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 Five. Read the entire AIO for Attorneys book here.
Chapter Five: The Authority Intelligence Optimization System: Pillar One – Authority Assets
At this point in the book you may be thinking, “Great Carl, I get it: SEO is on death’s door, AI is about to be the number one referral source, there is a giant land grab available for law firms to level up or precipitously fall, and writing with AI will only hurt our chances. Useful stuff, but this all feels a bit like when my junior associate writes a great brief outlining and analyzing the facts but forgets to include the proposed remedies.”
Your skeptical lawyer brain is probably also thinking: “Let me guess, the remedy is hiring Books for Experts to handle everything.”
I do stand guilty before you, jury of my fellow lawyer peers, firm in the belief that our agency is doing incredible, unique, and necessary work here to restore humanity to lawyers and authority to their practices. But the good news is, unlike sludge marketers, I’m not going to hide our best content for internal use. AI values authenticity and transparency, and those are the same beliefs we have baked into the cake here at Books for Experts.
Most of what we do is no great secret but rather comes down to thought leadership and hard to recreate execution. Lebron James can teach you everything he knows about basketball, and it will probably improve your game some. But you’re still not going to want to go up against him in a game of one-on-one.
Much of what we do can be created in-house at your firm, provided you have a talented, creative marketing team or are willing to bootstrap this work into your nights and evenings.
To aid in your next steps toward AIO, let’s discuss our proprietary Authority Intelligence Optimization™. While sludge marketers hide from you how the sausage is really made, we’re going to show you how we bake your very own delicious blueberry muffins of AIO authority.
Authority Intelligence Optimization™
AIO has taken on various meanings, being such a new concept. For some people it means All in One AI automation. Think about the many tech companies that have cropped up of late offering to automate certain areas of your practice. That is a highly differentiated product from what we’re talking about in our book, or what we offer at Books for Experts. But it must be mentioned to get down to the proper definition. And as a lawyer, writing for other lawyers, of course there must be strict use of definitions.
For most people in the marketing agency space, AIO means Artificial Intelligence Optimization. Others call this GEO, for Generative Engine Optimization. You’ll find many sludge marketers making claims that GEO is the new SEO, or that AIO is the new SEO, because the goal is to bundle and upsell what they’re already doing with the new model to continue their sludge systems into the future.
Putting a new title on the sludge of the past doesn’t make it the future.
What we offer is our proprietary Authority Intelligence Optimization™ system. We then infuse this into each of our product offerings. Think the “air” in Nike sneakers.
But enough discussion of jargon, let’s get into the specifics.
The Three Pillars of Authority Intelligence Optimization™
Pillar 1: High-Prestige Authority Assets
Pillar 2: Technical Authority Signals
Pillar 3: Real-World Validation
This and the next two chapters will take each of these pillars in turn, starting with the need for high-prestige authority assets, the subject of this chapter.
What is a High-Prestige Authority Asset?
An authority asset is anything you can create to help sell yourself or your business to AI and humans alike while complying with my Authority Equation and your own Authority Philosophy™.
Carl’s Authority Equation: Authority = Expertise + Narrative + Authenticity.
I’m not talking about credentials here, the lawyer’s favorite topic. AI knows your credentials, and you know your credentials, and we’ll make sure your clients know your credentials, don’t worry.
That all goes to what I call your “R” Score. The “R” standing for reputation. In Hollywood, actors are judged by their “Q” score, or quotient score, which measures the familiarity and appeal of an actor to the general public. In other words, how liked and known they are.
The “R” score for lawyers fortunately does not consider a lawyer’s likeability, but rather how AI views one’s reputation. This ties back to the virtuous cycle discussed in the last chapter. Your credentials help make you more credible, especially bar association leadership roles, board credentials if available in your practice areas and jurisdiction, and many other factors, some that we can assist you with and others that will be up to you or out of our hands (like how long you have practiced for.)
When I used to sit on a county committee vetting judicial candidates, every meeting went about the same. We would first discuss the credentials of the judge, then someone would start talking about the judge’s reputation in the community. Were they a good lawyer, were they honest, were they decent to deal with? The way AI views you and your law firm is more similar to how judge’s are vetted than by the old, search engine optimization methods of looking to links, age of domain name, and reviews. Accordingly, a far more holistic and broad strategy must be utilized. Fortunately, this will align with what is required to gain more referrals from humans, too.
