Why Copying Competitors’ AI Content Won’t Grow Your Firm, with Karin Conroy from Conroy Creative

Episode Notes

Transcript

Zack Glaser [00:00:00]:
Hey y’all, it’s Zach and welcome to the Lawyerist Podcast, one of the many ways we here at Lawyerist help attorneys build sustainable lives, better practices, and frankly, healthier law firms. Today I have Karin Conroy of Conroy Creative Council— try saying that 5 times fast— uh, here with me to talk about digital marketing or really not getting overwhelmed in the AI world of digital marketing. So we dig into actual practical ways that you can move forward, mistakes that people, you know, easily make, and steps that you can take to get started or help your digital marketing and media today. Anyway, stick around for my conversation with Karin.

Karin Conroy [00:01:06]:
Hi, I’m Karin, and I am a legal marketing consultant. And I own Conroy Creative Council, where we do all that.

Zack Glaser [00:01:15]:
Karin, I’m glad you’re here.

Karin Conroy [00:01:16]:
Me too.

Zack Glaser [00:01:17]:
Because I have I got some questions.

Karin Conroy [00:01:20]:
Okay. All right, let’s go. Rapid fire.

Zack Glaser [00:01:23]:
So, yeah, AI, AI, AI, AI, Claude, Claude, Claude, Claude, all that stuff. I have been playing with Claude Design for a significant amount of time, and I know a lot of people have been playing with Claude Design. And I posted something on Instagram the other day because I was deep into Claude Design. That thing will, it will, create a brand for you.

Karin Conroy [00:01:47]:
It will.

Zack Glaser [00:01:48]:
When it does it, it’ll create a dang website for you.

Karin Conroy [00:01:52]:
Sure will.

Zack Glaser [00:01:53]:
It’ll build this thing and it is freaking beautiful.

Karin Conroy [00:01:57]:
Not sponsored.

Zack Glaser [00:02:00]:
And it, well, that’s, but it lives like right there. Like thankfully for me, I know how to take that HTML or the JavaScript or Next.js or whatever it is and like host it somewhere. But it’ll create this beautiful brand. It’ll ask you like what, what you want it to feel like. It’s like, what’s your business and all that stuff? And so I posted something on LinkedIn that was like, you know, let’s go get the, get, get it, get after it. I feel like we’re in a world where like I can spin up a website in like 13 seconds now.

Karin Conroy [00:02:30]:
You could.

Zack Glaser [00:02:32]:
I thought you might have some thoughts on that.

Karin Conroy [00:02:34]:
I did. I do.

Zack Glaser [00:02:36]:
Given, given your response to my LinkedIn post, I thought you might have some thoughts on that.

Karin Conroy [00:02:39]:
I do. You know, I feel like Every time we have these shows, it’s like, hey, we talked about this before. We’ve talked about this one before too. And guess what? We’ve talked about this before. Um, so yeah, you could. I could also cut my own hair. I could also change my own oil. I, I could also, um, try to be my own lawyer.

Zack Glaser [00:03:08]:
Uh, yeah. Well, I’m gonna push a little bit back on this one because just, I don’t wanna push back. I’m going to tweak this just a little bit because I’ve always said that, right? We’ve always said like, I could be my own lawyer. I could, my dad has a story about asking a guy about like—

Karin Conroy [00:03:24]:
We talked about this. We’ve done this one before.

Zack Glaser [00:03:26]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have. But oh my God, but it does it, Corin. It’s like, I could cut my own hair if I just like told this bot to come in and be like, cut my hair and it looks good. It looks really pretty. It’s great. Why can’t I do it now?

Karin Conroy [00:03:44]:
I’m not saying no. And I am not saying, I am not anti-AI. So let’s start with that.

Zack Glaser [00:03:52]:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things, that’s why I wanted to talk to you about this. I know you’re not, you know, it’s not like don’t use AI.

Karin Conroy [00:03:58]:
No, I love Claude and I love Claude Design. And there is a lot of good stuff there. Here’s where I want to take a step back though, and here’s what I’m seeing and where I think it makes sense and where I think— what I’m seeing in the real world, what people are talking to me about. So, the short answer to you is maybe. Maybe that’s the right answer.

Zack Glaser [00:04:25]:
Okay.

Karin Conroy [00:04:26]:
So, before I spend the next 20 minutes going down this rabbit hole of all of that, I do want to give you your answer. which is, I don’t know, maybe. But that’s the case.

Zack Glaser [00:04:36]:
Thanks for the lawyer answer there. It depends.

Karin Conroy [00:04:38]:
It depends.

Zack Glaser [00:04:39]:
It depends.

Karin Conroy [00:04:39]:
And let me give you 20 pages of disclaimers and terms and all of that to read through about why it depends and under what circumstances. So, that’s the next 20 minutes. So, here’s what I’m thinking, every, or hearing actually, not just thinking. Every conversation that I have kind of starts like this. Like, we have dug into AI. Here is a summary of, first of all, where I think this conversation should even go. Let’s talk about, you know, the things we’ve already done and how I, where I’m at right now, which I’m gonna tell you is step 3. And they are starting at step 3 of any kind of marketing, which is where you are at.

