Law Firm Websites in the AI Age: Don’t Copy, Differentiate (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey y'all, it's Zach and this is episode 610 of the Lawyer's Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today I talk with Karin Conroy about websites, marketing, branding, and why now more than ever it is imperative that you don't take shortcuts and just do copycat marketing. Newsflash it's because of AI. Well we're doing this episode right now because Karin was actually one of the people that started the Law Firm Websites contest and yesterday, the 30th, we started that contest once again for the 16th year in a row of the Best Law Firm Websites competition. So submissions opened yesterday, March 30th, and they close Friday, April 17th, and we will announce the winners of the Best Law Firm Websites 2026, Monday, May 4th. So head on over to lawyers.com and you can put your submissions in there. Submit your website. Submit a website you thought was pretty amazing. Submit a website you thought was really amazing. Submit a website that you made with artificial intelligence, which it'll probably not. I mean, I don't know. If it's good, it's good, right? And we will look at all of them, figure out which ones are the best, and come back with a top 10. So make sure you get your submissions in by April 17th. Now here's my conversation with Karin Conroy.

[00:01:41] Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Karin Conroy, and I am a legal marketing consultant who I feel like I start every episode by saying I've been around lawyers forever, but it's a good start.

[00:02:08] Speaker 1: It is. It is. Well, good to see you again. Welcome back to the Lawyer's Podcast. Thank you. I love having you on at this time of year, especially. Always like having you on, but love having you on at this time of year, especially because of that history with the Lawyer's Podcast. As it relates to this episode coming out tomorrow, we're going to start our 16th year of the Best Law Firm Websites contest. We're going to open up. Yes. We're going to open up the contributions and all that, and we'll get going with that. But as people who follow the show would know, you started that. You've been here since day one of that competition. I did.

[00:02:45] Speaker 2: Since day one in 2010, I decided to throw together this post. If people have been around that long, they'll know that it used to be this, Lawyerist was this basically a contribution blog where it was just all these guest contributors. And so I put this post together and I was like, you know, a lot of my clients ask me for inspiration. Actually, they don't really ask for inspiration. What they're really asking for is who can I copy, right? And they find nice words around that. And so we're going to talk about that a little bit, but there have always been some sites that I referenced back to. And it's actually kind of interesting because where I always started with my clients was not other law firm websites. It was, let's take a broader scale view of who is doing beautiful work in website design and what can we learn from them. And then it just got boiled down to, okay, who's doing that in for a law firm? And then we, and then we, I created this contest and it just ballooned. It went bonkers for years and years and it's still around. So I wanted to talk first about like, why, why did, why is it such a big deal? And I have some thoughts on that, that tie back to this whole idea of copycatting.

[00:04:02] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing is like, why, why do people look at the, you know, why do you want quote unquote inspiration? And at best it is inspiration. Like that's the idea is, is going, oh, I didn't know I could do that. But at worst, at worst it is high, you know, legal marketing company. Can you make me a website that looks just like this?

[00:04:24] Speaker 2: A hundred percent. I've literally had people contact me and say, can you slap my logo on this? Maybe change the font color. And how much would that cost? Like, because the part of the problem is there is a bunch, so much garbage out there and there are these templates. And so in fairness, people are like, can you just make that a template? And so, you know, I don't want to be totally fair to these copycatter type people.

[00:04:53] Speaker 1: That's not what we're here for. That is not what we're here for. No, we're going to dog cuss them the whole time.

[00:04:59] Speaker 2: Absolutely.

[00:05:00] Speaker 1: Exactly.

[00:05:01] Speaker 2: Yes. But here's what I always said is, you know, no.

[00:05:06] Speaker 1: I will not do that. Yeah. That's not what I, that's not what I went to school for.

