Ben Paul: Mastering AI in Legal Business Development

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Ben Paul discuss:

• AI in modern business development for legal professionals
• Building and sustaining client relationships in a competitive legal market
• Enhancing personal branding and marketing
• Navigating economic challenges and their impact on legal services

Key Takeaways:

• AI tools like ChatGPT can assist lawyers in creating business development strategies and optimizing content, but human review is essential to ensure accuracy and relevance to the legal context.
• Lawyers should track their market share rather than just focusing on revenue fluctuations, as maintaining or increasing market share during a downturn can still lead to business growth.
• AI can greatly enhance the efficiency of content creation and client outreach, but all outputs should be carefully checked to ensure they align with legal regulations and client expectations.
• Consistent use of AI-powered personal branding, such as automated LinkedIn posting, can significantly increase a lawyer’s digital presence and client engagement, as shown by a case study where impressions jumped from 800 to 4,000 per week.

“[AI is] a habitual liar. It wants to please you. It wants to give you the answer. It will always give you an answer, whether it’s factually based or not. So it’s on you to fact-check that.” —  Ben Paul

Read Steve’s past episodes as Blogcasts—visit now: https://www.fretzin.com/blog/

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Episode References: 

This Legal Life: NOT Another Legal Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-legal-life-not-another-legal-podcast/id1679451845

About Ben Paul: Ben Paul is a leading Business Development coach for lawyers. He provides practical sales and marketing training and coaching services to individuals and law firms of all sizes. Having held senior BD positions within major law firms and with experience working in different countries, Ben is well-placed to help lawyers increase their revenue and enjoy the benefits of a healthy practice.

Connect with Ben Paul:  

Website: https://bdladder.com/

Email: ben@bdladder.com

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpaulbdm/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/18110718

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebdladder

Personal X (Twitter): https://x.com/BenPaul_NZ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BDLadder

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bd_ladder/

Company X (Twitter): https://x.com/BdLadder

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

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Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

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Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey listeners, I know you’re getting a ton of amazing tips from our expert guests here on the show, but keeping track of them can be a challenge. I know that. That’s why I’ve created Blogcasts, the perfect way to capture the best insights from every episode. Each Blogcast condenses an entire show into a two page summary packed with key takeaways that you can apply right away.

[00:00:21] Steve Fretzin: Head over to Fretzin. com slash blog to start reading, learning, and taking action. Let these blog casts help you on your journey to be that lawyer with Fretzin. Now, enjoy the show

[00:00:35] Narrator: You’re listening to be that lawyer life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice Each episode your host author and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin Will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results Now, here’s your host Steve Fretzin 

[00:00:56] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome to the be that lawyer with I’m thrilled that you’re back another episode, another opportunity to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled Rainmaker.

[00:01:07] Steve Fretzin: If you are not familiar with Fretzin, what I do, I do work with attorneys in two ways, coaching and training them to be Rainmakers through You know, very involved program involving coaching and training, actual classes that lawyers go through. And then also my Rainmaker Roundtable. So if you’re already a Rainmaker and you want to keep going on the same course, but just be surrounded by other very strong Rainmakers, that’s, that’s the program for you.

[00:01:31] Steve Fretzin: When I’m not doing that, I’m busy doing this, right? Doing tons of marketing and podcasting and books and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then it’s, it’s almost like a second job. 

[00:01:40] Ben Paul: Absolutely. If you want to run a business and you want to show people and teach them how to do coaching, which we both do, business development in and around lawyers, you have to also show and tell and do yourself as well.

[00:01:48] Ben Paul: And you’ve got to build your own book of work. I think, 

[00:01:50] Steve Fretzin: I think that’s a very, a very fair point that I, that if I’m not doing all the things that I’m teaching my clients to do, that feels a bit hypocritical. 

[00:01:59] Ben Paul: Absolutely. And they can smell it. Everyone wants to know that you stand by what you do and you actually follow your own methodology.

[00:02:05] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Right. Right on. Right on. All right, everybody. We got Ben Paul here. Starting off with the quote of the show. Thomas Edison, who, you know, I’ve seen enough movies to know this guy did a lot, but man, did he delegate quite a bit to, here we go. Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do, doesn’t mean it’s useless.

[00:02:22] Steve Fretzin: So welcome to the show and talk to us a little bit about your friend, Thomas Edison. 

[00:02:26] Ben Paul: Yeah, look, Thomas Edison, someone everyone admires. What’s interesting is my, I’ve got two children. My second boy is actually called Edison, but he’s not named after Thomas Edison. He’s named after the footballer Pele, which is a bit bizarre, but he was born in the world cup year.

