This is the introduction to the Book AIO for Attorneys.
Introduction
Within five years, most law firm referrals will come from AI – not Google, not your website, and not word of mouth as you know it.
This is an amazing opportunity.
Nevertheless, if you’re like many lawyers, you may feel a bit anxious about AI. After all, it seemed to come from nowhere, and is already “disrupting” every industry, the legal industry being no different. For every advantage, like being able to offload certain administrative tasks, it has created a threat of more DIY law, which could cut into legal profits. Ask any busy divorce lawyer how they feel when yet another client comes in with an AI generated Settlement Agreement or case strategy, and it’s not so hard to see why AI is treated by most attorneys as something between a thorn in the side and a bad case of dermatitis.
In the coming years, many will try and sell you on AI, in language coded in either hope or fear. “Imagine running a law firm with reduced staff and more output,” the purveyors of hope will say. “Act now, to future-proof your firm against the existential threat of AI,” the purveyors of fear will bark.
The purpose of AIO for Attorneys is not just to create the first field manual on AIO for busy lawyers, but also to reflect reality. And as a lawyer, you already intuit that the truth about AI is somewhere in the middle.
The present reality is this: Those who not only future proof, but who seek to thrive in the age of AI, will become the new category leaders. Those who fail to adapt will be left behind at terminal velocity.
What we offer at Books for Experts is a balanced approach to AI. Namely, the value of AIO for lawyers and law firms. As a fellow lawyer with more than sixteen years of experience in the litigation salt mines of New Jersey, I know more than a bit about how the current marketing schematics favor the commodification of attorneys. AIO offers an off-ramp to true, human connection. A paradox, no doubt, but one of the most important changes we’ll experience in our professional lifetimes. Let me explain.
AI May Be “Artificial, But It’s Far More Aligned with Human Persuasion and Creativity”
The reason why content written for SEO always felt so “uncanny valley” was that it was never actually written for humans. The level of sophistication was not there. It relied too much on shorthand tricks. This approach was rewarded by Google and the other large search engines, because their goal was to catalog the internet. Sometimes, oftentimes, at the cost of clarity.
How many times have you read your marketing vendor’s copy on your website, or for a new blog post, and been told something like, “I know it’s a bit cumbersome or clumsy, but this is what gets clicks.”
But whose clicks were you trying to get, ultimately?
Humans. Right? Right???
The SEO sludge marketers seem to always forget that part. With all their talk of clickthrough rates, and longtail keywords, and keyword stuffing, they forget that lawyers ultimately sell to, drumroll please…OTHER HUMANS.
Google may have been the Judge, but humans were the jury. And any trial lawyer worth their salt knows the judge makes certain calls, but the jury ultimately decides.
We went along with it because lawyers are busy, and many of us don’t feel comfortable with tech. For their part, the sludge marketers were all too happy to keep us in the dark because if anyone ever uncorked a flashlight they’d be flat out of business.
I know this better than anyone, as during the pandemic I briefly worked as a content “writer” for one of the largest legal marketing companies in the world. My job was to write SEO targeted blog posts, and despite my years of experience in both the law and writing, the persistent feedback I received was that my writing was too good for algorithms and that I needed to focus more on hitting clunky SEO terms.
You ever been told by your marketing vendor to create your homepage with copy like this: “X Law Firm, We Practice Y Law in Z Town; Presenting Z Town with the Best Y Law in A State.”
Who is that persuading? Certainly not humans, not even AI.
“Fair enough,” the SEO purveyors may respond, as I cross-examine them here on a hypothetical witness stand. “But the most beautiful message in the world will not mean anything, if nobody hears it. We drew people to the site, that was our job.”
Well, to some extent that’s accurate. During the halcyon, early days of Google search engine dominance, there wasn’t much that had to be done but play the Google game. Keyword stuffing and link farming were both productive, and the lack of competition made it easy to move up the ranks. Those with the early mover advantage gained dominance, and everyone else has been fighting for the scraps ever since.
And paying through the nose for the privilege.
The good news is those days are all but over. Swiftly becoming an unhappy memory in a large rearview mirror, as our AIO bus speeds forward toward the future.
Because AI is many things, but chiefly it is intuitive. It reads, analyzes, and even “thinks” far more in line with how humans do. Someday, they may take the best of human logic and intuition and integrate it into new frameworks of consciousness. That is no longer science fiction.
Remember, Deep Blue was able to defeat Chess Master Kasparov as far back as 1997. The AI platforms we use today are sophisticated, sure, but will be increasingly so as billions of dollars are flooded into AI research every year.
Because AI has tastes more aligned with humans, that opens up creativity and marketing strategy. Persuasion is back on the menu, praise be.
In this book I will teach you everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO), so that you have not only the roadmap for the future, but the tactics and strategies necessary to thrive in the new AI age. I will discuss at length the ethics and economics of AIO, will provide you with a comprehensive AIO audit, and will ensure that by the time you reach the back cover you will not only understand everything there is to know about AIO as it relates to attorneys, but how to capitalize and systematize AIO best practices into your own firm. Finally, I will provide you with a 90-day action plan in the final chapter of this book, so that you can get started right away.
Well, we best get on with the first chapter. Today’s technology moves fast and we’re going to need to get you up to speed immediately.