at least 95% of law firms plan to continue using newly adopted legal technology beyond the pandemic.  Yeah, I mean, we’re endemic stage, aren’t we?  It’s a clear indication that technology adoption has become the norm for firms of all sizes.  Have we read this one before?  It’s an interesting one.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We haven’t read this one before.

Conrad Saam: No?  Okay.  I think that my warning and my caveat here is the technology shiny object problem, right?  And to borrow from you, the expectations setting.  Technology is rarely a single shot answer to a law firm problem and it needs to be used and utilized.  Otherwise, it’s just another monthly subscription off the bank account that you’re not really getting much out of.  Ideally someone internal to the firm who really has a solid grasp on this to get the most out of it.  So I don’t disagree with anything is being said here.  Like, we’re obviously tech nerd heads, but you and I both experienced those firms that are overteched and flailing because of it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I think and I’ll kind of parse this through the numbers here, right?  So if you’re in the 85% that are using practice management software you get it, you’ve tried it, you’re on board.  I think that Conrad’s message about shininess and features and that kind of stuff and making sure you’re actually implementing and configuring it the way it’s most advantageous to your firm, you’re in that camp.  And I think the other thing too, and I know the folks at Clio are working to solve this issue for legal service consumers and lawyers, too, is historically, we think, practice management, we think just like matter management, where I think we’re starting to recognize that the lines are blurring throughout the entire journey all the way from that first contact which you might think more in a CRM stage through matter management and then beyond where you might go back to CRM.

I know Jack talks a lot about the full legal services consumer journey.  So maybe if you’re in that 85%, maybe that’s where you’re starting to go now.  It’s like think about how you can actually get beyond practice management technology.  If you’re in the 15% that aren’t using some form of practice management software.  Like, frankly, I don’t want to be I’m going to sound like a jerk here, but I don’t know how you’re effectively practicing law.  I guess if you’re in a particular practice, takes on one client or maybe but anything at scale, and you’re certainly not doing a great job of meeting consumers where they are because, shocker, consumers are online.

Now again, I say that and people be like, “Well, that’s a very privileged, entitled viewpoint, and there’s lots of people that don’t have access to technology, and that’s true.  And if you’re serving consumers that don’t have access to technology by any means, then yeah, of course, then you might need to provide some alternatives.  And then I think the other one too like Conrad’s said 95% of firm plan to continue using newly adopted technology beyond the pandemic.

(00:10:05)

I want to talk to the 5%.  They were like, no, no, pandemics over.  We’re not using it anymore.  Like what?  That’s just lazy survey responding, I think.

Conrad Saam: I was going to say the same thing.  That seems like lazy survey responding.  Yeah, I mean, we’re tech nerd heads.  This is what we do.  I do appreciate Gyi, you for once being the first to insult the audience instead of me.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam: Thanks for taking that bull.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I figured I haven’t been pulling my weight there.

Conrad Saam: No, you haven’t.

Gyi Tsakalakis: To learn more about legal technology adoption, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at Clio.com/trends.  That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O.com/trends.  All right.  That brings us to our first segment of this episode and we wanted to give a shout to Chewy.  Every once in a while, you see one of these consumer service.  When you see it by a big company like Chewy, you’re even that much more impressed.  And I think as we talk about this the idea here is you can find something tactical to take away for your own practice.  But they just really go so far above and beyond what it would be expected of like a dog food company that we want to call it out.  Hope to highlight some useful things you might be able to use in your practice and recognize the work that they’re doing here.

So today at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, we are honoring those who make the effort to serve their customers, clients in the context of law firms.  And today we are honoring Chewy with the Medal for Exceptional Customer Service.  And if you haven’t followed what Chewy is doing here, we’ll break it down, we’ll share the tweet.  It’s actually just gone viral.  I know Conrad, you even have a personal story that maybe you want to share, but I’m just going to read the tweet here.  At least this is one of them that we found.  This was coming up when it was trending, but the person contacted Chewy last week to see if they could return an unopened bag of their dog’s dog food after the dog died.

The person’s dog died, called up Chewy and “Hey, I’ve got all this dog food.  Can I return it?  We don’t have use for it.”  Chewy gave them a full refund, told them to donate the food to a shelter and had flowers delivered with a gift note signed by the customer service person at Chewy that they talked to.  Conrad, you can elaborate on this, but I understand this is their policy.  This is just what they do.

