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ABA Young Lawyer Rising - Master Lawyer Business Growth Now with Jared Correia · Legal Late Night

• Jared Correia (00:00): Hey everybody, it's your boy, Jared Correia. You're hearing from me now because Evan and I are taking a week off of a grind of producing legal late night, the middle of summer and orgies. So instead of our normal, please enjoy this episode of the American Bar Association Podcast, Young Lawyer Rising. I was recently a guest on this show, even though I am neither a young nor a practicing lawyer nor rising, at least not right now. But we'll be back next week with a brand spanking new episode of Legal Late Night with all of our usual shenanigans and some new ones as well. See you next time. Montana Funk (01:05): This is Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the A Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine Media. Welcome back listeners. This is your host, Montana Funk. Today I'm joined by Jared Correia and we discuss business development and how young lawyers can use their skills and qualities to stay ahead of the evolving trends in the legal business. I hope you enjoy our show. Jared, welcome to the Jared Correia (01:29): Show. Thank you. Montana Funk (01:31): So today we're talking about business development, and I want you to start off kind of explaining to the listeners what exactly business development is. And the reason I say that is I think a lot of young lawyers are probably thinking to themselves, okay, it's just finding people that I can work with or finding clients, et cetera. But there's a little bit of a difference there between client development and business development. So what exactly is that and the difference between those two? Jared Correia (01:58): That's interesting. I've actually never heard anyone propose it that way before. I don't know that there's all, you're getting business from clients. So for me, it's all client development. If I'm an attorney, especially if I'm a young attorney, (02:11): I think that to me, there's a dichotomy that happens. So I think I talked to some lawyers and they're like, I got to go out there and I got to do referral networking all the time, and that's how I'm going to get my clients. That's how I'm going to generate business. And I see some other lawyers who are like, Hey, I'm going to do web-based marketing. I'm going to get on social media. I'm going to write content, and I'm going to try to get clients that way. And I'm going to probably spend a lot of time on LinkedIn doing that. (02:38): And the thing that's interesting to me, I don't know if you see this, is that it's almost like never the twain shall meet. There are very few lawyers who do both. Do both. Yeah. There are lawyers who are hardcore, I'm a relationship person. I'm going to go out and shake hands and kiss babies, and that's what I'm going to do. That's how I'm going to generate clients. And I have found that even with young lawyers, there's just one bucket that they fall into. So I guess if I'm looking at this and I'm a new attorney, I want to do both aggressively. And the big thing for me is I want to put goals on what I'm going to do. So I want to set up not even reasonable goals for myself, stretch goals, challenge yourself. I'm going to have X number of meetings with certain types of people on a monthly basis. (03:24): And oh, I'm also going to do enough written content to populate a weekly LinkedIn post. I'm going to do that too, and then I'm going to measure my results to see what I get out of it in my converting clients because of this. Am I getting leads because of this? At what number? That's the kind of stuff that I want to know because ultimately, if you're in a big firm or even in a smaller firm within six to eight years, you want to have a book of business developed because the dirty little secret they don't tell you is that you're an intrapreneur and you're effectively running your own business as a lawyer if you want to have any kind of effective career, whether you're running your own firm or working for somebody else Montana Funk (04:04): Or becoming partner. And I want to ask you this because, so I mean, do you think there's a part to business development that maybe isn't actually client focused, but maybe it's working with creating relationships in the legal community with partners in different firms who maybe you can just have good networking down the road? Or do you think there's a big difference between that? Jared Correia (04:25): I guess it's semantics in some ways because to me, everything is client focused. I want to get to the client and convert that client. But are there brand building components that go into that? Yeah, absolutely. So the idea is everybody is, there's so much information passing through everybody's life on a daily basis. It's impossible to manage. And the information that's passing through my life that is I'm going to hire a lawyer for something at some point in the future is infinitesimal compared to the other stuff I'm looking at. I got to figure out where I got to get my kids for the