Karin Conroy [00:05:21]:
You are starting this conversation on step 3. Like, I have a thing and an output and this really pretty graphic. And then I’m like, okay, and what?

Zack Glaser [00:05:34]:
Why?

Karin Conroy [00:05:35]:
Right. What is the point? What is the point of this graphic, right?

Zack Glaser [00:05:40]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:05:40]:
Where did you start with it? What does it mean? Where does it fit? Does it really have a purpose? Is it doing what you want it to do? Like all of those things that make it make sense and would make it make it a yes. instead of like a WTF, right? Okay, so every conversation I’m starting with starts with complete overwhelm. Everybody is totally overwhelmed, right?

Zack Glaser [00:06:10]:
Because not only can I do that, I can create so, like that was the point of my point earlier.

Karin Conroy [00:06:16]:
I can send a rocket to the moon!

Zack Glaser [00:06:17]:
I could write a 300-page book. I could do so much stuff. I can create so much content, you know? And it is, it’s massively overwhelming. Yeah, by tomorrow, where do I even start?

Karin Conroy [00:06:28]:
Right. And the frustrating part of that, aside from overwhelm just being frustrating to begin with, but the frustrating thing is that’s not what was sold to us, right? The idea of AI is it’s supposed to make it easier. Like we’re supposed to be going and like skipping through the daisies right now and touching grass. You know, like we’re supposed to be, Like having this like blessed life where we’re sitting on a mountaintop, like cross-legged, like meditating. Right. But meanwhile, we’re sitting here staring at this computer screen with Claude and being like, what do I do with this graphic? I don’t even know what this is, but it’s so pretty. And now I feel like I need 3,000 of them.

Zack Glaser [00:07:11]:
Uh-huh.

Karin Conroy [00:07:11]:
Right. So everything was supposed to be easier. We were supposed to like have all these extra tools. The analogy I love that I keep coming back to is that AI has its own marketing problem. And the best marketing that was ever done for something along the lines of AI was The Jetsons.

Zack Glaser [00:07:31]:
I love this too.

Karin Conroy [00:07:31]:
Because we can all visualize that right now. As soon as I say The Jetsons, that’s the life we all thought we would be living right now. And I have been talking about this my entire adult life. Like, why do we not have the flying cars? Why do I not— when I go to get ready in the morning, it is way more of a process than I feel like I was sold as a child, right? I should stand in a tube and it should spray at me all the things, right? Do you remember this part of The Jetsons?

Zack Glaser [00:08:00]:
Oh, yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:08:00]:
The getting dressed part?

Zack Glaser [00:08:02]:
Do you remember what he did for a job?

Karin Conroy [00:08:05]:
No, what?

Zack Glaser [00:08:06]:
So he worked for Space Lease Rockets.

Karin Conroy [00:08:07]:
Okay.

Zack Glaser [00:08:08]:
And he—

Karin Conroy [00:08:08]:
I didn’t mean to jump into The Jetsons trivia game.

Zack Glaser [00:08:12]:
No, this is— he worked for Space Lease Rockets and he sat in front of a computer named Rudy, and that was an acronym. And I don’t remember what the acronym was. I don’t know everything. He pushed a button.

Karin Conroy [00:08:23]:
That was his job?

Zack Glaser [00:08:24]:
That’s it.

Karin Conroy [00:08:25]:
That’s amazing.

Zack Glaser [00:08:26]:
He pushed a button. Rudy did everything. He pushed a button. And I, to your point, I think that’s kind of what we want or see or envision or something like that with AI is just like, that’s what we were sold. Yeah. And then I’m going to relax.

Karin Conroy [00:08:40]:
Right.

Zack Glaser [00:08:40]:
And then I’m going to kick back and chill.

Karin Conroy [00:08:42]:
I think about this when I’m making dinner. Like, what am I chopping this stuff for? Where is what’s her name? What’s the robot? Come on, Zach, you know this. The robot maid person.

Zack Glaser [00:08:55]:
Oh, Rosie.

Karin Conroy [00:08:56]:
Rosie. Where’s Rosie? Why is she not chopping this onion for me? Because I hate chopping onions.

Zack Glaser [00:09:01]:
I shouldn’t have to use my own hands. I shouldn’t have to use my own hands to do things.

Karin Conroy [00:09:06]:
Exactly.

Zack Glaser [00:09:07]:
I shouldn’t have to cut my own meat.

Karin Conroy [00:09:08]:
Right.

Zack Glaser [00:09:08]:
I just cut my own, you know.

Karin Conroy [00:09:09]:
Rude.

Zack Glaser [00:09:10]:
It’s kind of gross. It’s ridiculous.

Karin Conroy [00:09:12]:
Right. So overwhelm should be the Jetsons. AI is not the Jetsons. This is where we’re starting, right? Every conversation is starting this way. Like, um, and we’re kind of like trying to force it into this Jetsons idea and we’re making it worse.