[00:05:09] Speaker 2: So you're a lawyer and there are these things called copyright laws to begin with. So yuck. Like that's problematic. So no. Second of all, what does that do for your firm? And what does that say about you that, well, it says nothing. It says nothing about you. It just says we're a law firm in X city doing Y practice area. And here's our phone number. And like, fingers crossed, something's going to happen. You know, like back in 2010, that would have worked better than it does now. You know, it may or may not have worked, but it would have worked better than it does now. Right. Listen, we used to, when I used to run a marketing department and we used to walk around saying inspiration in air quotes, you know, like what are we, we would look at the competitors. I worked for century 21. So we look at the other big real estate companies and like, what are they doing? That's working. And like, let's go get some quote inspiration, which meant like, what can we copy? So this is not a totally new idea, but it's, it's garbage, right? Like we're, we're not going to do that. We're not going to start with garbage.

[00:06:13] Speaker 1: Well, the, I think the bigger issue there is, is not the inspiration, the air quotes inspiration. The bigger issue is why, like, are you, if you're just copying something because you're just trying to copy and paste something, you know, we're really getting into this. And I think we're obviously going to get into this concept a little bit, a little bit more like that's, that's AI slop before there was AI slop.

[00:06:38] Speaker 2: Exactly.

[00:06:39] Speaker 1: You know, exactly. It's just, it's just crap. Why do you want to copy that person's website? Well, because it looks pretty. Is it going to do anything for your company?

[00:06:48] Speaker 2: They seem successful. So maybe that'll make me successful.

[00:06:51] Speaker 1: And so that's part of my, right, exactly.

[00:06:55] Speaker 2: So, but you know, I think this is a lot of what happens on social media. This is what happens kind of in the world generally. And so I think that was one of the things I wanted to kind of bring up is that this idea of copycat is not new. Like a lot of people think that's the way forward in marketing. Let me go find someone that I think looks like they're doing it right. And then I'm not quite sure what to do. So let me try to save money and time and effort and whatever, and, and I'm not sure what that next part is. So I'm just going to try to jump over that and do the same thing. Just short cut it. Right. And so what we're trying to say is let's, what would that look like if you didn't? What would it look like if you, if you actually use the inspiration?

[00:07:39] Speaker 1: Go on a follow me here. What if you didn't do that?

[00:07:44] Speaker 2: Let's not. Exactly. This is, it's complicated. I know. But the starting point is no. Yeah. Yeah. And I also want to start by saying this is not anti-AI. This is not like, you know, I am definitely not that. I want to talk about some ways you can use it that are different and probably different than what we were talking about in the past, because a year ago, AI was in a different place. Websites were in a different place. So I do want to talk about all that stuff. But I wanted to start with this core idea, like get this into, into your bones that what we're not doing is copycatting because that's the opposite of marketing. The point of marketing is to differentiate, to stand out, to position yourself as a different option that's clear and obvious so that when someone lands on whatever it is, even if it's AI, if they ask a question to AI, social media, Google, your website, the answer is clear and you don't have to work so hard for it because you know what happens when the answer is not clear? Now you're competing on price. So when, whether it's AI or what we were seeing 10, 15 years ago, what firms were coming to me and saying, and still come to me and say is revenue is down. And sometimes they'll say stuff like traffic is down and, you know, they don't really know what that means, but numbers are down. Things are not going good. They're not calling me if like everything's great, you know? If you're competing on price, you're all of a sudden hearing everybody's saying like, how much is this going to cost? Or even when I first started and people were saying, can you make that website a template? How much would that cost? That's a signal to me to say, oh, wait a minute, what am I presenting to you that makes you think this is about money, right? So let's reconsider all that so that now all of a sudden people land on your email or in your phone or, you know, those, those leads come in and they're ready to go. So that's where we're trying to go. That is what the point of this is.

[00:09:53] Speaker 1: So I want to go down a really, hopefully short, but really weird tangent.

[00:09:57] Speaker 2: I love it.

[00:09:59] Speaker 1: If you look at shampoo in Walmart or Kroger or, or whatever place, and you've got the brand name shampoo and then you've got a shampoo that looks just like it for the most part, but it's cheaper.