summer. I got to pay my electric bill. I got all this stuff that I'm looking at. And so if you're an attorney, and if you're looking at it from a brand building perspective, podcasts, this are great, social media interaction is great, and nobody's going to hire you necessarily or come to the point where they're going to become a lead for your law firm unless they've probably seen you do 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 things. (05:36): So this whole idea of, so when you talk about partnering with organizations, doing a couple CLEs, does that potentially lead to getting you a client down the road? Yeah, it's like a whole cluster of things that are going to lead to that ultimate outcome, but to my mind, everything's focused on that piece of the interaction, which is eventually somebody comes in, they're going to make the move to hire you or try to hire you. But yeah, I agree with you that there are a bunch of brand building activities you can do to manage that, and they should be personalized networking, but they should also be web-based marketing too. Montana Funk (06:10): Well, I was going to ask too, what do you think it is that potential clients want to see when they're actually talking to a young lawyer, Jared Correia (06:18): Physically talking to them, Montana Funk (06:19): Or even if it's social media, what skills are going to make you send out to someone versus the next young lawyer that goes up to the same client? Jared Correia (06:28): Sure. Yeah. I think it's a couple things. One of which is attributable to the lawyer and the other of which is attributable to the firm. If you're working for a firm, (06:38): The reality is that part of your brand is based on what they do and what their reputation is. So if I'm a young lawyer, I look at that from the sense of how can I leverage that? What does the firm do that I can rely on? I don't know. You're looking for a personal type of client. Not only am I good at what I do, and we'll get to that in a second, but my firm does this type of work effectively and has for a hundred years or whatever. I don't know what it is. We're the personal entry law, we're the oldest firm in Green Bay that does this, we're amazing, that kind of thing. And then I think for young attorneys have it tough, I think because they don't have a gigantic caseload in their back pocket where they're like, oh, I've done all these things. So I think the best thing you can do is kind of reflect how you would work on a case Montana Funk (07:28): In Jared Correia (07:29): Your marketing. So do you pay attention to detail? And that could be a whole bunch of things. There's no typos in my email. I'm not just slapping stuff together, right? I'm thorough about what I do because if you're thorough about your marketing, if you pay attention to detail and your marketing, I think people are going to be like, oh, okay. They probably act like that as an attorney as well. If you're aggressive about falling up with somebody, Hey, let's book a meeting. We talked last week, you want to do lunch, let's get that on the calendar. To me, that tells me as a potential client, oh, this person's going to be aggressive when they're moving my case forward. So I think what you can do is even if you don't have this massive reputation backing you up outside of what your firm has already done, which is not technically you at that point, you can do the kind of things that would be reflective of a good lawyer in the way that you market and network with people. And that's what I would focus on. Montana Funk (08:24): Right. And do you, I mean, I know a couple of people out of my law school class at least that went right into their own firm. They didn't even go to a firm, they created their own. So I mean, what can you say to those people who are like, I don't have a firm name to fall back on? Jared Correia (08:37): I mean, in some ways it's even better. First of all, pretty ballsy to launch your own law firm. Montana Funk (08:42): I know people do it from scratch. Jared Correia (08:44): Oh, people do it more often than I think folks even recognize. It happens a lot. And the great thing about that is that the ceiling's off in terms of what you can do, (08:59): You literally don't have anybody telling you what to do. So that means a couple of things. One is that you can be really authentic about what you're doing. You don't necessarily have to speak with a corporate voice, especially if you're starting out as a solo attorney. You can say what you want. You can be authentic, you can be direct. So to a lot of people, there's less of a barrier there. I think a lot of people, if they're working with a big law firm, they might be some corporate speak going on here, I'm probably going to work with multiple attorneys, that kind of thing. If you're a new attorney who's launched your own practice, you can be like, Hey, get to work with me. Montana Funk (09:37): This Jared Correia (09:37): Is truly and authentically who I am. There's no varnish between you and I. Then the other part of that I think that's really cool is that you can tweak your pricing model