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The Simple Website Fix That Gets Lawyers Found by AI with John Corcoran Summary · UnF*ck Your Legal Marketing

• Gary Johnson: Welcome to Unfuck Your Legal Marketing, the show. Where we get brutally honest about marketing, business, and the messy middle of making it all work. I'm Gary Johnson, marketing coach, strategist, and professional BS detector for attorneys and business owners who are tired of doing what everyone else does. Around here, we skip the fluff. We have real conversations, real insights, and maybe a few F bombs along the way. So let's get into it. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude or perplexity for someone who does what you do as an attorney? Do you show up? Today, I am joined by John Corcoran, an attorney-turned entrepreneur whose career is centered around helping law firms build relationships and reach new clients. And after building and selling a podcast business, John turned his attention. To helping law firms get found and recommended by AI tools. And today we're going to explore what that shift means for attorneys, how law firms can communicate their expertise online, and practical steps that lawyers can take to connect with the prospective clients in a very quickly changing search landscape. So, John, welcome to Unfuck Your Legal Marketing. Gary, thanks so much for having me. It is such a pleasure to have you. so you've worked in law, and also a little tidbit for our listeners. He was a speech writer for Mr. President Clinton, which I always love. Didn't you get played by Rob Lowe in West Wind? Yes, yeah. We could get to that story. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I mean you you two look exactly alike. So spitting image. Yeah. But you've worked in law, you've You've worked in podcasting and now AI visibility. So what did you see that convinced you this shift that was important enough to build a new business around it? Well, so part of it was personal. So I graduated in from college in nineteen ninety eight and a lot of people that I went to college with moved to the Bay Area and started working in the whole dot com boom. I worked in politics. I ended up going first I worked for DreamWorks for a stint in Los Angeles, which is where I'm from, and then I went to the White House. But I was actually jealous of my friends who were working in the dot com boom. I felt like I missed out on it. And so when this I'm not gonna miss this AI boom. This is gonna be a massive revolution. It's probably gonna make the dot com boom look piddly by comparison. So I didn't want to miss out on it. And then, you know, for for the last couple of years of when I was working in in my podcast agency, I spent a lot of time focused on visibility and I had looked and I'd realized that our our web traffic had gone down by ninety percent, over ninety percent. And and that's not uncommon. Lots of b businesses have experienced that 'cause they're if you think about it, five, ten, fifteen years ago, it's a very different landscape. And there was, you know, you could just kind of spit and you'd get people coming to your website, you know? Yeah, it's so easy back then. And now it's much more competitive and you have to do a better job. There's a lot of to do in order to get that traffic. So but what I found was even though our traffic had gone down, when we made some strategic changes, we went from pretty much being a hundred percent word of mouth, everyone who came to us was word of mouth, to all of a sudden we got people who are booking calls with us and we'd be like, Did you talk to this person? Where'd this person come from? Look down in the calendar invite and it says they found us on Google or they found us on Chat GPT or they found us from a Google AI overview and it was like, whoa, this stuff is really cool. And the thing I say to people all the time is that look, people are searching for you right now. They're looking for you. They're looking for the service that you provide. They're just not finding you. So the the question is, what do you do in order to match those two up? So that when people are searching for you, they find you. Yeah. And When you and I had a conversation a few weeks back, you schooled the crap out of me. and and in a very loving way. but one of the things that I had told you was I get most of my business from referrals, almost all of my business from referrals. And I also told you that I've never gotten any success from any leads that have come from online stuff. that it's all my networking and building relationships. And you did a search on me, right in front of me. like you shared your screen and you did an AI search. And two of my really good friends, who I'm not gonna say their names, but two of my good friends came up as one and two. And it was humiliating for me. And you also, and I don't know if you remember this, but you also said, hey, look, Just because the SEO didn't work for your business and you were getting crappy leads from it, it's not because of SEO. And it's not because of AI, it's because of what you're putting into it or not putting into it. So can you with being fairly delicate about you know, my fragile ass over here. can you kinda like walk through like like am I am I a unicorn or do most