Will AI Send Clients to Your Firm?

Episode Notes

Transcript

Rocky Dhir:
Hi everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m speaking to you in the summer of 2026. My social media and texts are chock-full of reminders that everyone I know got to go somewhere fun and interesting. I’ve been homebound this summer, but I do enjoy traveling. You go to new places, you meet new people and sort of find yourself. And then you come back and you find yourself. You find yourself missing the days when you went on vacation without kids. You found yourself on Zillow looking for homes in the place you just came from. And you find yourself needing to get new clients to help pay for that vacation because you just found the bill. And now that you have found yourself, how do those new clients find you? I’m old enough to remember the days when the only lawyer advertising seemed to be on daytime television, with all the rest being word of mouth and referrals and lawyers going to golf excursions and lunches.
And then the internet happened. And the term SEO, search engine optimization. It invaded our brains. And ever since, lawyers have been on a quest to obtain and retain a spot on the very first page of a Google search. But the internet never remains static. It’s changing. And boy, is it changing now with new tools and new rules governing how clients find us. To help us navigate all this, I did what any good lawyer would do. I brought in experts. Amanda Sexton is founder and CEO of Focusworks Marketing in New Jersey. And Zack McKamie, he’s vice president of marketing at Androvet right here in Texas. Maybe, just maybe, they can help us get a grip on how to become not only competent and capable lawyers, but also findable lawyers. So Amanda, Zack, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you guys.

Zack McKamie:
Thanks for having us. All

Rocky Dhir:
Right, so guys, let’s start with the basics. SEO, how exactly does that work? So Amanda, you want to walk us through that?

Amanda Sexton:
Sure. And so when we say SEO, I think people ubiquitously default to Google since a lot of us use that. There are of course other search engines. We’ll talk mostly about Google because that’s where we tend to focus most of our search energy on.

Rocky Dhir:
AltaVista, baby.

Amanda Sexton:
I think we’re ready for that to come back at this point, given how Google results have shown up lately. But a lot of it, it’s kind of two factors. So it’s the onsite part. What does your site look like? How is it explaining things to Google? A lot of technical pieces. What’s the backend coding? Is it a good user experience? Is it fast? And then the other part of it is SEO of SEO and component of that is what people are saying about you online. Do you have a lot of good, credible sites that are talking about your website and referring back to it? Can Google tell that you’re an authority in your space? So all of those come together to basically combine for SEO for how someone would find you online. And hopefully it got to your point, the goal is to come up not even on that first page, but within those first three results on Google.

Rocky Dhir:
It’s top three so you can see them right away. Zack, I don’t know if you remember this, but I remember when SEO was all about keywords and you had to jam as many keywords onto a webpage as possible. You’re just jamming sometimes even with white text in the background. I remember people doing that just to make words pop up in the SEO. I guess it’s the algorithm. Did that change at some point? Is that still the paradigm that we’re using when we talk about things like SEO or is that different now? And if so, when did that change?

Zack McKamie:
Oh, it’s 100% different now. I mean –

Rocky Dhir:
Great. Now I feel so out of touch. This is great. Thanks, Zack.

Zack McKamie:
Well, I mean, you were leading the witness in a way because you did know the answer, but there are techniques, if you will, to optimizing for search engines that have fallen to the wayside. And that’s because those were more about gaming the system. And Google got smarter about it. I say this often, Google’s goals haven’t changed. They’ve just gotten better at enforcing the rules. So they’re looking for quality content. They’re looking for natural trends. It’s less about being able to use some of those tricks like the all white text on a page, putting locations all at the bottom, creating very clunky content. It just reeks of keyword stuffing because that’s not what users want. They want the most authentic answer. And when you’re running a business like Google, which is all about search and paid ads, they want to provide the best answer to people.
So they’ve just gotten better about seeing those things and not rewarding sites for that. So it’s really about being authentic now, and it’s requiring businesses and marketers to step up their game and deliver things and information to their prospective audiences that matter.

Rocky Dhir:
Let’s step back for a second because I know that there are still lawyers, especially in smaller towns or smaller markets, or maybe depending on their practice area, they say, “I have a website, but I don’t really need SEO because most of my work comes to me from word of mouth. It’s just people know me.” Is that still valid or has that kind of altered over time?