a little bit like big firms, it's like a giant cruise ship that you're trying to turn if you want to tweak any of the ways that the pricing works. But if you're running your own law firm, you can be like, Hey, I'm cheaper. You're going to get me. I'm going to be aggressive and also dot, dot dot. I may offer non-traditional pricing models. I may be doing subscription services, or I may be doing flat fees and go ahead, compare my prices, and they'll be pretty good compared to what you've seen at big firms. So I think there's a lot more flexibility there, frankly, Montana Funk (10:20): I think if you're also ballsy enough to start your own law firm, then you probably have the guts to also go and be the confident person that these clients want to see, at least from the people I know that have started their own firms. Jared Correia (10:30): If your clients are other business owners especially, they're going to be like, oh, you're 25 and you started your own law firm. Good on you. I know how hard that is. And sometimes people are like, yeah, I'd love to support you in some way. I mean, you're not going to gain every client, but the way I look at it is everybody's got an angle that they can use everybody regardless of what your business looks like. So whatever kind law firm you have, whatever kind of arrangement you have, you can figure out ways to leverage that to your advantage. Montana Funk (10:58): Yeah, I agree. I want to talk a little bit too about maybe if you find someone that's not right for you, I want to take a quick break, but let's jump into Jared Correia (11:05): That a little bit. Oh, bad clients. Yeah, let's talk about bad clients. That's exciting. Montana Funk (11:15): Okay, so I think there is something to be said about talking to people, maybe you think this is a good potential client, and then the more you get to know them, you're like, oh, I actually don't know that I want them. Whether it's they give you the idea that maybe they're not going to pay on time or they're going to flake or whatever it is. How do you handle that? Jared Correia (11:32): Yeah, well, this person actually sucks. Yeah, it's funny. I think when people come out, they're like, oh, there's going to be a whole world of great clients that I can sign up and every interaction's going to be wonderful. It's not that way at all. There are tons of red flags. So there's two things I would think about here. One is I would have list of red flags together, frankly, and you just mentioned one, they can't pay or they don't show a willingness to pay, and I want to talk about something else in a second where we'll get back to that. Another issue you see is they've had multiple attorneys that they've worked with before and every relationship has gone down in flames. They're reporting the attorneys to the bar association. The other thing is the jailhouse lawyer type of deal where somebody's like, oh, you know what? I was reading an article the other day, or I think the more modern version of this is I was in chat GBT and it said, I should do this, and you're not recommending I do that. So what are you even talking about? Where'd you get your law degree from? Montana Funk (12:33): Right? Jared Correia (12:34): That's a problem. Somebody who thinks they're a better lawyer than you are, Montana Funk (12:37): The internet tells 'em something. So it's like, where did you learn because chat BT said this and I think you're wrong, Jared Correia (12:43): Right? It's like WebMD where you go on WebMD and you're like, oh my God, I have terminal illness and it's really like a Bruce. So I think I would get together a list of red flags and make, the problem is when you hire a client that sucks, then you're in the soup for a long time. You may have, I've seen situations for attorney hire bad clients, especially in the litigation context, and now all of a sudden you're stuck with that person for years and it's hard or impossible to get out. So I would have a list of red flags and I would stick to those. Now the other thing I would do is I would build some institutional structures around that or rely on institutional structures that your firm already has. So we talked about the payment thing. (13:27): One way to figure out whether somebody's going to want to pay you is do they make a big deal about paying for a consultation? If your firm charges people for consultations and somebody's having and hawing on that or looking for discounts, they're like, Hey, can we take this off the legal services fees once I hire you? Which, oh yeah, I'm surely going to do that. That's a red flag too. But that's brought to your attention because you have this process in place around that. If you've got an intake form and you're asking questions, how many attorneys have you used before? Or what happened when you worked with those attorneys? That kind of thing. And if you're processed, maybe part of your process is like, before I work with somebody, I'm going to Google them and do a deep dive on who they are, and maybe I'll go in and I'll ask an AI generative AI tool, what is this person's deal? Write me a synopsis of