Zack Glaser [00:09:29]:
Oh, I, okay. I like that shift right there where it’s like, we’re overwhelmed, but we’re still trying to shoehorn it.

Karin Conroy [00:09:36]:
Yeah, I’m trying to— I still believe.

Zack Glaser [00:09:39]:
Still believe.

Karin Conroy [00:09:40]:
There’s Rosie.

Zack Glaser [00:09:43]:
You can believe in one hand.

Karin Conroy [00:09:45]:
Rosie’s coming for me at some point.

Zack Glaser [00:09:48]:
I will be saved.

Karin Conroy [00:09:50]:
So far I have the robot vacuum. That’s as far as— that’s as close as I’ve got.

Zack Glaser [00:09:55]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s about it. And it still doesn’t do it.

Karin Conroy [00:09:58]:
Okay, but in this like kind of mistaken belief of all of this, we’re throwing everything at it.

Zack Glaser [00:10:05]:
Right?

Karin Conroy [00:10:06]:
And by we, I don’t mean me and you. I mean, all the conversations I’m having, all the law firms, all, you know, they, and they feel behind, right? Like, every conversation is, I keep hearing about this. And then I’ll have a conversation and they’re talking about ChatGPT. And I’m like, well, personally, I way prefer Claude. And they’re like, oh, no, what am I not doing? Like, and I’m like, sorry, sorry. Okay, shh, shh, shh, right?

Zack Glaser [00:10:30]:
Right, right. There’s somebody listening to this that’s like, Claude design can do that?

Karin Conroy [00:10:34]:
I know, Claude. There’s not just somebody, there’s many somebodies.

Zack Glaser [00:10:37]:
And don’t— I mean, like, what we’re saying is like, don’t, because it’s like, to what end?

Karin Conroy [00:10:44]:
Not entirely don’t though.

Zack Glaser [00:10:45]:
Like, yeah, yeah. But don’t just like go freak out and be like, I gotta go get Claude Design and I gotta get it to make my website. And not only is it gonna make my website, but it’s also gonna make all my mailers. It’s gonna, you know, write my voice, my tone.

Karin Conroy [00:10:57]:
It’s gonna be my entire marketing department.

Zack Glaser [00:10:59]:
It’s gonna be my entire marketing department. And I clicked on Fable or whatever the crazy, you know, out there one du jour is. Yeah, I clicked on Fable 5.1 and it thought for 20 minutes and it’s got this beautiful— So it’s got AI. Yeah, it’s got this beautiful marketing campaign and I can’t do any of it.

Karin Conroy [00:11:18]:
Right. Okay.

Zack Glaser [00:11:19]:
Because I don’t know what I’m doing.

Karin Conroy [00:11:21]:
Yeah. We, I’ve had enough of these conversations, like in both definitions of that, sentence. Like, I’ve had many of them. But I’ve also had enough of it.

Zack Glaser [00:11:30]:
I’m also done with them. Yeah, that’s right.

Karin Conroy [00:11:33]:
I’ve had enough of this. So we put— I put— I and my team put together this whole kind of system where I now sit down and evaluate, come up with a system of kind of walking them through, calming them down, figuring out where things are at and whatever. And so that’s, that’s what I’m going to talk about. But so it’s, it’s 5 steps.

Zack Glaser [00:11:52]:
And a lot of these steps are things you’ve heard me say many, many times So, Karn, are you telling me that I have to do things the same damn way that I’ve been doing it the whole time?

Karin Conroy [00:12:03]:
I’m telling you there are laws of being a human that don’t change depending on what kind of AI and technology you’re using. And here’s where it’s going wrong before I get into the 5 steps, because I know everybody’s like getting out their pens and paper to write down the 5 steps. Oh yeah, before you do that, that’s the problem. Number one, you’re, you’re, you’re You’re stepping ahead to step 3 because you’re so eager for this golden ticket idea, and you’re jumping into step 3, which is the tactics. The tactics are like the AI and the LinkedIn campaign and the graphics and the output.

Zack Glaser [00:12:41]:
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy [00:12:42]:
Tactics are the output of strategy. Tactics are not the input of strategy. So you don’t take Claude as an input. Claude is a tactic. You don’t put that as an input and then just say, hey Claude, this is what we see a lot Monday morning. Claude, I need 5 LinkedIn posts. No, no. Claude’s gonna do it.

Karin Conroy [00:13:07]:
He’s gonna give you 5 LinkedIn posts, but then you are, you are just muddying the water. You are making things so much worse.

Zack Glaser [00:13:16]:
Give me a specific because I got one in my head. Give me a specific of literally what Claude is missing in that output? What is something that we needed to have before we’re able to do that?

Karin Conroy [00:13:28]:
Okay, step 0, take a breath. Okay, you are not behind. You are, you know, like, let’s get your brain in the right place. And I know a lot of people talk about mindset. When people use the word mindset and ask to be on my podcast, that’s an immediate no, like that. I’m not talking about that. It’s not me. I’m not talking about mindset.

Karin Conroy [00:13:50]:
I’m talking about just calm down. Calm down.

Zack Glaser [00:13:54]:
Chill out, right? Take a breath.