Conrad Saam: Yeah.  A couple of things happened at the same time for me with Chewy.  One, I was at my in-laws and there was a pile of Chewy boxes waiting to go in and recycling.  And my mother-in-law talked about how amazing Chewy is.  After this tweet went viral, I saw a post from a friend of mine from high school.  Like the same exact this is just policy and what they do, right?  Same exact situation.  They had a dog put down, they asked to return the food here’s, the refund, donate to a shelter, flower, show up like the next day.  It’s so exceptional and it’s so easy.

The reality is, if you have a pet, you are going to lose a pet at some point in time.  And if that cycles back to Chewy, this is how they respond.  I was actually really lucky, and you may have met him unintentionally as well.  One of my business school friends from Michigan is Chewy’s CMO, and I actually asked to see if we could get him on the show to talk about this.  And he was like, we’ve got all these hoops we have to jump through.  I’m going to his 50th birthday party next weekend, so perhaps I can surreptitiously bring in the mic and we’ll record Mark as he talks about this policy.

Now, I joke, but for me you’re dealing with the loss of a pet.  It’s a hard thing to go through and to have a vendor retailer care so much, it’s great.  The reality is when you’re dealing with legal, you’re also dealing with typically really hard, gut-wrenching situations.  And I use the example all the time of when I’m talking about intake, go buy a pair of shoes at Nordstrom, be a really annoying customer and look at your experience there.  And then go home and mystery shop your own firm and compare the experiences.  You’re talking about a 200 or 200 — I don’t buy shoes at Nordstrom, but I imagine they’re expensive $200, $300, $400, right?

But that’s a really small ticket price when you think about it, compared to hiring an attorney.  And yet the experience in Nordstrom is always better than what you deliver to your prospects.  This is another example of where you can go above — I mean, it would be very easy to go above and beyond for your clients or even your prospects or those who you haven’t helped.  There are so many ways that we can go above and beyond as lawyers that we don’t.

(00:15:00)

And it would be so easy to deliver an experience that’s blow your mind, even for someone who doesn’t turn into a client.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.  That’s the one I think about all the time is, again, I think it takes only one aspect of this, right?

Conrad Saam: Totally.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There’s all sorts, really, places throughout the journey that you can do these, like, just really remarkable service things.  But I wanted to pick up because we get this all the time, like, “Oh, my clients don’t want to leave reviews online.  They don’t want to talk that I help them get acquitted from their crime or that they got hurt or whatever.  They’re getting divorced.”  And we see this happen.  We talked about Ken Levinson.  He does a really great job of empathizing, really, throughout.  But during his intake process, you’ll see in his reviews on Google, it’ll say, “Hey, can’t help answer some questions. And even though he wasn’t the right lawyer for me, he helped direct me to someone that could help me with my situation.”  So anyway, look, at this stage, hopefully you’re connecting those dots.  It’s the right thing to do to give your clients a great experience.

But I think for me, it’s like, think about this.  I can hear you right now rolling your eyes, being like, I don’t sell dog food, I don’t sell shoes, it isn’t the same thing.  But the emotion, the connection that these customers feel, ask yourself, do your clients feel that way about what you’re delivering for them from the experience standpoint?  And I would say the relationship between your dog food provider and your lawyer is different, but isn’t even more so?  Not to dimmish the relationship you have with Chewy.

Conrad Saam: Congratulations on insulting our audience twice in five minutes, Gyi.  But Gyi just basically said dog food is more important to your prospects than their lawyer is.  And frankly, you’re treating it that way, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam: Come up with a way like, there is a better way, there’s more that you can do.  This is just really meaningful to people.  I guess the challenge from Gyi is, can you find a way to have a better relationship with your prospects?  And Chewy does by selling dog food, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I reflect on this.  You know what I think about?  I think about all the time and money that lawyers are spending on ads, billboards and us and creative ad copy and what’s the next big shiny marketing thing?  And how much time are they spending thinking about how could I deliver something really, truly exceptional, remarkable to a client or to a prospect?  And I just think that that’s where there’s misalignment, right?  Again, I’m not saying there’s plenty of those big spending lawyers that do that stuff, right?  They set up charities, they do scholarships.  But this type of thing, I think that there’s so much area for improvement in delivering something really remarkable to a client.  And this is the best marketing.  I mean, you can’t beat this, right?

