David Arato
The Truth About Scaling an Agency in the Age of AI | David Arato
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"if no one owns marketing at a law firm I don't care if it's a solo or five people that do office sharing, it just falls apart
Key Takeaways
- ◆David started writing legal content in 2009 while studying for the bar because almost no one was doing regulated-industry content at the time, and he quickly realized law firms needed someone who understood their compliance frameworks and could rank content in Google.
- ◆For 15 years, 80% of Lexicon's revenue came from white-label partnerships with larger agencies, which let David bootstrap the company without building a direct brand, but now AI threatens those contracts as agencies experiment with creating content in-house instead of outsourcing it.
- ◆David tells law firms that content marketing takes months or years to hit critical mass, the same way Goodyear doesn't expect people to buy tires the day they see the blimp over a football game, it's about saturating the market until you become the go-to name when someone Googles 'best car accident attorney in Dallas.'
- ◆A business coach asked David why he tried to migrate Trello to Airtable himself instead of paying for it, and when he admitted it wasn't done yet but would be if he'd hired someone, she said 'sales cures all,' meaning get the clients first, plug the holes with bandaids, then use the revenue to fix your backend permanently with expert help.
- ◆ChatGPT can spit out 200 pieces of legal content in one afternoon, but by design large language models pull from existing sources and create generic, non-offensive content that doesn't stand out, so none of it will rank because Google has no incentive to surface five-things-after-a-car-accident articles that have been written 500,000 times.
- ◆Lexicon's job completely changed after late 2022 because AI lowered the barrier to entry for anyone to create bad content at scale, so now David's team has to demonstrate Google's four elements (experience, expertise, authority, trust) by interviewing lawyers, pulling new statistics, and adding case results that an LLM trained on old data can't generate.
- ◆David worries AI will kill the billable hour in law because if something used to take four hours and now takes one with AI, a lawyer can't ethically bill the same two grand anymore, and the partner-associate model might collapse when one associate using AI can do the work of five, making it pointless to hire a bunch of first-years at $150,000 each.
Full transcript
Show
Chad
Welcome back to Process Over Pressure, the show where we cut through the highlight reels and have real conversations with real true founders who have been in the trenches. They've seen the wins, they've seen the losses and everything in between. I'm your host, Chad Paris, and today I am joined by David Arato, founder of Lexicon Legal Content. For 15 years, David has built content marketing agencies that serve one of the most regulated scrutinized industry that there is law firms. But here's what makes today's conversation different. David is in the middle of a major pivotal navigating an industry being shaped in real time by AI. And he has been refreshingly honest about the pressure that comes with that. David, welcome to the show. Glad to have you, brother.
David Arato
Hey, thanks for having me, Chad.
Chad
Yes, I was excited about doing this one with you and getting the chance to talk to you. You have a unique job in what you do and the way you go about it. you know, I'd love for you to just kind of take a moment, tell us, know, 15 years is a long time to be focused in one vertical. I'm sure you've seen a lot. So.
David Arato
It has been.
Chad
I'd love you to tell us a little bit about yourself and where you've been and how you've gotten here today.
David Arato
Absolutely, I mean, you said it was a unique job, but trying to explain it to your family, that's something, No, so it kind of happened organically. I was graduating from law school, 2009, not a great time to be getting out of law school. And I started writing content while I studying for the bar the summer after I graduated for a small agency that no longer exists in St. Louis, where I'd gone to law school.
Chad
Get paid.
David Arato
And I realized that I was pretty good at it and that my content was ranking pretty well. And that not a lot of people were doing regulated industry content at the time. I mean, this is the Wild West, right? This is 2009, 2010. Quickly realized it was a pretty good fit for me and I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. So went all in on this. started doing it on a freelance basis and then slowly kind of morphed into an agency. And 15 years, you're right, it is a long time. We've been very lucky to have some very strong long-term partnerships in the legal vertical with agencies that use us as a white label partner. So that has, you know, just kind of follow the money professionally. You know what I mean? There's opportunity, you follow it. So yeah, that's that's that. That's how we got here.
Chad
That's great. know, and you think about, you know, there's a lot of people that are entrepreneurs are, let me say this, there's a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs and, are looking at things and thinking, okay, what can I do that? And I think, you know, one of the biggest things that I think is a hurdle is, is understanding your niche and what you're really good at.
David Arato
Yep. Yep.
Chad
and being willing to dive into that. And you've kind of found your niche. mean, I don't think you probably in the first year of law school said, you know what, I'm going to be a content writer or marketing for law firms and have things with that. It probably didn't come to your mind. how did you get to that? How did you figure out, how early did you figure out that's your niche?
David Arato
I didn't.