Karin Conroy [00:13:56]:
No good decisions are made when you’re being impulsive and freaking out about something and feeling like you’re behind. So, like, truly calm down and realize you’re not behind. Nobody else that is probably doing this, or if they are, they’re doing it wrong. And they’re just Flying by the seat of the pants. Okay. All right. So number one, let’s figure out what you’re doing, where your law firm is, what your strategy is, who are you speaking to? Where are we at right now? Where are we at? And why are we having this conversation? Let’s start with that.

Zack Glaser [00:14:30]:
That’s exactly— yeah. If I don’t know who I’m trying to speak to, right?

Karin Conroy [00:14:36]:
Who is my—

Zack Glaser [00:14:37]:
yeah. And why? Who is my ideal client profile?

Karin Conroy [00:14:40]:
Yep.

Zack Glaser [00:14:41]:
Then who cares what I say?

Karin Conroy [00:14:43]:
Right?

Zack Glaser [00:14:43]:
My 5 LinkedIn posts that have nothing to do with anything.

Karin Conroy [00:14:47]:
They’re coming out of the blue and everybody sees them and they’re like, what?

Zack Glaser [00:14:52]:
I had a post on— what is that called? Threads go nuts the other day. Absolutely viral. And it meant nothing because it wasn’t on brand. It wasn’t on point. It didn’t do anything whatsoever. What was it about? But it was moderately like kind of rage-baity political, and it got people’s hackles up a little bit, and got reposted and all that. To what end for me? So like, even if your 5 LinkedIn posts go absolutely nuts, you’re looking for, you’re a lawyer, you’re looking for people that have, well, you don’t know what you’re looking for people that have, but you get a bunch of medical doctors posting on it.

Karin Conroy [00:15:36]:
You’re right.

Zack Glaser [00:15:37]:
Who cares?

Karin Conroy [00:15:38]:
Yeah, I could tell you how to make a viral post. You renovate a bathroom or something. I mean, these are the things people wanna watch. Or you do some true crime thing, right?

Zack Glaser [00:15:48]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:15:49]:
So if you really wanted this podcast to go super viral, we should just start talking about true crime. Right?

Zack Glaser [00:15:59]:
Yes, we should investigate something and yeah. But to your point—

Karin Conroy [00:16:03]:
And I’m being facetious.

Zack Glaser [00:16:04]:
It doesn’t matter if we do.

Karin Conroy [00:16:05]:
What?

Zack Glaser [00:16:05]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:16:06]:
It doesn’t matter because what the point of that? Why would we be talking about that? Right? Is the point to go viral and to just get traffic for traffic’s sake? Right? Probably not. No, probably not.

Zack Glaser [00:16:19]:
No. And that’s the thing is you have to, at the end of the day, with all of this stuff, and I think this really, really gets to what you’re talking about, about where it’s step 3, none of these tactics matter.

Karin Conroy [00:16:31]:
Yeah.

Zack Glaser [00:16:31]:
If they’re not pointing at something.

Karin Conroy [00:16:34]:
At something, right. And I know people love to skip over this. But this is the difference between And I promise you, this is the difference when you look at your competitor who’s killing it and you’re wondering, it looks like I’m doing the same thing. And you’re not. You’re not. You are seeing one post that they do and you’re copying that and you throw that out there. And then you do some posts that you see somewhere else, you copy that, you throw that out there. It has no relevance to any plan or consistency or Whatever.

Karin Conroy [00:17:08]:
Figure out where you’re at. Who are you talking to? What’s your strategy? What’s the point? What are we saying? This is tied back to like this broader picture that a lot of people don’t want to do, where it’s like making a broad plan, not just a strategy, not just like, oh, here’s our ideal client and whatever, but like, okay, how are we going to get to them? What do we already know is true? You know, I don’t want to come to you and say, hey, I was at some conference and they told me I should be doing, um, legal service, uh, local service ads.

Zack Glaser [00:17:41]:
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy [00:17:42]:
Why? Why? Because they can make a bunch of money off of you, or because they actually think that’s going to work for your farm? You know, so what, what does that have to do with your strategy? Is this just something you are just plugging in out of nowhere, or does this really actually truly make sense for your entire plan of who you’re trying to reach, how you know they find you, and this will boost what you already know to be true. So start with this thing that you already know about your clients, that you know that is true. You know how they find you, you know where they are at, you know what kind of lives they live. Are they on TikTok? Maybe not. Some of them might be.

Zack Glaser [00:18:22]:
Right.

Karin Conroy [00:18:23]:
But you already know these things. You don’t have to come to a marketing person. You shouldn’t have to come to a marketing person to know these things about your work and your clients.

Zack Glaser [00:18:32]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:18:32]:
All right. So first we’re doing that. Then, so that’s kind of building, kind of figuring out the build and the strategy of that. And then stabilize, figure out the right channels, the right message, what works. I forgot one thing in that first stage. We’re going to start to plant the seed of, do I have the systems to support this? Right? We’re just going to start thinking about that. if my website got a bunch of traffic right now, what would people be doing? You know, would they land and they would, like, if I put this graphic that you’re talking about, this beautifully designed Claude design thing, I put this out there, then they come to my website. Do they land on the website and say, what?

