Ep. 65 - Google's New AI Opportunity for Law Firms

Google may have quietly created one of the biggest SEO opportunities we've seen in years.

In this episode, I unpack a newly published Google patent continuation involving Gemini and explain what it could mean for law firms looking to improve their online visibility. The concept is surprisingly simple: when users search for information that doesn't yet have a strong answer, Google's AI may begin saving those unanswered queries and revisit them later when quality content becomes available.

That creates a unique opportunity for attorneys and law firms willing to identify gaps in their field and provide valuable answers before competitors do.

I discuss how this technology works, why it matters for SEO, how Google's AI Overview could become even more important in the future, and a simple exercise you can use to uncover content opportunities within your own practice area.

If you're looking for ways to future-proof your firm's digital marketing strategy and stay ahead of larger competitors, this episode offers a fascinating glimpse into where search may be headed next—and how you can position yourself to benefit from it.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hi, and welcome. I'm John Rizvi, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For my new listeners, I'm pleased you came in to join me today. For my returning listeners, it's always great to have you. In my podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me in growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over 10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters right here in Coral Springs. Doesn't matter what you do for a career, it doesn't matter which industry you work in. Too many people, too many companies, uh, and in too many industries, and that's to say all of them keep making the same mistakes. The biggest mistake they're making is chasing trends. Everybody wants to get on the AI train. Everybody wants to get hyperfocused on a specific client or client base, often to the detriment of others. Now, are they doing any of this intentionally? Absolutely not. Nobody sets out to actively offend or turn off the very people they're trying to market their goods and services to. That doesn't make sense. But they chase these trends and they don't really understand them. They don't really understand how they work. They don't understand the upside. They don't understand the downside. They don't understand the broader cultural context in which these are occurring. And you have to think about that when you're moving uh in this direction. You have to be prepared to pivot quickly. And chasing trends and doubling down on them is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be problematic for your marketing. And for attorneys, we're particularly vulnerable to that. Now you may be scratching your head and saying, Well, you know, John, what do you mean by that? We don't chase trends, we follow the law. Yes, but to a certain degree, uh, this is unavoidable. Everybody in every sector chases trends. Maybe you're trying to increase your visibility among specific segments of the population, or you're trying to target a certain demographic. But the problem is every time you chase one of those trends or those populations, you're leaving other people out in the cold. So you want to be as inclusive and as broad-based as you possibly can. And you also want to do that in a way that you don't have your overall brand come across as beige. Remember, I said, don't be beige. Beige is bad. Uh we don't like that. Beige is wallpaper, and what you want to do is stand out. You want to be the purple zebra in a herd of white horses. But here's a clear, sharp, bright line. Let me explain what I mean by that. One of the biggest trends that is taking off, and of course, again, this is everywhere, is AI adoption. Now, a lot of users, especially in uh Gen Z, which is a very fast-growing demographic, don't like or trust AI if they're given any choice in the matter. When it comes to AI, they're more likely to trust human-generated content than they are content generated with artificial intelligence. Now, this is interesting to me because most people would think that people who are born in a world where SEO and Google and the internet and instant access to information would be the most enthusiastic adapters, uh adopters of AI, but that's not so. Strangely, uh Gen X seems to have more interest and more of an investment in AI and more optimism about AI than Gen Z does. So this is really strange. But on the other hand, these are people who have never known a world where rotary phones and landlines and video games that you can't play on a device uh that you can carry in your pocket and make phone calls was even a thing. They've never known a world that wasn't connected and wasn't plugged in. They've never known what an analog life looks like. Baby boomers, Generation X, uh millennials, at least to some degree, uh, the further up the timeline you get, the more likely it is that they will remember a world where the technology that we take for granted today, and in fact have come to rely on almost to the point of outsourcing our own brains in many ways, only existed on Star Trek and not in our pocket. That's a trend that can be dangerous for your marketing. If you rely on AI, you want to do it in a very, very careful way. We know or should know as attorneys that relying on AI to write our pleadings and causes of action is not a good idea. In fact, there's a case recently in Oregon where a federal judge ordered two attorneys, one from California and one from Oregon, to pay $110,000 in sanctions and attorney fees because their pleadings before the court were riddled with hallucinations caused by AI generated text. These are becoming more prominent and the penalties just keep getting