attorneys also feel the same way, right? And they push back on you probably on that too, right? Like Yeah, I do this I do this for people all the time. You know, I I pull up Chat GBT, I share my screen, I take a look at it. And the key is there's a couple of different things. One, you don't want to do it logged into your own account 'cause AI is a people pleaser. And AI will show you what it knows that thinks will please you, even if it's talking it c because you've conversed and talked about your own business, it'll spit back your business to you. So I mean I talked to a guy, very intelligent person, wealth advisor, been very successful recently. And, you know, I was like doing the same thing with him and he was like, Well, you know, I've been searching in our Microsoft co pilot, you know, account. And it recommends our firm. I'm like, yeah, because it knows you. Like it knows that'll please you, you know? So what you have to do is so you can do it, it's very simple. Is do a log out, do an incognito window in in Chrome browser, log out, go to these different platforms, Chat GPT, and then search for what someone would search to find you. Don't search for your name of your business. That's one thing, that's a different matter. What you want to search for is what are people search so if they're looking for estate planning attorney, Newport Beach, California. If they're looking for litigation attorney St. Louis or Cleveland, something like that, you can search for these sorts of search terms that people are looking for and see, do you show up? Or does some competitor that by the way you probably don't have much respect for, but for whatever reason is popping up higher than you? That's not a good thing. You know, that's over time that's going to be really bad. Yeah. It's horrible, actually. And and like I said, it was humiliating when you're like, Hey, by the way, you're not even in this. And I'm like, Buck. Yeah. Yeah. And you're as to your point, it's about what information you put out. So what what I say to people all the time is look, Chechu BG doesn't make stuff up. Gemini doesn't make stuff up. It has to come from somewhere. So if someone about, you know, what's a good divorce lawyer in Los Angeles or something like that, it goes and it looks across the web to find access to that information. And we can unpack where it gets that information. How it decides on which of information to share. But if you're not putting anything out there, if you're not creating information for the web, if you're not trying to get awards and third party citations and things like that, then you're just not gonna show up. You know, it's like someone who goes to a networking event, they're standing in the corner, not talking to anyone. Yeah. And they're wondering why they're not getting any business from the networking event. Right. You know, it's like you gotta put yourself out there, you gotta open your mouth. You gotta say some things and you gotta do that at a networking event, it would be face to face online. It's largely through your website. That's where I would start. And also through third party sources as well. Yeah. And one of the things that you had said, you had given me some great advice where you're like, I'm looking at your website. And by the way, this was just a networking call with me and John. and he was already spilling out information and trying to help me out. And he had said, Look. I'm looking at your website and you don't have a blog post, but I saw on LinkedIn and YouTube that you are putting out a video every single week. And you're like, look, all you gotta do is transcribe it and put it on there. It's that simple, you know, kind of stuff. And it's some of these things that we don't think about, you know, as professionals is like because we're not in your world, right? I mean, and that's one of the biggest reasons why people need to hire you, is because You're the expert. You, you've got the experience around it. You also understand and then made mistakes for yourself because you tried this out on your own business and then increased that. but we don't know what we don't know, you know, and that's that's such a you're such a valuable asset for attorneys because they don't know this stuff. And also they listen to other people, mostly the marketing agencies that specialize in SEO. And they'll say SEO is the only thing that's the this is it. It'll never go away. Da-da-da-da-da. Right. But going back to my point of getting high-valued clients, it has been my opinion, and this is only my opinion, until I talk to you, that high valued clients will come from referrals, which is true. But you also said, yeah, it also can come from Online. So tell me a little bit. You know, I I mean increasingly now I don't believe anyone that says my only come from XYZ because we're living in a world now where everyone from you know regular individuals, consumers, business people up to the biggest of the big CEOs of publicly traded companies, billionaires, everyone's online time. And yes, people ask for referrals from their network all the time. But they also do research independently because it's so easy to do. They're gonna go to ChatGBT and ask for a recommendation. They're gonna go to Google. They're gonna end up not just in Google, but in Google