who this person would be in the context of a lawyer who's going to work with them. There's tons of information out there now, and you should definitely vet Montana Funk (14:23): People. Do you think there's something to be said about, obviously social media is becoming a huge part of just everyone's career these days. Do you think it's a red flag if a client doesn't have any form of social media or presence online? Jared Correia (14:36): Oh, no. I think that's great actually. Montana Funk (14:39): It's like in the dating world too, I'd almost be happier Jared Correia (14:40): If somebody doesn't have social Montana Funk (14:42): Media. You're like, oh, you don't have a social media presence. I love that. Jared Correia (14:46): That's the first place I'm going, Montana Funk (14:47): Right? Yeah, Jared Correia (14:48): I'm googling someone, but I'm also seeing if seeing they have their Facebook locked down or not, can I get on their Facebook? Can I get on their Instagram? Are they doing stupid things? Do they look like a tool to me? If somebody doesn't have social media, I'm like, great, sign me up. Montana Funk (15:03): Right? Jared Correia (15:03): I mean, they might be serial killer, hopefully not Montana Funk (15:05): Never, Jared Correia (15:06): But chances are they're more normal. And the person who does that, all the social media and is doing a million things on social media, but the upshot is I would definitely be doing the vetting. I would definitely be doing that. Everybody I talk to is a consultant. I won't take anybody on until I have a chance to Google. Montana Funk (15:23): I mean, I think that that's smart, but do you think there's a way to vet someone if they don't have anything online? Jared Correia (15:29): It's going to be really hard unless you want to do skip tracing. And I don't know if I would spend the money doing that, Montana Funk (15:34): Fingerprint them. Jared Correia (15:35): In that case, if I talk to somebody and they truly have no online presence, I'm thinking, okay, they might just be really normal, as I said, or I'm thinking they might be really elderly and they just never get into it. Or they might be a doomsday prepper. I don't know. So at that point, I'm probably going in and I'm having some conversations with them on a personal level. And that's okay too because I think that's perfectly viable. If you want to get to know somebody, I'd be like, Hey, what do you do for work? Montana Funk (16:05): What are your thoughts on bunkers? Jared Correia (16:06): What kind of things do you enjoy? Yeah, do you have a bunker? Have you built a bunker in your home? Montana Funk (16:11): What do you think a can? Jared Correia (16:12): That kind of thing. (16:15): Do you live on a large hill where it's fortified to the most? Yeah. Do you live under a large hill? Yeah, I would be trying to have conversations because the thing is whether you're on social media or not, people like to talk to each other, talk about each other. I find that whenever I have conversations with people, I find this really easy to get people to talk if you just ask open-ended questions and listen to them, and that's what I'd be doing. And then as I was having that conversation, I'd be thinking about, okay, let me get back to my red flags. Am I seeing any of these red flags here? Are they trying to dictate to me how they would want a legal representation to run? Do they do that in other aspects of their lives? That kind of thing. Montana Funk (16:56): And people love talking about themselves, so I Jared Correia (16:58): Think they do, Montana Funk (16:58): Right. Jared Correia (16:59): Yeah. Do you think you just have to bait the hook to get them to do that? And mostly that's asking open-ended questions. Montana Funk (17:05): No, I think that that's a great point, and I think that's also helpful for maybe young lawyers who are a little bit more shy or reserved or nervous starting out. It really is as simple as just pick a couple of questions that you think everybody can talk about themselves about and then start that way. But do you think that there's questions that someone should absolutely be asking in those meetings? Jared Correia (17:28): Lawyers are not the best conversationalists, Montana Funk (17:31): Hey, I think I'm Jared Correia (17:32): Good. They present company excluded. I think part of it is every lawyer part of it is the way you're trained because you're trained to look at the downside of everything. So I think a lot of lawyers are like, oh, if I had this conversation, what if I do it? But there's no way to do it wrong. What if I don't ask the right questions? I see that happen or there's ethics rules. What if I ask a question and it could potentially be against an ethics rule for me to be doing that? Don't worry about any of that stuff. I think that it is good training to be able to have a conversation with somebody, jump in and start asking open-ended questions. If you want to write down those open-ended questions, I suppose that's fine, but it's a good skill to be able to have ad hoc extemporaneous communication with people. (18:23): So some