Zack McKamie:
I personally think that’s a great question because if you’re doing dedicated search engine optimization, it’s not something you do once and then hope that you’ve climbed to the top of the mountain. You can’t just set it and forget it on your website. But I do think that for different types of firms, search is going to play a different role. And for instances, I hear oftentimes from clients, my relationships are what drive it or people are just coming to vet me. And if you’re in a commercial firm, your audience is a sophisticated consumer of legal services. And so they’re probably not going to Google and saying, “Best antitrust attorney in Dallas near me.” That’s just not what’s happening, but they are come to your site to vet you and learn more about you. So that’s where I might just make sure that your branded search term or any term that identifies the law firm, identifies the attorneys.
You can do that responsibly without investing in what I would call a more aggressive SEO strategy for a family law firm or a criminal defense firm where you really do want to show up for non-branded terms like we were talking about earlier, best family law attorney in Frisco, Texas, for instance. That would be worthwhile for a consumer face of practice.

Rocky Dhir:
Amanda, agree, disagree or yes, but feel free to jump in on this one.

Amanda Sexton:
No, I completely agree. And I think the big question, the but part of that is some firms just are happy with the size that they’re at. They don’t want to grow. So then investing in SEO doesn’t make sense for them. If they’re like, “This is my practice, I’m going to practice for 10 more years. I’m happy where I am. I don’t want to be hiring people.” Then maybe SEO is not for them. They’re doing the networking that they’re doing. They’ve built up a great network of referral sources over the years and then they don’t need to invest in SEO. But I think Zack hit it spot on. That’s going to work for some firms. And for some firms, they should be looking at other alternatives and venues to make themselves more valuable to the potential clients and just stand out more from potential options.

Rocky Dhir:
So far, I think what’s been the assumption I’ve had is that attorney marketing is about SEO or that that’s really the core of marketing yourself as an attorney, as people that help attorneys market themselves. Is it just about SEO anymore or are there other factors to making yourself stand out as an attorney and to getting the word out about yourself? So Amanda, you’re nodding your head. Is there something you want to say and then let Zack kind of think and ruminate over this?

Amanda Sexton:
I think attorneys and firms that have done it really well have historically leaned into storytelling and talking about clients and the work that they do and how they help versus just I’m a commercial litigation attorney or I practice family law. But I think that the marketing today has created an environment, and especially just I think overall the climate in general has created a situation where people are looking for a trusted advisor. They don’t want just an attorney anymore. They want someone that they can trust and they can go to and they could just count on something solid being there. And I think the marketing that was done in the past for just for SEO sometimes didn’t encompass that. It was just get someone to your website. And now it’s get someone to your website and really be able to show them on that site, show them other clients you’ve worked with, be able to talk about how you practice law, why you practice law, show them a little bit more about what they’re going to get.
So by the time they talk to you, they’ve built that relationship. There’s PR now that’s even more important. It’s all of the signals that are, it’s not just one channel anymore, at least that’s what we’re seeing, is that it’s a multi-touch. People want to be able to look anywhere and see the same consistent message about your firm and at that point pretty much build a relationship before they’ve even had that conversation.

Rocky Dhir:
I’m trying to put this in terms that even I can understand. I think what you’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that it used to be that SEO was sort of the linchpin of attorney marketing. And now it’s maybe just step one of attorney marketing and then there’s a whole nother set of tools behind it that you use in addition to SEO. Is that a fair summation?

Amanda Sexton:
It is. I think for now, if you’re a firm that’s doing just SEO, there’s no need for panic. I think the mayhem that we hear from clients that the sensationalism of SEO is dead. It’s not dead, it’s still there. People are still looking online, but I do think there’s going to be a more dramatic shift in the next year or so that we’re going to start to see. And I think the more channels that you can get yourself on now and see what’s working, the better instead of all the eggs in one basket.

Rocky Dhir:
Zack, how about you? What do you think is the components to effective law firm marketing at this point?