steeper. So far, the Oregon case is a record breaker, but before too long, it's going to be a footnote and there's just no getting around that. Also, Gen Z is more likely to notice and react negatively to AI generated content than the average population. And that's a big problem because Gen Z by 2030 is estimated to have $12 trillion worth of spending power. To put that in perspective, right now, Gen X will have around $25 trillion in spending power by 2030, according to estimates. But that doesn't mean that you can ignore Gen Z forever. Gen Z are the trendsetters of this world at this point. It's their ethos and their beliefs that they're structuring. Uh, and they're gonna structure what the world is going to look like 10, 20, 50 years from now. Just like the baby boomers did with the world we live in, and to a lesser degree, Gen X. And this is interesting because you would think that Gen Z would be all about AI and all about digital everything, all about following trends. Oh, I saw this video on Instagram, and the next thing you know, you've got a TikTok trend going or something. Gen Z took the internet and made it do things that Gen X and before would not have thought of, and that's both good and bad. So you want to be very, very careful about which trends you adopt, and to a certain degree, all of your marketing is going to be influenced by them. If you're not following trends, I promise you that your SEO agency, if they're any good, probably is. Now, again you come back to, but we're attorneys, trends don't matter, the law matters, how it changes matters, and how it evolves matters. Yes, this is true, but you're writing for and presenting this information to a cohort of people who are very skeptical about AI stability and permanence. They don't view information in the same way, they don't partake in information in the same way. So, what do you do with that? Well, the first thing obviously is to be authentic, be yourself and show a little personality. People don't react to brands, they react to personalities. Your personality ultimately is your brand. If you're a nice person, if you're an aggressive person, if you have outside interests or hobbies, there's nothing wrong with dropping a brief mention here and there. It humanizes you and makes a connection because you may love gardening, for example, on the weekends. Well, so do a lot of other people. Great. Now you have something to talk about. Now, of course, is that relevant to the law? No, unless you're doing something with, you know, in patent law with genetically engineered plants, for example, uh, or some kind of uh other aspect of intellectual property. Uh the point is you want to be human. Uh, you don't just want to be a stack of law books, uh, you also don't want to overinvest in trends. But one of the biggest trends that you should be investing in is authenticity. And in fact, it's not a trend. Uh if you strongly feel something or you're you passionately feel something, if you support a specific cause or what have you, it's okay to say that. It's okay. In fact, it's strongly encouraged. Why? Because that in itself creates human connection, and that's what Gen Z is looking for. And to a lesser degree, Gen X uh and Millennials. That's the era roughly between 1975 and 1983. These are the hybrids who remember an analog world and a digital world. Their entire childhood was analog with a few exceptions, uh, like the Apple IIE with the Oregon Trail. Uh, that game, I'm sure many of you remember it. You have uh uh but if you don't know anyone in that age bracket who does not know what uh that game is or whose face doesn't light up when they hear the name, oh I remember that. Of course you do. You know, the Apple IIE was the first mass-produced educational computer, and it was obviously what started Apple on its path to global dominance in the computing market. But they also remember the shift from the analog world to the digital world and how it incorporated itself into the broader world. Uh so you want to look for that connection as well, although not to the same degree. Uh, you want the cynicism of Gen X paired with the optimism of Gen Z. The next thing you want is to keep your content as human generated as possible. If you want to fact check with AI, that's fine. But anything you do at the end of the day has to have human eyes, a human mind, and a human heart behind it. Otherwise, it's not going to get you anywhere. Now, if we're talking about personal injury, you want to relate to your clients' fears and their uncertainties. What happens when worker's comp says you're not really injured and you need to get back to work? Meanwhile, your doctor is saying yes, you absolutely cannot and must not go back to work right now. How do you navigate that? How scary is that? How can I help you make this less scary? What do I do and what do I bring to the table that will make this an easier lift for you while you navigate the system? Those are just a couple of questions uh that are just off the top of my head. But you could apply this to literally any field of law. So you want to be authentic and you want to show some humanity and some emotion. Show that you're invested. Uh, show that your client's success is yours. If they lose, you're going to take it personally. You're going to take it as a personal failing on your part. That's authentic. Attorneys don't become attorneys because they like to lose. Attorneys don't become attorneys because there is nothing good on Netflix. So lean into that. Get into the authenticity and emotion. Don't chase the latest trend. Don't try to be American Eagle or Gap or Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, or any one of those brands. They're not doing the same thing that you're doing. They're not targeting the same people facing the problems that you're targeting. And they're totally disparate