[00:02:39] Ben Paul: And as you’ll know, Steve, I’m a tragic, an avid soccer fan, as you would call it. So I just think this is a great quote because there’s so many things right now that are being invented and created and they don’t necessarily. Have the answer, have the outcome you want, but they usually have a second or another outcome, and we’ll see this in a lot in the technology that we see in around us, right?

[00:03:00] Ben Paul: You wanted to do something. It spit something out. It’s not what you’re looking for that time you throw away. But actually, sometimes if you come back to it. It’s actually helpful in something else you’re trying to do, or it could be used to a, to a secondary thing as another use. So I think it’s really, really powerful to think just because we’re so focused on one thing, something else can happen.

[00:03:18] Ben Paul: And I think that’s also true in our client relationships. We can be really focused on trying to get in the sale. And actually, sometimes we miss. The wider opportunities are out there to ask bigger questions, broader questions, which actually leads to bigger and better opportunities down the track, because we’re just focused on the here and now.

[00:03:33] Steve Fretzin: And the fact is, is even if something you try doesn’t go the way, you know, it’s an experience, right? It’s an opportunity to learn. It’s an opportunity to know, Hey, this didn’t work. So I’m going to do it differently next time. Or maybe I’m going to avoid that next time, or I’m going to work off of that mistake.

[00:03:47] Steve Fretzin: And that’s what Edison, I mean, the light bulb. How many failures to get to, you know, to get to the one that worked as thousands. 

[00:03:54] Ben Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Right. And the more you, the more you fail, the better you get. There’s no, there’s no denying that. And I can see the Jordan shirt behind yourself there. And there’s that famous Nike commercial, you know, like I take the winning shot because I failed and it’s one of the best commercials of all time.

[00:04:09] Ben Paul: And it’s absolutely true. How many times did that guy Mr. The key shot, but actually when he really mastered over his career, he didn’t because he put himself forward and learn from those experiences and got better. 

[00:04:19] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, right on. Hey everybody. You’re listening to me and Ben, Ben Paul, CEO of the B of the BD ladder out of New Zealand.

[00:04:26] Steve Fretzin: So I’ve got some good international friends and we love to talk about that. Our friends, the hammers. And we love to talk about you know, what we call soccer, they call football. And that’s, that’s okay, right? We, we got, we got past that pretty quickly, but but we also love to talk shop as, as two business development coaches in different world sides of the world.

[00:04:47] Steve Fretzin: Mm-Hmm. And we, we have things in common to talk about that. Makes it interesting for us to just kind of see how the other, how the other half of the world is living and what they’re doing and what lawyers struggle with and, and you’ve been really focused on AI for a while. I think it’s something that I brought up on the show with a content, great content guy from the last show, but.

[00:05:05] Steve Fretzin: We didn’t really dive too deep into AI and I was really hoping you could take us a little bit further and maybe start off with like, all right, lawyers know about AI, maybe they’ve even like been on chat GBT and type something in, but that may be the extent of it. So where would you like to start with a, well, you know what, I apologize, dummy, before we even get to that, give us your background, man.

[00:05:25] Steve Fretzin: I totally missed that, messed that up, but let’s go back one step. Then we’ll go back to AI. 

[00:05:30] Ben Paul: Okay. So. My career, I’ve been a direct sales person selling actually interest in the IT training. It is kind of relevant today because when I was selling IT training, one of the things I was really good at was selling the training courses for the brand new products, the things that came to market, bringing it real excited me.

[00:05:46] Ben Paul: It’s change. It’s interesting, right? We’re selling that to big corporates out of London. So yes, I’m based in New Zealand, but I’m originally a Londoner, hence the, the West Ham thing. But also that gives me a nice world perspective about what we’re talking about here today. Then I worked in house as many people do for various law firms and other professional services, really enjoyed that BD and around 2020 decided to form my own business, which is the BD ladder, which stands for business development ladder.

[00:06:15] Ben Paul: And the whole ethos behind that. And the reason for the ladder is it’s a step by step practical approach to give people results, to help people who aren’t salespeople, to actually do sales, to help people who aren’t marketing, to do marketing. Yes, we work with some big companies as well, that Transcribed by https: otter.

[00:06:28] Ben Paul: ai require us. And they obviously have BD help guide them and help them, but it’s most fun. Like, as you’ll know, Steve, when you work directly with those lawyers and those people who just need that help and that practical steps and ability to feel more confident, they can have sustainable pipeline of work because the most stressful thing for any lawyer is not having any work or not have any visibility of any work.

[00:06:51] Ben Paul: Actually, that’s the most stressful thing for any consultant. And right now the world’s a bit Squiffy and depending on your region, the recessions are deeper. Or not so deep, depending on where you sit. So there’s more work to be done right now for people in this space. 

