Beyond Copycat Marketing: Building a Law Firm Brand That Actually Converts, with Karin Conroy

Episode Notes

Transcript

Zack Glaser:

Hey y’all, it’s Zack, and this is episode 610 of The Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, I talk with Karin Conroy about websites, marketing, branding, and why now more than ever, it is imperative that you don’t take shortcuts and just do copycat marketing. Newsflash, it’s because of AI. Well, we’re doing this episode right now because Carin was actually one of the people that started the Law Firm websites contest. And yesterday, the 30th, we started that contest once again for the 16th year in a row of the best law firm websites competition. So submissions opened yesterday, March 30th, and they close Friday, April 17th, and we will announce the winners of the best Law Firm websites 2026, Monday, May 4th. So head on over to lawyers.com and you can put your submissions in there. Submit your website, submit a website you thought was pretty amazing.

Submit a website you thought was really amazing. Submit a website that you made with artificial intelligence, which it’ll probably not … I mean, I don’t know. If it’s good, it’s good, right? And we will look at all of them, figure out which ones are the best, and come back with a top 10. So make sure you get your submissions in by April 17th.

Now, here’s my conversation with Karin Conroy.

Karin Conroy:

Hi, I’m Karin Conroy, and I am a legal marketing consultant who I feel like I start every episode by saying, “I’ve been around lawyers forever, but it’s a good

Zack Glaser:

Start.” It is. It is. Karin, once again, welcome back to The Lawyers Podcast. Thank you. I love having you on at this time of year, especially. I always like having you on, but love having you on at this time of year, especially because of that history with the Lawyerist Podcast. As it relates to this episode coming out tomorrow, we’re going to start our 16th year of the Best Law Firm websites contest. Yes. We’re going to open up the contributions and all that, and we’ll get going with that. But as people who follow the show would know, you started that. You’ve been here since day one of that-

Karin Conroy:

Since day one, in 2010, I decided to throw together this post. If people have been around that long, they’ll know that it used to be this lawyerist was basically a contribution blog where it was just all these guest contributors. And so I put this post together and I was like, a lot of my clients ask me for inspiration. Actually, they don’t really ask for inspiration. What they’re really asking for is who can I copy? They

Zack Glaser:

Want a template.

Karin Conroy:

And they find nice words around that. And so we’re going to talk about that a little bit, but there have always been some sites that I referenced back to. And it’s actually kind of interesting because where I always started with my clients was not other law firm websites. It was, let’s take a broader scale view of who is doing beautiful work in website design and what can we learn from them. And then it just got boiled down to, okay, who’s doing that for a law firm? And then we, I created this contest and it just ballooned. It went bonkers for years and years and it’s still around. So I wanted to talk first about why? Why is it such a big deal? And I have some thoughts on that that tie back to this whole idea of copycatting.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s the thing is like, why do people look at the … Why do you want quote unquote inspiration? And at best, it is inspiration.That’s the idea is going, “Oh, I didn’t know I could do that. ” But at worst, at worst it is, “Hi, legal marketing company, can you make me a website that looks just like this?

Karin Conroy:

” 100%. I’ve literally had people contact me and say, “Can you slap my logo on this, maybe change the font color and how much would that cost?” Because part of the problem is there is so much garbage out there and there are these templates. And so in fairness, people are like, “Can you just make that a template?” And so I don’t want to be totally fair to these copycatter type people.

Zack Glaser:

That’s not what we’re here for. That is not what we’re here for. No, you’re going to dogcost them the whole time. Absolutely.

Karin Conroy:

Exactly.

Zack Glaser:

Yes.

Karin Conroy:

But here’s what I always said is, no.

Zack Glaser:

I will not do that. Yeah, it’s not what I went to school

Karin Conroy:

For. You’re a

Zack Glaser:

Lawyer

Karin Conroy:

And there are these things called copyright laws to begin with. So yuck, that’s problematic. So no. Second of all, what does that do for your firm? And what does that say about you that … Well, it says nothing. It says nothing about you. It just says, “We’re a law firm in X city doing Y practice area and here’s our phone number and fingers crossed, something’s going to happen.” And back in 2010, that would have worked better than it does now. It may or may not have worked, but it would have worked better than it does now.

Zack Glaser:

Right.

Karin Conroy:

Listen, when I used to run a marketing department and we used to walk around saying inspiration in air quotes. We would look at the competitors. I worked for Century 21, so we’d look at the other big real estate companies and what are they doing that’s working? And let’s go get some quote inspiration, which meant what can we copy? So this is not a totally new idea, but it’s garbage, right? We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to start with garbage.

