Karin Conroy (00:03.032)
Welcome to Council Cast Compendium. This is a quarterly strategic briefing on what’s shaping legal marketing. It’s meant to be kind of a highlight reel, like when you look back on those home renovation shows and you catch up on a year’s worth of episodes. So we put out a lot of episodes every quarter, and this is meant to be a highlight reel of all of the best of all of the episodes that we had last quarter. So in this past quarter, we talked about

credibility, how it’s constructed through clarity and reinforced through connection. And then it’s proven through consistency. And that was quarter one of 2026. And now the conversation has shifted. Now it’s about innovation and AI is everywhere. It’s in the majority of the episodes that we had in the past quarter. And it does keep coming back to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is louder.

But the thing that keeps coming up is that Google is not the only search engine anymore. And this is a major shift in the world, in the economy, and especially in legal marketing. So law firms are asking a very real question. If everyone has access to the same tools, what actually differentiates us? And when I look back at this quarter’s episode and conversations with Pete Everett, Joe Toscano, Gert Melick, Bill Shander,

Neil Schaeffer, TJ Robertson, and all of our Chambers guests, one theme stood out, which is that modernization without strategy is just noise. And you hear a lot about AI slop and the garbage and the kind of junk that everybody sees everywhere with this kind of cheap, not strategic AI work, but modernization with clarity.

creates your advantage. So it’s all about how to use AI in a strategic advantage point without kind of diminishing all of the marketing work that you’ve done over all of these words, sorry, over all of these years. And it’s not about chasing AI and it’s not about posting more on LinkedIn. It’s also just not about keeping up or evolve, but it’s about evolving in, it’s about evolving intentionally. So today,

Karin Conroy (02:23.494)
I’m connecting all the dots of all of these episodes, all of the chambers episodes that we bring up as kind of a refresh that our past episodes that because we’ve had so many years of these episodes in the podcast, I bring forth these chambers episodes to be little nuggets of valuable information that you might have missed because maybe it was a couple years ago and you didn’t see that episode. So we’re tying those in.

And we’re talking about all of the connecting dots with all those episodes. And we’re starting with what’s changing in search, what’s shifting in authority signals and why most LinkedIn strategies are failing, even though LinkedIn is growing and expanding and continues to prove to be such an important platform. So when everyone has AI, what actually sets your firm apart?

So let’s begin where modernization is most visible, which is search. And this is the conversation that oftentimes is the only conversation a lot of firms are having. They think when you think of legal marketing, you think of search and your Google rankings and all of the numbers that come from Google alone, but that is clearly changing. And so here’s the first segment that I wanted you to notice and pay attention to.

And we’re talking to Pete Everett about whether AI is replacing Google or reshaping discovery or what’s going on with AI and AI search. And here’s a good clip for you to pay attention to.

Karin Conroy (04:08.514)
We also talked to Joe Toscano about how AI search rewards real human expertise. Joe Toscano worked at Google and he has all these cool stories about meeting with these investigators who were looking into the practices of Google and things that he was saying years ago that are now being seen in AI. the things that we now know to be true that at the time they thought

that he was saying, and at the time they thought were a little bit, you know, kind of out there. So this is such a cool episode where he’s talking about the ethics of AI and the core idea is that AI is not replacing Google, it’s restructuring how that expertise is being surfaced. So the talking points is that behavior is fragmented, Google Chat GPT perplexity copilot,

and all of the AI search pulls from this structured authority signals and firms relying on generic SEO tactics are losing ground. And you’re probably seeing this in your SEO reports where suddenly these kind of cheap and easy blog posts aren’t really working anymore. And possibly a lot of your traffic is not there anymore. And a lot of people are kind of freaking out about that. But what he talks about is that that traffic wasn’t really good.

quality traffic anyway. So the search results and the traffic that’s coming directly from AI is higher quality, higher intent clients. And so it’s actually, you know, it’s all for the better. So AI is rewarding, clear positioning, specific expertise, consistent authority signals, and visibility now depends on structured relevance. Not these kind of cheap, easy blog posts where you are saying,

the things that you’re saying about yourself, but the credible expertise that it can validate, not just from you, but from other authority points on the internet. So it’s creating credibility, not noise. And here’s a good clip from Joe Toscano’s episode.