David Arato
I didn't even know that was a job when I was graduating from law school. How did I figure out it was my niche? Again, it was really organic. Seeing opportunities and taking them, especially in the circumstances I was in at the time, it was almost out of necessity, if you know what I mean. But then necessity becomes opportunity when you look at it the right way. And especially when... you're servicing a regulated profession. So obviously legal makes sense for me to be in because I have a JD. Even though I'm not a practicing attorney, but I have the JD, which provides me with a credential that gets me through the door, so to speak, right? Like just when people with people who practice law want to talk to people who don't understand what they're talking about, who understand the regulatory framework of and the regulatory issues involved. in advertising or marketing a law firm, which you do talk about in law school. So that credential gives me just inherent, what's the I'm looking for? Like it's a credential that people take me seriously in my space.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. They know you know, they know you know their business, right? They are comfortable knowing that you do that. You know, I've had some lawyers on my podcast and have talked to a few and I always find it interesting in talking to lawyers is, you know, there's this, there's a stigma that you think about when you think about a lawyer, right? You think about this,
David Arato
Good for it. That's correct.
Chad
a high-rise building, corporate America, suit, tie, walking in, briefcase, and just giving it to the people. That's made for a movie. The reality is that a lot of these guys and girls that I've talked to, they know the law. They know it. They're good at it. They get it. But when it comes to the... I think this is kind of ironic. In law school, they don't say,
David Arato
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Chad
Let me take you over here and run these business classes because no one teaches them how to run a business. They teach them how to defend law and prosecute, defend, and those things, legal jargon, but not the business side of it. Do you see that in what you do?
David Arato
Absolutely, 100%. And like, I'm gonna even go a little further than what you said. Law school teaches you theoretic, the theory of law and you learn how to think like a lawyer, but it doesn't teach you how to file a case. It doesn't teach you how to get into court. It doesn't teach you how to litigate. That's all. Law school does not prepare you very well for either being a practicing attorney or a business person. And it's funny in my little slice of this industry, Many of the lawyers who have achieved what I'll call industry fame or notoriety people, the people who look up to, are lawyers that no longer really do a lot of practicing, lawyers that have built teams and they're master marketers. Like their name is on the door, they own the firm, they're getting people to come sign up for the firm, with the firm, they're getting clients through the door, but they're not actually practicing law. They've become a figurehead. Their face might be on the billboard, but they're not the ones in court. Those are their associates. Those... Like I can almost split the industry into like these master marketer lawyers who no longer practice and the practitioners who are capped out because they don't know how to get enough clients through the door and make enough money to scale their businesses up. Because like what's the bottleneck there? The bottleneck is you as a professional, right? So like scaling a law firm is a really difficult thing to do.
Chad
No, so true, know, in my world, being a consultant and working with business owners, you know, I'm like, you're saying something there that's this, you know, we do see it in law firms, but it's not just in law firms, it's everywhere. mean, you typically have a person that is very strong in their job and what they do, and they're really, really good at it. I mean, they know it. I think it comes down more, in my opinion, more than not is it's the things that they enjoy doing is what they're really good at. And the things like, for example, I may be a really good lawyer, but I hate the business side of it. Like I hate the marketing. I hate all that stuff. Like that's not something I enjoy doing. And so, you know, I think there's people that's probably maybe listen to this or going, yeah, that's me. And we kind of fool ourselves and say, we're really good at everything. Cause no one wants to say, well, I'm not really good at that and get help.
David Arato
Yep, absolutely.
Chad
I just say, yeah, I'm brilliant. I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor, I'm a this, I can do anything. Reality is that it's something that you don't like is going to pull you away from being the most effective business owner you possibly can.
David Arato
The reality is if you own a law firm, you are a business person first. If you own a law firm, you're a business owner. You gotta get clients in the door. And then you practice law for them if you're a solo. But you can't say, I'm just a lawyer, I'm just a business person. You gotta be both. Or you get to a point where you've scaled enough that you're a lawyer who is great at business. Or... You're a lawyer who's bad at business but great at the law, right? But like, very few people can thread that needle well.
Chad
True. So what do you, when you take on a client or you look at a client, they're saying, hey, David, I need you to come, we need to talk. What is kind of your, some of the things you look for, I guess, initially at the very beginning to know, is this gonna be a right fit? Where do I need to go from here?