Zack Glaser:

Well, I think the bigger issue there is not the inspiration, the air quotes inspiration. The bigger issue is, why? If you’re just copying something because you’re just trying to copy and paste something, we’re really getting into this, and I think we’re obviously going to get into this concept a little bit more.That’s AI slop before there was AI slop.

Karin Conroy:

Exactly.

Zack Glaser:

Exactly. It’s just crap. Why do you want to copy that person’s website? Well, because it looks pretty. Is it going to do anything for your company? They

Karin Conroy:

Seem successful, so maybe that’ll make me successful.

Zack Glaser:

Despite that.

Karin Conroy:

Right, exactly. But I think this is a lot of what happens on social media. This is what happens kind of in the world generally. And so I think that was one of the things I wanted to kind of bring up is that this idea of copycat is not new. A lot of people think that’s the way forward in marketing. Let me go find someone that I think looks like they’re doing it right. And then I’m not quite sure what to do. So let me try to save money and time and effort and whatever. And I’m not sure what that next part is. So I’m just going to try to jump over that and do the same thing.

Zack Glaser:

Just shortcut

Karin Conroy:

It. Right. And so what we’re trying to say is, what would that look like if you didn’t? What would it look like if you actually use the inspiration?

Zack Glaser:

Go on a follow me here. What if you didn’t do that? Let’s

Karin Conroy:

Not. Exactly. It’s complicated. I know.

Zack Glaser:

But

Karin Conroy:

The starting point is no. Is

Zack Glaser:

Don’t. Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

Yeah. And I also want to start by saying this is not anti-AI. I am definitely not that. I want to talk about some ways you can use it that are different and probably different than what we were talking about in the past because a year ago AI was in a different place. Websites were in a different place. So I do want to talk about all that stuff, but I wanted to start with this core idea, like get this into your bones that what we’re not doing is copycatting because that’s the opposite of marketing. The point of marketing is to differentiate, to stand out, to position yourself as a different option that’s clear and obvious so that when someone lands on whatever it is, even if it’s AI, if they ask a question to AI, social media, Google, your website, the answer is clear and you don’t have to work so hard for it.

Because you know what happens when the answer’s not clear? Now you’re competing on price. So whether it’s AI or what we were seeing 10, 15 years ago, what firms were coming to me and saying, and still come to me and say, is revenue is down and sometimes they’ll say stuff like traffic is down and they don’t really know what that means, but numbers are down,

Zack Glaser:

Things

Karin Conroy:

Are not

Zack Glaser:

Going

Karin Conroy:

Good. They’re not calling me if everything’s great. If you’re competing on price, you’re all of a sudden hearing everybody’s saying like, “How much is this going to cost?” Or even when I first started and people were saying, “Can you make that website a template? How much would that cost?” That’s a signal to me to say, “Oh, wait a minute, what am I presenting to you that makes you think this is about money?” So let’s reconsider all that so that now all of a sudden people land on your email or in your phone or those leads come in and they’re ready to go. So that’s where we’re trying to go. That is what the point of this is.

Zack Glaser:

So I want to go down a really, hopefully short but really weird tangent. I

Karin Conroy:

Love it.

Zack Glaser:

You look at shampoo in Walmart or Kroger or whatever place and you’ve got the brand name shampoo and then you’ve got a shampoo that looks just like it for the most part, but it’s cheaper.

Karin Conroy:

Yes. And

Zack Glaser:

So that’s a good point. If you’re going to copy, then you’re competing on price. And that’s not generally what attorneys are going to want to do. But I want to add another thing here so I can bring us out of this tangent quickly. Users now, users continue users of websites, users of our services continue to get more technologically savvy.

Karin Conroy:

Yes.

Zack Glaser:

And so they’re expecting more out of these sites. They’re not expecting some BS like, “Okay, well, here’s my first page. It’s got no information. I can’t help you. I can’t help you in any way.” Yeah, it’s got a phone number, it’s got a picture, it’s got, I’m a lawyer.

Karin Conroy:

Some columns and a gavel.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. If they’ve gotten to your website, they don’t want information. They want to act, right?

Karin Conroy:

Right. They want to feel, actually. At first, they want to feel something. First, they want to feel like this firm gets me. I feel like I might’ve said this before too, but let’s just say for your shampoo analogy, let’s just say you go to the Nordstrom site and you are looking for shoes and you land on the website and all of a sudden there’s this whole dialogue about where Mr. Nordstrom went to college and you’re like, “What in the world? I need some shoes.” Right?

Zack Glaser:

It’s published some amazing stuff on how to make shoes.