[00:07:03] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I think we were talking the other day that there is a dramatic difference between what’s happening in the U.

[00:07:09] Steve Fretzin: S. Like lawyers have never been busier or had more work. And I know that that’s the same in other parts of the world. 

[00:07:16] Ben Paul: Absolutely not. And it’s, but it’s pockets here in New Zealand. So we are in quite a big recession, probably the worst one we’ve experienced for a long time. The GFC wasn’t so bad here because we’re not a financial center like the U S or, or London where it would really hit deep.

[00:07:31] Ben Paul: Yes, it’s hit retail, but it’s hitting all of our businesses. Government has stopped spending. So right now, property lawyers, Not very busy, but we’ve seen quite a little bit of work around kind of sort of the litigation employment side. So all the traditional areas where you would expect in a recession to work, so they’re playing out.

[00:07:47] Ben Paul: So if you’ve got that multi firm practice, you’re cushioned a little bit. Your revenue may be slightly down from year on year, but actually it’s, It’s probably grown from 2019. There was an artificial bump in that sort of 2020 to 23 kind of period due to global factors, which we don’t want to go into, but we all know what they are.

[00:08:05] Ben Paul: But if you sit in some of those boutique or you’re a solo practitioner and you’re in one of those spaces, it’s tough because the work is, the work is less than people just aren’t doing the commercial property deals. And certainly the housing market is called and stuff like that. So that just also has an effect on those people who work in those, those type of areas.

[00:08:21] Steve Fretzin: Right. And that’s where, you know, BD and marketing and AI and all that comes into play because we can’t just sit on our hands and wait for things to get better. We’ve got to step up and there’s still a pie and there’s pieces of the pie and it’s who’s getting what piece and how much and someone that’s just used to sitting in front of a computer and cranking out billable hours isn’t going to get the pie the same way someone that’s anxious to get out and meet people and talk to clients and come up with other You know, ways of building business.

[00:08:48] Steve Fretzin: So that’s a good transition then to go back to where I screwed up a minute ago with, with getting into AI before your background. My apologies, my friend, but where do lawyers start with AI? Let’s just put that out front. I look, 

[00:09:01] Ben Paul: there’s a lot out there, right? And we’re going to talk about the stuff that’s free and readily available.

[00:09:07] Ben Paul: We’re not going to get into the, the purpose built custom software and on all the expense around that. Cause that’s a whole due diligence in itself. That’s fair. But reality, if you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, I need to build a book of work. My work’s down or I just need to want to use this to speed up what I’m doing.

[00:09:24] Ben Paul: You need to have a plan of what you’re doing and understand where you’re going to start. It’s really, really key. Just going back on that last bit you said there around the pie, I think that’s really interesting because it starts with what metrics do you measure? Most people measure their revenue and revenue goes up, revenue goes down and it panics.

[00:09:40] Ben Paul: If you can get a kind of feel for the size of market you’re playing in to how much available revenue in that market. So. You know, if you’re Chicago law firm in property, how much is in that overall market that you could go for? And how much is your market share? And if you can measure your market share and maintain, that’s a really good place to be because when markets drop, you could arguably actually grow your market share and you can still grow.

[00:10:04] Ben Paul: So that’s really important. And that whole research is really important because that’s where you start with AI. You know, I’m here. You can actually ask chat GPT. I’m a property lawyer in London. I’m targeting these types of properties. What should my ideal clients look like? It will give you an answer, right?

[00:10:26] Ben Paul: So you can start doing that whole profile. Then you can ask it what kind of business development activity do lawyers do in this space in this area? And it’ll give you an answer again. So what you’re now starting to do is build a plan. So you’re starting to build some research. It’s all around how you prompt it and what you do.

[00:10:42] Ben Paul: So traditionally, most people will be familiar with a business development, a sales plan, or the dreaded partner plan. That lovely thing that sits in a drawer gets wheeled out at the end of the year. . Now the firm made me do it. Yeah, the firm made me do it. This is really, really powerful and I really follow it and I will change the date on it and resubmit it.

[00:11:02] Steve Fretzin: There you go. I gotta plan for next year. 

[00:11:04] Ben Paul: It’s just a different, yeah. And at some point, seven years down the line, you know, their, their target number four has been acquired and no longer exists, but that name is still going through for the last three years on their plan. And no one’s questioned it.

[00:11:18] Ben Paul: They’re in, is there a point to the validity of that? When you’re creating a plan, the first thing you got to do is try and understand how much time you’ll give to it and how much you will follow it and how much detail you need in that plan to follow it. And everyone’s slightly different, but you can get.