Zack Glaser [00:19:17]:
Oh my. So when you’re talking Claude design, like, I think that’s one of the big things to think about is that like, these things a lot of times are beautiful.

Karin Conroy [00:19:27]:
Yes, that’s it. That’s it. It’s beautiful in a vacuum. And it’s not tied to anything. And so, like, in that moment, feels like a great idea.

Zack Glaser [00:19:38]:
Yeah, it’s gorgeous. Awesome. I would love my website to look like this. Let’s do it. YOLO.

Karin Conroy [00:19:44]:
So we’re not going to make decisions that way for your entire law firm and your marketing and your growth and your revenue and all of that stuff. We’re not going to make decisions like, what my 14-year-old would do with her undeveloped brain, right?

Zack Glaser [00:19:58]:
Like, I mean, yeah, no, we’re not.

Karin Conroy [00:20:02]:
We’re not gonna be impulsive.

Zack Glaser [00:20:03]:
Say it with me, everybody. We’re not gonna make decisions like that.

Karin Conroy [00:20:07]:
Come on, let’s hold hands around a little fire and sing a little song.

Zack Glaser [00:20:11]:
Not anymore. At least we’re not gonna anymore.

Karin Conroy [00:20:13]:
Yeah. Right, exactly. Because that’s what’s happening. And people are coming to me and they are saying this over and over, and they’re a little bit embarrassed about it too. And that’s okay. Um, and I don’t want you to be embarrassed about that because it’s okay to experiment and figure out where this fits.

Zack Glaser [00:20:29]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:20:29]:
Um, and the other thing we haven’t really talked about that I’ll briefly mention, we’ve mentioned many other times, is that this is not new. Like, AI is new, of course, but this whole experience of people trying things, thinking that this is going to be this golden ticket, that it’s going to change everything, whatever. This is not new. We have gone through this. I used to do websites in HTML, just straight old HTML. Then it was WordPress, then it was this, then it was— there’s always something. There’s always something.

Zack Glaser [00:21:02]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:21:02]:
And sometimes there’s great things that you can pull out of that and add to your system and your strategy and all that stuff. But sometimes, like what I’m seeing a lot of, people are just jumping way too far ahead of it and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So we’re not going to do that. So we have figured out who we are, who we’re talking to. We’re kind of figuring that part out. Then we’re going to figure out the right channels. Now we’re not doing anything yet. We’re figuring out, we’re taking the data from like the calls that are coming in, the people we’re talking to, where we know that, um, they’re saying that they found us.

Karin Conroy [00:21:40]:
Like you should be asking these questions like, You already know if you have a referral source that’s sending you a ton of business, you already know this. And whether you’re doing anything with that or not is a whole other conversation, but you know this. And so this is what we’re going to build off of, right? We’re going to build off of, once again, like I said a minute ago, what do you already know to be true?

Zack Glaser [00:22:04]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:22:04]:
What do you know about these people, where they are and how they’re finding you? And you know, All of that good stuff. And then the last thing we’re going to do is grow with the tactics and plugging all the right pieces in.

Zack Glaser [00:22:18]:
What is it? Plan the work and then work the plan?

Karin Conroy [00:22:22]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Zack Glaser [00:22:24]:
Yeah. Karin, that’s not what I wanted AI to do for me.

Karin Conroy [00:22:30]:
I know. I know. I wanted Rosie today.

Zack Glaser [00:22:35]:
I want to press the make a website for me button. I want to press the get me clients button.

Karin Conroy [00:22:40]:
Right, you know, exactly. In all of those steps, because I kind of summarized them, but in there, after you set that strategy, there is a significant important part before you start kind of figuring out those channels and building it all out. That is repair the foundation. And here’s the thing that a lot of firms are not doing when they first talk to me. I’ve been doing this, we’re closing in on 20 years. I have firms that stay with me for years and years and years, decades, sometimes from the beginning, and they think that their sites are still okay and they are that old. So, yeah, I have had a lot of firms where we have redone the site many, many times over, you know, 15 to however many years they’ve been with me. And that’s a necessary part of, you know, the growth and change and way that you run your firm and all that stuff.

Karin Conroy [00:23:40]:
And it’s not just your website, it’s your content, the things you know about the way people are finding you. Maybe you’re slightly adjusting the work that you do and like your practice series and the things you’re offering. Maybe you have some sort of a new package that you’re offering. Maybe you have a new team member that’s Focusing on some certain practice area, whatever that might be, before you start implementing all of these changes in AI and everything, you need to make sure that you’ve got that foundation that is ready to go. It’s fast, it’s working technically well, and it can handle it. And that’s not usually the case. It’s usually, oh wait, there’s a bunch of things we need to fix before we can actually do any of this stuff.

Zack Glaser [00:24:25]:
I have a weird example of some of the things you’re talking about. Um, there is, there is a law firm website out there. Um, and I love this website. I want to go on, on record saying like, I absolutely love this website. And it is, um, like technically really good website.