Karin Conroy:

Yes. I was in the Law Review of Shoemaking. Yes. Okay. And you’re sitting there thinking, why would I care about where you went to college? I don’t. You got to make me care and you got to show me that there’s something in it for me. So first show me the shoes. And for a law firm, the shoes that I know what you are going through, I have done this before, I have this experience. So number one, because we’re going to come back to the web. We need to keep kind of coming back to the website idea and the contest and how this all relates to an actual website instead of just marketing theory. So let’s talk about it because I could do that all day. I know we got a limited amount

Zack Glaser:

Of time. Welcome to the Marketing Theory Podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

Right. Okay. So we’re on your homepage. We’re on the website. Number one, that people, you got three seconds. Okay.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

You used to have three seconds. Maybe you don’t even have that anymore. And those three seconds may not even be a human. This may be a bot. So you got to connect to either a human or a bot saying, “I practice this thing,” but you don’t start with that. It’s, I understand the problem. I understand the problem you’re seeking and you need to communicate that very clearly. I’m thinking six words or less, right?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. And through words and images, because again, we’re going to have bots and humans and in some ways you want to evoke that through color or branding. Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

Yes. Right. I have a whole thing about stock photos. So should we talk about stock photos real quick?

Zack Glaser:

Actually, yes, because I think underlying all of this is the idea that content is cheap as hell now.

Karin Conroy:

Yes.

Zack Glaser:

The creation of anything that is active content is extremely cheap. What’s not cheap is expertise, experience, feeling that curated content, but content is cheap as hell. So I mean, you can sniff out. There’s a layer beyond stock photos now. It’s like stock photos and then even worse is these AI Dolly created photos. Could you imagine having your website filled with those cartoon images of you as an attorney?

Karin Conroy:

Well, here’s the thing, Zack, I want to talk about what, because I don’t want to totally poo-poo AI, right? Yeah. We are still being supportive. So there is a place. I do believe there is a place for AI imagery in websites. And then there is very much not a place. So here’s the two columns. We are not doing AI bio images. We are not.

Zack Glaser:

Well, okay. With a caveat on all of these things, with the caveat of unless that’s your brand.

Karin Conroy:

Or unless you’re doing something like there’s a tag showing, please remove the tag on my shirt or something that is minor and the core of what you are displaying. So this is kind of this concept with the plus or minus for pros and cons of AI. The core idea is human. So the core idea of this image is we’re going to keep the face and 90% of this image the same. We’re going to maybe change the tag or maybe something in the background or whatever. Here’s another example that I used recently. I had an image of an office and it was, I actually had a couple different pictures from different angles. There’s like a car parked in front and it’s at this weird angle because it was like a narrow focus and whatever. So I take those, and this is the office building, right? No humans involved.

This is just like, “Hey, here’s where our office is. When you come to visit us, this is what it looks like.

” So I take that into AI, have it combined some, give it a nice perspective, remove the ugly car that was in the front. That’s fine. I don’t see any issue with that. It’s just visually cleaning it up. Okay. Where we’re not going to use AI imagery is even in some of your blog posts, we don’t want to be obviously fake. We’re not trying to obviously do these shortcuts and cheat codes and cheat the whole marketing system. And that is what most people are going to AI for. They’re going for like, “I’m going to cheat something.” And so put it through a lens of, am I trying to cheat something at the expense of the core of who my firm is and what I’m trying to present? So where can I use it and not use it in a way that still says what I’m trying to say without just ruining it?

Zack Glaser:

Well, yeah. And I think it goes back, and you’ve said this before, it kind of goes back to what are the basics here? And one of the things that you really talked about last time when we were doing this was we’re trying to put ourselves out there as trustworthy. We want the bots to trust what we say, that we are who we say we are, and they’re actually going out to other places to Reddit, to other podcasts, to things like that to say like, “Okay, this person is an expert on blank. And if we’re putting trash on our website, untrustworthy stuff or fake stuff, then that’s going to undermine that. “

Karin Conroy:

Right. You wrote all of it. So you’re putting all this effort into your marketing and then you’re coming in with this AI slop and it’s like a cancer and it’s just ruining all of this work and effort and not just the marketing online stuff you’re doing, but think about everything you’re doing to build your career in terms of your work itself,

Zack Glaser:

The

Karin Conroy:

Relationships you’re building. And then you go out and you spend all this time and effort and you go and you’re networking and you’re doing all this stuff and then someone lands on your website and they’re like, “What?” This

Zack Glaser:

Is a joke. This looks like a- This

Karin Conroy:

Is not who I thought it was. Let me back up and rethink whether I’m going to call them now. And that’s the worst thing you want to have happen. This website, your marketing, all of it should just be greasing the process to get those leads in the door, whatever that is. And so if you are looking at different methods, whether it’s an AI image, AI content, AI, whatever, look at it through the lens of, does this truly support my marketing strategy outside of online stuff, outside of everything, my core marketing strategy of what we’re doing here as a law firm, as humans.