David Arato
Sure, so we've had a lot of, we work both with agencies who white label our services, I mentioned in the beginning of our conversation, and with law firms directly. For law firms to be in a place that it's gonna be a mutually beneficial relationship with us, we wanna see law firms that have a decent marketing budget, obviously, because you have to deploy something, whether it's time or money, in order to get results. Like you can't dip your toe into this thing and expect to get an ROI. Secondly, we really like to work with firms where someone I don't care if it's a partner and associate or a dedicated marketing manager or CMO someone who owns marketing because what we'll often see when I mean when I say owns marketing what I mean is someone whose job it is to make to make sure that marketing is running and That they're looking at the metrics and they want to see their ROI what's their spend? What's our eyes ROI? Etc because what we've seen is if no one owns marketing at a law firm I don't care if it's a solo or five people that do office sharing, it just falls apart. Like they engage with us for six months. And then they're like, we're not seeing anything from it yet. And you got to give content marketing time. You have to give it a time. know people, people don't like hearing it and I don't blame it. Like don't get me wrong. We do our own content marketing. I wish I could see a one-to-one ROI for like, I posted a piece of content and five clients came in off of it. You can't do that. You're building up your content library and your presence online over months and years, right? That's, that's what it is. And you get this critical mass where you become the go-to answer
Chad
yes.
David Arato
or when someone asks a question in either, you know, legal marketing, like I like to think that we come up, I don't like to think I know, we appear a lot if you ask, if you Google or chat GBT or Claude, ask Claude, how can I do content marketing for my law firm? We come up. That's because of years of creating content. The same is true if you want to get that result for who's the best car accident attorney in Dallas.
Chad
Yeah.
David Arato
Right? Like you can pay for it in PPC and maybe pay $1,000 a click or create tons of content over the course of years. Anyhow, the firms that we work with are the firms that care about marketing or have the resources to track it and have someone in their firm who owns that as their purview.
Chad
Yeah, it's, you know, it's it before opening my company, I, you know, I was an executive and worked for 15 years with different, different size companies from some that were, you know, one to 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, some that were, you know, 40, 50 million.
David Arato
Mm-hmm.
Chad
And I think that's what you said there is really, there's some great gold nuggets that you say there. Because I've been in those situations when you have a board of directors and you have CEOs and you have people who want instant, like they want things now. That's how they operate. They look at data, they look at, okay, you did X, tell me what the ROI today. And marketing is one of those things that's really hard to pinpoint on ROI because you don't see it instantly. You're so right. It's a long play. It's a, am I feeding that today? You may not see that outcome or that win six months, four months, five months. It depends, but it's a longer play. but it's so vital to the life of your organization for the future. Because if you're not doing that, somebody has already started, they may be a month ahead of you or two months ahead of you, and they're getting better at it while you're still figuring out, should I do this or should I not do it? You have to spend money in it.
David Arato
That's right. You have to. And I was actually reading one of Dan Kennedy's books. can't remember the title. Magnetic Marketing, maybe. Just the other week, and he was talking about, you think Goodyear expects people to run out after they see the blimp over the football game? You think they're going to run out and buy some Goodyear tires? Right? This is not even a year's, this is decades long play. Good year, good, you see it everywhere, right? And like the same is true for the firms that are, the law firms that I see, like, you I live in the Denver market, I'm in Breckenridge, but I go down to Denver, Rockies games, and I see a couple of these law firms advertising at the game. Like they have like a big panel on the, on the outfield wall.
Chad
Bye.
David Arato
You can't connect an ROI directly to that, right? It is like saturating the market, being everywhere and being the go-to name when it comes time for someone. When someone gets in the car accident, somewhere back in their mind, they're like, oh, I saw Smith and Jones at the Rockies game and that's who I'm gonna call. Right? Or they've just been exposed to them so much it becomes the go-to thought in their mind for injury attorney Denver.
Chad
Yeah, no, it's so true. you know, something you're kind of saying, and I was sitting here while you were talking about that, thinking is, you know, there's so many, there's so many levers in a business that you have to pull. It's not just, you know, you can't put all your money in marketing, you can't put it all here. Because I've seen, for example, this is a scenario that I've seen happen with a business owner. You spend the money on marketing, but you lack your workflow or your automation or your... other processes. so people are coming in the door and because you don't have a good workflow, your customer service lacks. And so I always tell people, yeah, the marketing is what brings people to the door. And what you do at that point is going to mean whether they're going to go out and tell the experience or they're going to say, don't ever use that person again. You can, you can spend the money on market and you can kill it faster than you can build it.
David Arato
100%. And like, not all of us have the luxury of having, you know, deep, deep pockets funded by, by, by VCs, right? Like a lot of us, us included, we bootstrapped your company the whole way. And I'm, I'll be, I'll be candid with you. Like we're, we're pivoting right now. We're, really building Lexicon Legal Content 2.0 right now. And it's interesting after 15 years of business, we've been 80 % of our business historically came from white label partners.
Chad
Yeah, sure.
David Arato
So what that means is we were integrating with bigger companies and becoming kind of a outsourced content marketing arm. So we relied on their infrastructure. Now as we work more more directly with law firms, we are now having to build, first of all, build a reputation. Like I was talking to someone else the other day who's in my industry, who's like, hear all these agencies that you're servicing and I've never even heard of you, even around 15 years. So in some ways we're acting like a startup right now. To your point, as we're moving from servicing
Chad
Yes.