Karin Conroy (06:35.118)
Okay, so in this next segment, I wanna talk about when everyone has AI, how can you set your firm apart? So I’m gonna reference this episode with TJ Robertson, which is called, When Everyone Has AI, What Sets Your Firm Apart? And in this episode, the core idea was that AI tools are democratized, but strategy is not. So yes, we can all go into chat GPT, we can all go in…

to cloud or whatever your AI tool is of choice. But your strategy is your unique strategic advantage. And so these are the areas where you can create a differentiation where you have your clarity of your expertise and AI is gonna compress that mediocre content. So now you have to work harder on your content and this is all good news. This is stuff that we should have been doing anyway.

garbage that we were kind of putting out and just basically filling the internet with is not going to get any traction anymore. And so, you know, in a perfect world, which I don’t necessarily see this happening, but in a perfect world, the garbage would kind of go away and all of the better content would rise to the top. That may or may not happen, but your garbage traffic is going to get less and less. Your your garbage content is going to get less and less traffic.

And so it’s going to be less and less valuable to put that kind of traffic and it’s going to be less and less valuable to put that kind of content out there so that it doesn’t do anything. So why do that? So modernization is not about speed. It’s about the strength of the signal.

Karin Conroy (08:34.614)
Okay, so now in this third segment, I want to talk about LinkedIn and how LinkedIn is not broken, the generic thought leadership is. So once again, we’re talking about the strength and quality of the signal. And this is referencing two episodes that we had this quarter. We had an episode with Bill Shander where we talked about why LinkedIn content fails. And then we had an episode with Neil Schaefer that was called Why Your LinkedIn Content Isn’t Working.

And so a lot of the content that you see on LinkedIn is broad and safe and boring. And that’s just not going to work. And realistically, that wasn’t really working in the past. was getting some traffic. And so that maybe looked like it was working, but those numbers were kind of false and leading you to believe that there was some reason to continue doing that. But basically what’s happening now with AI.

is that it’s just not gonna work and it’s what wasn’t working within the human decision process anyway. So now we are just refining the decision process to demand the type of content that is actually going to work, that humans want and that this algorithm is also going to favor. So it wants perspective, it wants consistency, it wants your expertise and it should build authority

for you and your firm. So a lot of firms have had this debate about whether to post on their profile or the firm page. And the firms that are really succeeding in this are posting on their individual profiles and having an opinion and showing their expertise and not just posting generic firm news on the firm LinkedIn page, but being more specific, being more individualistic.

amongst the partners or leaders of the firm and posting things that start and encourage conversations, as well as really encourage the viewers to recognize the expertise and knowledge of whatever the conversation is. So visibility requires specificity, not volume. So,

Karin Conroy (10:58.06)
We want defined positioning and repeatable insight. And these are things that you should be figuring out in your strategy. So this should be happening before you’re even going to LinkedIn to post about your things. You should already have these strategic documents in your firm, knowing what your voice is, knowing who you’re trying to speak to, and knowing what you’re saying in a unique way so that when you end up posting,

It’s within the box of your strategy and it makes sense and it ties back to your broader plan. So LinkedIn is just one channel. It’s working really well for a lot of firms who are following this path, but authority is multi-surface. And so your authority should be appearing, yes, on LinkedIn, but then also tying back to your website, showing up on other places, in other platforms, and it should be showing up in places that…

AI can see you appearing all over the place and tying back to a similar strategy and message so that it continues to repeat and have that consistent message that ties to your strategy. Here is a clip that ties back to all of these ideas about LinkedIn, what’s failing and what’s working.

Karin Conroy (12:23.66)
Okay, so every quarter and every other week we do a Council Cast Chambers episode. The point of these Chambers episodes, as I said earlier in this episode, is to refresh your memory about a previous episode that we’ve had because we’re going into five years of Council Cast and there are so many guests that we’ve had on and sometimes it’s, there’s so much value and it’s interesting to look at those episodes.

again, a year or two or three later and reference back and say, hey, this was such a good episode, but this has changed and this has stayed the same. And so there are nice short clips that are typically less than 15 minutes that you can listen to during your carpool commute. also I intro the episodes with things that have changed and things that you should know.

and what was valuable about that episode. So you can get some highlights and then there’s also a link to the original episode if you want to listen to the whole thing. So a few of these episodes that we featured in the past quarter were from Mike Buckby, Jobi Parker, Andrea Jones, John DeMato, Ryan Birch and Dave Sobel. The overarching core idea of all of these episodes was that authority signals extend way beyond your website.