[00:10:12] Speaker 2: Yes.

[00:10:13] Speaker 1: And that's, so like, that's a good point. If you're going to copy, then you're competing on price and that's not generally what, what attorneys are going to want to do. But I want to add another thing here so I can bring us out of this tangent quickly. Users now, users continue, users of websites, users of our services continue to get more technologically savvy.

[00:10:35] Speaker 2: Yes.

[00:10:36] Speaker 1: Yes. And so they're expecting more out of these sites. They're not expecting some BS like, okay, well here's my first page. It's got no information. I can't help you. You know, I can't help you in any way. Yeah. It's got a phone number. It's got a picture.

[00:10:53] Speaker 2: It's got, I'm a lawyer.

[00:10:54] Speaker 1: Some columns and a gavel. Yeah. So they're, if they've gotten to your website, they don't want information. They want to act, right?

[00:11:02] Speaker 2: Right. They want to feel actually, the first they want to feel something, first they want to feel like this firm gets me this, you know, I feel like I might've said this before too, but let's just say for your shampoo analogy, let's just say you go to the Nordstrom site and you are looking for shoes and you land on the website and all of a sudden there's this whole dialogue about where Mr. Nordstrom went to college. And you're like, what in the world? I need some shoes, right?

[00:11:41] Speaker 1: He's published some amazing stuff on how to make shoes. Seriously.

[00:11:46] Speaker 2: Yes. In the law review in college.

[00:11:50] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:51] Speaker 2: With shoemaking.

[00:11:52] Speaker 1: Yes.

[00:11:53] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Okay. And you're sitting there thinking, why would I care about where you went to college? I don't. Yeah. You got to make me care and you got to show me that there's something in it for me. So first show me the shoes. And for a law firm, the shoes are your, that I know what you are going through. I have done this before. I have this experience, right? So number one on the, because we're going to come back to the web. We need to keep kind of coming back to the website idea and like the contest and how this all relates to an actual website instead of just marketing theory. So let's talk about it because I could do that all day. I know we got a limited amount of time.

[00:12:32] Speaker 1: Welcome to the marketing theory podcast.

[00:12:33] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:35] Speaker 1: Right. Okay. So we're on your homepage.

[00:12:38] Speaker 2: We're on the website. Number one, that people, you got three seconds, you used to have three seconds. Maybe you don't even have that anymore. And those three seconds may not even be a human. This may be a bot. Right. So you got to connect to either a human or a bot saying, I practice this thing, but you don't start with that. It's, I understand the problem. I understand the problem you're seeking and you need to communicate that very clearly. I'm thinking six words or less.

[00:13:13] Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. And, and through, through words and images, because again, we're, we're going to have bots and, and humans and, and in some ways you want to, you want to evoke that through color or branding.

[00:13:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes. Right. Oh, I have a whole thing about stock photos that. So should we talk about stock photos real quick?

[00:13:34] Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yes. Because I think like underlying all of this is, is the idea that content is cheap as hell now. Yes. The creation of anything that is like active content is extremely cheap. What's not cheap is, is expertise, experience, feeling, you know, that curated content, but content is cheap as hell. I can, I mean, you can sniff out, there's, there's a layer beyond stock photos now. It's like stock photos. And then even worse is these like AI dolly created photos. Could you imagine having your website filled with those like cartoon images of, of you as an attorney?

[00:14:22] Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, Zach, I want to talk about what, cause I don't want to totally poo-poo AI. Right. Like we are still being supportive. So there is a place, I do believe there is a place for AI imagery in websites. And then there is very much not a place. So here's the two columns. We are not doing AI bio-images. We are not.

[00:14:46] Speaker 1: Okay. With a caveat on all of these things, with a caveat of, unless that's your brand.