Zack Glaser:

I can envision a scenario where somebody is, they’ve done a presentation for business leaders in their area and they look very polished. They’re very dapper. And then you go onto their website and it’s either stale looking or missing something or just does not fit their brand.

Karin Conroy:

The other part I was going to say, on top of stock photos is the bio page. These are two long running thorns in my side.

Zack Glaser:

And the issues are just being exacerbated now.

Karin Conroy:

Right. Exactly. And stock photos is just the visuals, but your bio, that’s just the content piece of it. And so a lot of people will just slop that together and they, for some reason, they don’t think this cares or they don’t think this matters or they think it needs to say the garbage that you typically see. And just because you typically see that garbage on a bio page doesn’t mean it’s right. That is definitely not the right way to do it. And once again, there’s stuff you can do in AI and this doesn’t necessarily go back to this. Something I’ve been writing and talking about for years and even at the ClioCon, I think it was two years ago, Jack got up and was talking about, or maybe it was a session in, I don’t think it was the opening thing, about bios and what you typically see in them.

And it was a Venn diagram. What lawyers typically write on their bio page, what a client is looking for. And then the overlapping part … You ready?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

The phone number. That was it.

Zack Glaser:

Yep,

Karin Conroy:

That feels right. And the content, right. And so come on people, let’s look at this through your client’s lens. What are they looking for? They do not care where you went to college. They do not care what publications you wrote in 1996. So I’m not getting into all of that today. I’m not going to go into it, but I do have articles and whatever, and just rethink it. Rethink what your bio page should have and don’t rethink it with Claude. Rethink it in a strategic way from a human perspective.

Zack Glaser:

And that kind of gets back to what we’ve been talking about most of the time when you and I discuss these things is that’s basics. In a world of changing artificial intelligence, three weeks ago, things were very different than they are right now, and they’re going to be very different in another three weeks. In a world that is changing like that and people are getting savvy very, very quickly, what we can do is the basics.

Karin Conroy:

Right.

Zack Glaser:

Right. Be approachable.

Karin Conroy:

And we can add an … Exactly. Be human, be approachable, and add that AI overlay. Make sure you can expedite things and use it in an efficient way, but make sure that you’re using it strategically. Make sure that you are taking what it’s saying and being really thoughtful about it. And I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever used the first version it’s ever given me. So come on, let’s put some work. We’re going to put some work into it. Make sure … Yeah.

Zack Glaser:

One of the things I want to get to before we wrap up here is in the background here of I can go to Claude now and I can build a website in about 14 seconds. I really can. And the thing I keep remembering, again, content is cheap as hell right now. The thing that I keep remembering is that, yes, I have this ability, but so does everybody else who’s willing to pay the fee. And so how do you stand out in a world full of AI slop? And- Well,

Karin Conroy:

Once again, that hasn’t changed. Yes, we have more slop and it is actually doing more for us, but that also hasn’t changed. And that AI, like you said, it’s not just going to sort of look like what everybody’s else is saying. It’s literally taking from those sites and putting it together based on just a big blob slop of what else it’s finding. If you put, okay, I’m a truck attorney, a truck accident attorney in Atlanta, it’s going to go out and find your competitors.That’s such a problem.

Zack Glaser:

And that is what people have been asking to do when they want to do shortcuts. And I think what I’m getting at here is that I think now more than ever, it is imperative to go to somebody who can curate your look, who can curate your brand, who has the experience to do these things. I think I used the example before we got on the air here that people can go and have access to the same amount of legal knowledge and content that I have right now. And I would suggest that they don’t go represent themselves in court still because they don’t have the experience and the expertise to do these pickballs. No. Yeah,

Karin Conroy:

Because

Zack Glaser:

Listen,

Karin Conroy:

Zack, I think most people listening to this episode thought this was going to go a different way.

Zack Glaser:

I think

Karin Conroy:

You

Zack Glaser:

And I thought this was going to go a different way, Garrett?

Karin Conroy:

Seriously. Five minutes ago, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to talk about, but it’s been good so far. But usually an episode like this is going to be like 10 tips about your website and make sure you update the copyright and make sure you have the following five, whatever. This is not what we’re talking about. And the other thing that didn’t go the way people are probably expecting or the thing they don’t want to hear is, and this is going to sound slightly salesy, is that the only true cheat code and the only shortcut, let’s call it a shortcut,

Zack Glaser:

Not a cheat cut. Yeah, yeah, shortcut.