Zack McKamie:
It’s pieces to a puzzle that everyone’s always trying to put together. The way that I preach or explain it to clients is it’s about understanding your audiences and meeting them where they are. For some firms, it might be advertising in a trade publication because they know that their audience is there, but probably also finding a way to connect with them on social media in addition to a mix of other things you might do. For other firms, it could be just about how do I show up online on page one as often as possible? But also as Amanda was alluding to, that’s changing rapidly. And it’s not about showing up as a link on page one. It’s about showing up in an answer on an LLM where they don’t have to take a single click to get to your website to learn more. Hopefully the answer’s right there.
If you’re running a referral-heavy firm where you know you’re going to get most of your good cases from other attorneys, it’s about being involved in events potentially, advertising, being on social media there, sending out newsletters, renting third-party lists where you can publish though leadership or your big case results. Oftentimes it’s just about staying top of mind with those referral sources because you want them thinking about you when that case comes across their desk. And if you have a relationship with them, it’s often just about nurturing that relationship and reminding them that you’re there. And there’s lots of ways that you can go about creating that visibility. So lots of channels and lots of tactics that we have at our disposal now. It’s about pulling the right pieces together to make sure that wherever your audience is consuming information, you’re there.

Rocky Dhir:
You mentioned a second ago about putting yourself into an LLM. And so at first I thought I need to get a master’s degree in law, an actual LLM. And then I Googled it and it showed up on the first page of Google. It says large language model. This is an AI thing that we’re talking about. So let’s take a quick break and when we come back, let’s talk a little bit about maybe the new rules of attorney marketing in an age of AI, or are the rules still the same? Let’s find out guys, we’ll be back in just a couple of seconds with Zack and Amanda. Well, guys, welcome back. We’ve got Amanda Sexton, Zack McKamey, and we’re talking about attorney marketing so that clients can find us. Important stuff. Sometimes we kind of take it for granted, but we’re learning a few new things here about some of the tools and some of the changing paradigms.
One of the things that we talked about just before the break was about LLMs, large language models, as it turns out. That’s an AI term, and I know AI can be a little scary, but we can’t avoid it now. It’s part of who we are. So Zack, maybe let’s start with you on this one. How do you think AI is reshaping attorney marketing generally and maybe SEO specifically?

Zack McKamie:
When we talk about AI in marketing, it’s really about, and there’s lots of terms that are being tossed around, but GEO or generative engine optimization. So it’s similar to SEO in that you’re trying to engineer your online footprint or your online visibility around how do I show up in those large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity.

Rocky Dhir:
Harvey AI.

Zack McKamie:
Harvey, Harvey AI, the legal-focused one. It’s about the science or the technique or the practice of if someone’s searching for a service or a recommendation there, how do you improve your chances to show up in the answer? It used to be with SEO or is with SEO that you just did to show up as a link among many links, but this is the opportunity to show up in the answer, which is not even a click to your website at that point.

Rocky Dhir:
So there’s LLM and now we’ve learned GEO or GEO. I’m going to spend some time thinking about another acronym. I’m just going to make something up and throw it out there in the internet and see if anybody picks up on it. We’ll just figure it out. Amanda, what about you? How do you think AI is kind of reshaping your world of attorney marketing?

Amanda Sexton:
I think it’s adding, I mean, AI for everyone is adding on new work, new ways of doing things, creating less work in some capacities. But for AI when it comes to attorney marketing, we’re seeing that it’s, again, the people that are searching for attorneys and are coming to attorneys that way and clients that are being found through an LLM, the intent is much higher. So the context from there might be fewer, but the people that are reaching out to you are more likely to become a client. So another thing that we’re finding, I don’t want to throw out that SEO is gone and you should only do AI, at least for us, we consider SEO still the foundation. You might add on some AI optimization on top of that. But the people that are searching, they’re having conversations, this will start to become more commonplace.
People that are in a professional capacity tend to use AI for work. But on a personal level, people are having these conversations and turning to these tools more just for the conversation of here’s what happened, what do I do? Which leads them then to, hey, who’s the best attorney in here? And the difference with that is that in Google, you might have 10 results come through or you might have the map pack come through where you see your listing and all of the reviews. And it’s different. And what you’re looking into AI, you might not have that. You might just have three recommendations, and that list is not going to be the same time. I would encourage everyone who’s listening to just go onto your AI tool of choice and just Google, “Hey, what do you think of my firm?” And see what the sentiment is.
You never know what AI is pulling from and what it might think about you. And if it doesn’t reflect exactly what you’d want to, it might be, we had a client that they were having a particular practice area that for so long, they had said verbally in PR pieces that they did not do this type of work. And then when they started doing it, it became really challenging to teach AI, hey, they actually do this kind of work and for them to show up in it. It was a whole PR thing to get them to actually then re-convince AI that now they want to do this type of work. So it’s a good exercise to just see what AI thinks

Rocky Dhir:
Of you. AI is like my child. She doesn’t forget. Anything you say, she will hold you to it.