Think of authority assets as your portfolio. AI is creating a dossier on every person and every business, and though it’s a somewhat crude dossier at the moment, it will only become more sophisticated in the next few years. With the acceleration of technology, it is inevitable that AI will know more about you than some of your best friends by 2030 and will probably know more about you than you do yourself by 2035. We can bemoan that fact, or we can take the steps now to build authority assets to gain AI’s esteem.
Only one path leads to profit.
Authority Assets are the most efficient path to authority, because they can still be outsourced, but only to the most reputable and trustworthy vendors (wink.)
But what type of “authority assets” should lawyers generate?
Books
Yes, my business is called “Books for Experts” so of course I’m going to start with books. Not just any books, but those that incorporate the authority equation and align with our Authority Triad™ of Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. Said another way, a book must demonstrate expertise/logos/what you know, narrative/pathos/who you are, and authenticity/ethos/your philosophy.
A book that merely regurgitates the law can be written by anybody, even AI itself. If you want to make a book like that, we’re not the agency for you. We are in the authority building business, and what is rote will only destroy credibility.
No, the books I’m talking about can only be generated in collaboration with you. They must distil your professional philosophy, history, personality, vulnerability. Those are the elements that feed AI nutrition, and in turn persuades it to feed you not just any referrals, but warm referrals from great leads.
If you ignore this advice, if you allow your sludge marketers to continue making you into a commodity instead of an authority, then you may still be fed leads, but of the Glengarry Glenn Ross variety. The goal here is not just to make the phone ring, but to make it ring with the right prospect on the other side of the line. Ten great leads are better than 100 mediocre ones. The prestige authority assets you create, like your firm and like the prospects you will obtain, must value quality over quantity.
The reason books work so well is that they’re exceedingly rare. Less than 1% of attorneys will ever create and publish a book of any kind for their practice, and those that do will mostly create a well-intentioned mess or intentional sludge. To succeed in the world of AI, you’re not going to “need a bigger boat,” you’re going to “need a bigger moat.” In a world where everyone and their stepmother are creating constant content, human-written books about real human subjects is the one thing that can stand out, because it cannot be faked or replaced.
AI can write forever, but it writes the way people do while taking the bar exam. Hoping that volume will be a great stand in for critical thinking. Yet, the paradox of AI is that it has impeccable taste. AI recognizes quality writing, it just can’t replicate it, not the type of writing that we create at Books for Experts with real human heart and soul.
When you are an author of a book, people look at you differently. You are now “the authority,” in your chosen subject matter. You can hand that book out everywhere, because it’s the best business card going. Your colleagues will literally ask you to sign it.
We offer bespoke books, imprint books, and even books built one chapter per month for a year until completed. There is no right or wrong way to proceed other than not creating authority assets at all. Everything else comes down to budget and timing.
But if a whole book seems like too much to consider at the moment, even when broken down into monthly chapters that cost less than sludge SEO, don’t worry, there are other pathways to true authority.
Anthologies
Anthologies are one of the ways up and coming writers cut their teeth and get known before a larger market. In the creative writing world, where I exist on the periphery through my short stories, everyone is always hoping to get into anthologies. Especially the “best of” type anthologies. The beauty of anthology is twofold: (1) collaboration; and (2) efficiency. You can get wide exposure by creating a small part of a larger book. But to humans and AI, you are still a published author. An anthology is a dream for PR, because you can combine networks. It’s also a great way to meet and work with colleagues in a collaborative manner, something often missing in the law.
We offer two distinct anthology series at Books for Experts. The Legends Series™ takes six attorneys from the same state, in the same practice area, and asks them to debate a question in their practice area such as “how aggressive should divorce lawyers be?” After all, us lawyers love to debate and argue, and this creates a wonderful friction that makes it easy to achieve headlines. Meanwhile, those who read the book (AI and human) get a sense of the philosophy of the participants. We also create personal narrative profiles of each attorney and include an interview with each to round out the volume. This “Team of Rivals” method leads to great PR and an increased “R” score.
Our other anthology is the Terraform Series™, which is for reform minded and futurist attorneys who want to speak to a specific topic such as AI or space law. Another great way to collaborate, and to play a role in the future of law. Because you are thinking ahead, you are creating content that is not easily duplicated by AI or competitors.