And this of course ties into everything we’re talking about with AI and innovation and how things are changing with AI and search and modernization. So some of the main points throughout these episodes were that the chambers episodes are credibility and architecture and third party validation matters more in this AI driven discovery process that your clients are taking when they are looking to you

and trying to determine you versus your competitors, they need some third party validation. So if you think about this in terms of just reviews and testimonials, even in your own decision process, when you’re buying anything, if you’re on Amazon, there’s a reason why products on Amazon want all of those reviews and testimonials. And they want, you want to be able to say, hey, I bought this.

Karin Conroy (14:42.222)
or I bought this as a gift for you and the reason I bought this is because it had 40,000 five-star reviews and that must mean something because it helps you to make the decision to make that purchase. So along the same lines, we need those third-party validation triggers and signals from a variety of different platforms for your clients as they are making that decision about who to hire. And that could include things like media appearances, could be

include testimonials, rankings, Google reviews, podcast guesting is such a big thing. And we are having a upcoming episode about that that you’re going to love. And citations. So all of the various blog posts that are actually working and people care about and citations on other websites, if you can guest post or show up on other websites that come back to you.

AI systems are gonna recognize that structured authority signal and then authority is gonna be ecosystem based. It’s not just gonna be based on your website and what you’re saying about yourself anymore. It’s what is the entire internet saying about you and is it true based on what you’re saying about yourself? So modernization is gonna require this external validation layered into a digital presence. And search is no longer centralized in

the world of Google, which once again, I believe is a good thing in terms of kind of knocking Google off of its pedestal a bit in their importance. And I am in no way saying Google is dead and all of this is replacing Google. I’m just saying now the pie is more balanced and you need a variety of different pieces of things that are happening in that pie. So here is a

little clip montage of a handful of different moments in these chambers episodes that are tied back to all of this about AI discovery, authority signals, and how it expands beyond your website.

Karin Conroy (16:59.862)
Okay, in this next segment, I am going to highlight the episode with Gert Melick because he is a Council Cast collaborator, which is a group of guests that I have put together who continuously show up on the show, come back and have such great insight and value. And we build off of the previous episodes and continue the conversation and…

This conversation about AI that I’ve been having with Gert has been going on for years now. And we’ve talked about AI and how to have your law firm’s content beat AI or compete with that. And in this episode, we talked about his search everywhere optimization pyramid. And if you haven’t seen this, you should really go back. This is such a great philosophy and theory of how to think differently. Because if you’ve been here from the beginning,

I spent an entire year talking about the marketing funnel. And in that year, the marketing funnel is an upside down triangle. And you go through the top of that funnel is awareness and you go through that decision process down to the point when you have a client and then ideally they become either a referral source or a repeat client. His search everywhere optimization flips that funnel on its head.

And there are some key areas where things are shifted around in terms of the order that you should think of your content creation, how to do the content creation, how to figure out what your clients care about and the questions they’re asking, and then how to align your content with those client questions. And before you even align that, how to get these signals and alerts

based on what they’re asking. So it’s pretty cool conversation and I highly recommend it. And the things to know about this episode is that search is no longer in one place, like I was saying in the last clip, the last segment, and that Google is no longer the sole node for this discovery web. So think about where these clients are going. They’re spending a lot of time on Reddit, which is maybe surprising to some of you, but it is kind of the hot topic.

Karin Conroy (19:16.43)
And so Gert and I talk a little bit about that. We talk about the combination of Reddit plus LinkedIn, plus your content on your website, how to approach that and how to do it in a well, in a good, successful, well-strategized system. So here’s a great clip from that episode.