Zack McKamie:
I agree with Amanda. I think the benefit of optimizing for AI also allows you to do really good SEO because it’s more involved. A good for instance is, so with Google, it sends out one bot to evaluate the web and return information. That’s how the algorithm works. For most LLMs, they’re sending out three bots and they’re looking at three different things. And so if you’re doing a smart AI strategy, which is going to be on page, like Amanda was talking about earlier, making sure from a technical standpoint that these LLMs can parse your information, that you can categorize it correctly, that you can write in scannable ways, oftentimes question and answer format, because I’ve heard the analogy that these bots have ADHD and if they can’t figure it out quickly, they’re moving on. So you’ve got to write better content, you’ve got to structure it differently.
You’ve got to make sure your site’s built and you have schema in place so that there’s no question about what you’re talking about. But then there’s also the off page that Amanda was alluding to earlier with SEO. What are all the things happening off your site? So are you being, and she mentioned PR, but how many articles are you featured in that speak to the subject matter that you want to be found for? Are you in places where we know that AI cites content from? YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, all these sort of, I mean, YouTube is definitely not, and LinkedIn aren’t fringe, but I mean until a couple years ago, when’s the last time you heard about Reddit? It’s become a huge player in this. And so what are those communities saying about you, but also the reviews? It’s looking for trust. These LMs are looking for trust.
And so all of those things that I just mentioned that you could be doing from a GEO standpoint, well, guess what? That’s also a great SEO.

Rocky Dhir:
If I’m a lawyer sitting in my office and I decide after hearing this podcast that I’m going to go and optimize my AI. I kind of resolve, I’m going to do this. I guess what’s my to-do list? What’s the first, second, third thing I should do?

Amanda Sexton:
Yeah, so the first thing that I usually suggest is that people take advantage of the things that they’ve already done. So if you’ve done SEO and you have a ton of content, one of the lowest lift things you can do is look at all the content you have and say, is this scannable? To Zack’s point, is this written for AI? I mean, good copywriting in general should have headers and scannable text and conversational language and written for people. So hopefully it’s already mostly there. But adding in some FAQs, if you think about the questions that people are looking for and asking, adding those into the content you already have, it’s just a light lift for what you already have. That’s probably step one. You’ve already spent some money, you’ve invested in that strategy, you can make the most of it. But to Zack’s point, the next step is looking at what else is out there to try to get some articles and some publications, maybe apply for an award or two.
And really recency is very important. If you won an award a year ago, that’s probably too long. What we’re seeing is the last three months is really the most recent part. I know. And it’s like, this is a lot of work, but AI wants what’s current and what’s recent. And it’s done the scanning, it’s looked online, it’s gotten all of the generic content that it can find. So now it’s looking for what’s new, what’s unique, what’s a thought leader. So it’s looking on all of those sites, to Zack’s point, for LinkedIn and YouTube, what are people talking about that’s new? So if you can be that thought leader, that’s a great position to put yourself in.

Rocky Dhir:
Wow. Okay. So a year is too long and three months is right at the edge. This is definitely a changing paradigm. Zack, your thoughts on this to-do list for the attorneys.