things. Let them chase the trends. You need to focus on authenticity, humanity, and emotion. And when I say humanity, of course, that starts with human-generated content. In a perfect world, we'd all create our own content, but not all of us have the time for that. But again, most of us didn't become lawyers because we wanted to write books. Well, a lot of us do uh write books, including myself. But that wasn't our primary goal uh when we went to law school. Our first day uh as a 1L, we weren't thinking, gee, I'd love to write a book one day. No, it's gee, I really uh want to graduate. I really want to keep uh uh have a job when I'm done. So be honest and keep the humanity in your communications. And yes, humanity in a digital world is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. But Gen Z in particular is going to be more skeptical of artificially created, AI generated anything than they are with human content that shows that there's an actual person involved. And that makes sense, right? We don't want to deal with a computer when we can deal with a person. You know, uh, which uh if you want, you know, if you want a quick answer, uh then you you go to a website, you type in a query, or you do your searches, um, and that's what you want to look for. You don't want to go to a website that's full of tangents and small talk. Uh you just want to get the answer and then go about your day. And that's totally fair. But as attorneys, uh this is a time that we have an opportunity to update our image uh in the public perception. We can lean into our humanity a little bit. We can lean into the emotional side of the law. We can empathize with our clients and sympathize with them. We understand their struggles. We see this day in and day out. So we have to have some idea of how to navigate this stuff, lean into that and lean into that aspect of the law, and not just the law itself, because the law is black and white, it's heartless, uh, and it's emotionless, and it applies to everybody more or less equally. And we all know that ideally, it should apply equally. But some people find the law more uh more equal than others, and whether that's right or wrong uh is beyond the scope of this podcast, but you do need to keep that in mind, and you really need to make sure uh that your communication is resonating with your prospective clients, uh, their emotions, their needs, their fears, and their wants. Uh maybe you don't care if you get a $10 million settlement and you just want this company uh to make you whole again. You just want them to fix the problem that they caused, whatever the problem might be. And the more you do that, the more authentic your brand is going to come across to viewers. You don't know what demographics these people fall into. Yes, you can tailor your branding and target the demographics that you're looking for to a degree, but you don't want to do that to the point where you're shutting everybody else out. And again, Gen Z is a very fast-growing cohort with a lot of money to bring to the table. Why would you cut yourself out of a chunk of a $12 trillion demographic? Nobody says, nah, I don't need the money. I don't need those clients. Nobody says that ever. Just doesn't happen. Now you and the client may not be a good match intellectually or emotionally, or maybe they want you to do something that you know for a fact you can't do. Okay, that's fair enough. But you can lean into their needs and their fears, their wants and their emotions, and you can show them uh how you can assist them in this way, how you can correct a wrong and how you can make their lives better. You can tell them what your strategy is uh and how you're making their problem go away, or at least reduce it uh in the most painless manner possible. So, yes, you do want to lean into your experience, you do want to lean on your education. If you've uh got a 500 win to four loss ratio, then by all means talk about it. But remember, every case is different, every human being is different, and every human being wants to feel like they're having a conversation with an actual human being. The case they care the most about is their own. And that's one of the reasons why Gen Z is so down on AI. Forty-eight percent of Gen Z workers do not like or trust AI-generated content, and they won't use it or engage with it if they're given the option. If they absolutely have to, they will. But if they have to choose one and that's uh and choose someone that they're going to work with, it's going to be the one that doesn't sound like AI. So bring that human aspect to your marketing. Bring authenticity to your marketing and show up as yourself. Don't just be a stack of books in a suit. Be a human being. Show them who you are and what makes you who you are. It helps them both legally and personally, because attorneys that don't empathize with their clients probably aren't going to win very many clients. Especially not in this new world where AI generated content and digital everything is the rule, not the exception. Uh be the exception. Bring the pendulum back the other way. Uh this is going to do be a lot better for you in terms of your marketing and in terms of your probable success rate than just about any number of SEO tricks or tactics or hacks that anyone could tell you about. Again, I'm John Risvey, a Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd appreciate it if you could click the like button and make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any updates from this channel. And don't forget to share with your friends and colleagues that are attorneys and will find this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for stopping by today, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and ideas on making your firm's digital presence stronger and more durable. I look forward to seeing you next time.