Karin Conroy [00:24:44]:
Okay.

Zack Glaser [00:24:44]:
But, but when we talk about like needing to update things, um, even when it’s technically good or technically like it’s, it, If you go to burger.com, it is a relic. Corinne, in some ways it’s beautiful. You know?

Karin Conroy [00:25:04]:
Right there. This page originally put up on July 4th, 1996.

Zack Glaser [00:25:08]:
1996.

Karin Conroy [00:25:09]:
He’s proud of this.

Zack Glaser [00:25:10]:
And I love it. This is one that was actually sent into our website contest.

Karin Conroy [00:25:15]:
You are kidding me.

Zack Glaser [00:25:16]:
And I, in some ways, had trouble not having it be in the mix because like—

Karin Conroy [00:25:21]:
Wow, can I describe it?

Zack Glaser [00:25:23]:
Oh yeah, yeah. But before you do that, like technically it’s very good.

Karin Conroy [00:25:26]:
Yeah, it is.

Zack Glaser [00:25:27]:
Like in the background, it is like I ran it through it. Like it has like, it’s fast, Karen. It’s fast as hell.

Karin Conroy [00:25:35]:
Okay, fast is not the only, that’s not the only criteria.

Zack Glaser [00:25:38]:
It’s got a lot of information in there. It’s got a lot of like the words that he wants to rank for and things like that. But it is not, Beautiful. Um, but it also is very personal. It is a very personal website. Like, this is, this is a, like, so in some ways, like, you know, you know about this person.

Karin Conroy [00:26:00]:
Okay. And so I, can I describe it though? Because you’re, this is a long intro for what people are really missing out. Okay. Let me start by the background being a tiled leathery brown, like, but like dirty leather, right? Like it’s kind of a, milk chocolate color. But there used to be, back when we did HTML sites, there used to be these tiled background graphics that you could get and you can see it repeat.

Zack Glaser [00:26:28]:
Yes, yes.

Karin Conroy [00:26:28]:
Which is one of my favorite things where you can see the repeating pattern and it’s like those sounds where you can hear them repeating and all you hear is the seam. So all you’re seeing here is a seam of this repeating background. The reason I’m holding on to that description is because there’s very little other visual elements to describe.

Zack Glaser [00:26:47]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:26:48]:
It’s all text. And then there’s a bunch of buttons. The buttons are using Arial font. And there are, let me count really quick, 5, 10, there’s probably 23 buttons all in one big blob in the middle of the page, some of which include the following. Okay, billing and info, hiring a lawyer, wills and probate, but then Gardening. Fireflies. Turtles. Quote of the week.

Zack Glaser [00:27:20]:
Yep.

Karin Conroy [00:27:21]:
Wine.

Zack Glaser [00:27:22]:
Here’s the thing. Quote of the week.

Karin Conroy [00:27:24]:
I like this so much.

Zack Glaser [00:27:25]:
This website is up to date.

Karin Conroy [00:27:27]:
2022.

Zack Glaser [00:27:28]:
2026, if you go into some of the, like, what’s new on my website is May 2026.

Karin Conroy [00:27:37]:
Nice.

Zack Glaser [00:27:37]:
Okay. Okay. So the thing, and again, like, I want to say, like, I have trouble, like, not putting this in the mix because it’s a very personal website. You know this person. You know, when you’re a— when you are looking for somebody, you go in here and you’re like, I’ve met this person in a way. He likes turtles. Yeah. And so like, okay, if I want that, and it’s very specific, it’s very, you know, but I use this as an example because you and I, this is a very weird tangent, but you tweaked my brain because Even here, you have to update.

Zack Glaser [00:28:12]:
Even when, like, this has been here since 1996. It is a site that is still working. It is still running.

Karin Conroy [00:28:19]:
Being updated.

Zack Glaser [00:28:20]:
It has an amazing URL. It is burger.com. It is still being updated. But at some point, you do have to renovate.

Karin Conroy [00:28:31]:
Yes.

Zack Glaser [00:28:31]:
You know, you have to take your stuff from Art Deco into the ’70s, into the ’90s.

Karin Conroy [00:28:38]:
And honestly, saying Art Deco in relation to this website is giving it way too much credit. I mean, there is no design or category of beauty here.

Zack Glaser [00:28:54]:
No, but I mean, I made websites that looked like this when I was younger, but it is very 1996 website. It really is.

Karin Conroy [00:29:03]:
It is.

Zack Glaser [00:29:04]:
Again, if Donald Berger is listening to this, I want you to know, I love this website. I am not— I love it.

Karin Conroy [00:29:11]:
Absolutely. Okay. All right, Zach.

Zack Glaser [00:29:15]:
From my way, in my way. I don’t know that it— I’d be curious though if it works. I’d be really curious if it works.

Karin Conroy [00:29:22]:
It works for a certain kind of person. You know who it works for? It works for his gardening and turtle buddies, and it works for his model railroad buddies.

