Note: This chapter is being built in public, one brick at a time — just like we do for clients through the Authority Chapter Plan™. Welcome to Chapter Fourteen. Read the entire AIO for Attorneys book here.
In a world of attorney billboards, shouting television ads, and content written in white crayons by sludge marketers, the potential of a return to classic, authority based legal marketing is what drew me to this field. Finally, a way to fight sludge marketers and the commodification of our profession both. Finally, a chance to grow law firms with dignity.
But AI is a new frontier, and with any technology one must feel comfortable with the professional responsibility and ethical boundaries created. In this chapter, I will describe why ethical AIO offers the cleanest path to both authority, and compliance with attorney rules of professional responsibility.
Ethics and Attorney Advertising
The ethical landmines inherent in AI mostly involve the output, rather than the input side of the equation. Said another way, the ethical restraints are far more obvious when you seek to create content with AI, rather than for it. The “hallucinations” in case sites that make the news have nothing to do with AIO as we define it: creating prestige authority assets, ensuring AI can locate them, and ethically serving as a leader in your community and in the profession.
The usual Rules of Responsibility and attorney advertising apply, of course, and differ by your jurisdiction, so I must offer the lawyerly disclaimer (some habits die hard) that you will need to conduct your own research, but nonetheless this overview is intended to provide the vocabulary and a critical analysis of why Authority Intelligence Optimization™ offers the most ironclad ethical framework of any marketing system lawyers may utilize.
Most of the admonitions against attorney advertising involve directly soliciting potential clients following a specific sort of incident, creating false or misleading claims, dishonesty, citing to specialties or specializations you may not have earned, or not listing your communication as attorney advertising.
At a granular level, this is why I have always been uncomfortable with PPC ads. You are farming out your marketing to a non-attorney, who is then creating micro ads for your law firm that tend to not fully comply with all these requirements.
Decisions in certain jurisdictions that it was not unethical to run keywords on your competitors’ names have always been particularly puzzling to me, given how our profession can be such sticklers about other legal advertising concerns. It’s almost as though there has been a collective movement to bury our heads in the sand about ethics and digital marketing, maybe as a tacit acceptance that the internet is simply far too complex, too large to police, and would require a complete overall of our ethical frameworks to patrol.
But I would rather deal in absolutes, or near absolutes, and that is what AIO offers for those who pursue of the Three Pillars of AIO™: Authority Assets, Technical Authority Signals, and Real-world validation. After all, AI does not change our core ethical responsibilities; but it does create a new, growing, and complex landscape in which we must apply them.
AIO Ethics and Authority Assets
The great thing about authority assets is it’s far easier to market a book than a lawyer. You can probably get away with saying your book is the greatest ever written in your practice area, whereas any direct comparison to other attorneys or law firms might be seen as grounds for inquiry in most jurisdictions. Books, articles, even well written blog posts elevate the profession and demonstrate authority; they are by definition anti-sludge and ethical. Which is to say AIO offers ethical marketing with dignity.
If you are going to write with AI, and I think most lawyers are already doing so or will be in the coming years, then you must remember that it’s ultimately your name on the book, the article, the blog post, your voice on the podcast, your face on the video, same as it’s your name on the legal brief if you choose to file it without checking the AI generated citations.
For those who farm their work outright to AI, keep in mind that outsourcing your work to AI provides no more cover than to unscrupulous legal marketers; it is always your license on the line. For instance, if AI created website copy that promised the “best results,” or “the best law firm in Tarzana,” then that may run afoul of certain attorney advertising rules or rules of responsibility. It’s always your job as the attorney to review and sign off on any marketing. Don’t just trust that AI will get it right. More often than not, it won’t.
But provided you’re producing your own material, or that you have set parameters defining your human-AI partnership, you will rarely go wrong marketing via keynote speeches, writing books, or publishing articles. These activities are considered by many to be just good old fashioned lawyering.
AIO Ethics and Technical Authority Signals
Likewise, there is nothing unethical or alarming about ensuring your website is secure, fast, and searchable by Google and AI platforms alike. I can think of examples where you can stretch things too far, of course, but they are real fringe bar exam type concerns. For instance, your metadata should be as accurate as what’s shown on the page.
If you’re heavily involved in litigation, then you no doubt have run into metadata discovery issues. Every year, these seems to be a larger concern, and one most courts remain poorly equipped to handle given the technical expertise to sort them out. Such e-discovery issues come into play when analyzing technical authority signals.
In sum, your schema and other technical signals must be honest. Model Rule of Professional Conduct 7.1 addresses communications concerning a lawyer’s service. Although I do not want this chapter to take on the dry flare of an ethics CLE, I think it’s important to again highlight that what you indicate on your firm’s behalf – or that which is presented by others on your firm’s behalf – may violate such rules the same as having the copy right there on your website.
Said another way, every piece of structured data on your site must be verifiable and true. Your schema should reflect a perfect, machine-readable reflection of your actual, human-world credentials and services. Otherwise, your digital twin can get you in trouble.
So, make sure your AIO team is not marking up fake credentials and that you’re not making false claims, either in real life, on your web page, or even behind your web page in your metadata.
You don’t need to be a coder, or have a full technological grasp to get into the AIO game, but you have a duty of supervision over everything in your domain, and that means you may pay the crimes of an unscrupulous “GEO” or false “AIO” type marketer who may, for instance, implement misleading schema to get you quick results. Example: Attorney John Doe is board-certified in civil litigation when you’re not. Sludge marketers know that clients want fast results, and cutting corners may present the quickest way to get them (at first.) Then, when everything comes tumbling down, they’ll be nowhere to found.
Again, caveat emptor.