Conrad Saam: You cannot beat this.  The viralness of this, right?  It just builds on itself.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And maybe you won’t go viral.  But if a couple of people are like, “Hey, my lawyer did this thing.”

Conrad Saam: Yes.  Viral tends to mean massive, right?  And I’m not really talking about massive scale.  I’m talking about, does that become a referral source because of that exceptional experience and the answer is maybe, right?  But it’s a lot cheaper than spending money with me and Gyi on Google Ads.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Let’s take a quick break.

[Music]

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Now, it is impossible to be in the United States right now and not be aware of the massive Supreme Court changes, specifically Roe v. Wade.  What does this mean for the country Gyi?  I promise this is not a political show, but we will tie this back into the topic.  This back into the topic of legal marketing and cause marketing, but what are we dealing with here right now Gyi?

(00:20:03)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, even having this conversation, I was a little bit reluctant.  This is a legal marketing podcast.  Who cares?  But then, you know, at the same time and this is what you’re going to think we’re going to eventually get to is like, this is our small platform and so we feel like we had to say something about it anyway, this is Conrad’s idea, is really what I’m saying, in short.  But I think the thing that keeps coming back to me is how can we not have autonomy over our bodies?  How can there not be substantive due process?

I’m not a constitutional law expert and I know substantive due process is probably dead before this opinion.  And I know privacy rights are dead.  It’s very clear the constitution talks about enumerated rights.  How can we be only having judicial review for enumerated rights that have to be spelled out?  And again, some rant.  This is the rant you wanted.  I don’t want to make it much longer than that.  I know people feel very strongly about the abortion issue and lawyers should stand for something, right?  Maybe you stand for there are no unenumerated rights in the constitution, and maybe part of your practice is litigating cases that help further that, and that’s your cause.

But it’s impossible for us to be silent about it.  I think this is a particularly divided time.  We were dark humorly joking around about this being a Dystopian 4th July.  And again, not just the Dobbs decision.  I think there are some other decisions with respect to the power of the EPA to keep the environment clean.  And they’ve already acknowledged that they’re going to be taking on this Moore case in the next term, which I think is going to have very significant impact on state legislature’s ability.  So, hey, lawyers, this is your time to shine, folks.  This is your time to get out there.

Conrad Saam: This is a great opportunity.  One of the problems with social media is the anonymity and the vitriol that comes out of that.  And it’s very easy to flex your keyboard muscles.  This is a great opportunity to reach out to people who are on the other side, which I did.

Gyi Tsakalakis: How did that go?

Conrad Saam: It went very well.  The reality is all of you have friends who sit on a different side of the aisle.  Whatever side you sit on right now, this is a great opportunity to reach out to that group, that constituent, and say, hey, you’re, my friend, disagree on these things, I still love you, right?  It’s an opportunity to do that.  And it comes across much more meaningful because of the weight of what we are talking about right now.  I would just encourage you guys to think through how you can kind of build much deeper relationships with people who are on the other side, but it’s hard.  It’s a hard time right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I think the other thing, too, is because, again, we just did our little rant here, and I’m sure people are listening.  They’re like, yeah, this is your little own political rant.  But real law firm stand for something.  Maybe you’re not passionate about these issues, but real law firms are active in their communities.  How can you not be a leader in your community?  Whatever kind of practice that you have, I’m sure you get the, hey, you’re a lawyer.  I’m going to ask your opinion on something.  Real law firms educate the public.

Again, whatever your interpretation of what’s going on with the constitution and the government, you should be standing for educating the public, right?  Real law firms inspire social change.  Real law firms help people.  Real law firms partner with organizations to further justice.  They raise awareness for social issues, they maintain the dignity of the profession, and they participate in public service.  Again, those are a couple of things, and I think it just feels so demeaning to call this marketing.  But the truth is, this is what it’s about, right?  This positioning yourself, building a reputation for whatever it is that you stand for that’s the thrust of what we’re trying to convey.  When we come back, we’re going to go deeper into should your law firm stand for something here?  Is that appropriate or not?