Zack Glaser [00:29:30]:
Ooh, that’s a really good point here too. Like, if you don’t have your, your, uh, um, ICP, like, you could be getting tons of traffic and it just, it’s not getting you any clients.

Karin Conroy [00:29:42]:
Okay, but here’s what’s not working. Like, I land on this, I immediately was shocked to— I assumed he was retired, and I assumed that he was very elderly, and, um, I assumed that Like, okay, he’s doing estate planning. And I made a lot of assumptions. Like, I don’t need to list them all. You make a lot of assumptions when you look at any design, especially something that stands out like this. Does this speak to me if I’m looking to hire an attorney? Absolutely not. I would absolutely go past this because for a litany of reasons, this is not my guy.

Zack Glaser [00:30:19]:
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy [00:30:20]:
He does not speak to me. He tells me about himself. He tells me about his turtles, his model railroading, and his gardening. And That may speak to some of his pals, but that’s it. You can draw a line around that and that is it. He is not going to expand beyond all of that. And even within that, um, that’s going to be a stretch for some of those guys too, because this is a very unique, very, very unique kind of client that would be okay with this website. I look at this and I’m like, absolutely not.

Zack Glaser [00:30:50]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:30:51]:
I, I know how this was built and Um, why, why have you not updated? You know, what is it that you have against that?

Zack Glaser [00:30:59]:
Mm.

Karin Conroy [00:30:59]:
Because then I’m gonna wonder what else that applies to. So basically, every time someone is taking this judgment of you on your marketing or your website, they are assuming that this is an indicator of how you will be treated, how your work will be done, how the client experience is gonna be. I am telling you all of this information about me and my firm so that you can have a glimpse into whether we are a good fit and if this is the right kind of work and how much I know about this work. This tells me none of that. And so, I wonder, okay, what else are you a stick in the mud about? What else do you not, you know, do you decide that you just don’t like certain laws and you’re not going to, you know, write my will that way? You know, like what else? What else are you holding on to white-knuckled for no really good reason? Because holding on to a website from 1996, there’s no real good reason to hold on to that. Truly.

Zack Glaser [00:31:58]:
I’m going to land this plane. I’m going to, I’m going to bring this back into what, what we were talking about.

Karin Conroy [00:32:03]:
I can hardly wait.

Zack Glaser [00:32:04]:
Um, if you just slap together an AI website with no thought to it, you haven’t done step 1, you haven’t done step 2. and you just say, here’s the, here’s the thing, then I think you wind up with those exact same questions that you just had of, of, do I trust you? You’ve got, you’ve got an AI-generated, you know, whatever picture on here. Do I trust, like, did you slap this together? It looks slap and dash, you know? And so I think that if you, going back to the first thing we started with, if I go on to Claude design and I just slap together what is right now looks like a Claude website, you know, you can kind of, you can kind of, if I just slap that together and put it up, somebody’s gonna probably look at that and go, nah.

Karin Conroy [00:32:54]:
Right. And everybody’s gonna think it looks slick right now because it’s the hot thing.

Zack Glaser [00:32:58]:
Sure.

Karin Conroy [00:32:58]:
But let me tell you, and I promise this is, this has been done before too. There have always been templates. There have always been DIY options of every industry. There’s always been DIY versions of a website that looked cool for like 5 minutes and then you saw saw it everywhere. And, and then all of a sudden you’re like, wait a minute, why does everybody else have the same stock photo of columns and the scales of justice as I do? I thought it was so cool for 5 minutes. So once again, what this is, is this is coming to core foundations of marketing. What is the point of branding and marketing and all of this? What is the point of this? The point is to differentiate yourself and be memorable. Right? And if you’re using Claude Design and everybody else is, how are you doing that? So, maybe there’s a way that you can do that, and I promise there is also, but not by starting at step 3 and not by just slapping it together in the same way that you are worried that your clients are going to come into your office with some Claude legal opinion.

Zack Glaser [00:34:02]:
Truly.

Karin Conroy [00:34:03]:
Right. I mean, it’s happening everywhere, right?

Zack Glaser [00:34:06]:
Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:34:07]:
Claude was telling me not to do some medical advice through him recently. He literally cut me off. He’s like, Karen, stop. I need you to seek medical attention. Claude, who wants to make me happy.

Zack Glaser [00:34:23]:
Right, right. That was the thing. Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:34:25]:
Right. So in the same way, you’re worried that, you know, your clients are coming into you and they have their case kind of— they think they have their case put together and they’re feeling good about it because they’ve drafted letters and they’ve put it all together. They’ve got an outline for you. Same thing’s happening to me. People are coming to me, they think they’ve got their brand all put together and whatever, and I’m like, that’s pretty— no. And it’s kind of like, you know, a kindergarten version of it. And, you know, this is not a new conversation.

Zack Glaser [00:34:52]:
It’s not a new conversation. People want to move forward. They’ve got these shiny new, new tools. What can they do right now to move themselves forward? What can they do to get— obviously take a breath, but what can they do to get past this overwhelm and get past this excitement? It’s kind of like excited overwhelm, but get past this excitement of like, oh my God, I can, I can make these things that I’ve never been able— I’m magic now. You know, what should they do?