of the questions I alluded to before, if I was making a list of stuff I wanted to ask somebody about what do you do for work? Do you enjoy it? What do you do in your free time? What are you interested in? Do you golf? Do you play sports? What do you do? And I think I would just ask very open-ended questions about them at a somewhat personal level. And what you will find is people will largely be responsive to that. And then I would ask follow up questions based on what they tell me. I wouldn't go heavy into planning stuff. I find that the best stuff, I find that the best stuff you find is unplanned people volunteering something. I have conversations every day where I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I wasn't expecting this person to say that. Now let me interrogate that. And as a lawyer, what's great is that you have really good investigatory skills when you think about it. That's everything you do as an attorney. You're looking for cases to put in a brief. You're looking at personality traits that people might have, and I would just lean into that. Montana Funk (19:27): I think that that's a really good point. I also, I want to talk a little bit about the negatives that can happen and how to kind of come back from those as well as how trends are changing and how to stay ahead of that. So let's take a quick break and then we'll go into that nitty gritty. So let's start with this one. Let's say you have a client, potential client, you're having lunch with them, doing some, whether it be deals or just conversations, kind of start potentially retaining them and you realize, oh, I said something. I think I messed it up, or I don't think they're going to want to work with me. How do you come back from that? Can you come back Jared Correia (20:07): From It's so on brand. For the young lawyer vibe, it's like, oh wow, what if I screw up and what do I do? Montana Funk (20:13): Right? Jared Correia (20:15): So the first thing I would say is that failure's not the worst thing in the world because you got a long career ahead of you. So the first thing I'm thinking of, if I say something that I've screwed up, I can admit to myself, I screwed that up. I need to do better next time. That's a lesson to do better. Next time you may lose that client, but there'll be other clients in the future. So I don't view failure as this thing. You have to go home and (20:41): Eat a pin of Ben and like suck it up. You learned something and I guarantee you won't do that again the next time. I also don't know that there is a long list of things that you can't recover from. And this is what I was talking about before we went to the break. If you test yourself and you start to get good at having extemporaneous open-ended conversations, I think what'll come from that is you have a better ability to recover because there's a whole host of things. Even the definition of bad, there are really bad things, but you could say some crazy racist stuff during a meeting. Yeah, don't do that. Which you're probably not coming back from. Montana Funk (21:25): Yeah, don't do that one. Jared Correia (21:27): But what if you use the wrong fork for dessert at dinner? I guess that's a mistake, but that's a totally different class of mistake. So you could make a joke about that. I think everything is recoverable or most everything is recoverable from, and you just have to be willing to move past it. I think this is a mental thing, a willfulness thing more than anything else. I think you're right. A lot of people worry about this, especially young attorneys. And then what I always find is you get into the situation usually and it's not as bad as you think it's going to go. Sometimes if you're talking to somebody and you say something silly, they might be the ones who are like, I was in a situation where I was young once and I was trying to get business. And they may make it easy for you to come back from that. (22:20): They may say, you know what? I remember when I was having one of my first business meetings and I was trying to close the client and I said this, and it's similar to what happens here. I'm not going to use that as a black mark against you, and this is a learning experience for you. So I think the thing is, a lot of this is assumptions that people make about how things are going to go. And in a lot of cases, in most cases, I think the assumptions you make about these things, they don't go the way you plan. So I would be open to that as well. Montana Funk (22:49): Yeah, I like that point that it also shows you're human. If you make these mistakes or slip upon your words or make a joke, it shows to the client, okay, this person's not just a robot with this canon speech that they give to every single person. Jared Correia (23:02): You make a joke, somebody doesn't laugh at it Montana Funk (23:05): And you're like, oh, that did not land. Yeah, Jared Correia (23:08): Just say that. Be like, I guess I'll have to rewrite that one. Montana Funk (23:14): There's always, Jared Correia (23:14): Yeah, there's always ways to, or my cat like that one. There's always ways to maneuver