[00:11:34] Ben Paul: AI to create you a typical sales plan for your type of law in your type of jurisdiction and your type of area. And it will be pretty good. 

[00:11:46] Steve Fretzin: And then I’m assuming you have to update some prompts and right. Is that the lead into? 

[00:11:51] Ben Paul: Yeah. You’re going to have to sort of say refinement. This is there. You might even say, you know, so what, who are the top 10 commercial property companies in, it may not give you an exact answer, but it will give you something, you know, you can ask it, you know, who are the lead in here, who, have you got a rich list in this area, whatever you’re trying to target.

[00:12:12] Ben Paul: And if you, and it’s really important, you understand your target audience. So if you don’t do that, you’re going to have to go for a whole planning stage. And yes, you can try and prompt that with AI. I would say that’s probably a stage where you sit down and go, Hey, this is my business plan here. Who do I work with, who’s bought my services, who’s likely to buy my services?

[00:12:29] Ben Paul: What does that look like? Then you can start building that plan. Then you can say, Hey, so, Hey, Gemini, ChatGPT, where do these people appear in the marketplace? Where do they talk? Cause if they’re appearing in the press, that will tell you the press they read is the press they appear in, which tells you if you want to do a content strategy plan, that’s where you want to appear.

[00:12:49] Ben Paul: So now you’re starting to get into granular detail a bit. But you can go, you know, how often should I be writing content? How often should we post on LinkedIn? What types of activities can I do to win work? So what you’re creating now is a plan. 

[00:13:02] Steve Fretzin: Wait a second. Are you taking away my job? 

[00:13:04] Ben Paul: Yeah. 

[00:13:05] Steve Fretzin: No. Okay. Just checking.

[00:13:09] Ben Paul: Because if we’re really honest with what we do in our coaching thing and for all the speedy professional support lines out there, right? The plan. The easy part, it should be replicable, it should be there. It never works if you sit there and write the plan for the person anyway, because then we’re back to that part of the plan that sits in the thing.

[00:13:32] Steve Fretzin: I’m going to maybe not argue, but kind of like point counterpoint here. I mean, so I’m going through with clients a SWOT analysis. I’m going through with them. Who are their targets? What’s their buyer persona? What’s their marketplace? Place. We’re developing an objective strategies, tactics, action. So like, I’m going through all of that to ensure that they have a, you know, not chat, GBT, but a GPS, like here’s where I am, here’s where I want to go.

[00:13:59] Steve Fretzin: And here’s what I need to actually do. And then of course, there’s the accountability that they’re actually going to do it. It’s not going to get shelved because it’s out in front of us every time we meet. 

[00:14:08] Ben Paul: And that’s absolutely going to work. But the linguistics lawyers will like this here. If I do a plan for you, you won’t do it.

[00:14:17] Ben Paul: If I walk alongside you, as you’re describing. It’s 

[00:14:20] Steve Fretzin: their plan. I’m just, I’m coaching them through writing it. They’re actually writing it and then it’s their responsibility to follow it with my specific boot in their rear. 

[00:14:30] Ben Paul: Yeah. So you, yeah, exactly. So you’re, you’re facilitating. Now this in the early research stages and building that plan is where AI can be really powerful and speed up that process.

[00:14:40] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Yeah. I love that. 

[00:14:41] Ben Paul: What it’s lacking then is if you have an experienced colleague or an experienced coach like yourself to sit down and go, Hey, look, I just want to sense check this before I launch ahead, spend my marketing budget. We’re out 15 pairs of shoes going out and pounding the pavements and going and seeing everyone.

[00:14:58] Ben Paul: Does this make sense in your experience? Does it make sense? TAPGPT control its archives and try and claim experience, but it isn’t the same experience as we have, as your colleagues have been for it. As anyone who’s a business would have gone through, right? Which is why arguably some regions now are bouncing back quicker from the recession than others, because they’ve got more experience of recessions.

[00:15:22] Ben Paul: Like the business know what to do. They don’t stop spending. Whereas in ones like here, where they’re struggling, everyone’s just cutting spend on the classics, like marketing and training and all that kind of stuff. Because There’s no experience yet. We know that if you actually do the opposite, you’re going to be in a better place.

[00:15:38] Ben Paul: Every, every book 

[00:15:39] Steve Fretzin: says do the opposite. Don’t cut back, actually make that investment. But that, that being said, some people like legitimately don’t have the ability to do it. So I get that, but it’s, which is frustrating, but the AI, I, for planning, I love the idea that it’s, it’s out there to get someone’s motor going to get somebody started in it.