Karin Conroy:

The only shortcut is to hire an expert. And this is the same thing you’re telling your clients, right? Right. This is the same thing you’re saying, “Hey, I have been a lawyer for X years and when you hire me, you’re not paying me for those hours that you hire me. You’re paying me for all the hours that I have been a lawyer and all the things I’ve learned that you could Google and you could spend five minutes on, but you’re probably going to get wrong.” Same with anything. You and I were talking about how I do not change my oil. Same with your marketing and same with your website. Come on. Your website is a big deal now. And we were going to maybe talk about whether websites are dying or whatever. I swear Sam and I had an episode about websites are dead like 10 years ago.

People keep saying that. I don’t believe websites are dead. I think they’re different and they’re evolving. And that’s a whole nother episode we can talk about how it’s this constant living, changing thing. You can. You can put your own DIY website together. You

Zack Glaser:

Totally can.

Karin Conroy:

Absolutely. Good luck to you. That is not what we’re saying. We’re saying the only true shortcut is to purchase all of the years of experience of an expert in the same way that you’re saying that to your clients.

Zack Glaser:

Right. Yeah. I think that’s the thing. But okay, people don’t have to go into that type of thing blind. You always, much like what one would advise people to do on their law firm website, you always come into here with something that people can do on your website, something people can get on your website and you have a trust audit. Talk to me about what that is and where people can get it.

Karin Conroy:

The idea that I was saying a little bit ago about like, let’s take a look at these thoughts and ideas that you have through the lens of your strategy or your plans or like what makes sense. So we have this audit. It’s going to ask you a bunch of questions and kind of give you some thoughts around whether certain parts of your marketing strategy should or shouldn’t use AI and ways to align it with things that are building trust. So you can download that checklist at my website. It’s cononroycreativecouncile.com/lawyerist.

Zack Glaser:

Ooh, all right. It’s the same link we always say. Yeah. I hope that gets us some trust on the AI bots. Right. Exactly.

Karin Conroy:

Yeah. A little backlink.

Zack Glaser:

Well, Carin, as always, thank you for being with me and talking with me about this. I think one of the things that people can take away a lot of times when we talk is that … Well, two things. One, there’s a lot to this and a lot to think about when you’re thinking about your marketing, but two, when you get overwhelmed, you can go to the basics. Marketing, Big M has not really changed that much. The way we do it, the tools we use, things like that, but actually marketing your services, it’s still the same as it was three weeks ago, three years ago, 30 years ago.

Karin Conroy:

Yeah. And don’t just go into AI and throw a grenade into your entire plan and system. There’s good stuff there, but let’s not just start from scratch. So let’s use it in a smart way that’s strategic and whatever. And if you have questions, please feel free to reach out. I love to talk about this. This could have been an hour and a half, but balancing this kind of theory and all of this stuff with how to practically use it is that’s the thing we’re all trying to figure out right now. And like you said, it’s changing every three hours and people are coming up with new ways of doing stuff. So use it. It’s cool. There’s great stuff out there, but there’s also so much garbage.

Zack Glaser:

Yes. Yes, there is. And I’m going to have to sort through a lot of garbage in our website contest that starts up tomorrow.

Karin Conroy:

Oh, that’s it. You know what would be fun is to have a roasting one to be like, “Here’s the bottom of the list.” Or maybe to be nice about it and be like, “Here’s the ones who have some mistakes.”

Zack Glaser:

Here’s some potential. I like to call all of my mistakes opportunities. My wife calls them … Zach, you have some opportunities this weekend. It’s

Karin Conroy:

Like preschool language.

Zack Glaser:

Yes. Yes. You have some opportunities around the house. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy:

That would be fun.

Zack Glaser:

That would be fun. We would have to anonymize this stuff, but it would be comfort. Right.

Karin Conroy:

You’d have to call in some lawyers.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see.

Karin Conroy:

That could be fun though. Maybe I could do a theoretical post about that. But I do think just taking a look at the winners and the people who are posting or the nominees for this website contest, there is value there. And I’m not saying not to do that, but keep it in check. Don’t go so far where you’re now copycatting. Because I talk about how that happened to me in the beginning, but it still happens. It happened last year. I had another … And it wasn’t like my own side, it was another one from the lawyer’s side. This one’s so cool. And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s theirs.” That’s

Zack Glaser:

Why I got chosen. So let’s not do that. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Karen, thank you again. And if people want to see more from you, it is conroycreativecouncel.com.

Karin Conroy:

Yes.

Zack Glaser:

Thank you.

Karin Conroy:

Exactly.

Zack Glaser:

Awesome.

Karin Conroy:

Thank you.

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