David Arato
few dozen smaller, sorry, few dozen large clients to looking at service, trying to service two to 300 smaller clients, that is a different backend completely than servicing, and especially when you're the one building out the infrastructure, right? And to your point, like we're kind of building the plane as we fly it, right? And that's always hard.
Chad
yeah.
Chad
Yeah, sure. Sure.
Chad
Yeah.
David Arato
You know, it's one thing when you got millions of bucks coming in from VCs and you can build out your back end and then you start marketing and you're ready to go and you, you know, not every business is like that.
Chad
No.
Chad
No, it's right. And so, you know, one of the questions I get often asked is like, okay, I hear you say all that. I agree with you because I think that on was like, well, where do you start?
David Arato
Yeah.
Chad
Well, how do you even start? Because you know, there's so many, there's so many variables when you're doing a startup or you're in the business that you could pull. There's so many levers, right? And as an individual, there's only so many levers you can pull. So I get asked this all the time. Okay, what is the first lever? And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, because I think you've been around, you know, what is the levers that you pull first? What is the main levers that you pull first? I think it's a great question. I'd love to hear your thought on that.
David Arato
Yeah, that's right.
David Arato
Well, I've actually, I've come around on this recently, very recently. Someone said to me the other day, sales cures all. And what I was thinking about is this, like, if you've got the revenue to solve your backend or your operational problems, you can solve them, right? Like, and the context was this, that I, as CEO of my company, often,
Chad
Hahaha.
David Arato
I do a lot of stuff like this. I do a lot of outreach. I publish a lot. I do a lot of events, a lot of in-person relationship building. But one thing that I do is I take on pet projects, right? And one thing I was trying to do is migrate our company from Trello antiquated project management system to Airtable, much more modern relational database, like much more powerful. And I thought to myself that this would be a good project for me to take on. Because I was talking to... And I'm non-technical by the way, like I was a professional musician that I went to law school that I didn't even practice law. I started doing this. So like I'm not some computer with right? So I think it's a good idea to do myself and I'm talking actually to her business coach I was talking to about this and You know, she asked me she's like, why did you take this on yourself? I was like, well, I don't want to spend the money on it Well, she goes is it done yet and I go No, she goes, would it be done if you would have paid for it? And the answer was absolutely yes. And luckily we do have the revenue to cover it. But I was thinking at the time, and the reason the sales cures all things is I realized just go get the clients. I think this is where, I think there are different answers to your question. But where I sit right now, go get the clients, do your best to not buck it up.
Chad
Yeah.
David Arato
Put a bandaid on your processes, like plug the holes until you have the revenue. And then rather than taking, like take that revenue and immediately redeploy it into professionally building at your backend with expert help in a way that plugs those holes permanent.
Chad
Yeah, mean, I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer. think that as a business owner, that is probably, I think there's a few really pivotal things you have to make a decision on. I think this is one of them that is the hardest because you're absolutely right. Sales does cure. mean, money coming in helps you. helps you to grow, it helps you to turn it over, helps you to put it into the infrastructure that you need to. However, there's also a fine line on the experience and the process because the last thing you want to do is have it all wrapped into one side and then get that first client you can't deliver. And so it's really a balancing act. mean, it's all about
David Arato
That's right.
David Arato
Absolutely.
Chad
being smart to say, when is the dollar amount that I've got? We're at a good place that we need to take that and build that infrastructure. I think if you're kind of doing that together like a little ladder, I think we could make it work.
David Arato
Sure. Yeah, I've read some business books that discuss like growth phases and consolidation phases. Not that we've ever done this because I don't know, I'm just not that organized. But you like you're in a growth phase, consolidate, get the clients consolidated, fix your backend growth phase and alternate to your point about being a ladder situation.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. think, I think it's just, it's all about, you you know, how you look at and how you approach it. So, you know, so tell me, you know, you, you've kind of been white label and you mentioned something. I just wanted to kind of circle back on that because I thought it was a really good point is you, know, you were, you're white label and you've been doing this for 15 years. So all these top law firms, like you've, you've done work on probably all of them. Like they, you've done work. You're just not the name in the front of it. And now.
David Arato
Peace.
Chad
You're the name and you're like, Hey, I've been doing your work for 15 years. What? didn't even know you. How does, how does that feel? How does that, like, do you kick yourself a little bit or you're like, why, why didn't I do this earlier? Or kind of what's, what's going on with your mind? I think it's interesting.
David Arato
They don't
David Arato
I'm gonna give you a philosophical answer. There's no use looking back There's no use looking back and look we built this business bootstrapped Pretty well over the course of 12 13 years being purely almost purely white label At the time I Didn't see how much well first of all, no one could predict a generative AI
Chad
Yeah, that's fair.