[Music]

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Male:  Today’s legal news is rarely as straight forward as the headlines that accompany them.  On Lawyer 2 Lawyer, we provide the legal perspective you need to better understand the current events that shape our society.  Join me, Craig Williams, and a wide variety of industry experts as we break down the top stories.  Follow a Lawyer 2 Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network or wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

(00:25:02)

Conrad Saam: And we’re back.  Gyi ended that last segment talking through real law firms stand for something.  You’re taking sides.  This is caused marketing in a very, very polarized situation.  And Gyi, one of the things I often hear about from law firms when we’re talking about these things is I don’t want to insult my audience.  I’ve heard many, many times, stay out of politics, don’t take sides because you’re going to shrink your market and you’re going to turn people off.  Let me pose this question to you.  You want to take one side or another on this Roe v. Wade issue, right?  And I’m just going to pull something.  Let’s say you’re a personal injury lawyer.  It’s nothing to do with Roe v. Wade.  Why would you jump into that phrase that seems like, I’m just going to alienate my market, right?  I’m just going to tick people off.  Why Gyi?  Why would you do that?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m going to let you handle that.  I’m going to tell you from why it’s in your best interest, forget about marketing is because if you’re not educating on these issues, the whole civil justice system is based on your ability to redress your grievances.  I think maybe stepping out of the Dobbs stuff might help people that might be particularly angry that we’re spending all this time talking about this right now.  Think about tort reform, right?  If legislatures and courts start interpreting the constitution and creating laws that limit your access to the court system for redress of damages, your livelihood is at stake.  And then again to the positioning of, “Hey, this is what I believe in.  If you’re not going to hire me because we don’t share the same values, that’s your choice.  But you have to ask yourself the question, too, is like, at some point, what are your values?”

Conrad Saam: You mentioned tort reform and the self interest in that.  I love the example of standing for something that you have no self interest in.  And that’s the key on the positioning, because I’m going to use the PI firm, taking a firm stance on Roe.  You are now a very different PI firm from a positioning and decision point.  I mean, you can take a stance on all sorts of things, environment, Roe, there lot of things you can —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Whatever is important to you, whatever you value.

Conrad Saam: I’ll extend Levinson.  He takes a position on food, right?  He likes food.  It’s great.  Okay, so now he’s the guy who likes food.  So I want to use that innocuous example and then do the same thing with and then extend it to Roe.  If you’re thinking about hiring a personal injury lawyer in Chicago, and you are into food and you like food and you’re in Chicago, well, he’s the guy for you.  He’s now positioned his firm against all the other PI lawyers that look the same, right.  Do you like that or not?  Does it resonate with you or not yes or no.  And the answer is very simple.

In the same way, you can take a very heated polarizing issue like Roe and recognize that by taking aside either side on that for something that you have no self interest in, you are creating an affinity and a positioning that matters to a lot of people.  And you have now taken you’re one of 20 lawyers in the consideration set and now it’s a binary choice.  I either agree with them or not.  And then I’m going to look at the other 19 attorneys in that market.  And so, the other part of this for me is this has to be deep and genuine.  You have to be taking some form of action on this.  And it can’t just be like, “I’m taking a position on this because I’m using this as the marketing tail to wag the law firm dog.”  But how deep do you get into this?  I’ll bring this up for Gyi, but one of the things that some of the people in the agency world have done is they created an organization called ARR, and Gyi and I both joined that.  Can you talk about that as an example of like we’re getting deeply involved in taking a stand on that as opposed to just kind of window dressing and trying to make the marketing tail wag the agency dog?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a group of agencies that have agreed in principle to support team members who need to travel out of state to get an abortion, which we consider healthcare.  And again, I know some people take a much different viewpoint on that, which is fine, but we’re putting our money where our mouth is, and we haven’t worked out all the issues.  And there are myriads of issues, especially as states move to add aiding and abetting laws to helping women that want to travel out of state.

Conrad Saam: And the deeper these things become divisive, the more you actually you have to be genuine with it.  Maybe Ken really doesn’t like pizza but he just talks about it because some of the story –

(00:30:05)

Gyi Tsakalakis: He does.