Karin Conroy [00:35:22]:
Okay, so first they have to go through these 5 steps. We have this quiz, we put this together because I keep getting the same, having the same conversation and getting the same question or whatever, where it’s going to walk you through that. And then it puts together this really nice kind of state of your marketing. And it has some nice, like, kind of, um, it grades you on certain things and tells you the priority, which this is where I think, um, people are getting things upside down. They’re putting priority on the wrong elements. So it’s going to walk you through it. It’s going to tell you, start with like evaluating your current state. Setting your strategy.

Karin Conroy [00:35:59]:
Some people have done this and that’s great, but things have, you know, things have been refined and changed and all of that stuff. So we need to have that conversation again. Where is it really? And have things changed and whatever? So evaluate your current state, set your strategy, repair the foundation. That was the one I kind of threw in there after the fact. Look at your technical, um, stuff. Look at your conversion paths. Is your website a mess? Can it handle this? Do you have a system for this? What does your intake look like? Like, let’s look at all of this. Also, we don’t even have time to get into the offline marketing.

Karin Conroy [00:36:32]:
But what are you doing offline and how does that integrate? So, these are not 2 standalone things, your online and your offline. It should all be working together. And when you have offline marketing activities, so I’m talking speaking engagements, you’re going to an event, you are doing whatever, you’re like going to a CLE, some kind of offline human-to-human engagement. What do you have in your marketing systems in place to support that? You should have something. Do you have anything? Do you have a referral system set up? Do you have— have you figured out how you thank people?

Zack Glaser [00:37:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:37:11]:
Like, you don’t want to figure that out, right? Like, you know, on a random Tuesday when you’ve got 75 other things to do. Create a system for it. Okay. So, figure out that foundation, your systems, all that stuff. Then you map your channels and then you build a content engine, not just like slap, you know, I saw whatever.

Zack Glaser [00:37:30]:
Random ads and marketing. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy [00:37:33]:
A whole system around it. So the content engine may include some of that offline stuff. It may include, um, actual content pieces that are driven by that. It could include some, you know, uh, content pieces that come from Claude that are supported by Claude or whatever your platform of choice is. Um, but that’s where this stuff comes in. Once you’ve done all of those other elements, and then our little quiz thing will kind of put it in a priority, tell you how to address it. It’s going to go into more depth on each one of those steps. And kind of talk— I like to talk a lot about the offline marketing stuff.

Karin Conroy [00:38:09]:
I feel like this is where— this is your point of differentiation with the AI stuff, right? This is your humanness.

Zack Glaser [00:38:16]:
That’s exactly right. And a podcast for another time. I think all of the SEO Um, tools and things like that that have been out there for, for a little bit, telling you all this, the little tiny minutiae on SEO has made people feel more comfortable in that area of marketing and has brought them away from the like, go glad hand on the square.

Karin Conroy [00:38:42]:
Right.

Zack Glaser [00:38:42]:
Go talk to some people, sponsor a baseball team, you know, sponsor a soccer team or whatever.

Karin Conroy [00:38:48]:
Yeah. And when you look at the amount of introverts that are lawyers, like this is something that they’re like, oh, yay, I can just sit here and look at my SEO report because that feels more comfortable. You know, I don’t want to do that.

Zack Glaser [00:39:02]:
It feels like— but it’s a rocking chair, you know?

Karin Conroy [00:39:05]:
Right.

Zack Glaser [00:39:05]:
It’s, it’s not going anywhere. You’re doing something, but it’s not going anywhere.

Karin Conroy [00:39:08]:
Yeah, exactly. And it’s going places a lot less than it was before. Um, you know, we could get into that as a whole other episode too, but the stuff that’s happening online is being driven by AI and results are diminishing and The only thing that I’m seeing that’s moving the needle in the opposite direction is human interactions that are driven and supported by AI. So events, cross-linking, you know, when you go to conferences, all of that stuff, it works. It just does. And it always has, and you know, it’s true. So just get out there.

Zack Glaser [00:39:44]:
Okay. So they want to get out there. They want to get started. Where can they find your, your wizard and your 5-step process?

Karin Conroy [00:39:51]:
So it is the same link it always is. It is conroycreativecouncil.com/lawyerist.

Zack Glaser [00:39:59]:
Awesome. We will put that in the show notes, um, so I don’t have to spell it out.

Karin Conroy [00:40:02]:
Um, but it’s a long one.

Zack Glaser [00:40:04]:
Yeah, it’s not difficult to find Conroy. It’s not, uh, you know, Conroy Create. But, uh, yeah, Karin, this went longer than I expected. Thank you. Thank you. I, I don’t think it was your fault, but I, I always enjoy talking to you about this stuff. It is, it is something that is I think on people’s minds is how do we—

Karin Conroy [00:40:24]:
It for sure is. And just calm down. Start by calming down.

Zack Glaser [00:40:27]:
Touch some grass. Just take, take a breath, Zach. Take a breath. Well, Karin, thank you again, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.

Karin Conroy [00:40:36]:
Of course. Thanks for having me.

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