Note: This chapter is being built in public, one brick at a time — just like we do for clients through the Authority Chapter Plan™. Read the entire AIO for Attorneys book here.
You’re here, having nearly completed the book, and by now you probably see that AIO is the future of legal marketing. The only thing left is to start implementing, taking concrete and actionable steps.
But how?
The purpose of this, the final chapter of AIO for Attorneys is to provide you with a bridge from knowledge to action. Specifically, this final chapter presents a 6-Month kickstart plan for lawyers and law firms looking to not just follow, but lead this new world of AI referrals.
Below you will find a step-by-step plan that can be enacted within half a year, to help you build moment and stack your first authority wins.
Change is never easy, even when it’s positive. Shifting from what has likely been years of shallow content, PPC, SEO, and the other tactics foisted upon your firm by sludge marketers is going to take time and effort.
In this article, I am going to assume that you are doing this solo. That means you will not be hiring my agency, Books for Experts, or anyone else to assist with your AIO legal marketing plan. If you need us, you know how to find us. Otherwise, let’s get to the initial steps you can take over the next 180 days to build up real AIO authority for your firm.
6-Month AIO Marketing Plan for Lawyers: The Mindset
Before we get into AIO implementation specifics, I recommend the following mindset shifts:
- Consistency is more important than Intensity. I know, right, this advice coming from the guy who wrote the 50,000 word first draft of this book in a less than ten day sprint? Well, guilty as charged, but as I tell my daughters in the time-honored tradition of all parents, “Do as I say, not as a I do.” AIO can appear deceptively simple, but if you rush the process you’ll just be creating more noise. Like any habit, a daily cadence is important to establish. You will need to rewire not only your own brain, but the central nervous system of your very firm. This will take time, resiliency, and dedication.
- Progress over Perfection. The goal here is to get the AIO engine running, not to build a flawless machine on day one. Any effective AIO marketing plan for lawyers is going to require ongoing effort. If you get bogged down by perfectionistic impulses, you will fail to launch and return to the “devil you know,” i.e., your “friendly” sludge marketing team.
- Permission to be the Authority. As I discussed in one of my recent Authority Philosophy Podcasts, you do not need anyone’s permission to be the authority. You were found to have the essential competence to practice law the moment you passed the bar exam, and you were a fully credentialed attorney from the moment you were sworn in and given a bar license number. Do not let imposter syndrome force you into commodification. The more you put yourself out there speaking, writing, and engaging in thought leadership, the easier it will come. AIO asks for more out of you than SEO or PPC, but isn’t that only fair considering how much it gives? Aren’t you also asking for far more from your law firm? Your career? Yourself? Finally, AIO allows you to get out of things what you put into them, as the era of keyword stuffing and shallow blog posts is lifting. Now is the time to show the world the authority you already are. Even if you’re a newer attorney with less than five years of experience, there are venues to establish your authority. Just because you do not know more about child custody law than the accepted experts in your jurisdiction doesn’t mean you can’t help teach prospective clients about the nuances. Find the audience and fit that’s right for you.
Month One: The Internal Work Phase
The first month of AIO should be centrally focused on planning and internal work. Make no mistake, this will be some of the hardest work you do. It is the foundation that you will build the Three Pillars upon, and it should not be rushed. All this could be handled in a weekend retreat or in a couple of telephone calls and additional research from us, but for the purposes of this chapter I will assume you’re doing this work over a month, when you can find spare time.
Step One: Defining Your Authority Philosophy
This is the non-negotiable first step, which is why I structured this book to address this concept at length in the last chapter. It is also the topic of my next book, Authority Philosophy: The Lawyer’s Framework for a Practice with Purpose, should you wish to go in-depth on the subject. There is always more to say about establishing an Authority Philosophy. To briefly summarize: answer the three core questions (for yourself and for your referral sources and prospective clients): Why do you do this work? Who do you serve best? How do you win? This becomes the strategic compass for everything that follows as you build out your AIO marketing plan.