[00:14:53] Speaker 2: Or unless you're doing something like, there's a tag showing. Please remove the tag on my shirt or something that is minor and the core of what you are displaying. So this is kind of this concept with the plus or minus for pros and cons of AI. The core idea is human, right? So the core idea of this image is we're going to keep the face and you know, 90% of this image the same, we're going to maybe change like the tag or maybe like something in the background or whatever. Here's another example that I used recently. I had an image of an office and it was, I actually had a couple different pictures from different angles. There's like a car parked in front and it's at this weird angle because there was, it was like a narrow focus and whatever. So I take those and this is the office building, right? Like no humans involved. This is just like, hey, here's where our office is. When you come to visit us, this is what it looks like. So I take that into AI, have it combine some, give it a nice perspective. Remove the ugly car that was in the front. That's fine. I don't see any issue with that, right? Like it's just visually cleaning it up. Okay. Where we're not going to use AI imagery is even in some of your blog posts, like they're just, we don't want to be obviously fake. Like this, we're not trying to obviously do these shortcuts and cheat codes and cheat the whole marketing system. And that is like what most people are going to AI for. They're going for like, I'm going to cheat something. And so like put that, put it through a lens of, am I trying to cheat something and, and at the expense of the core of who my firm is and what I'm trying to present. So where can I use it and not use it in a way that still says what I'm trying to say without just ruining it?

[00:16:48] Speaker 1: Well, yeah. And I think it, it goes by, you've said this before, it kind of goes back to like, what are the basics here? You know, like, and one of the things that, that you really talked about last time when we were, when we were doing this was we're trying to put ourselves out there as like trustworthy. We want, we want the bots to trust what we say that, that we are, you know, who we say we are. And it's, and they're actually going out to other places and to Reddit, to other podcasts, to things like that, to say like, okay, this person is an expert on blank. And if we're putting trash on our website, untrustworthy stuff or fake stuff, then that's going to under undermine that.

[00:17:35] Speaker 2: Right. It's going to erode all of it. So you're putting all this effort into your marketing and then you're coming in with this AI slop and it's like a cancer, you know, and it's just ruining all of this work and effort and, and not just the marketing online stuff you're doing, but think about everything you're doing to build your career in terms of your work itself, the relationships you're building. And then you, you know, go out and you spend all this time and effort and you go and you're networking and you're doing all this stuff. And then someone lands on your website and they're like, what is a joke? This looks like it's not who I thought it was. Let me back up and rethink whether I'm going to call them now. And that's the worst, that's the worst thing you want to have happen. This website, your marketing, all of it should just be greasing the process to get those leads in the door, whatever that is. And so if you are looking at different methods, whether it's an AI image, AI content, AI whatever, look at it through the lens of is, does this truly support my marketing strategy outside of online stuff, outside of everything? My core marketing strategy of what we're doing here as a law firm, as humans.

[00:18:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can envision a scenario where somebody is, you know, they've done a presentation for business leaders in their, in their area and they look very polished, they're very dapper. And then you go onto their website and it's, you know, either stale looking or missing something or just does not fit their brand.

[00:19:12] Speaker 2: The other part I was going to say on top of stock photos is the bio page. These are two, like, long running thorns in my side.

[00:19:22] Speaker 1: And the issues are just being exacerbated now.

[00:19:24] Speaker 2: Right, exactly. And stock photos is just the visuals, but your bio, that's just the content piece of it, right? And so a lot of people will just slop that together and they, for some reason, they don't think this cares or they don't think this matters, or they, they think it needs to say the garbage that you typically see. And just because you typically see that garbage on a bio page doesn't mean it's right. That is definitely not the right way to do it. And once again, this, there's stuff you can do in AI, and this doesn't necessarily go back to this. Something I've been writing and talking about for years. And even at the Clio Con, I think it was two years ago, Jack got up and was talking about, or maybe it was a session, and I don't think it was the opening thing, about bios and like what you typically see in them and what, and there was, it was a Venn diagram, what lawyers typically write on their bio page, what a client is working, looking for. And then the overlapping part, are you ready? The phone number. That was it.