[00:15:59] Steve Fretzin: And then they’ve got to check it. Prompted, reprompted. Yeah. What other things are lawyers, should they be using AI for marketing to, they’re busy and they. Aren’t going to do this just on their own need. They need assistance. 

[00:16:16] Ben Paul: Yeah. And look, I’d say personal branding and content marketing are the obvious first camp cabs off the rank.

[00:16:22] Ben Paul: And if you’re not using it for that now, hands up, I am, my clients are, why wouldn’t you, right? It’s understanding of what you use it for and how you use it. Right. So I found an article. It’s interesting to my client base. It’s on, on the internet, in the newspaper. I want to post it. I chat GPT, please write a Post for this on LinkedIn, complete with hashtags.

[00:16:48] Ben Paul: Great. It throws something out, maybe an enthusiastic 21 year old might write, and you look at it and go, that’s probably not going to fit with my brand. Okay. Now, can you write it more on the tone of commercial lawyer or corporate lawyer or tax lawyer, whatever it might be? It comes out, hopefully it removes the emojis, it looks a bit, a little bit there.

[00:17:06] Ben Paul: You could keep prompting this and you could waste a lot of time doing this at this point. Or you could say, actually, what I’ve just had is the quickest, cheapest junior copywriter that, that man or woman has ever invented. I can just edit this now. So all that thought process, and it’s very good at summarizing articles and taking the key points out.

[00:17:25] Ben Paul: So if you don’t want to read the whole article, you can actually rely on it to take those summary points out. Yes. Fact check by all means, if you need to, and just. But most cases LinkedIn, you’re going, Hey, look, here’s an article. The key points are sort of around this. If you’re in this space, you might want to be aware of the third one because it’ll have an impact on your business.

[00:17:44] Ben Paul: Happy to chat to you. Here’s the article. Bang. Done. That will take you less than a blue increment once you get used to it. Right? So now you can post four or five articles for the month in about 15 minutes. This is the speed and efficiency side of doing it and getting your profile out there and your personal branding out there and being really specific with it and really understanding it because LinkedIn now has a scheduling tool as well.

[00:18:09] Ben Paul: You can schedule your three or four weeks ahead. So I had to play at this at the turn of the year. I was more consistent in my marketing. And my views per week went from about 800 people seeing it to over 4, people getting those impressions and engagement went up and all the other metrics you want to see.

[00:18:26] Ben Paul: So super simple to do that. You know, 

[00:18:30] Steve Fretzin: with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings. io prides itself on proof, not promises mentality. The best firms hire rankings. io when they want rankings, traffic, and cases. Other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver.

[00:18:46] Steve Fretzin: Get more rankings, get cases, and schedule a free consultation at Rankings. io today. Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. Man, I thought I was a good marketer, but maybe not. Lawyers have been approaching me asking, what’s the Rainmakers Roundtable? Well, I tell them this is a special place created exclusively for rainmaking lawyers to continue their journey of prosperity.

[00:19:07] Steve Fretzin: Our program is unique as every member has a significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year. Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop with America’s top rate makers Please go to my website Fretzin. com and apply for membership today Let me take it a one step further, which is you know, how can AI personalize the experience for?

[00:19:34] Steve Fretzin: Clients of the lawyers so now we’ve talked about the marketing side of it and I think You know, just to kind of wrap that up in a bow, I mean, you’ve got the lawyers have to play with it. You’ve got to, you know, try it out. You’ve got to watch some YouTube videos like do, you know, you got to be in there and kind of messing around in the sandbox a little bit before you feel comfortable.

[00:19:53] Steve Fretzin: Let me just 

[00:19:54] Ben Paul: specific around if you’re going to try and write an article, for example. 

[00:19:57] Steve Fretzin: Okay. 

[00:19:57] Ben Paul: You say, look, I want to write an article. I want it to be roughly about a thousand words. I want to write a piece on Should clients think of when they’re taking a lease commercial lease in. downtown, insert name of city, it will throw out an article that’s pretty good.

[00:20:18] Ben Paul: That’s one way, but you could break it down step by step. Say, could you give me a title for the article based on this, this criteria? Can you give me the content for an article base? Can you give me the structure of an article based on this criteria? And you go, that’s quite good. Then you might say, could you write the first paragraph or could you write the entire piece, or could you write the main bit here?

[00:20:36] Ben Paul: Then you look at it and go, that’s a pretty good, accurate, generic piece. I’d need to check some of the legislation. Yeah, absolutely. You should. Don’t rely on it. Don’t trust it. It’s a habitual liar. It wants to please you or give you an answer. As people have used it for evidence in parts of the states have found out, right?