AI overviews and and getting in Gemini and things like that and getting recommendations. So yes, they will people oftentimes will go off of a referral, but there are lots of businesses that do massive transactions and they do it because of a combination of different factors. It it might be a referral in the mix, it might be you know, research that came from their w people looking at their website. It might be information that came from Chat G BT. And increasingly now our website needs to be written for two different types of people for a hu or two different types of entities, a human and an AI bot. And so people might not even read all that information on your website. They might read it in a text based chat inside Chat G BT or Gemini or something like that. Yeah. So The the and words are more important than ever, which is should be music to the ears of any lawyer, right? Because words are what we traffic in. Yeah. But words are more important than ever. The words that you put out to the world are incredibly important. And answering all the questions that people have, you know, there's a big disconnect between what information we put out in the world in in writing and in in terms of on our website largely, but also on third party sources. And what's in our head. You know, and the reason why we so many lawyers are so exhausted and and have to spend so many hours in the day is because we there's stuff that's trapped in our head and we don't let it out. If you take it out of your head and you answer all those different questions that people have and you put it out onto your website, people will either read it on on an in an AI engine or they'll read it on their website. But by the time they get to you, they will be that much warmer because they've answered so so many of their questions have already been answered. Because you know, now with with Chat GPT, it's like a choose your own adventure. You know, people start with one question, you know, I need a business litigation attorney in in St. Louis, right? And then they get they read the answer and then they're like, well, actually, you know, this is really what I need. I need someone to draft an NDA and then I need someone to draft a purchase agreement. actually, really, I want someone who's not in St. Louis. I really want someone who's actually in Carbon Deal, so they're gonna need to be closer to me. You know, and they're go they're they go down these different rabbit holes, right? But by the that's a c giving you a call, there's so much further along in that buying process and there's so much s of a stronger lead for you. Yeah, absolutely. And you you've brought up Newport Beach, Saint Louis. Is geography also really important to put into your content in there? Because, you know, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because a little bit more about it. First of all. Lawyers are licensed by state bars, so they're primarily, you know, most are practicing only in their in their state. so if you have a website that doesn't say anything about your city, maybe it has your address on there, maybe it doesn't. and, you know, there's there's nothing for AI to go off of, right? To to know that you that's where you practice. That's the region you practice in. So you really have to be kind of clear about that. I talked to a guy was on a webinar that I did yesterday. Who had offices in two different cities, I believe it was Seattle and San Diego, and he was like, you know, we gotta keep on getting leads from Seattle, but we don't get any from San Diego. And I'm looking over his website and I'm like, the only place that says anything about San Diego is down in the footer here. It says your address. How is anyone, Chat Chibachi or anyone, supposed to know that you want more business in San Diego? It's it's it's in your head. Right exactly. You're not communicating that out to the world. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean it's totally true. It's in their head. I mean, it's in my head too. Like I look at it and I'm thinking, Yeah, I rely upon my footer. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, like let's say what is your goal? If you want to get more divorce clients in San Luis Obispo and Miami and Atlanta, if it is, you gotta do something to make that be so. So, you know, certainly if if you're a geographically you know, limited if you want to focus on a specific geography, you know, you can create city pages on your website, which is really helpful. you can create content that could be as simple as, you know, how answering the questions you want to be you want to be as helpful as possible. So put yourself in the shoes of your client, your ideal client. What are the questions that go through their head? And probably if I ask you to sit down and write down those 20 questions, because you've answered them hundreds and hundreds of times before, you know what those most common questions are. Yeah. Are those questions answered on your website? Most of the time those 20 questions are not answered on your website. Yeah. So what does that mean? Either they get bogged down in the process before they ever get to you and they don't get on a phone call with you because they haven't been able to get the answer, or technically they get the answer from someone