[00:20:37] Speaker 1: Yep.

[00:20:38] Speaker 2: That feels right. None of the content. Right. And so come on, people, let's look at this through your client's lens. What are they looking for? They do not care where you went to college. They do not care what publications you wrote in 1996, you know. So I'm not getting into all of that today. I'm not going to like go into, but you know, we, I do have articles and whatever, and just rethink it. Rethink what your bio page should have. And don't rethink it with Claude. Rethink it in like a strategic way from a human perspective.

[00:21:08] Speaker 1: And that kind of gets back to what, what we've been talking about most of the time when, when you and I discuss these things is that's, that's basics, you know, in a, in a world of changing artificial intelligence, you know, three weeks ago, things were very different than they are right now. And they're going to be very different in another three weeks in a world that is changing like that. And people are getting savvy very, very quickly. What we can do is the basics, right. You know, right. Be, be.

[00:21:37] Speaker 2: Yeah. And we can add in. Exactly. Be human, be approachable and add that AI overlay, you know, make sure you, you can expedite things and use it in an efficient way, but make sure that you're using it strategically. Make sure that you are taking what it's saying and being really thoughtful about it. And I can't remember the last time I've ever used the first version it's ever given me. So come on, let's put some work. We're going to put some work into it, like make sure, yeah.

[00:22:05] Speaker 1: One of the things I want to kind of get to before we, before we kind of wrap up here is, is in the background here of, I can go to Claude now and I can build a website in about 14 seconds, I really can. And the thing I keep remembering, again, content is cheap as hell right now. The thing that I keep remembering is that, yes, I have this ability, but so does everybody else who's willing to pay the fee. And so how do you stand out in a world full of AI slop?

[00:22:41] Speaker 2: And once again, that hasn't changed, like, yes, we have more slop and it is actually doing more for us, but that also hasn't changed. And that AI, like you said, it's not just going to sort of look like what everybody else is saying. It's literally taking from those sites and putting it together based on just a big blob slop of what else it's finding. You know, if you put, okay, I'm a truck attorney, a truck accident attorney in Atlanta, it's going to go out and find your competitors and I'm like, that's such a problem. So yeah.

[00:23:16] Speaker 1: And that is what people have been asking to do when they want to do shortcuts. And I think what I'm getting at here is that I think now more than ever, it is imperative to go to somebody who can curate your look, who can curate your brand, who has the experience to do these things. I think I used the example before we got on the air here that people can go and have access to the same amount of legal knowledge and content that I have right now. And I would suggest that they don't go represent themselves in court still because they don't have the experience and the expertise to do these things. They don't know the pitfalls.

[00:23:58] Speaker 2: No. Yeah. Because listen, Zach, I think most people listening to this episode thought this was going to go a different way.

[00:24:03] Speaker 1: You and I thought this was going to go a different way, Karin.

[00:24:06] Speaker 2: Seriously. Five minutes ago, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to talk about, but it's been good so far. But usually an episode like this is going to be like 10 tips about your website and make sure you update the copyright and make sure you have the following five, whatever. This is not what we're talking about. And the other thing that didn't go the way people are probably expecting or the thing they don't want to hear is, and this is going to sound slightly salesy, is that the only true cheat code and the only shortcut, let's call it a shortcut, not a cheat code, the only shortcut is to hire an expert. And this is the same thing you're telling your clients, right? This is the same thing you're saying, hey, I have been a lawyer for X years. And when you hire me, you're not paying me for those hours that you hire me. You're paying me for all the hours that I have been a lawyer and all the things I've learned that you could Google and you could spend five minutes on, but you're probably going to get wrong. Same with anything. You and I were talking about how I do not change my oil. Same with your marketing and same with your website. Come on. Your website is a big deal now. And we were going to maybe talk about whether websites are dying or whatever. I swear Sam and I had an episode about websites are dead like 10 years ago. People keep saying that. I don't believe websites are dead. I think they're different and they're evolving. And that's a whole nother episode we can talk about how it's this constant like living changing thing. You can. You can put your own DIY website together.