[00:20:53] Ben Paul: It’s not the way to go. Double check it. But you’ve got a really good structure for, for an article that would probably normally take you about three or four hours to get it to. Now you’ve short circuited that and now you’re into the last hour of editing. Lawyers are great editors and they tend to know their clients and things so now you’ve got to do the stuff where you bring in the stuff that’s personal, your experience, the things you’re happy to share.

[00:21:14] Ben Paul: You don’t want to put that in chat GPT because then you’re putting it in the AI to learn and you’re giving your information to other people, but you want to put that in the article and get it out there. So that’s really, really powerful. And then if you’re really clever and you go, well, I want to optimize this for commercial leasing in Sydney.

[00:21:30] Ben Paul: You can go right back and you can put the article back in or you can put the intro and the conclusion and say, can you please optimize it for this SEO keyword phrase bang. It’s better at writing repetitively than we are, because we’re as humans, we hate repetition, but machines are quite good at it. It looks good.

[00:21:44] Ben Paul: Now you’ve got an SEO optimized article, so now you’ve got something really practical to work on, right? And you can do it and you can get it out there. 

[00:21:50] Steve Fretzin: And how is this going to affect lawyers work with their clients to maybe improve the client experience? Let’s, let’s transition to that, because that’s an area that lawyers may not have thought of.

[00:22:01] Steve Fretzin: They might have thought of the article piece, but maybe not. Like, how is this going to actually improve how they provide great service? 

[00:22:09] Ben Paul: And look, again, you can get into that whole plan inside of what does great customer service look like? What should we do? It’s really also understanding what else you can take to your client.

[00:22:20] Ben Paul: So you can use, hey, you can ask AI, like, I want to talk to a client about stuff other than the work, you know, other than the matter in hand. Can you give me some ideas of how I can do that? Can you suggest an email? Because I want to discuss what’s going on in the sector. Can you write that for me? 

[00:22:35] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and I wrote that.

[00:22:36] Steve Fretzin: I wrote that email today and got it out to a ton of people, but it, and it took me five minutes because I know what I’m doing and I know what I want to write and got the message. But some lawyers would lament about it for maybe days before getting that email written because they just don’t have the language or the words at the tip of their tongue.

[00:22:54] Steve Fretzin: So this is a great option, how to write an email or how to communicate in, when it’s just, you know, you’re a perfectionist attorney or whatever. 

[00:23:03] Ben Paul: Yeah. And look, you can. Use this now to get it to say, Hey, this is my client. They’re interested in these things. Could you suggest two or three emails or types of emails I could write to the client to get a meeting with them to discuss that?

[00:23:17] Ben Paul: And it will spit something out and it will be okay. It’s going to be about 60 to 70 percent there, right? But what it’s going to lack is the stuff that you have. If you, if you have knowledge of your client, it’s not going to know the personal stuff, it’s not going to know the relationship. Arguably it’s not a great ghostwriter.

[00:23:35] Ben Paul: It’s getting better. The more you use it, the better it gets at being a ghostwriter for you. But actually. The more you add your personal touch, your personal flavor, your personal style in the email that you send, the better it will be and the more likely it is to be received well. 

[00:23:47] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:23:48] Ben Paul: But what it does do is really good structure and it gets you past that stage of inaction.

[00:23:52] Ben Paul: It gets you to action, which is the key part, as we discussed in our first podcast, you know, doing nothing is an answer to going nowhere, doing something slightly imperfect. imperfection, we’ll get you, get you forward, right? And we need to do that. So it gets you past that point. By all means, ask it. How frequently should I talk to my client outside of the work I’m doing and how often should I meet them?

[00:24:12] Ben Paul: How many relationship meetings? Find a way. Yes, the likes of us can tell you. Yes, your colleagues can tell you, but if that gives you confidence, great. And then diarise it in. And then when you diarise it in, diarise it in, In your Outlook or your, or whatever you’re using, right? Great, here it is. At the top end of town, there’s CRMs now that are building this in, that are saying, hey, you need to contact your client today, it’s Thursday.

[00:24:34] Ben Paul: Here’s some suggested content you should say to them. You can use the tools out there to kind of almost create your own version of that. So you’ve got a artificial friend, a robot friend, that’s actually help, helping you prompt and know what to say. But always remember that just sending it without reviewing it, checking it, editing it.

[00:24:56] Ben Paul: Won’t be the right outcome for you, but use it as a really, really powerful Help and support 

[00:25:04] Steve Fretzin: are there. I mean not to go negative, but I mean there’s also some fear About ai and not not global disaster fear that that goes without saying i’m sorry everybody But but I mean lawyers have obligations they have You know, you know, a yard 80 RC here and then in the US where they’re regulated, right?