around this. I think it's continuing to push, continuing to improve, and really to me, I'd rather make my mistakes early in my career than just not get enough reps and make my mistakes eight to 10 years in. I want to be a machine when it comes to networking, when I'm like eight to 10 years in when I'm hitting my prime. And you got to get reps in to figure that out. That's just way it goes. It happens to everybody. So I would tell people, don't be too hard on yourself. Then you go down the rabbit hole of perfectionism, which is a bad Montana Funk (23:53): Scene. Do you think on the flip side of the coin, there's anything on social media for those whose presence is solely on social media that they should avoid doing? Jared Correia (24:01): I dunno. You hear a lot about don't talk about politics. You hear a lot about, I would even have some people say like, oh, if you're from Cincinnati, don't talk about the fact that you like the Bengals or whatever, because there might be people who like other NFL teams. To me, it should be based on your authenticity. You should be the person you are every day in the way that you market. Because the problem is, if you're not doing that, if we take that to its logical extension, you're lying about yourself (24:36): And it's tough to keep track of the lies, really. So I would be the person that you are. I would lean into the things that you like and enjoy. I would talk about the things you want to talk about. I think there's this notion out there that, oh, everyone has to love me. Well, I have terrible news for you. Not everyone's going to love you. And if you start to get a broad audience, there's going to be a lot of haters out there and sometimes they're just doing it to be jerks. And you have to be okay with that. And if you lean into something, I think there are going to be a higher percentage of people that actually like you and get invested in what you're doing. If you're authentic about it, then people who are looking for, Nope, here's the deal. Nobody's looking for a carefully curated internet personality. They're just not. Montana Funk (25:25): That's Chet g Jared Correia (25:25): Bt, right? Yeah. You don't want to sound like an ai. You want to be pretty authentic because you're going to stand out from the crowd that way. And will you turn some people off? Yes, but that's okay because they wouldn't have been into you anyway. Because what's going to happen when you meet them offline? They're going to see who you really are and they're going to be like, oh, I actually hate this person. I'd rather know ahead of time, hate me online so you don't have to meet me in person. Montana Funk (25:50): Yeah, I mean, yeah, you wouldn't want to be somebody that you're not. And then you show up to take these people to lunch and all of a sudden they're like, whoa, this is not what I was expecting. And it's awkward and you all sit there just staring at each other. You don't want Jared Correia (26:03): That. I'd rather wear my ripped t-shirt online than show up and wearing my ripped t-shirt online to a networking meeting when the expectation was I'm going to have a tuxedo on and be a super polished dude. Montana Funk (26:15): Yeah, Jared Correia (26:16): Exactly. Montana Funk (26:18): I know that this is happening, but what are the trends that you're seeing right now with this development of AI chat, GPT in the market? Things are evolving every single day. So what are those biggest challenges that you're seeing that these young lawyers should be prepared to get ahead of? Jared Correia (26:34): Well, so two things I would tell you about that, and we can expand on it if you want to. Don't ever use the AI to draft your stuff for you. It's not very good, and it sounds robotic and people can tell. And the problem is, this is in your face all the time. You're in a software at work, it's like, would you like AI to draft this? You're on LinkedIn, LinkedIn's like, would you like us to draft your post using ai? And he start writing stuff and it's like, would you like us to edit this post using ai? And I'm like, no, I would not like you to do that. In fact, now the other thing that's really interesting here is if you're somebody who wants to do web-based marketing and you're going to start putting content out there, what's really cool about that is that content has been, the primacy of online content has actually expanded recently, and it's a great way to get into AI-based searches. (27:27): I think a lot of people think, okay, if I'm going to find a lawyer, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have, I'm get a referral to that person, and then the very next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to Google them or I'm going to Google a certain type of law and look for an attorney. But that's not always how it goes down. People are doing in-app search, people are using AI-based searches. So a lot of people might look for a lawyer on perplexity or somebody might go on LinkedIn and look for a lawyer. So this notion of generating useful content, posting it in a number of different places, maybe appearing in an AI