else, a competitor of yours. Who has answered those questions along the way, so they don't ever pick up the phone and call you. Or if they get those answers, they're more likely to eventually find you because that it's like little breadcrumbs that that lead them over to you and then they come to look, lawyers aren't going away anytime soon. There's still plenty of things that lawyers have to do that do for their clients. So there's always the fear of, if I put this stuff out there, are they gonna even need that's not the case. No you know, I mean like you know, when you you know, an intake call with someone who's a prospective client who's talking to you, asking you questions about, you know, filing my divorce or something like that, there's lots of questions that they ask. Sure some segment of those people are gonna be like, Thank you, okay, I'm gonna go and they hire someone else or they try and do it themselves or something like that. But putting the answers to those questions on the website outside of your head is only gonna make your life easier and it's gonna create more breadcrumbs that lead people back to you. Yeah, I totally agree. And especially if you're trying to go after those high valued clients, they're not going to be paying you the nine hundred dollars an hour that you're getting by not knowing how you think, by not understanding what is up here. And I think you were so right where it's like, let's get it out there. Would you recommend like having a FAQ frequently asked question page? On every page. On every page. At the bottom of every page. Not a separate page. So that this is something that people kind of mistakenly do is they lock all their case studies or their testimonials on one separate page. I would not do that. You can have a page that has a bunch of case studies and testimonials and have a page that has FAQs, but you want to put it on every single page. So what wins now is clarity over cleverness. Clarity trumps cleverness today. So you want to be as clear as possible. And that It's kind of law school, you know, legal research and writing one one, you know, like is your headline clear? Are your subheadliners c headlines clear? Are the paragraphs clear? Do they lead towards a conclusion? You know? but then things like an FAQ down at the b super helpful, even if it's restating questions that were up above because it makes it really easy for the AI bots which are crawling the web, crawling your website all the time, to grab various different incarnations of different types of questions that people might ask and y s they they kind of like suck that up into their system and then those answers are more likely to be surfaced when people ask those questions inside of their system in ChatGPT or Gemini or something like that. Yeah. Great advice. God, these are nuggets. thank you, John. so is there like is it like a one and done? Should they be consistently doing changing things up on their website. yes. So so it's like hygien like dental hygiene. You know, you can't just ignore your website, let it go by for years and not do anything. I was guilty of that for a lot of years. And it it goes stale, it goes bad. there's also been studies that have shown that about sixty to seventy percent of the answers that are that that come up in in the AI search engines come from the content that was published in the previous ninety days. So what that means is if you're putting out content on a regular basis, you are far more likely to be surfaced. And I'm not talking about LinkedIn, I'm not talking about on YouTube. Those things are fine. You might do those for your own reasons, but those are not helpful from an SEO GEO standpoint. I don't see those frequently being sources of the information accept those answers. So yes, you absolutely want to be putting out content on a basis on a fresh ba on a regular basis. You also want to have someone who's checking your site to make sure that, you know, plugins are updated, to make sure that there aren't broken 404 pages, which are broken links. There aren't like images that are really slow to load. There's a lot of technical pieces that you want to do as well. And that goes back to the, you know, being as useful as possible because we're dealing with a super intelligence now that you know the best analogy I can give is it's it's kind of like You walk into a room full of a hundred people and you assess people really quickly. You look at their attire, you look at their mannerisms, you look at their shoes, and you make a very quick assessment of people. That's been proven many times before. Yeah. And AI is does that times a thousand. So when someone searches for best divorce lawyer in San Diego, the AI goes out, it searches all these different divorce firms. And it runs a big search on them, not just on their website in seconds, but on third party sources as well. And it gathers all up of this information and it makes an assessment really quickly. Really, really quickly. And so it's really important to have this information be accurate out there. Yeah. And AI, especially with lawyers, they're typically like, okay, John, I get that, but how do I protect my how do I give like case studies and how do I give the stuff in my head while I still protect my clients confidentiality and