David Arato
And part of our pivot is this. think a lot of our agency partners are experimenting, and they should, and I want to make this clear, they should be experimenting with using AI to create content in-house rather than using a vendor. Now, ultimately, think there's a lot, I mean, look, there are pros and cons to using an outside vendor, pros and cons of doing it in-house.
Chad
Hmm?
David Arato
I understand how AI would make it more attractive to say, let's build a team in-house that does quality control and humanizing and optimization of AI output rather than giving this all to an outside vendor. I get it. I don't think in a regulated area like legal or medical or finance. building an in-house team makes a lot of sense for smaller agencies. Like, look, if you're a huge, if you're a scorpion, sure, do it. But if you're servicing 50 to 100 clients, like I'm not sure if it makes a lot of sense to build an in-house team. But my point is, I couldn't have seen that coming. And not building, we built a reputation within the agency market. That's why we worked, have worked or continue to work with some of the largest legal marketing agencies in the country.
Chad
Mm.
David Arato
I don't think I could have foreseen a situation where we wanted to pivot to work directly with law firms. So at the time, there was no pressing need in my mind to build a national reputation with law firms. That being said, it is kind of fun at this stage in business to have to act like a startup.
Chad
Hmm.
David Arato
Like I'm kind of enjoying the challenge of getting out there, doing these podcasts, publishing. I had an article come out in the ABA law practice magazine this morning, actually. So like doing this kind of guerrilla marketing and getting ourselves out there and like for the first time, trying to establish myself as a thought leader in this space, which has been going on for a few years now actually. like first, know, I was kind of in the shadows for a decade, right? So like it's kind of fun to be honest with you. Was it the best business decision? Obviously not, but here we are.
Chad
Yes. it Yeah, well, I think it is fun and we all have gifts and we all have certain things that we're really good at. I do in my job counseling, it is our business counselor is what I am really. But you do the coaching on leadership and the things. also with AI and process workflows with companies. And I always tell my clients, one of the things I always am very upfront about is when it comes to AI or it comes to any type of workflow, like processes, procedures, whatever, I always tell them, I always say, look, you cannot fix everything. You cannot. If you do that, it will drive you crazy. you have to take this thing in steps. you know, being a startup or being a new company where you now don't have the hundred, you know, millions of dollars to just throw at things. Because when you get to a certain place as a company size, I mean, to spend $20,000 on an ad spend, like, let's chump change. Let's just do it and see what happens. And that's where you're operating from. Yeah, let's do it. Try it. See what happens. Okay.
David Arato
Yeah, peanuts. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Chad
$20,000 for a startup or a smaller firm is a lot of money that can go into some more powerful ways. And so you have to think of it in a different light in what you're trying to accomplish. I see, had this, as you use this example, I had this conversation just the other day with a guy and he was at a big firm and he's now in a small firm. And that's exactly what he was struggling with because...
David Arato
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad
In his old firm, it was just like, oh man, we're to go get this ad going. So his ideas are like it is in the big firm, but now he's in the reality of the small firm and it's not working. And I'm like, you got to get out of that. That's not you anymore. You're in a different animal. you got to figure it out.
David Arato
Yeah, big it. Yeah.
David Arato
We're lucky that we're straddling the middle there, that we have the capital to deploy, but also acting like a startup in that we are getting in front of clientele for the first time and having been around for 15 years. like, it's an interesting dichotomy right there.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
I think it's, I'm glad you you know, you're writing articles and you're doing that kind of stuff. Cause I think that's, you know, have a lot of knowledge in it and you're giving back. I think that ABA is one of the, I think is a great to read. I mean, that's that's a fun one to read, even if you're not a lawyer, there's just some really good stuff in that. But that's cool. mean, I'm really excited to see what you do with this and kind of how you're progressing through it and get to. You know, go back sorta and say, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna try this a little different. I think that's cool. I think that's fine. It's gotta be scary and but at the same time, I'm excited.
David Arato
Well, we're, and as I mentioned, we're very. It is exciting. And we're very lucky in that we do have some solid partnerships that don't seem to be going anywhere and are locked in contractually. So while I do feel a little bit of instability in the market as a result of AI content creation, we have a good amount of runway. So I'm not waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat or anything like that. We're in a solid position. You know what I'm doing, honestly, is I'm looking at the business in a bifurcated way. I'm going to call it wholesale and retail. So wholesale is when we partner with agencies and we're behind the curtain and we're helping them support. their support their clients from a B2B2B standpoint. And then the retails when we worked with law firms, which is a completely, they have a different set of pain points. They want a completely different product, even though it's fundamentally sorry, service, I should say, they want us to productize the service in a way they want us to package it differently. It's fun. It's been it's been an exciting and creative way to use the same fundamental deliverable marketing content and look at a different market segment and figure out how to package it differently to make it more attractive for this market segment. And it's completely different pain points in the way we discuss it. And that's been a creative endeavor.