overview in Google, which is not a paid ad, that's an organic result that's going to be at the top of the search results. You got to start thinking about this and how your content program could take advantage of that. (28:21): When I talk about your content program, and I think if people are listening, they might be like, well, I work for a big firm. I don't have a content program, but you should put stuff out on your own that maybe your firm can publish, maybe you can do on your own. The more of a personalized web presence you have, the better. And there's more places that's going to show up because of all these AI tools and all these AI tools are focused primarily on content. So if you're a new lawyer and you're not thinking of that, that's something you should absolutely be thinking of. I know I took that in totally two different directions. Montana Funk (28:53): No, I mean that's kind of what I wanted you to talk about. I don't know if you've noticed, this is something that I've even noticed with AI is if I'm sending professional work emails now, it'll send me a synopsis before I even open their response of, it'll say contract crime theft. It breaks it down into subject, you open it. It's not at all Jared Correia (29:12): Ai it here how you might reply to what Jerry has said to you, Montana Funk (29:18): Right? And people can tell, at least I think that people can tell. And like you were saying, I think it's important Jared Correia (29:23): People can tell, Montana Funk (29:24): Right? Because people I think are going to use, or I think some people are going to want to use AI and chat G, maybe write their bio, maybe like, oh, write this synopsis about me. Is it really accurate? Oh, they're going Jared Correia (29:35): To want that, Montana Funk (29:35): Right? Or are you then going to face the issue that you were talking about where they find your online presence meet you in person? It's not the same at all. Right? Jared Correia (29:45): Well, the problem with AI right now is it's still a little uncanny valley. I can tell that it's ai. So I know I'm telling people not to use ai. No one's going to listen to me. Everyone's going to use ai. So if you use AI to produce any type of content, I would definitely put your own spin on that. And I would do that in two ways. So I would look at what ability I have within the software to change the tone. If I want to be a little sarcastic, I'll tell the AI to be a little sarcastic. I can regulate the tone that's used via an ai, and then you should read everything that an AI has produced and then edit it yourself before you get to a final version. Some tells on M dash is like AI uses M dash all the time. A lot of people don't write that way, and if you don't write that way, it's going to look a little unusual. So there are a bunch of tells. I would just dive into those and then anything that I put out should be something that I finalize. It's similar to if you've got an admin person or paralegal who's drafting something for you, you would revise that before it goes out. Think of AI as an assistant. Yeah. Montana Funk (30:54): Do you think there's things that you should be looking for on the flip side when you're looking at clients to make sure that their information is not full AI generated? Jared Correia (31:02): I don't know. Unless it's reflective of something that would need to be managed on a substantive legal side. I don't really care if my clients are communicating with me on ai. I don't think that's an issue for people. I mean, I guess from the standpoint of efficiency, if I'm an attorney, I'd rather my clients didn't do that because if it's, it's funny, this is one of the issues is that I think a lot of the communication is going to start becoming just bots talking to each other. Montana Funk (31:36): I know. Jared Correia (31:37): And humans standing on the sidelines and trying to get it Montana Funk (31:39): Somewhere watching it fake type. Jared Correia (31:42): Yeah. So if my client is obviously sending me AI messages constantly and I have to call them and be like, Theresa, what the hell are you talking about here? I might have a conversation and be like, Hey, stop sending me AI emails. I know they're AI emails. Just pick up the phone and talk to me. That'll be a whole lot easier. But this is going to become a recurring problem like five years from now, two years from now, one year from now, we may just have AI avatars doing this podcast. Montana Funk (32:12): Oh gosh. I really do feel like, I mean, even you go online now and you see people arguing and comments on videos of if it's AI or not, and getting so intense about it. And it's like the girl's eating glass. She's eating glass fruit. We know. Please, why are you? So I think that it is something to be aware of. As you said, it's going to continue to develop. And I want to ask you one more question before we end the podcast. I do think this is important with the AI issue that we're facing. If you could tell young lawyers one piece of advice to stay ahead of the competition and stand out and make themselves and authentic selves known over their