avoid, you know, misleading claims that are out there. Sure. what would you say to them if they said that to you? Look. You know, we're we're moving into a world where for the last twenty years the that type of case studies, testimonials, proof has become more and more prevalent. We have Yelp, we have TripAdvisor, we have all these different Angie's list, how's we have these all these different platforms, trustpilot, that are surfacing reviews. And I get it that lawyers are worried about that. That's fine. It's about getting consent from your your clients to the extent that you can. I get it that there's some lawyers that have clients that can't do that. You might have to work around that. But I prefer to use it as an opportunity to highlight them. You know, I was in the podcasting world for a long time, and the easiest way to get a testimonial from someone is to invite them onto your podcast. You know? Yeah. Or to invite them in a way that highlights them. So you could. showcase you know your in a particular way you could create a you know be on your website that's like you know showcase it gives like publicity to their business who doesn't want publicity for their business you know or puts it on you could put it on LinkedIn and just you know take the time to have like a half an hour call with them where you sit where you go through you the basic formula is where were they before before they came to you? Why did they come to you? What did they need help with? Where were they afterwards? How did you help them with that transformation? That's the basic types of questions that you want to ask of them. And you can do that in virtually any legal field or any industry that you're helping clients with. And look, the point is you want to help others who are in a similar situation. Right. Even take one of the hardest ones, divorce, right? You know, if someone has been through that difficult situation of of going through a divorce. There's other women out there. There's other husbands out there who are at the beginning of that process. You, Mr. and Mrs. Client, you have survived that. I'd like to share your story about your tips. Everyone has tips, your advice on how to get through that. And what you really want to do is highlight that. And if you do that, they will never also want to share some nice words about you, what you've done, how you helped them through it. So that's what I would say. And th this also hits on what we talked about before, which is I want those high valued clients. If you are interviewing or you're doing case studies of high valued clients and how you help them and what was their issue that they had and what that success looked like, they're gonna go, that's like me. It's totally like me. I need to use John because that's me. I was or am going through that similar situation that this person that I'm reading or listening to has gone through. And it's Brilliant advice to get those high valued clients, not just from referrals, but also if they are referred over and then they see that, they're gonna go, okay, I trust John. I totally trust him because he's obviously helped out somebody else like me, and somebody referred me over to him. It really just comes to this is my issue. How can how soon can we start? You know, kind of big. And and if if you want more help with this. My old company, Rise Twenty Five, still does a phenomenal job of this. My business partner is still running that company and they're part of a larger company now. And they put out a ton of content about this. So you have if you have all kinds of questions about, well, how would I do it? How would I get started? All that kind of stuff, go check them out. There's lots of great advice out there. But this is done at the highest level on down now, where there are, you know, billionaires who've started podcasts and they're using it to really build and nurture strategic high value relationships with other key players in their life, strategic partners, things like that. it's done at every level. and so it's just really the highest level networking that you can do is what we're doing right here, right now, which is highlighting someone and promoting them and and giving them publicity. Yeah, absolutely. And and like you had said, it is at the highest level, you know. So if somebody if an attorney is like, okay, I did some of these things. Now I want to know what should they be looking at for metrics to say, hey, is this moving the needle? Besides, hey, I got these clients in, right? Because it takes time to get that engine going. But are there certain things that you feel like lawyers should be looking at as they start to do this to? I don't it's part of it is momentum too, that they're like, ooh, this is this is moving the needle, you know, as opposed to it's just going into the ether. I have no idea where it's making a difference or not. So are there tangible things that they can look for? Yeah, and depending on what platform they want to use, there's various different tools. refs is one that's been around for a long time, SEMrush is another one. Depending on how techy you are, there's is a API called Data for SEO, which you can plug into a platform like ChatGPT or Claw and access it that way. and then there's good old fashioned Google. So Google Search Console