Chad
That's it. mean, you just summed it up the best probably that you could sum it up. Same packaging, deliver differently, different pain points. And that's what it's going to be because they're not at that level or they're not where that is. They're thinking about different, their minds in a different place, right?
David Arato
That's right.
David Arato
In my industry, what you don't remind me of is when I realized that Benadryl is also packaged as sleep aid. It's the same thing in both bottles, different label, right? And like I often... I often think about that in this situation, because the pain points are so different. In my industry, and I don't want to get too deep in the details because it's a general business podcast, obviously, but when I talk to agencies, they want to hear, what is your price per word and what is your turnaround time? That's their pain point. How much content can you deliver? What cost? In what timeframe? Law firms don't want to hear about price per word. They want to hear, how is this going to help me get more cases? And what is soup to nuts? Give me the content ideation, post it on my website, put it on our social and optimize it. What is that price point? They don't want to get granular, they want a package and the agencies are completely different.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. I so true. So I got to ask, know, we're, we're, you know, kind of the elephant in the room. Let's, let's talk about, let's, I know we've talked a little bit about AI, but let's cause it's there. Right. And, and I'm, I've had these conversations with law firms and stuff, you know, look, AI is doing nothing but growing. It's nothing beginning matter. It's going to continue to grow. It's, tell people it's not going away. You might as well embrace it. It's here. Right.
David Arato
Yep. Yep. Nope.
Chad
What have you seen or just maybe you can be a candidate? And when you look at AI and you look at law firms, because there's a lot of variables that go in there with legality and what can be shared and how it's shared and all those things. And I know that AI is working, there's companies working on some of that stuff to make it where it's fit for law firms. But there is a ton of law firms that are using AI right now today.
David Arato
It should be.
Chad
talk to tons of them that are doing it. What's your thoughts on it? I'd just love to hear your piece on what you think.
David Arato
Okay, I'm going to go from, I'm going to start prognosticating about AI and legal practice, and then I'm going to go to what we do. So I never practiced, let me make that clear, but I did go to law school and I do work with a lot of lawyers, so I do understand a lot of how the industry works, how they bill, etc. I'm concerned about how AI is going to affect a lot of really deeply ingrained models in the legal profession. The billable hour for on if you used to bill four hours for like let's I don't know Chapter seven filing. I'm not sure those are usually flat fee I can't think of something off the top of my head but if something used to take you four hours and you bill two grand for it and now it takes you one hour you can't build two grand for it ethically anymore. So I think the value of billable hour legal work is going to shrink and that's gonna have to change because I don't think lawyers are gonna be able to survive and justify the costs of their education with the billable hour. Secondly, I think that the
Chad
Sure.
David Arato
partner associate model might be threatened by AI. Because if I were a partner who was billing up my associates at 400, 500, 350, depending on the market, bucks an hour, and All of a sudden, one associate could do the work of five associates by using AI and ensuring legal, like what's the point of me hiring all those associates anymore? At 150 grand a year, right? Or whatever the starting rate is in your market, it might be 80 in Cincinnati and 150 in New York City, I don't know. But you get the idea. What's the point of hiring all the associates? So I'd be terrified if I was a first year law student. So I think there's gonna be a lot of disruption in the, I don't think lawyers are going anywhere, first of all, because I think,
Chad
No.
David Arato
legal licensure is moat that the bars, they're not gonna like, you're not gonna penetrate that moat for a long time if you ever do. Like they're not gonna let AI lawyers in court. They're not gonna let a pro say litigant in. And some guy tried it a few years ago. He's wearing like glasses with like a screen reader on him and tried to use chat GPT to practice, the judge kicked him out. So I don't think lawyers are going anywhere. I think it's gonna be really disruptive to the way the industry bills.
Chad
No.
Chad
Yeah. I agree. No, I was just going to say I completely agree with that completely. Yeah.
David Arato
with regards to go ahead and sorry.
David Arato
With regard to what we do, content creation is squarely in the sights of AI. It was the first thing that people started using it for. And I looked at my wife, I remember it was, I say this in every podcast I go on, so just so you know. I looked at my wife in late 2022, December, Christmas, and I was like, Erin, and she's my business partner as well, and she went to law school. She practiced a little bit.
Chad
yeah.