[00:25:24] Steve Fretzin: It’s a regulated industry. So they’ve got to be very careful about what they’re putting online or what what they’re putting out there and all this. What should they do to protect themselves before producing something? Anything AI generated? 

[00:25:37] Ben Paul: Well, it’s your checks and balances on anything you do, right? So if you were using a freshly graduated lawyer in your firm to write the first draft or anything, or write the first contract, would you send that out?

[00:25:49] Ben Paul: The answer is no. 

[00:25:49] Steve Fretzin: Right. 

[00:25:50] Ben Paul: So what’s your process to review it, right? Double check it. If there’s something that looks too good to be true, probably is, it will make up cases and they’ll be very convincing if you want, if you ask it to formulate an argument to prove something. That’s a dangerous prompt there.

[00:26:05] Ben Paul: So find me, find me all the recent cases and cases. Law or create an argument for me to win this case, right? It will create an unbelievably good argument, but as I think I said earlier, it’s an habitual lie. It wants to please you. It wants to give you the answer you want. It will always give you the answer, whether it’s factually based or not.

[00:26:26] Ben Paul: So it’s on you to factually check that. Where you are, you’ll need to know the laws of what you can say and what you can’t say. You can be guided by professionals on that. You can double check it with some of your member bodies. Mostly you can say more than you think you can, which is to say you can give a personal opinion without it being a legal opinion.

[00:26:46] Ben Paul: It’s just how you write it. 

[00:26:48] Steve Fretzin: One of my clients, yeah, sorry, I interrupted. One of my clients you know, had it review like a contract and like make suggestions for arguments and changes to a contract. And he was impressed because it had many of the ones he, that he had. And then on top of that, it added two more that he hadn’t thought of that were like legit, right.

[00:27:11] Steve Fretzin: That he just had to Wordsmith and make sure they were, they were right, but he was like, Oh, I didn’t even think of those things and he was like thrilled that he was able to get a couple extra points in a contract that normally he wouldn’t have thought of. So it’s just the checks and balances at this stage, right?

[00:27:27] Ben Paul: Yeah, so you got to have your process in training and that’s a really good example because you’re asking to review something you can. Check the review, right? So if you’re doing a proposal for a piece of work, you can say, can you review the RFP that I’ve submitted? Let me know. Let me know what you think.

[00:27:41] Ben Paul: Just be careful. Obviously, if you put anything like that in proprietary open source AI, that, that, that all your case studies examples would then be open to the rest of the world and out. Now be used and shared widely. So you just need to, again, have that check and balance of what you put in is available to others.

[00:28:00] Ben Paul: Intranet type versions of AI that people can use for contracts for. There’s some out there now to actually respond to big tenders and RFPs. You’ve got a knowledge based management system, which will turn out the first answers based on you. But it’s look, it’s, it’s really powerful stuff. And the fact that it’s, you know, you can go and make a coffee and it’s Done this work before you get back.

[00:28:21] Ben Paul: It’s really a great time save. What we’ve also got to understand is, you know, while we have digital natives currently working in the workplace, the next five to 10 years, you can have AI natives. So when you’re saying prompting is hard at your next generation of lawyers coming through and those that you’re bringing through in your graduate program stuff, they’re going to be AI natives.

[00:28:40] Ben Paul: You don’t think they are like, I think the example we said at the start, you know, they’re writing their essays and they’re doing their. They work on it to such an extent, the universities and schools are using AI to check whether it’s AI written 

[00:28:51] Steve Fretzin: the 

[00:28:51] Ben Paul: best of the robots, right? 

[00:28:53] Steve Fretzin: Well, yeah, high school and college and everything.

[00:28:55] Steve Fretzin: It’s like, they’ve got to make sure it’s real. I mean, you want to know it’s a human that’s doing the work. And in some instances that’s important, like with, with, in, you know, school and then in other circumstances, who cares if it’s right, it’s right. It’s going to help win a case or, or get a contract completed faster than, than great.

[00:29:12] Steve Fretzin: We don’t need a human to do it if it’s going to be right. 

[00:29:15] Ben Paul: No, absolutely. And this, this will come to the point of all the stuff. School’s going to go full circle in a way as well, which is really important. I used to love doing history because you could read all the sources and growing up in England, you know, medieval history, what’s right and wrong.

[00:29:28] Ben Paul: So where’s the bias in the source? Can you trust it? Is it legit? So all those kinds of skills, like just coming back in, just that we’ve got AI in it. So machines produce something. Is it right? 

[00:29:39] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. 

[00:29:39] Ben Paul: It always produces the right answer based on the data you give it much like a calculator. There is no difference.