Karin Conroy (19:39.062)
Okay, so in this version, this episode of the Council Cast Compendium, I am going to add a book review of my own because I read a lot. I typically read about 100 books a year. And this is where I created the idea of having a book review section, mainly because I love talking about books. However, I also think it’s a cool little segment where those of you who also like

reading and talking about books may find a little twist, interesting tidbit, something to talk about that ties in the topic that I’m talking about with the guest. But in this case, it’s me. so tied into everything we’re talking about this quarter, I just finished this book called Empire of AI by Karen Hao And she is an investigative journalist. And so this is a really cool book where she researches and investigates

basically the beginning of OpenAI, that relationship between all of those guys that were creating ChatGPT Claude, OpenAI, and then also Elon Musk. And all of their relationships, all of these kind of insider conversations, things that were happening. And I don’t know if you remember the part of

the history of when Sam Altman got booted and all of the drama that happened in those days, but that’s in the book. So the things to know about this book are that explores kind of how the major AI systems were built and the kind of power in these tech organizations and all of the drama and the good juicy bits of the stories that

that went into building all of these massive companies that we now know and use every day. And some of the things that are good takeaways are things around governance, ethics, and stewardship of your data, and the things that you might want to consider in terms of security, client confidentiality, and also it’s just a great story. So OpenAI, sorry.

Karin Conroy (22:02.164)
Empire of AI is the name of the book by Karen Howe and I will put that on the show notes and the show page and I highly recommend it. It’s a great book.

Karin Conroy (22:14.966)
Okay. Final synthesis. The things to know about the episodes from this quarter is that innovation is just not about adopting every tool. And I know it feels overwhelming because you see all of the conversations around. If you’re not using this, you are really missing out. And if you are not trying this software, you are really missing out. And even for myself, I click on a lot of these things and explore and it can be.

overwhelming. And the more you click on these things, the more they show up for you, of course, because of the algorithm. So just like with any good marketing strategy, the goal is to try to clarify and really pinpoint your strategic difference, who you serve, why you do it, all of these human qualities and unique selling propositions that have not changed since the internet.

have not changed since AI and are at the core of your firm and then align the tools that actually make things more efficient and make your work better. So clarify your expertise, make sure that your strategy and approach and thought around your firm strategy is crystal clear and maybe it’s something that you need to take a step back and review because

Now with AI things may be slightly refined and changed based on the work that you’re doing, but maybe not. So take a look at it, figure out where you can modernize while still maintaining your position and align your visibility and your strategic approach to all of the pieces of the pie. Google AI search, your offline marketing, align all of that with your positioning. So.

Also, you know, when also taking a look at the book that I recommend, make sure that you are exercising some responsibility with how the technology is used and put some thought into the potential risks and issues that could arise there. And the firms that will win in this era are not going to be the ones who are the most experimental and trying every new thing and doing all the weird stuff.

Karin Conroy (24:36.078)
It’s the ones who are going to be intentional and strategic about it where you try to they try something and you as the client Come in and experience whatever that thing is and you think that is really slick that really made this process easier whether it’s a handful of frequently asked questions that you provide at the right time whether it’s just ease in your intake process whether it’s something that just makes

a process or an experience for your clients better and easier, but not reinventing the entire client process, not removing yourself as the human, not removing your all of the best parts of the work that you do as a human and making sure that you are walking the line between what makes the most sense and also what doesn’t and what is going to actually kind of erode trust and ruin that client experience for your clients. So

Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a valuable place to be and it rewards differentiation. It wants your thought leadership. wants your expertise. It doesn’t just want a bunch of slop and all of the garbage and the AI slop that everybody is talking about. It does want you to appear consistently, but if that consistent quality is once a week, then so be it. If it’s once a month, so be it, but make sure that you’re showing up in a consistent way.

that provides value and works for whatever works for your firm. So it’s not, do I keep showing up with all this innovation? The question is, how do I modernize strategically and responsibly? And it’s not about adopting every tool. It’s about clarifying your expertise, structuring your authority and modernizing your presence, but then aligning that visibility with your positioning. And AI is gonna accelerate that clarity

And it’s going to accelerate the confusion. So if you are showing up all over the place and it’s messy and you’re saying a variety of different things and you’re just trying to quickly check all the boxes of where you think you need to show up, even if some of it’s not well done, it’s going to accelerate that confusion. And it’s, it’s not going to end up resulting in quality links and traffic and clients into your door. So.

Karin Conroy (26:59.766)
Search surfaces expertise and it ignores that noise and just don’t be part of that noise. So if Q1 and our Q1 compendium episode was about credibility, Q2 is about evolution and innovation without strategy creates noise and innovation aligned with clarity is going to beat authority and build authority. Authority is aligned with the systems that create opportunity and

All of that is going to work in a synthetic process that really elevates your innovation and your authority if it’s done well. This has been Council Cast Compendium, your quarterly council on building authority in a modern marketing landscape. We’ll see you next quarter.