Part of our job as your AIO partner is to ensure you understand the “what” and the “why” behind every technical signal we implement. That Books for Experts is an agency run by me, a licensed attorney with sixteen years of experience in the litigation trenches of New Jersey certainly doesn’t hurt in bridging the gap between the technical and the legal, but if you’re using other vendors make sure you stay on them about what is both seen, and unseen in your marketing endeavors. There’s nothing inherently wrong with attempting to be found by AI, provided you’re not cutting any corners or otherwise breaching any of the standard rules of professional conduct or rules of attorney advertising.
AIO Ethics and Real-World Validation
When Awards Are, and Are Not Something to Brag About
If you think it’s hard to keep your “digital twin” out of ethical landmines, they’ve got nothing on the issues the real you confronts every day. As Pillar Three is the bridge between your physical and digital “twin,” this is another area where discernment is paramount.
One landmine here is phony awards. Be careful when advertising any award, and the phonier the award, the more leery you should be.
Do: Ensure proper language and ethical compliance with ethical and advertising rules, especially when you have been awarded the latest “Super-Duper Amazing Attorney of the Year” type awards from large (or small) directories whose business model borders on vanity.
Don’t: Be Afraid to show off to humans and AI alike when you win a prestigious award from a bar association.
Do: Fear displaying plaques you received from some directory that sent you a flattering email.
Don’t: Be afraid to post or even create press about that legitimate pro bono award you received.
The Media
When engaging with the media, or even conducting public relations, your duty of candor is absolute, and you must not violate attorney-client privileges. When I used to serve as deputy county counsel for one of the county’s here in New Jersey, I would often work on cases of media interest. Whenever I was called to comment, my answer the same: “No comment.”
That said, some attorneys have made careers out of speaking to the media, knowing exactly how to weave and dance the way a great boxer might. Media mentions are a great way to build out AIO in the real world, and to then link back to it digitally. There is no need to be shy, just cautious and smart.
Likewise for public relations, the spine of any effective pillar three program. Here be certain to avoid dishonesty, as in all things, and to label any “advertorial” type placements as such given the requirement in most jurisdictions that attorney ads be denoted as such.
Except, apparently, PPC ads. While most PPC ads like with Google state “ad,” or “sponsored,” that should not comply, I wouldn’t think, with New Jersey’s requirement that all legal marketing ads state “Attorney Advertisement,” and yet it seems this is never broached. Creating what I call the 1990’s MLB Effect: when everyone else seems to be violating the rules, it becomes hard to not want to join in so as to not get left behind.
Another concern with PPC is when advertisements are dishonest or otherwise violate the rules of professional conduct or advertising rules in your respective jurisdiction.
With the three pillars discussed, let’s now turn to AI and privacy concerns.
AIO and Privacy
Why I Stand Against Retargeting Ads for Lawyers
One of the underreported issues with attorney advertising are pixel-based tracking ads. You ever notice if you go onto a website like Brooks Brothers, for example, you’ll suddenly start seeing Brooks Brothers ads all over the web? These type of retargeting ads may be a nuisance, but usually fall into “no harm, no foul” territory.
But what if you share a computer or phone with your spouse, and you visited a divorce law firm, and now those divorce law firm ads are popping up all over, clueing in your spouse to the fact you’re thinking of filing for divorce?
What if this occurred in a household with domestic violence?
For too long, sludge PPC and SEO types have utilized such tools, with law firm’s implicit knowledge or not, exploiting the vagaries of our rules of professional conduct. Thus, again creating the 1990’s MLB Effect, sans steroid injections.
Books for Experts will never utilize pixel-based or retargeting ads for attorneys, because chasing prospective clients around the internet trying to cadge their work is not only the opposite of real authority, but also against your dignity and that of the would-be clients. It also has the potential to blow up in your face, ethically or otherwise.
The beauty of AIO is that you become ubiquitous not because you are chasing clients around the web, but because you’re producing such a volume of material that you can’t help but be noticed for all the right reasons.
AI and Privacy
What if AI inexplicably leaked your data, including your client’s confidential data? This is why you should not be speaking to AI about the specifics of your cases. Or feeding ChatGPT or other AI assistant’s your case files. Either use specialized AI products or keep things general. This is the next frontier in litigation: subpoenas for AI chats in divorce cases (“we want to see if John Doe ever hid assets from his spouse”), personal injury cases (we want to see if Jane Doe’s lifestyle is really as hampered as she claims following the car accident”) perhaps even criminal prosecutions (“Hi ChatGPT, this is the prosecutor here, please hand over all records so we can prove that felony against Defendant X.”)
If you’re in litigation, AI records will be the story of the coming decade.
It’s also beyond the scope of this book, which is focused on AIO marketing, but something interesting to consider as you reflect upon AI and its impact on law overall.
Analytics
Tied into the discussion of retargeting advertisements, but related, are analytics, such as Google Analytics, which track who comes to your website and from where. Similar analytics exist for more specialized portions of your marketing, such as podcasts, newsletters, and email marketing campaigns. Using tracking technologies to gather user data without proper disclosure or consent could violate not only your ethical duties of honesty, but privacy laws. The takeaway here is to ensure that your website has a clear and accurate privacy policy (a good legal disclaimer wouldn’t hurt either), to protect against such issues.
Conclusion
AIO represents a giant leap forward in not only dignity, but ethical alignment for our profession. As the landscape shifts from SEO games and blogs written in white crayons toward true authority assets, there will be easier compliance with ethical guidelines. Which is a great thing, because as you will see in the next chapter, the economics of AIO are its most promising feature.
With the ethical discussion concluded, we can turn now to the big picture prize of increased firm revenues and decreased spending on marketing. Because in the new referral economy, trust is the ultimate currency, and an unimpeachable ethical framework is the only system that can mint it.