Step Two: Conducting the AIO Audit
As you will recall, Chapter Eight of this book provides you with an extensive AIO audit you can perform. Your law firm’s (or personal) AIO audit will provide you with the data you need to proceed over the rest of the initial AIO sprint. Pay close attention to your current AIO strengths and weaknesses. This is your baseline, and along with your Authority Philosophy forms the groundwork and foundation for all that is to come. As I am sure you have told your own clients many times, you cannot achieve anything substantial until you first know your proper direction. Authority Philosophy is the compass and the AIO audit is the stars guiding you in the right direction.
Step Three: Authority Asset Inventory
You have no doubt created authority assets in your career. Now is the time to review your old CLE presentations, publications, and appearances. This is the raw material from which you can start to assemble new material, this time with a plan.
Step Four: An Easy Makeover for Your Digital Twin
Act on the low-hanging fruit like updating your bio on your website and third-party profile sites. With your Authority Philosophy now locked down, it’s time to give your “digital twin” a pulse. Consider ways to improve the copy on the rest of your website as well but hold off on action until you determine whether or not to hire anyone to assist.
With these four easy steps completed, you can enter your second month of AIO feeling far more secure.
Month Two: The Creation Phase
With the foundation set, the second month of your transition to AIO legal marketing will be far more focused on creating authority assets. The goal of this month is to transform your internal strategy into your first tangible, public-facing asset. Start small here, just one authority asset will do. Which type of asset? Focus on whether your strength lies with writing or speaking.
Authority Asset: Writing Option
Write a definitive, 2,000+ word blog post that answers your ideal client’s single most pressing question. To give you an idea of length, this chapter is over 2,000 words. 2,000 words is about the equivalent of 8 pages in a standard book. A substantial but not quite daunting amount. Write this blog post yourself, with no help from AI. Later on you can perhaps integrate AI into your workflow, but it must be subtle. The thought leadership and the bulk of the writing and editing must be yours. Be creative and ensure you focus on just one issue or concern of your client. Write everything you know on the subject. Strive to make this the single most important and helpful blog post ever written on the subject in your state. You will have all month to work on this in your rare free time. Be informative, but do not write “like a lawyer” unless your ideal clients are other lawyers. As masters of persuasion, we too often forget to write for the audience. Your blog post is not written for a judge, or for other attorneys, it is written to educate the public. To inform, in common but engaging language.
Authority Asset: Speaking Option
Outline and record the first three episodes of your new podcast. You don’t have to go crazy worrying about sound quality; you just need to record three episodes answering questions your ideal client might ask. You may feel silly in the first episodes, I know I did when creating my Authority Philosophy podcast. So be it. If you have partners or do not own your firm then you should clear your podcast first with the appropriate colleagues. Otherwise, remember that perfect is the enemy of the good and get to work on your podcast.
As you can see, both options intentionally did not require permission to get started. You’re not pitching an article to Law 360, you’re not asking to be a guest on the Engaging Experts podcast to speak about your experiences in the law. Those are a bit harder to pull off, as I can tell you from experience. The key for now is to get into the routine of creating authority assets. But don’t worry, you’ll be pitching soon enough, in month three.
In the meantime, in the final week of month two, start researching the top 25-50 targets for your Pillar Three outreach efforts. These might include podcasts in your niche looking for guests, local legal publications that accept op-eds or articles, and organizers of relevant CLEs. Now is the time to mine your network and start building new pipelines of business.
Month Three: The Public Phase
Now is when you put things in motion, and the real you, not just your digital twin, joins the fray.
In the early part of this month, start pitching articles, podcasts, CLEs, even book proposals. The idea is to get yourself out there as often as possible talking about what you do, and who you are, and what makes your firm (and you) distinct. The goal here is to break the inertia and start getting your name in front of people. Some of you may already have good connections and ongoing engagements, if so keep up the great work and expand your terrain.
Early in the third month is also when you should publish your blog post or podcast episodes from month one. You now have a fresh authority asset. If you build just one authority asset each month you’ll be doing more than 95% of all attorneys. That pace may seem small, but that means in a decade you could create 120 internal authority assets, and that doesn’t even consider all the efforts you can make externally for real-world validation.
Be creative in getting yourself out there this month: even speaking before some Rotarians or sponsoring a local youth sports team can be enough to break the inertia and build up some positive mentions online that both your fellow humans and AI will love. There are non-profits to volunteer to, and charities to sponsor, and bar events–oh so many bar events!