David Arato
Long story short, look at it and I was like, Aaron, I gotta go take the Colorado bar because we we're screwed. I was like, chat GPT is doing what we do in 30 seconds. What I didn't realize at the time was it just lowered the barrier of entry of content creation for anyone and their whomever. to create shitty content at scale in an afternoon. You could put out, if you put your mind to it, you could put out 200 pieces of content for a law firm website in one day. None of it would rank. None of it would rank. These LLMs, by definition, by design, should say, by design, create content that is pulled from other sources and is generic and is non-offensive and doesn't stand out. By design, the content doesn't stand out. And if the name of the game is getting content to rank, you're gonna have to put a little bit of extra something in there to get it to rank. So what's happened to Lexicon and I think to other content creation agencies over the past four years, almost now, is the job has completely changed. Rather than sourcing really great writers who are very accurate and don't drop commas and don't have typos, that part's easy. The hard part now is actually creating content that... matches with a firm's identity that demonstrates the four elements Google wants you to demonstrate in content, which is experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Also that adds something new to the conversation. Again, if these LLMs are trained on an existing corpus of data, nothing will be new. Again, by design. So like,
David Arato
It's up to us to go out there and get new statistics or case results or interview the lawyer to create content that's going to stand out and get in the top spot for either the AI overviews or on the Google SEO organic results or show up in the LLM platforms, the chatbots, Claude or OpenAI or ChatGPT. So our job has changed completely. I thought it was...
Chad
Yep.
David Arato
We are able to create better content faster than we used to, but there's also more content going out. So the competition has just increased to create great content.
Chad
Yeah. No, well said. And, and I, I'm working with a client right now, actually that's doing that. And he's, you know, trying to build his online presence with his shopping and stuff like that. And I was talking to him at his meeting today about SEOs and, and I said, look, you can use Claude and that's fine or, or chat GPT, but I would advise you to, if you want to lay it out, you want to feed it and it lays it out, take that and then rewrite it because you're,
David Arato
100%.
Chad
your way it's going to write it is not going to hit. You have to take that as a good scope and say, okay, don't like rewrite it in your own words because that's what's going to be powerful. you know, AI will it get better? Yes, it will get better. But every time it gets better, everything else gets better and everything has access same tools. So over time it's going to do nothing but
David Arato
and everyone has access to the same tools.
Chad
Flatline because everything else is the same at same content out there Yeah It's changed
David Arato
That's right. the job has changed. The job has changed. And a colleague of mine I saw on a podcast, and I like what he said, I'm stealing it, Chris Dreher. He said, what is Google's incentive to index or surface AI slop content? Why would it, like...
Chad
Yeah.
David Arato
Google's incentive is to give the users the best experience they have, right? And the most accurate answer to their query. So why would it surface five things to do after a car accident that's been written 500,000 times in the past 15 years, right? Probably 100,000 of them by us. But you see what I mean? Like it has no incentive to even.
Chad
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right.
David Arato
Google has no incentive to index that content, much less surface it. And then if you think about the fact that indexing content takes resources from Google, there's clearly a secondary incentive to then not index and ignore AI-generated slop. So good luck getting AI-generated slop indexed and ranked.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, it's so true. And I also add a little piece to that is I think that what you'll see happen is, and this could happen, the people behind the scenes at Google or Facebook or, know, all those guys, they could be having a really bad morning and change the algorithm. And it's like, okay, now we're all really screwed because that can happen too. Zuckerberg can have a bad morning and be like, we're going to change it all.
David Arato
That's right. That's right.
David Arato
Yeah.
Chad
Very common, could happen, but I think you're right. you got to, so I think we're both saying the same thing. I think AI is great tools and I think you saw about how you're using it and where you're trying to use it to be successful. It cannot replace everything. It cannot replace everything. It can be a resource to help you in some areas that, you If you're, if you've got a bunch of case studies and you're looking at four or five different case studies, you're trying to, trying to work on, know, your opinion or whatever. There's some deck and they can work very good about going and getting that information and help summarize it put it into black paralegal work. Like they can, can, they can do that. And it's very good at that. And it helps to write the cases or helps put it in that you're always going to write it yourself, but at least we'll misuse this as an example, you know, That's a good way maybe to use it. That's a good, cause it's, it's resourcing and helping you look at some resources that's tying a bunch of stuff in one rather than you having four screens up, trying to look at a bunch of Yeah. Well, David, this has been awesome. Uh, if people are out there and they're a law firm and they're like, Hey, you know what? We need some help with content writing. We need, we need some marketing help. Um, you know, that, that are like, I, I, I, everything y'all have said today, I could use some help. How could they get in touch with you?
David Arato
Absolutely. Absolutely.
David Arato
email me, David @ LexiconLegalContent.com. I'm all over the socials. I'm active on LinkedIn. Our website is www, obviously, LexiconLegalContent.com. So we're really easy to find.