competitor, what would be your advice be for that Jared Correia (32:53): AI division or non-AI division? I just think of Wally, where, Montana Funk (33:00): Oh, I hate that movie. Jared Correia (33:01): Everybody's in. Montana Funk (33:03): It's so uncomfortable. That movie, Jared Correia (33:05): Everybody's sitting in their chairs, drinking big gulps and the AI are just doing all the work. That's where we're probably headed, unfortunately. So if you want to stand out AI division, so I think it's mostly about prompting. If you're going to use an AI and you want it to do unique things on your behalf, you have to kind of give it a little bit of a push. And when I talk about AI a lot, I talk about AI is like kids, right? So if I tell my kids clean the counter, they're going to do a terrible job of it, if that's all I say. But if I'm very specific and I'm like, do this part. Take plates, put whatever food waste needs to go into the trash, put in the sink, wash it off, put it in the dishwasher, close it. I have to give step-by-step instructions. You have to do the same thing for ai. So let's say you're using AI to draft some communications. I think I would be experimenting with the prompts. So I might say, Hey, I want you to draft a blog post for me on this topic, but give me three different versions Montana Funk (34:17): Of Jared Correia (34:17): It. One's going to have this tone, one's going to have that tone, one's going to have this tone, and then I want you to have a really unusual call to action at the end. Something like that. I will get into an AI tool and I'll be like, do this for me. And then I'll be like, get weird. And I get good results with that. That's the first thing I would say. non-AI division. I like a shtick actually. I like a good shtick. Montana Funk (34:41): Oh, me too. Jared Correia (34:42): So if you could come up with stuff that's memorable, that is specific to you, I think that's helpful. I have always tried to overlay music stuff in what I do. So when I used to write content, which I never write anything anymore because it's so much easier to just talk like this, I would just make musical recommendations. I would take liner notes that they used to have on record albums, and I would put that, I would be like, Hey, here are five songs that you can listen to in this category in the podcast I do now, I will sometimes do album reviews. And it's funny because people are like, oh, that's the dude who does the album reviews. (35:21): And then they're like, oh, well he's also really useful if I need these things. So that kind of stuff. It doesn't even have to be legal specific. That can become a really memorable thing that you do. And I've had people send me mixed CDs back in the day and playlists on Spotify, and they're like, oh, I don't know if you've heard this before. Take a listen to this artist. Or This is a new single that you might like. That kind of thing. Because I talked about before, if somebody is going to be in a position where they want to hand you work, they've probably seen you do something like 10 or 12 times. And that's just another thing that somebody else isn't doing. So it's super memorable. Montana Funk (36:04): I like that. I make yourself memorable. And I mean, I love shtick too. I feel like I'm always in a bit, which probably annoys everything. I feel Jared Correia (36:10): Like you need a bit, Montana Funk (36:11): You do need Jared Correia (36:11): A bit. Yes, Montana Funk (36:12): You do. I don't know necessarily what it has to be per person, but make it something you're comfortable doing. Jared Correia (36:17): Let me just say, if you're somebody who's listening to this and you don't have an ongoing bit, it's past time to develop one. Montana Funk (36:22): Yeah, being in constant bit is my favorite, Jared Correia (36:25): Right? Yes, absolutely. I Montana Funk (36:26): Love that. Well, I really appreciate all that. I do want you to tell our listeners where they can find you so that they have follow up questions, song recommendations, whatever it may be, how can they reach out to you? Jared Correia (36:36): Always looking for song recommendations, artist recommendations. Send it my way. You can Google me Jared Correia, or you can go to my website, which is red cave legal.com. It's pretty easy. I'm Montana Funk (36:47): Available. Speaking of the Hills, right? The caves. Jared Correia (36:50): Oh, it's a whole bit too. That's like Play-Doh, allegory, the cave. We can get into that some other time. The forms. Montana Funk (36:58): Well, I appreciate you coming on so much, and thank you for this. This has been a great conversation. Jared Correia (37:03): I had fun. Thanks for having me. Montana Funk (37:05): Well, listeners, that's our show. Thank you as always for tuning in. If you like what you heard today, please recommend us to a friend. You know that you can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts. Until next time, I'm your host Montana Funk, and you've been listening to Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the ABA Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine Media.