At the end of this first 90-day sprint, take stock of where you made inroads, and where you faced setbacks. What makes legal marketing so difficult is that you cannot cold call the way other industries can. Lawyers need to build up authority and forge their own gravity. The focus on inbound, permissive marketing rather than outbound is a striking feature of legal marketing. Meanwhile, just by doing good work AI will start to recommend you, the same way search engines have all these years. In a sense, AI performs the outbound marketing you are barred from doing by the rules of professional responsibility.
Now, for the next three months you must jump into a cadence of making inroads across all Three Pillars, while maintaining the vision and execution that went before.
Month Four– The Jump
Pillar One Advice: Authority Assets
Return to your Authority Audit and find your largest remaining authority gap. Perhaps you have great content, but limited distribution models. Perhaps you have focused on building up a nice little blog but have not created much long-form content.
Or maybe you find it easier to work your case files than the speaking circuit, and who can blame you? Regardless, you now have an honest assessment before you, and it is time to act. Focus on just one thing, that single most glaring authority gap, and for the next 30 days do everything you’ve been doing already plus serious steps to fill in this gap.
Pillar Two Advice: Technical Signals
This may be the most limiting area of advancement, because if you work in a larger firm you may not have much sway over the firm’s website or other technical signals. Nonetheless, review your bio on your firm’s website and take steps to update it with any recent credentials, authority assets, or examples of real-world validation. It’s probably been a while since you last updated the bio, and this is a quick, easy win to begin implementing AIO best practices for how you will be discovered by AI and humans across the web.
Pillar Three: Real-world Validation
Take something you’ve already done and repurpose it publicly. Take some blog posts you’ve worked on and convert them into a third-party article submission, or as a podcast pitch.
Month Five: The Momentum Gain
Pillar One Advice: Authority Assets
Same thing as before, only now continue with what you were doing and take an actionable step to correct your second most glaring authority gap.
Pillar Two Advice: Technical Signals
Claim and optimize all professional bios such as Avvo, Martindale, etc., to standardize your bio externally.
Pillar Three Advice: Real-world validation
Assuming acceptable within your jurisdiction’s ethics and firm culture, reach out to five former clients with whom you had great rapport and results and ask them for Google reviews.
Month Six: Sustained Authority
Pillar One Advice: Authority Assets
Start work on a long-form authority asset such as a book. This will be your big overarching project for next year. Gain clearance from firm leadership and start working on this as both a practice accelerant, a personal hobby, and a way to develop as an attorney, a leader, a thought leader, and ultimately, a rainmaker.
Pillar Two Advice: Technical Signals
Provide your web team with the information necessary to implement Author Schema on your bio page or ask their advice on how to do so. Be sure to clear this first with firm leadership, of course. The Author Schema makes it easier for your profile to be located by AI.
Pillar Three Advice: Real-world Validation
Conceive of and implement a public relations plan that will attract local media. This works best if it is something specific to your practice area. If there is some tension in the premise, all the better as that is what achieves headlines. For instance, you could provide a free prenuptial agreement clinic on Valentine’s Day if you’re a divorce firm. Provided you have the go ahead from firm leadership, let your creativity flow and capture those sweet, sweet media mentions.
AIO Beyond The First Six Months
Thereafter, you have built the structure that will carry your practice forward into the future. Remember, AIO was never about a six month sprint, but about building a new marketing structure, one rewarded by humans and AI. After six months you have built a system that, if maintained, will increase both your authority and your firm’s profitability many times over.
With the AIO engine built, you can now work toward accelerating the speed.
And if you need help, either at the start of your AIO journey or at any time, you can always reach out to me and I will be glad to talk it over with you.
This six-month plan is more than a marketing strategy; it’s the start of a new habit and a solid foundation for a new kind of practice. One built not on volume, but on value. not on sludge, but substance. One that defies commodification and paints in technicolor rather than with white crayons.
The authority you build in the next six months is the authority you will keep for the rest of your career.
But it’s what you do in the coming months and years that will determine just how high your firm can climb.