AI is changing how lawyers market themselves, manage work, and bill for their services—but using it responsibly takes more than the right tools. Explore practical ways to put AI to work while protecting client confidentiality and making room for human oversight.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Frank Ramos discuss:
- AI for personal branding and business development
- AI-assisted presentations and content creation
- Email automation, agents, and workflow efficiency
- Client confidentiality, privilege, and human oversight
- AI’s impact on legal pricing, staffing, and careers
Key Takeaways:
- AI can help lawyers understand their online presence, identify target audiences, and shape more focused marketing.
- Tailoring presentations and content to a specific audience can make business development more relevant and memorable.
- Agents can automate repetitive work, but they require testing—and sometimes a dedicated software tool may be worth the cost.
- Protect sensitive information by vetting platforms and checking AI output against original source material.
- Distinguish between a skill you lack and an opportunity you’re afraid to try; practice can build confidence over time.
“With AI, we all have this tool now that can help direct our careers and our professions, and beyond the obvious ways.” — Frank Ramos
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About Frank Ramos: Frank Ramos is a nationally recognized litigator, strategic advisor, and thought leader with over 26 years of experience defending commercial, product liability, premises liability, trucking, and insurance disputes. Named Miami’s Product Liability Lawyer of the Year twice by The Best Lawyers in America and holding an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell, he counsels clients ranging from global manufacturers to hospitality brands, while also advising businesses on AI adoption and legal risk. Known as the “Miami Mentor,” Frank has written 20 books and over 500 articles on trial practice, attorney development, and litigation management published by the ABA, DRI, and FDCC.
Connect with Frank Ramos:
Website: https://www.goldbergsegalla.com/our-team/frank-ramos/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miamimentor/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:02]
Hey everybody! Before we get to the show, want to just share that Alfredo Fernandez, one of our Be the Lawyer community members, was kind enough to write a LinkedIn recommendation. Part of it goes like this: the BTLC is a powerful circle of lawyers who are generally invested in improving their BD skills, books of business, and professional freedom and influence. For the price of one to two billable hours, lawyers can get immediate access to those established and future rainmakers. Contribute, learn, and benchmark with similarly driven lawyers. Check it out today, everybody. Sign up, be the lawyer.com/community, and we’ll see you there. And enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:44]
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.
Steve Fretzin [01:06]
Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here, and welcome to the Be That Lawyer podcast. I’m so happy that you’re here. If you guys haven’t checked out my articles in Above the Law, you’re going to want to do that. It’s a weekly. Went from a month. I went, Frank. I went from a monthly column to a weekly column. That’s awesome. So now I’m sending them content all the time, and I just did one. That’s what is it? It’s I’ve been watching The Walking Dead. I’ve been kind of binge watching The Walking Dead, and I’m comparing The Walking Dead to legal business development. So how about that for like finding a way around it? You know,
Frank Ramos [01:40]
great analogy.
Steve Fretzin [01:40]
Yeah, and you’re writing for Above the Law too. What’s your tell everybody about your column?
Frank Ramos [01:45]
Yeah, and thank you because you’re the one who made that possible. For about a year and a half now, I write a young lawyers column. It appears every Thursday afternoon, and it’s basically hot takes for young lawyers. I’ve been practicing for close to 30 years, if you can believe it. And every week, I provide some sort of tips for advice for the big under lawyers trying to do better in their profession, their careers, and so forth.
Steve Fretzin [02:07]
Yeah, yeah. Well, those young lawyers are going to want to check out the Be That Lawyer community, our online community. I’m just constantly self promoting. Apparently, is what’s going on right now. But if you go to be that lawyer.com/community, check it out. But this is like this is you know the content, the rainmaking and mentorship that you might be looking for, and having live events with me and everything in between. So listen, great stuff, man. Peter Drucker, he’s been on this show maybe more than anybody doing his quotes. And let’s start with our quote of the show: the best way to predict the future is to create it. So welcome back to the show, Franken, and tell us why you love that quote so much.