[00:25:42] Speaker 1: You totally can.

[00:25:44] Speaker 2: Good luck to you. That is not what we're saying. We're saying the only true shortcut is to purchase all of the years of experience of an expert in the same way that you're saying that to your clients.

[00:25:57] Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. I think that's the thing. People don't have to go into that type of thing blind. You always much like one would advise people to do on their law firm website. You always come into here with something that people can do on your website. Something people can get on your website and you have a trust audit. Talk to me about what that is and where people can get it.

[00:26:21] Speaker 2: The idea that I was saying a little bit ago about like let's take a look at these thoughts and ideas that you have through the lens of your strategy or your plans or like what makes sense. So we have this audit. It's going to ask you a bunch of questions and kind of give you some thoughts around whether certain parts of your marketing strategy should or shouldn't use AI and ways to align it with things that are building trust. So you can download that checklist at my website. It's ConroyCreativeCouncil.com slash lawyerist slash lawyerist.

[00:26:57] Speaker 1: Ooh. All right. It's the same link we always use. Yeah. I hope that gets us some trust on the AI bots. Right.

[00:27:04] Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:27:07] Speaker 1: A little backlink. Well, Karin, as always, thank you for being with me and talking with me about this. I think one of the things that people can take away a lot of times when we talk is that well, two things. One, there's a lot to this and a lot to think about when you're thinking about your marketing. But two, when you get overwhelmed, you can go to the basics. You know, marketing, big M, has not really changed that much. The way we do it, the tools we use, things like that, but actually marketing your services, it's still the same as it was three weeks ago, three years ago, 30 years ago.

[00:27:45] Speaker 2: Yeah. So don't just go into AI and throw a grenade into your entire planning system. Right? There's good stuff there, but let's not just start from scratch. So let's use it in a smart way that's strategic and whatever. And if you have questions, please feel free to reach out. I love to talk about this. This could have been an hour and a half. But balancing this kind of theory and all of this stuff with how to practically use it is that's the thing we're all trying to figure out right now. And like you said, it's changing like every three hours. So and people are coming up with new ways of doing stuff. So use it. It's cool. There's great stuff out there. But there's also so much garbage.

[00:28:28] Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, there is. And I'm going to have to sort through a lot of garbage in our website contest that starts up tomorrow. So.

[00:28:40] Speaker 2: Oh, that's it. You know what would be fun is to have like a roasting one to be like, here's the bottom of the list. Here's. Here's. Or maybe to be nice about it and be like, here's the ones who have some mistakes.

[00:28:52] Speaker 1: Here's some potential. I like to call all of my mistakes opportunities. My wife calls them opportunities. Zach, you have some opportunities this weekend.

[00:29:02] Speaker 2: It's like preschool language. Yes.

[00:29:04] Speaker 1: Yes. You have some opportunities around the house. We're all friends. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:09] Speaker 2: That would be fun.

[00:29:11] Speaker 1: That would be fun. We'd have to. We would have to anonymize this stuff, but it would be.

[00:29:15] Speaker 2: Right.

[00:29:16] Speaker 1: You'd have to call in some lawyers. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:19] Speaker 2: We'll see. That could be fun, though. Maybe I could do like a theoretical post about that. But I do think like just taking a look at the winners and the people who are posting or, you know, the nominees for this website contest, there is value there. And I'm not saying not to do that, but keep it in check. Don't try. Don't go so far where you're now copycatting, because, you know, I talk about how we did. That happened to me in the beginning, but it still happens like it happened like last year. I had another and it wasn't like my own site. It was another one from a lawyer site like this one's so cool. And I'm like, yeah, that's theirs.

[00:29:57] Speaker 1: That's why I got chosen. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Karin, thank you again. I want to, you know, see more from you. It is Conroy Creative Council dot com.

[00:30:11] Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you. Exactly.

[00:30:14] Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you.