Zack McKamie:
Yeah, the first place I would start is go test the LLMs. They don’t share information. When you look at something like Google, you can get a competitive keyword analysis and understand how many people are competing for certain terms. You can understand first-party data from them. But since these LLMs don’t share any of that, you really have to reverse engineer it. So go see what you’re cited for. Get a lay of the land. Are you showing up already in certain results across all the platforms for just natural terms that you would want to be found for? And then you want to prioritize around those. So you might look at it and you may have, let’s just say, 15% share across the LLMs of how you’re showing up. And then you develop strategies for how to go about it. It’s very topic and sort of subject cluster-based.
And that’s where you would start to clean up your website, make sure that technically it’s sound, that you add that schema. You’re rewriting your content with an eye towards what these LLMs favor. And then you look outward to what is everything outside of my site saying about me? Because a lot of these LLMs, they go right past your site. I mean, they want to be able to read it, but they’re looking for third-party trust. And so then we talked about honors and awards. We are seeing that super lawyers in America, best lawyers in America, chambers rankings, those are often sourced and cited by LLMs because they naturally have a best of or this sort of reputational aspect to them. So actually buying profiles there and filling it out with content and helping wrench the story that’s being told about you online. And then how do you go about it on a consistent basis?
Where are you publishing? How much are you publishing onsite and offsite? And then are you looking at it monthly to see how you’re affecting change? Are you starting to show up for those prompts you identified doing that reverse prompt engineering?

Rocky Dhir:
So when I get those ads saying that, would you like to be featured in this magazine as one of the top legal thinkers or whatever? I get those sometimes. Am I going to pay to get an award? We used to laugh about that say 10 or 15 years ago. But if I’m hearing you correctly, now you got to think long and hard. Maybe that’ll show up on an LLM. See, I’m getting the lingo down, but it might show up on an LLM. So do I need to now rethink whether I buy those awards?

Zack McKamie:
I agree. I wouldn’t even say 15 years ago, three years ago, five years ago, we might see a pay-to-play opportunity and go, “No, this is pay-to-play. You don’t need to worry about it.” But now we’re taking a closer look to say, “Is there benefit here in helping inform LLM answers?” And so the answer may not automatically be no.

Rocky Dhir:
Wow. Okay. This is why we do the podcast. This is very interesting. I’m looking at my clock and I’m realizing we’ve just been talking and talking. We need to hear from another one of our sponsors. We’re going to take a quick break. When you come back, we’re going to talk about some strategies and maybe some thoughts that you guys can share with attorneys, some practical points that they need to consider. So guys, sit back, relax, listen to this next ad from one of our sponsors, and then we’re going to be back with Amanda and Zack in just a few seconds. We’re now back with Amanda Sexton and Zack McKamie. While we were on the break, they said something kind of interesting. They said things have changed so much just from January to July of 2026, just in six or seven months. Well, did I just say six, seven?
I just said six, seven. I’m outing myself as a Gen Z dad. So they said in just the last six or seven months, things have been changing. So walk us through that. What’s changed in just six months? Amanda, you want to start us off?

Amanda Sexton:
From a search standpoint, I think we’re seeing more adoption from actual individual people. We definitely, I would say at the end of last year, it was very rare that we would have clients that would say, “Oh, we’re getting leads from LLMs.” And these days it’s fairly common for that to happen. And if you have a consistent strategy in place, that can be a marketing tool for you. Where I would say even in September of last year, it was something that firms were just starting to open up to. And I think the adoption rate is still fairly early for firms that want to get in this game. We have a lot of firms that are still doing SEO, but aren’t considering the AI component. And just like with regular SEO, the earlier you get into it, the easier it is to keep that positioning across time.
You already have the strategy. So I think that part has changed that more and more firms are coming onto it. I mean, from a business standpoint, the capabilities are incredibly exponential just from January to now. But I think that also lends itself to what firms can do in terms of themselves just going online and seeing what’s out there and building out a strategy to Zack’s point.

Rocky Dhir:
And Zack, one thing we’ve talked a lot about is I keep hearing social media. You said Reddit earlier, which to me was a bit of a shock. I always thought of Reddit as where young people go to just talk about the world, and that’s what Reddit was in my head. But now it sounds like it’s a place where maybe there’s a place for professionals in there alongside the LinkedIns and these other types of networks. So talk to us about a social media strategy for attorneys that I guess might go hand in hand with SEO and AI. How would you see that play out? If an attorney walked into your office right now, what would you tell them about a social media presence?