Frank Ramos [02:43]
You know, I think now, and I’m sure we’ll talk more about it. But I think with AI, we all have this tool now that can help direct our careers and our professions, and beyond the obvious ways. And we can talk a bit more, but certainly for personal marketing branding, it’s such an important tool to help you get out there more than you would before. Whether it’s posting on LinkedIn, preparing slide decks for presentations, or creating copy for your website.
Steve Fretzin [03:08]
Yeah, things are changing. Like I was, I’ve been mentioning. I don’t know if I mentioned this on the show. How many times are people getting bored hearing me? But I’ve been coaching lawyers for 18 years, and just over the last couple years, I think I’ve I’ve ramped up the marketing branding side of what I work on lawyers with from about 10% to about 30% of the total like time that we work together. It’s not taking away from business development, but it’s becoming more important to combine it with business development and have both, you know, both working for you because we’re such a part of this attention economy now, and and AI is just exploding it, you know, even further. So, hey everybody, Frank Ramos, incredible attorney, friend of mine from way way back, partner at Goldberg Segala. Give us a little a little feeling about where you come from and how you came to be.
Frank Ramos [03:53]
Sure. So I’ve been practicing, like I said, almost 30 years. Worked most of my career at a smaller boutique firm. Joined the firm I’m at now about two and a half years ago, mostly on this civil defense side, but do everything from commercial to products to personal injury defense, and spend a lot of time in the last few years, certainly since March or spring of 2023, on AI. That’s when 4.0 ChatGPT dropped, and I was just fascinated with it. I grew up reading science fiction novels and watching science fiction movies and learning about AI before anybody else really talked about it, and the models have evolved about to a point where they can pretty much do anything. And whether it’s the Astra model that dropped about a month ago or so for OpenAI, or Fable 5.1 that dropped about six weeks ago, and the new models that are apparently so powerful that they’re dangerous and they’re kind of waiting to see what they can do with them.
Steve Fretzin [04:41]
Yeah,
Frank Ramos [04:41]
they can do so much for your practice, whether you’re a solo person or you work at a very large firm.
Steve Fretzin [04:46]
Yeah, yeah, and it’s crazy. And I, I mean, I just had a, I mean, I literally got off the phone with a prospective client about 15 minutes ago, and you know, he was asking me, you know, as a part of my, you know, program, like, am I getting into AI? Am I getting into. Marketing and branding, and and kind of helping people with that. I’m not really getting into AI, but if there’s a an AI tool or an AI consultant or somebody that I can leverage to help somebody, you know, be more efficient, yeah, 100% for that. So I’m I’m talking and thinking more not about like how AI is going to help the legal industry, you know, with efficiencies on document review and e-discovery and stuff like that. But how can we use it to better, you know, plan our businesses to better give us direction? Not as a coach or a consultant, but as another weapon or in our arsenal.
Frank Ramos [05:34]
Yeah, you could simply type into one of these models. You know, say your name, your company, or your firm, and what your goals are, and ask you to look you up online and find all the information, and one get a gage as to how the world sees you based on your footprint online, and maybe surprising. You know, it may not be. You may be not putting yourself out there the way you think you are, based on how this model is interpreting it, and then helping you think through the next steps and next plans, which so much of what you do as well, but having another tool in the toolbox to help you plan and strategize about where you want to go and where you want to be.
Steve Fretzin [06:09]
Yeah. So is that your take on maybe the best first step for attorney that’s getting into AI and starting to wanting to explore it is to just like ask about themselves to see what what’s going on? What would be one or two other things that they could explore that might be useful to them to sort of understand? You know, maybe it’s who their market is, or maybe it’s about business development and how to approach it, or like, what is your what’s your hot take on that?