Chad
Yeah, and if you're out there and you're listening and you're like, I like some of this stuff they're saying or saying, feel free to reach out to David. You're always welcome to reach out to me as well. And I can connect you with David and we could both work helping you or however. But again, what a great time it's been with you. Really appreciate you taking the time and having a conversation. So guys, thank you and you all have awesome day. All right, we'll cut it there and we'll go there. Do you like it? I mean, it was fun.
David Arato
Feels good.
David Arato
I had fun, yeah. I hope it's going to be of value to your viewership and listenership.
Chad
Yeah, me too. And when I'll get you the raw footage and you can use, think the way you explain some of that stuff could really impactful to some people that may be out there looking for some advice or help.
David Arato
Yeah, absolutely. Listen, I do have a two o'clock and I know that we were planning on two o'clock to Mountain. I know we were planning on chatting after this and I do want to, I am very open to discussing working with you. I just can't do it now.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah. No, that's fine. What I'll do is I'll see you. Look, I'll send you an email recap after this. And it's a little, I'll put a link in there that you can pick a schedule of town that works best for you, whether it's in the future and we can hop on and maybe trade some ideas. I'd love to, I'd love to, if nothing else, think, you know, contact and there's some synergy that you may have some clients that I can help in, in trading off and like that. think,
David Arato
Let's do that.
David Arato
Absolutely.
Chad
I think maybe help you in some of the things you're doing. I think there's some good stuff we can do together even, even on that.
David Arato
100%. But I do appreciate this opportunity. You said you're going to send me the raw. Do you guys not chop it up in house?
Chad
I will. So if you want, either way, I'll give you the raw and then I also will do all this chopping up and edit. We'll make a bunch of tags and it'll be on on my YouTube channel and I'll tag you. Do you have a YouTube channel or do you have a
David Arato
I don't, need one. So I've been on about 40 podcasts in the past two months. So I'm building up this huge, I'm, I'm guesting, I'm not doing my own, but I'm working to get all this content together. And then I'm gonna start a YouTube channel with my guesting and then aggressively promote all of my appearances on LinkedIn and Meta and all that shit.
Chad
Okay.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Perfect.
Chad
I'll send it to you in the chopped up version and anything I have I will share with you. I'll send it to you. You can tag and put it anywhere you want to and all that stuff. Nope, that's easy peasy.
David Arato
Awesome. What do you use to do that, by the way? I've been looking at some options.
Chad
I have, well there's a couple that I use. Riverside actually, to be honest with you, has some really good editing tools. But I use Opus Clip too. It's a little user friendly. It's really good about putting some of the tag lines and images on top of like the cut up reels.
David Arato
Okay. Sorry. Okay, I've heard of that one.
David Arato
Does it do the, does it cut it up itself?
Chad
It will. I think it's a little easier to cut up and make into little B-Rows. There's a couple other that I'm looking at. I always like to try things before I ever tell the client to try it. There's a couple out there that's coming along. A lot of AI and that stuff will cut it fast for you, yeah.
David Arato
What are you paying for Riverside?
Chad
Uh, think it's like 30 bucks something like that a month that four bucks. It's not it's not bad
David Arato
Mugly, okay. I'm just trying to figure out what the all in cost of creating video content is gonna be.
Chad
you could see yourself and I mean, not counting the camera and not counting any of that kind of stuff. Yeah. You, you, you, but you'd be less than a hundred bucks. 100 bucks probably like that to do it. I don't, don't. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this, like this Riverside, they have a, an AI you can do editing and it'll take out like all the pauses, all the miss words. It'll filter it.
David Arato
Why every how I like shit
David Arato
Okay, right on. That's great. want to start doing this. Go ahead, please.
David Arato
Okay.
David Arato
Pause.
Chad
So it'll do a lot of that for you and you don't even have to like, it's, you can publish it to Facebook, LinkedIn, you can do straight off of it.
Chad
Clipping it, yeah clipping it. I have a virtual assistant that I use and she's a little more comfortable in that so she likes to cut and clip it over there which I'm fine with, I don't care. She makes some really good videos but.
David Arato
I'm thinking that I want to have Erin, my wife, she doesn't want to be front-facing in the business. But what I was thinking is like, I have her interview me on Riverside. She's upstairs, I'm downstairs. I'll be in my studio. She interviews me. And then I have a bunch of content of me just talking about all this shit, right? Like about, and like, I can, but my, part that I have not figured out, like the interviewing is easy on Riverside. But then I haven't figured out the chop-up part. But you're saying Opus A.I. just does it.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
yeah.
Chad
Opus Aia will do it and you can clip it. And it's really easy. Like you can just pull like, want this section. And it's, I think it's a lot, it's very, very user friendly to cut things. You can add music to it. Like if you add like, yeah, you know, all kinds of stuff into it. So, all right, I'll send you an email today.
David Arato
Okay.
David Arato
Okay. All right, I appreciate the advice. Thanks, Chad. Good to see you again. This was fun.
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