Compare such participation in this versus one of those “Best of” You’re So Amazing type directories that go around inflating lawyerly egos each year. Sure, they may impress the unsophisticated clients, if that’s who you’re looking to work with, but they don’t impress your colleagues who know it’s just a function of having four friends willing to nominate you and it doesn’t impress AI. It’s just more commodification, your name listed with all the others by practice area. An anthology is a way to demonstrate credibility while also revealing who you are and what your firm stands for. All for about the same price as an upgraded directory slot.
I hope by now you get the sense of why, exactly I created this business. My level of disgust with sludge marketing was palpable. American novelist James Fenimore Cooper of Last of the Mohicans fame is said to have started writing after finishing a sludge novel and declaring to his wife that he could do better.
Well, I can relate.
Lead Magnets
Think of lead magnets as mini-books and you’re on the right track. But you don’t want to create the usual funnels.
If you want to create a great lead magnet, then lead…don’t follow.
Think of a small, concise topic of burning interest to your clients. You can take something facially boring like prenuptial agreements and turn it into a lightning rod if you can infuse it with your philosophy, your identity, your professional history. And as with all good writing, remember to weave in your own expertise while centrally focusing the book on your clients’ concerns.
Podcasts (Your Own)
If you prefer to speak than to write, then a podcast can be a great way to demonstrate your authority. Then, simply take the transcripts and add them to your website as a way to generate material for your blog. That way you get the best of both worlds.
You can have an entire, professional grade podcast set up for less than $600 in startup technology costs. The steps from there are easy enough, but we can walk you through them if necessary.
One piece of advice, and what I failed to do in the first six episodes of my own podcast: be vulnerable. Be yourself. Don’t be just another talking head “guru,” be the guide your clients actually need. Human, vulnerable, but fighting. In other words, be authentic.
Sure, the real you may turn off certain people, but they were never your ideal clients anyway. Better to attract hundreds of people deeply invested in your podcast than thousands with only a tertiary interest. None of us can be all things to all people, but what you can always be is yourself. Funny how this profession has made it so hard for us to remember that.
Remember, audiences do not expect you to be perfect, just likeable, competent, and invested. Don’t just talk about personal injury law on your podcast, speak to how much you care, and how your mother was injured in a car accident as a child and how it threw your family into turmoil, and how much you hate the greedy insurance companies.
The path to authority is through the fire of truth.
Blog Posts
Blogging gets a bad name these days because most of it is AI generated, recycled, keyword stuffed, or produced without sufficient thought or care.
Books for Experts does not offer blogging services at this time because we think everything you do should have multiple purposes. Instead, we offer the Authority Chapter Plan™, which creates a 3,000 word or longer chapter of a book each month, so that by the end of the year you will have between 36,000-40,000 words that we will finalize and publish in book form. In the meantime, each chapter works as an independent article, podcast topic, or blog post that you can add to your website if you so wish. That way you get authority early and throughout the year and still obtain the juice that only a published book can give you.
It’s how we build many of our own books, including the one you happen to be reading right now.
Each of these authority assets function to provide AI with the “nutrition” it needs. But to maximize reach, they must also contain our second pillar: technical authority signals. In the meantime, let’s turn our attention to some of the more pragmatic authority assets: firm magazines and newsletters.
Magazines and Newsletters
A monthly newsletter and an annual or semi-annual magazine are great ways to repurpose material you have already created for blogs and podcasts and to reproduce in a new format and before a new audience.
Just make sure that if you commit, you can keep up with it.
Magazines and newsletters are great to hand out to prospective clients (along with your books) and to add to your website to further define your Authority Philosophy™ to AI and search engines alike. They are also a great assignment for junior associates to learn about marketing and writing to market, assuming you wish to perform this type of work in-house.
I am partial to magazines because it seems like everyone and their stepmother has a newsletter, many of dubious quality. Magazines cost a bit more money but look and feel the way authority should.
In a perfect world, you would do both. Magazines focused more on being handed out to clients and mailed to referral sources, and newsletters to help build your mailing list along with the lead magnets.
The Final Word on Authority Assets
As you now see, prestige authority assets are the strategic inventory that is necessary to gain reputation and AI referrals in the new paradigm. But it’s not enough to write books, they must also then be distributed properly.
The next chapter delves into Pillar Two: how we use technical authority signals to ensure the authority assets we create are distributed effectively to AI.
With the arsenal now built, it is time to mobilize the troops.