Frank Ramos [06:34]
Yeah, those are all great examples. You can literally prompt, and I have my headsets on. I literally dictate into these platforms, whether it’s on my phone or on the platforms themselves, my two favorite models for marketing are OpenAI Astro, which is the latest version, or Claude 5.1 Fables, the two newest models. And I pay personally on my own pocket $100 a month, or you can get a $20 version or free version. But I’m a high user because I do that and I do a number of other things. So I use those versions of the models, and I’ve done this myself. Where I’ve in each model said, you know, I’m so and so, I’m with so and so firm. How should I market myself? Who are my target audience? This is the type of work I want. Where are these people? Like in terms of what organizations they belong to, what magazines or publications do they read? Where is the best points of contact of overlap between me and them? And then you can work backward from there in terms of developing a personal marketing plan. I think we all typically know as lawyers based on our practice areas and our geographic reach, the clients we want. We don’t always know how best to reach them. You know, if I was a personal injury lawyer, I may be using TikTok or Instagram, and what would that look like? And interacting with these platforms to come up with some sort of strategy on creating reels or videos. If I’m where I’m at representing corporate America, I’m probably not on those platforms. I’m on LinkedIn, and what should posts look like on LinkedIn, and what’s the intention span, and do I attach articles or put them somewhere else in the piece, or how long should they be, and what should they focus on, and how do I draft my posts so that they capture attention? I have a strong lead, I have a strong hook, and so forth. And using these platforms to help me shape my content. And then for slide decks, for example, I remember last time I created a slide deck without AI, and I can create a slide deck that may have taken me an entire day for marketing purposes in 20 minutes, and it’s the it looks better than any other slide deck I would have created. The slide decks I’m creating now are 10 times better and 10 times faster to produce.
Steve Fretzin [08:31]
Because I tried that the other day with an existing, very outdated. I mean, the slide deck has been touched up, but it it was created 10 years ago, and it’s just it’s heavy and it’s got some backgrounds on it, and you know it’s like 10,000. I don’t know what it is. Is you know just the memory of it is like big on an email. What is it? Not gigabytes. What is it? I don’t know. It’s 10,000 something. Anyway, it should be like 1000. So you know it’s hard to send as an attachment sometimes. But I tried it. It basically just took my stuff and just like put it on blank slides. And so maybe I’m not using the right tool. Is there what’s the best tool for slides, like to update a PowerPoint?
Frank Ramos [09:06]
I think the best tool right now is ChatGPT Astra, which you have to pay more to get. And I like to say I pay $100 a month, but I think it’s worth the investment, even though we’re not my own pocket, and so it’s $1,200 a year. And I do the same thing with cloud. I’m paying $2,400 a year for these two platforms. Okay, but it does so many different things. And so we rotate that slide deck, upload it to Astra, put it on the Mac setting, and say, you know, take the slide deck and modernize it, make it look better, make it pop more, make it flow, create the images so that their AI created images, maybe even create some animation with the images. What I’ve started doing is I created a graphic novel teaching lawyers how to defend cases, and that stylized view I then turned and translated that into my slide deck. So now all my slide decks have almost like a graphic novel perspective or right from beginning to end. Yeah, and you can animate them if you want using Astra. Claude, I think when I. Whenever I see a slide deck, I immediately say, “Oh, that’s a flawed slide deck. It has a very formalistic way of looking at it, and that’s okay. But you can really do a lot of things with Astra and ChatGPT. You can’t use with the other models. And so, if you are heavy in presentations, if you do a lot of webinars, if you do a lot of presentations abroad, you know, when you’re traveling, this is a way to make every presentation have its own feel, have it dedicated to that specific audience. You know, you can upload. You know, if you’re going to a specific seminar and you know who’s going to be there, and you you can upload the information from that organization, you can upload some background about the organization, upload your slide deck, and ask it like, how do I massage the slide deck so it really caters to that audience, and they’ll feel like, oh, this person didn’t give me some generic slide deck. They really focused on our needs, and I think it’s one way to separate yourself from other people who are out there, sort of doing the speaking gigs and and speaking tours.
Steve Fretzin [10:54]
Awesome. And what would you say you found to be one of the greatest time saving tools, practical tools that lawyers can use to, you know, maybe it’s get out of their inbox because they’re in there for five, six hours a day, or maybe it’s just something that helps to organize things, or you know, like I’ve got JCI that’s automating, you know, email responses. So things that that are repetitive that I would be doing over and over and over again when somebody like again hit up probably I don’t know. I’ll just make up a number and say somewhere between 10 and 20 times a week for people that want to be on my podcast, which is an incredible compliment. But many of them are PR agencies and podcast right groups that are like out to they’re targeting me, and I appreciate that again. But I need to have a response to them. I don’t need to keep writing the same thing over and over. What are your thoughts on on efficiencies?