Zack McKamie:
Well, it does so much for you, whether just authentically and organically, if you’re posting on the relevant social media platforms that make sense for you, you’re sending signals to Google and you’re sending signals to these LLMs, but you’re also having authentic conversations there, hopefully, and demonstrating thought leadership. So when it comes to professional social media networking, LinkedIn is still the defacto place. That’s where business gets talked about. So as it relates, but then you have Reddit, which is a social media site, and that is a shocker. Who would’ve thought that we’d be talking about lawyers having a Reddit strategy? But where it boils down to there is that AI is looking for authentic trust. And it faints, it’s going to get more authentic trust from social media sites like that because people are having real conversations about it. So does it want to trust you on your first-party website saying how great you are?
Or does it want to trust a community of Reddit that is saying how great you are? Well, Reddit’s going to get that nod. And so having a strategy around social, what makes sense to post where, and then hopefully having authentic conversations around it and people actually engaging with your content sends that signal to the LLMs that it can ostensively trust over your site. So you need to have a plan going into social media. Don’t just do social media for the sake of doing social media because then your content’s going to stink and then no one’s going to hang around and engage. And what you’re really looking for is a place to have these conversations and a place to reach your audiences, and then you get all the benefit on the right ones of affecting your online footprint as well.

Rocky Dhir:
So Amanda, I guess to jump off of what Zack was just saying, in terms of that authenticity, let’s use an example. Let’s say you’ve got a business lawyer. I think the example we used earlier was antitrust. So I’m an antitrust lawyer. I deal only with businesses. At that point, do I still need to have a TikTok account? Do I need a Reddit space? I mean, how does social media play? I mean, do you base it on the type of practice area or is this something every practitioner should be figuring out how to use social media? I mean, what would you advise somebody?

Amanda Sexton:
That TikTok question has been around for a long time, and if I had a dollar for every time we were asked about

Rocky Dhir:
It. Okay, fine. Should I have a law firm Tinder profile?

Amanda Sexton:
Not an

Rocky Dhir:
Extra dollar. Is that better?

Amanda Sexton:
No, but it’s a fair question because there are some attorneys that do it and do really well and they bring in a lot of clients. So it’s obviously a question to ask if this person’s bringing in clients from it, should I be doing it? I mean, to Zack’s point, that’s again, just going to be firm dependent on what works for them, where their clients are looking. Whether or not currently we’re not seeing LLMs indexing a ton of TikTok content, that could change. YouTube just overtook Reddit in terms of being looked at. Reddit might not be something that they look at from a year from now. It could be TikTok. So I think whatever it is, firms have to be willing to adjust their strategy depending on where they want to bring in clients. So if it’s in the interest of supporting their AI strategy, that might look a little bit different.
But where they should be and on social is really dependent practice area-wise. I think the one thing that we’ve seen across the board, I mean, Zack had mentioned it, is a personal LinkedIn account where I’m still amazed that it’s free for the views that you can get. Almost every attorney has a referral system in place. That’s a great spot to just stay top of mind. And we are seeing those get indexed into the LLMs also. So it’s kind of a twofold strategy with LinkedIn.

Rocky Dhir:
How about you, Zack? What would you tell an attorney coming into your office first time? Say a business lawyer. Which social media, I guess, applications should they be on at that time?

Zack McKamie:
I agree. I would start with LinkedIn because like I mentioned earlier about that’s where business is discussed. But the great point that Amanda made about TikTok is it may not be for everybody, but you also have to think about the content that performs well there. That’s a video. And so if you’re not willing to shoot video and do it in bite-sized pieces, you probably don’t belong there. But where you do belong is YouTube because people use, I mean, it’s the second largest search engine behind Google. And so having a presence on YouTube, we know that it’s trusted, like if Anna just pointed out by LLMs, the reason being is that it’s a lot harder to fake a conversation. So it sees that as trust of you have a transcript of what you discussed in the video. I can trust this more than I might trust the written word on your website that you may have manufactured using AI as a for instance.
So YouTube makes a lot of sense, even though people don’t necessarily traditionally think about it as a social media platform. I think it qualifies. And so I would start at those two places. And then depending on your practice, you’ve got the whole MetaSuite with Facebook and Instagram. So if you’re going to be more consumer-facing, it might make sense there to educate those audiences where they are.