Conrad Saam: Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I think the point Conrad is making in some where too, it made me think about this.  Again, we set it outside of July 5 when we’re recording this.  Now, over the last weekend, I saw tons of law firms with Happy 4th of July, right? Generic Happy 4th July some fireworks.  And in fact, I know many firms that are using particular legal marketing vendors have literally the same image and the same message across all of their social media accounts.  If you need the juxtaposition so if you’re not convinced that you’re going to jump into the fray of polarizing cause marketing, which, again, everyone’s got to find their comfortability level, and there are arguments against depending on a lot of factors.  But that’s the other end of the spectrum, right?  You’re literally just out there with stock imagery fired off that’s being used by 20 different firms.  If you don’t see how that actually has zero value and zero positioning and zero standing for something, then we’ve not done our jobs.

Conrad Saam: I’m just throwing this out there as an example, because your lawyers in your local markets, you want to get involved in this aiding and abetting laws.  What does that mean?  Be the forefront of talking about this and maybe dealing with this.  Right there, there is opportunity.  I’m not suggesting every single one of you should jump at that opportunity, but it’s not like there’s not an opportunity for you to get intimately involved locally with this issue.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And again, vice versa if you’re in, “Hey, America is going the right way right now, go out there and talk about that.”

Conrad Saam: No. Great example.  I referenced the reaching across the aisle.  One of my favorite lawyers, who I am very on different pages on the conservative side as well as the religious side is Kelly Tang Riker and what she said when this came out, she’s very happy about it, and she talked about how she’s adding adoption to her services.  That’s getting genuinely, deeply involved in something that she believes in.  And so, I don’t want to sound like this is a bunch of bleeding hearts snowflakes who are telling you to get on the Gyi and Conrad side.  There are lots of ways to get involved with what you believe in, regardless of how that aligns with the Gyi and Conrad show.  But get involved.  Get involved deeply if it’s something that you are genuinely passionate about.  And there’s a lot that you can do with us.

Gyi Tsakalakis: My big thing, I think when you really boil it down, whatever you’re into, this is not the time to be vanilla.  I mean, it’s never been the time to be a vanilla, but I don’t see how you build audience and reputation for anything without standing for something.

Conrad Saam: And the flip side of this, well, I’m trying to come up with a way to leave this on a super easy happy note for everyone.  And I’m going to use the puppy thing.  There are lots of things that you can get deeply involved in that are pretty much not divisive.  Puppies, helping the local animal shelter.   We talked about Colette’s Cookies the other day.  That’s the woman with autism who created a bakery because she couldn’t get hired anywhere, and you can now buy gift packages from Colette Cookies.  There are a lot of things that you can do that don’t necessarily mean taking a side.  It’s pretty hard to be against Colette’s Cookies or puppies.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. And I think, again, the impetus for this conversation was some of the issues that are very serious in our country right now.  I think the other thing that I would say, though, is Conrad made this point.  It doesn’t have to be related to anything you do, but where there’s overlap about a cause you’re passionate about and it’s at least tangentially related the things that I think about are like, if you’re a criminal defense lawyer and you’re active in the Innocence Project, or if you’re a personal injury lawyer and you’re active in the disabled rights communities, stuff like that, those are some that just come to mind at the top of my head.  If you’re a family lawyer and you’re active in all the communities out there that help support people dealing with family law issues, beyond just the actual divorce and custody legal issues, those are the types of things where there’s a ton of, I hate to say this, but synergy between the alignment —

Conrad Saam: Don’t say synergy.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Maybe alignment is better between something that you’re actually passionate about and the community that you actually help serve professionally.  I think where you can find those opportunities, there’s even that much more value in both for the community that you’re serving as well as for your practice.

Conrad Saam: And with that, we will see you in two weeks.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes.  Thanks so much, dear listeners.  For those of you that we scared away or angry away today from our politics shares, thanks at least for taking the time to sit through this episode.  If you just landed on this episode, please do subscribe and again, good, bad, or indifferent, we welcome your feedback.  You can hashtag LHLM us, you can contact us through our websites, or you can leave us a nasty review on Apple Podcasts.  Thanks again.  Until next time.  Conrad and Gyi, Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

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