Frank Ramos [11:41]
Yeah, Coqpilot’s really good for that. If any of you all use Copilot, it integrates with your Outlook. Assuming you use Outlook, if you use Gmail, you can use another platform like Gemini or something. But you want to use a platform that is connected with your email. And again, we use Outlook at our firm, so we use Copilot, and it’s a great way to control your inbox, control your opt box, manage what’s going in and out. Maybe even creating form responses to some of the communications you mentioned. I think that’s so important because I don’t know about you. I receive about 300 emails a day. I receive about 100 messages on LinkedIn. I get about 100 text messages, 50 voicemails, and another 100 messages through Facebook Messenger. So all that I’m getting about seven 800 incoming. And if I don’t have a way of dealing with that, then that’s all I’m doing all day, right? And I’m sure you feel the same way.
Steve Fretzin [12:25]
I was gonna say, and that’s how your hair got gray like mine,
Frank Ramos [12:27]
right? So, and that’s pretty common. I mean, we all want instant responses and gratification, and something may come in from a prospective client. And if you’re not, especially if you’re on vacation, you’re in deposition, you have to find a way to automate that, and at least let them realize that you’re they’re on your radar. You’re trying to respond, and they’re not picking up the phone and calling somebody else.
Steve Fretzin [12:48]
So you have the so you’re using Outlook. So you’re using what was
Frank Ramos [12:52]
the not Copilot. The
Steve Fretzin [12:54]
Copilot. So you’re using Copilot, and did you have to set up rules, or did you have to set up an agent? Like I’ve noticed a lot of people talk about agents, but there no one really that I’m like talking to on a regular basis has an agent, and my wife is still confused that it isn’t a secret agent.
Frank Ramos [13:08]
Agents are actually pretty easy to create. I think there’s a sense that you have to be some sort of programmer. You literally just tell the platform what you want. Let’s say if you had email, you would say every morning or every at noon, or 5p.m. review all my emails and categorize them in A, B, C. And in terms of category A, respond accordingly. Category B, just put them in spam. In category C, you know, flag them or whatever. And then you can give it as many steps as you like. And I think you can probably give six, 810, steps. And you have to test. You want to make sure it’s working properly, but that after that, you pretty much set it on autopilot, and so that’s basically what an agent is. And every foundational model, when I say foundational model, I mean Copilot, Plod, Gemini, all these models have the ability for you to create agents. If you’re using a wrapper like Harvey or Lexus, they can create agents in those as well. And it’s really an agent is nothing more than a multi-step prompt that the platform follows for a specific problem you’ve ascribed to
Steve Fretzin [14:07]
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Narrator [15:43]
not be
Steve Fretzin [15:43]
they’re not all sophisticated enough, or even if you talk to it to like get it done. Like my, I tried email. You could tell me I’m wrong, but I tried doing. I’ve got Gmail, and I tried using Gemini, and I tried using you know some other elements to try to automate the email the same way that an actual software does, like an actual like program does like JCI, and I’m just not seeing it as like is is intuitive and is is simple and is just doesn’t seem like it’s quite there yet. I feel like maybe that’s what’s going on and why I’m hesitant and other people might be hesitant to to try to create these agents because they may just some of them just maybe aren’t quite as. I mean, there’s a reason why these softwares exist and are selling for. I think I’m paying $50 a month for this email automation tool. I don’t want to pay the 50, but I’ve tried like on my own and it just hasn’t hasn’t panned out. Maybe it’s my issue.