[00:29:45] Ben Paul: What you put in, you’ll get an answer. But you need to have that knowledge of maths to check whether that’s right. You’ll need to have a knowledge of the law of people of business to double check. Is it right? Which bits are right? If it’s producing content or even let’s be argument like a university essay, if it’s producing the 60, 70 percent of just churn and words and fill, but the next 30 percent is that person’s brain, knowledge, experience, finesse.

[00:30:12] Ben Paul: And that’s arguably a bit where the mark should be and where the human difference comes in as well. It isn’t a great emotional writer. And that’s why it doesn’t touch people. 

[00:30:22] Steve Fretzin: Well, listen, I think we have to wrap up on that note. We have a game changing podcast, this legal life, not another legal podcast. I feel like I’ve been on that before.

[00:30:31] Steve Fretzin: I have to look that up. I’ve been on so many podcasts. Yeah, 

[00:30:33] Ben Paul: you have. Yeah, 

[00:30:34] Steve Fretzin: I have. Okay. Thank you. All right. So tell us a little bit about that podcast. So everyone knows. 

[00:30:39] Ben Paul: That’s good. Friends of mine Ventura Boga at Nexel. I’ve was their first guest on it. That’s one of the reasons why I like it.

[00:30:45] Ben Paul: But the other reason I like it, they’ve just had so many guests like they’ll they’ve People in the AI sphere, people, lawyers, just a whole range of people in and around the legal field. So if you like the business of law, whether it’s sales, running a law firm, growth, people, there’s something for you. And it’s so consistent.

[00:31:04] Ben Paul: It’s just great to see it. And there are people from all around the world. So much like this, it’s just a really great lesson. 

[00:31:09] Steve Fretzin: Very cool. Well, check that out, everybody. And let’s take a moment to thank our wonderful sponsors, of course, sponsoring my own Rainmakers Roundtable. So, again, if you’re a Rainmaker Managing Partner feeling like you’re on an island, you want to get in a room where it happens, where lawyers talk shop, they share best practices, I bring in experts.

[00:31:27] Steve Fretzin: Around the world to talk with them as well as allow them to just solve each other’s problems and hold each other accountable. It’s a wonderful, very collaborative group. Just email me at steve at Fretzin.Com to get a meeting with me to see if you qualify. And of course, I want to thank our sponsor rankings.

[00:31:43] Steve Fretzin: I owe. If you’re looking for SEO to get first on Google, if Google Ads, website design, whatever it is you need, they are a top player in the space and hopefully you’ll check them out, Rankings. io. And of course, shout out to Sonia Palmer, hosts an amazing show for women in law called LawHer. Check it out.

[00:32:00] Steve Fretzin: And Ben, thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more about the coaching you’re doing for lawyers, what’s the, what are the digits? 

[00:32:08] Ben Paul: Right. So the best way is bdladder. com. You’ll find me nor my contact details on there. Really simple loads of free stuff and lots of articles that you can get your teeth stuck into as well.

[00:32:19] Ben Paul: What’s honestly been at bdladder. com just email me, I’ll respond. But do check out bdladder YouTube channel. There’s heaps of free stuff there and great. Interviews on business and just practical sales advice like we’re giving today, but we keep updating it. There’s more to come, so make sure you subscribe when you’re there.

[00:32:39] Steve Fretzin: There you go. And I think you’re working on something with the AI and for lawyers. So that’s now, you know, I’m not putting you on the spot too much, but that’s, it’s in the works, right? 

[00:32:47] Ben Paul: So, yeah, the book is, is planned. You’ll know more than I do. This is my first book. The book is planned and we have the chapters written.

[00:32:54] Ben Paul: We know what we’re talking about, hence why we could do it. Articulate today and we’ll be bringing that out hopefully sometime this year because we’re trying to commit to that and the idea and I think it’s really, really relevant and it’ll be like today, which is going to give practical examples of how lawyers and other professionals can use this in isolation without spending a fortune to speed up their BD work with that sort of sense check just to help them drive, drive their growth and then they know when to use colleagues or external people to give them help along the way as well because you always need that human experience as well.

[00:33:26] Steve Fretzin: Well, thanks man. Thanks for being on the show. I’m glad that we were able to catch up a few weeks ago and get you back and we’ll root for those West Ham United, you know, team and, and, you know, hopefully they don’t play, you know Manchester city too often. It’s a tough team, but anyway, I appreciate you and I appreciate you sharing your wisdom and let’s, we’ll keep in the loop.

[00:33:44] Ben Paul: Okay. Cheers, Steve. very much. All right. Cheers, 

[00:33:46] Steve Fretzin: my friend. And everybody for spending time with Ben and I today on Be That Lawyer with Fredson podcast. Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again very soon.

[00:33:59] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.