Rocky Dhir:
I guess that makes sense because YouTube is owned by Google, if I’m not mistaken. So that would make sense that they’re like, “Oh no, we just laughed ourselves.” I mean, I can see why Google wouldn’t necessarily be shedding a tear over the fact that YouTube overtook Google. So I guess it kind of makes sense. Amanda, one thing I know you’ve talked to lawyers about, and you touched on this earlier, it’s the power of stories and storytelling and marketing. And Zack, I get a feeling you probably wouldn’t disagree with this, but Amanda, walk us through your thoughts on how lawyers can become better storytellers and how that impacts their marketing.

Amanda Sexton:
I think the interesting piece, especially when we talk to lawyers and clients, is that you’ll ask them a question and they’re like, “Oh no, we don’t do anything. Not the big deal.” And I think after you’re practicing law for so long, you’re kind of like, “Oh, this is just what we do.” But the more you have that conversation and you start to tease it out, you’re like, “Wow, that’s some really impressive work that you’ve done.” So I think thinking back to some of the clients that you’ve helped the most, that you felt the most rewarding, if you can find a way to anonymize that and to really frame it as this was the issue, here’s how I solved it, this was the end result. And really that framework is a really good way to tell the story. And it’s great even if you’re networking, it’s not just online.
It’s a really good way for people to remember what kind of client. Clients you can help and how you could help them. And I think people also, that feels much more personal than some of the standard language that we see on attorney sites. People read that outcome and they say, “Wow, this person really worked hard. They had a unique perspective.” Or, “This is the same exact problem I have. This is who I want in my quarter.” So that storytelling, it can take a little bit of time to work that out. And part of that is sometimes just a conversation, but just having that framework and writing those down and working them into conversations. We find even in intake conversations, that can be something that happens too. And using that across the board, those stories can be put into any channel that use. They can be put into the middle of blogs, they can be shared on YouTube, that can be part of a social post.
And they could be part of a podcast when they come on to talk about those stories. So it’s pretty compelling and it can be used across the board.

Rocky Dhir:
Zack, your take on storytelling. Are you on board with what we just heard or do you have a different take on it?

Zack McKamie:
No, 100% agree. I mean, one of the positioning or taglines that we use at Andervet is we’re here to help you tell your story, because it is about stories. It’s what resonates with people and has for all of time. We crave stories as humans. It’s the preferred way to communicate. And so I encourage clients to not be afraid to tell them and to think about themselves in their lives, in their personal lives. A lot of them have adopted social media, especially as we have digital natives as we call them. They’ve grown up on the internet fully. They use technology differently. And videos are great, for instance. I mean, what more engaging way to tell a story than to do it through video or a podcast like we’re on today. You embrace these things that resonate in your own personal lives and then you apply that to your business.
And oftentimes it is a richer story and you’re telling a better story.

Rocky Dhir:
This sounds like a lot to keep up with. I know for me, my head is kind of spinning, and I’m sure any lawyer who’s listening to this is saying, “All right, how do we get a grasp on all this?” So is there a book called Lawyer Marketing for Dummies? Or is there some place that lawyers can go to just kind of learn the basics? Where would you point them for that? So Zack, we can start with you. And then Amanda, if you’ve got any others, we’d love to hear them.

Zack McKamie:
I’d say go online, do your research. There’s going to be lots of sources out there that help break this down because us as marketers, we’re marketing our business and we want to show up in answers on LLMs. We want to show up online. So we’re practicing what we preach. So there’s lots of content available, whether it be YouTube, on individuals’ websites or third-party publishing where you can get handle on the things that are effective in this space.

Rocky Dhir:
What should they be searching for? I mean, again, going back to keywords and SEO, what are some of the keywords that they should type in to figure this out? Because it’s overwhelming sometimes.

Zack McKamie:
It’s andreved.com and it’ll just pop right up to my website and you can read all that. No,

Rocky Dhir:
This will make a great story one day. I had a podcast guest and you won’t believe what he did.

Zack McKamie:
It’s really basic. It’s that question and answer format that Amanda was alluding to earlier. How to optimize my law firm for AI. And you’ll see a list there and they’ll get citations. Go into YouTube and just wherever your AI or digital literacy is, start there and then you’ll naturally climb the ladder as you go and learn and find out more. And then there’s just, I was reading a Forbes article earlier in the week all about this and learned some new things myself. So just about being curious and getting online and finding the things that start to line up because you’ll start to see it lining out across a few sources.