Frank Ramos [16:37]
Yeah, it’s a great distinction. I mean, pretty much every problem we have, someone has created an agent, given it a name, and is charging you a licensing fee per month, and the question then becomes: Can you do it as well or better for free? And that’s tough. It really depends on the platform. I’m not a huge fan of Gemini or the integration with Google email. I think it’s good, but not great. I think really the leading platforms are purposes of other reasons are Copilot. I mean, yeah, Copilot is good, much better with Outlook, and I think that’s much easier to use. A lot of people don’t want to use Outlook for a variety of reasons. People prefer Gmail, and it really is a lot of trial and error. And I think a lot of part of the thing is people get frustrated because they assume you can just make a few prompts, it’s not working. Therefore, it’s me. For example, a lot of things I’ve created. I mentioned graphic novels and creating some tools for young lawyers. I’m trying to create like a simulation for young lawyers, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours on this. And it could have been easy for me to walk away from it and just saying, “Well, it doesn’t get it. But I can see the progress being made, and just have to ask yourself, how much time do you want to invest, and how big of a problem is this for you, and how far are you willing to go before you decide? You know what, I’d rather just pay a licensing fee to do the same work.
Steve Fretzin [17:47]
Yeah, and there’s the other side of it, which is the scarier side, where I think lawyers are hesitant because they could get into trouble. You know, like it’s not okay. You know, when you’re dealing with you know client confidentiality and some of the ethical rules that they have, that they’re getting into AI that could disrupt that or could get them into trouble. So, what are some of the things that you’re seeing happening out there, and what what are what should lawyers be doing to protect themselves?
Frank Ramos [18:14]
Yeah, so I think the biggest issue you’re seeing are lawyers’ concerns about the confidential nature of their data, as you mentioned, and leaking that data, and having platforms train on that data, and so you want to have a closed platform, meaning that the platform doesn’t train or use your data or expose it to third parties, and that’s a conversation you have to have through your IT company and your CIO if you have one, and certainly with the and investigating what platforms you’re using. And in our firm, we only use closed models to protect the data. You know we use we have a lot of medical records, so everything complies with HIPAA, and you want to make sure you check all the boxes. And if you do, then you should be fine. Don’t use the open models. Don’t use any models that you haven’t done this due diligence on. But once you’re there, you should be fine in terms of the confidential nature. And then the next issue, which I think you may have hinted at, is you know how do you ensure that the output is accurate so you’re not relying on hallucinated cases or fake cases, and that really comes down to you have to read the cases, read the material, read the information, and you know it’s really good at summarizing documents, medical records, depositions, but someone in your enterprise or group has to go back and compare the output with the input, make sure that the summary of the depot actually comports to the deposition, the summary of the medical records comport with the medical records. Need to have a person in the loop to confirm all that.
Steve Fretzin [19:32]
Yeah, I love all that. It’s really important for lawyers to just just make sure they understand you know the rules and then in the way that they should be working, especially in their own state, one of my clients came up with when you send information to a client, like let’s say you know some confidential information, and they want to like run it through their AI to see if if it’s right or if there’s a way to save money or to just have AI check it, and then they’re they’re. Putting that out into the ether, right? So she put some kind of a of a footprint on her, you know, her work, so that it couldn’t be, so AI couldn’t use it. Is that something you’ve seen? Is that something that you recommend?
Frank Ramos [20:12]
Oh, that’s fascinating. I haven’t heard that, but that’s a great solution. There are a lot of clients, especially if you’re representing them in family law, bankruptcies, personal injury. They feel like they can be their own lawyers, send it to AI. There’s been some recent cases that, by doing so, they’ve reached sort of the attorney-client work product privileges, and if opposing counselor to find out, they could secure those prompts and responses and secure the underlying data, which is clearly privileged. But now it’s lost its privileged nature. So I think that’s important. I think I’m more concerned about how our clients are using AI than how we lawyers are using it. And you have to have a frank discussion with them. Maybe in your retainer agreement, certainly any communications you have with them, saying, “Please do not, in any way, use AI. I am a lawyer. You think you’re helping yourself. You’re actually hurting yourself, and explain why. Don’t just say that. I think all humans were kind of curious and say, well, these are the issues that are involved when you do that.
Steve Fretzin [21:03]
No, very smart, and maybe that’s a good segue into how you see as a heavy user and and looking at the big investments that big law is making into AI and and how it’s you know the future of it, and some of it’s scary, and some of it’s just lawyers wondering like how it’s going to impact them. But what do you see? How do you see the future in in six months, a year, 234, out?