recently added an AI feature where you can look and see your appearances in AI searches. So that's really helpful as well. The main thing I would say is just build a process and a and a pattern of keeping an eye on these things. Because they're only going to be more and more important as we shift. And at some point, this is really really important point I want to make. We're recording this in October of 2026. At some point in the next 18 months, the number of Google searches and the number of AI searches is going to flip. Right now, there's more Google searches and there's fewer AI searches, but in the next 18 months, it's projected the pattern that it's at to flip. And there'll be more AI searches than Google searches. Now Google is not going away. They're but they are rapidly changing. And a year from now, Google, mark my words, is gonna look more like Chat GPT than it has historically. And they're just burying those ten blue links that we knew for the last twenty years, burying them where AI overviews at the top and the links are either at the bottom or they may go away entirely eventually. And so if you were depending on that for people to find you, that's going away. And believe it or not, there are lots of businesses that have done really well in Google and are completely absent. From any sort of AI, Google AI overviews or ChatGPT or anything. And they're gonna be in for a rude awakening. I'm already starting to see it by talking to businesses saying, you know, they kind of say some things that are a little bit, you know, around the edges, like, it's getting harder, it's more competitive. It show up that, you know, there's a a shakeout that's happening where the businesses that are savvy that are adapting to the new world. are probably going to adapt and they're going to be okay. And the ones that own aren't are going to be left behind. It's exactly what happened 25 years ago when s you know some businesses, you know, including many law firms were like, I don't need a website, you know? Like they were like, you know, the last ones to adopt the new technology. But the world is changing. Yeah. I mean, and that's why this world needs people like you, John. I mean, seriously, because you You do put out so im much information out there to help people to understand that there is a monumental shift that is going on right now. It's not like it will be going on. It is going on right now and don't get left behind. Sort of like what you did when you got left behind with the the dot com era where you're like, shit, I shouldn't be in the in the White House. I need to be in, you know. I ain't gonna miss that one again. Like it ain't gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah. You see it you see it happening right now. It's unfolding in front of our very eyes. And, you know, I do you try and kinda like shake the trees with people and be like, You gotta pay attention to this. This is really gonna affect you because it's gonna be harder to catch up you know, the more people wait behind this and you know, others are gonna get ahead. Absolutely. So, John, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And if anybody wants to get a hold of you we're gonna put in all of your contact information in the notes because I typically go, what was that? they just said their email address. But just listen to what John has said. He has given so many nuggets and you know that there is so much more to it that if you are even sniffing around going, should I do this for my law firm, give him a call, reach out to him. You can obviously tell he's not going to be like, I'm going to shove this down your throat, you know. He's not like, and this is no dig to SEO people, but like an SEO person, like the good old days. but extremely intelligent, knows what's going on, was a lawyer so he understands you, and really reach out to him and have that conversation so that you don't get left behind, because then you're gonna be regretting it. So, John, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your time and all of your wisdom that you shared with us and yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for serving the legal profession. I mean, I w practice for many years. and it can be in hard. I mean like one of the hardest businesses I ran 'cause you you're doing the work and you gotta drum up the work. And trying to balance those two is hard, you know, and that That's that's why bigger firms pop up and you create segmentation and one guy's a rainmaker and the other guy's staying in the office all the time doing the actual work, you know, makes it easier on people in some ways. so yeah, but thank you for doing this. it's always my pleasure. Even though people go, Why do you work with those? I'm like, not all attorneys are assholes. There's lots of nice lawyers, that's true. There's a ton, majority are. So it's always a pleasure. So yeah. Thank you again, John. Cool. Thanks, Harry. That's it for today's episode of Unfuck Your Legal Marketing. If you got a spark of inspiration, learned something new, or at least got a good laugh, make sure to follow, rate, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. Thanks for hanging out with me. And remember, the best marketing is the one that actually sounds like you. See you next time.