Amanda Sexton:
This is another great use case for AI. I find that sometimes when I want to learn something, and I think everyone learns differently too, so it’s easy to say go to a website and read or watch a video or find a podcast. But I find that I’ll go to AI and I’ll say, “I want three podcasts, three YouTube videos. I want to learn about X.” And I would also encourage you to include that recency factor in there from the last three months. I know even when I look for certain podcasts about AI –

Rocky Dhir:
Three months.

Amanda Sexton:
It’s the timeframe and it’s changing. And to also look for your specific practice area because you might get advice from a type of agency or even just someone that’s familiar, maybe they’re a CMO for a certain type of firm. The type of practice that you have will really kind of dictate what marketing tactics will work for you. So searching with that specificity will really give you more information. But I would keep it short and sweet and then learn the way that’s best for you. And AI can tell you that.

Zack McKamie:
I think that’s a great point, Amanda. Use AI to teach you about AI. It knows itself better than all of us. And so that’s a great starting point.

Rocky Dhir:
Ask your friend Claude or Chat or Harvey or whichever one you decide to work with. I love it. Final question, and I think this is the question that a lot of lawyers listening to this are going to be wondering. They’ve probably been wondering it up until this very moment, but if I’m going to start doing all this AI, doing all this stuff that we’re talking about, about AI optimization, I think that was the term. If I’m going to start putting this together, how many internal organs do I have to sell to make this happen? I mean, what kind of budget would lawyers need to set aside for this? And I think that’s probably where they get the most afraid. So Amanda, if you want to jump in first and then Zack, you please. And obviously none of this is binding on anybody. We’re going to put that out there upfront.
This is not a quotation. We’re just trying to get a sense of what we as lawyers need to set aside and be prepared for with something like this.

Amanda Sexton:
I will give a very lawyer answer back and say it depends.

Rocky Dhir:
Of course.

Amanda Sexton:
So if you are a kind of niche practice in the middle of Iowa, you’re going to be spending a lot less than personal injury in Miami. So that’s really what it comes down to is practice area and geography. And there’s kind of different levels to SEO too, right? You could say, “I’m willing for it to take six months or maybe a year for me to get there.” Or you could say, “I want to invest in those PR components and in that content in the beginning and just do a heavy push and I need to be there within six months.” And again, no guarantees because no one controls Google. I would love to. I’d be making a lot more money. Could be anywhere from the $2,000 range at a low start to kind of get you rolling and then up to, I mean, there’s firms spending $100,000, but those are obviously in a much different, in a big law capacity.

Rocky Dhir:
Zack, what do you tell people when. I’m sure you’ve been to many events and lawyers come to you and say, “God, I can’t afford you.” And what’s your retort to them? And I use the term tort.

Zack McKamie:
That’s right. It does depend. And those were some good examples because if I’m a very niche practice, I’m going after one aspect of where I want to be seen. But think about an Amwell 200 to 100 law firm where they have so many practice areas and so many attorneys. You can’t boil the ocean on day one. So you’re going to have to create a strategy of what are the things that I want to focus on first and then build it and make some choices. But I would recommend that people look at what they’re spending right now from an SEO standpoint, and then just know you’re going to spend more when it comes to AI because it takes more and you’re producing content in a different way, you’re approaching it differently. You don’t have some of the reporting tools that you do in your SEO world.
So some of that stuff’s just got to be done manually. And so if they’re working with an agency, for example, think about what you’re spending there and just know that you’re going to be adding thousands to that, maybe not multiple thousands, but just start it where you’re at and know it’s going to take more, especially early on.

Rocky Dhir:
So the lesson is, if you build it, they will come if Claude tells them to. So that’s what we have learned today. That is unfortunately the end of our time together. We could talk about this all day, but we’re going to have to save some for next time. So Amanda Sexton, Zack McKamie thank you both for joining us. You’ve given us a lot to chew on and to search about, so thank you both.

Amanda Sexton:
This is great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Zack McKamie:
Yes, thank you.

Rocky Dhir:
Absolutely. And of course I want to thank all of you for tuning in. I want to encourage you to stay safe and be well. If you like what you heard today, please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, keep searching online. I’m Rocky Dhir signing off for now.