Frank Ramos [21:26]
I think most practices that are a billable hour practice are going to transition to flat rates, and I see more and more of that happening. And for some lawyers, that they already do that-you know, bankruptcy, family law, some other areas. But I think the traditional hourly billable hour lawyer is going to slowly but surely transition to a flat rate model within the next 24 to 36 months because it’s just not going to make sense. Because a lot of the tasks in a given case, they might do litigation. So those again from the litigation lens. So many of those things can be supplanted or used or transported through AI. You know, like we mentioned, summaries. You know, often do we have paralegal summarized records? Well, that’s going to go the way of the dodo. Basic motion practice can be done by AI. Even evaluation letters, preparing for depositions. High might take to prepare for depositions has largely been reduced, and so the life cycle case in terms of the number of billable hours is going to be reduced significantly. You’re going to see a lot of pressures by clients making you do that. And the way to stay viable and stay in the black is to say, well, you know, I want to pass along savings. But if I pass along all those savings to you, then I’m really not making money in these cases anymore. So why don’t we go to a flat rate model that benefits both of us overall? You’ll be paying less, and I guess theoretically I’ll be making more than my actual billable rate, and I think we’ll both be happy. So I think that’s going to be the biggest shift in the future.
Steve Fretzin [22:46]
And then the then the concern being that you know many of the attorneys, paralegals, and attorneys that are doing sort of the the repetitive jobs that AI can do are going to be displaced, or is it just that they’re not going to be displaced? We’re just going to find something else for them to do.
Frank Ramos [23:01]
I think a lot of them are going to be displaced. I think some people say, “Well, they’ll become paralegal technologists. Some of them will. It’s reminiscent of legal assistants when I started the practice 30 years ago. Most lawyers had their own legal assistant, or they shared it with just one other lawyer. And these days, you have like five or six lawyers sharing one legal assistant, and you have a lot of lawyers not using legal assistants at all, and basically saying, “Why don’t we need a legal assistant? And may you have somebody in your office that does scheduling or somebody does calendaring, but the traditional legal assistant job is kind of devolving, and you have all these AI legal assistants. I think paralegal positions are largely to go that route. Now, if you’re a trial paralegal and you help at trials, or there’s certain specific jobs, but I just think the number of paralegals over the next five to 10 years is going to be reduced by 50 80%
Frank Ramos [23:47]
I think the need for young lawyers that number is going to be reduced by 20 to 30% and so and it’ll be interesting to see how acceptances into law school is going to line up with that. You know, when we think back to the crash in 2008, and it took a few years for the legal market to catch up with that. Attorneys graduating between 2011 2013 couldn’t find jobs, and then that led to a big dip in applications. And then we needed more jobs, and suddenly, you know, it was like it seems like legal practice never really lines up with the metrics and the needs of the legal of the overall population and what the economics are, but it just seems like there’s some disconnect there, and so I can see there being a drop off there.
Steve Fretzin [24:27]
Yeah. Well, I know it’s it’s concerning for many attorneys and maybe even for the the law school students coming out of it that you know this is changing so quickly that you know while right now there I’m seeing a huge deficit in associates, like you know, from new law school grads to maybe five years in, that there’s so much work, and law firms have never been busier, and they just can’t find good help, right? And they can’t, and then the ones they do find, they want ridiculous money because they know like it’s a shortage, right? And so, and then just to move that forward. Year or two to think that there might be an excess is really sort of interesting.
Frank Ramos [25:05]
Yeah, it’s kind of fascinating. Made a great point. Right now, I think most firms have a hard time finding and keeping good talent. I think that’ll be less of a concern in the next three to five years, and that’ll sort of level off. And I think eventually, there’s the the supply is not stripped of demand, and we have to go back to that sort of 2008 model where we just had too many lawyers and too few jobs.
Steve Fretzin [25:25]
Yeah, well, really interesting stuff. I just I always appreciate hearing from you and your thoughts on things. And this is this is a topic that’s on everyone’s mind. And I know it’s sort of being beat to death in many ways, but I personally can’t get enough of it because it’s so interesting and also it’s just so change is so consistently changing that I just I can’t. It’s hard to keep up sometimes. Last question for you: What’s Frank’s big mistake?
Frank Ramos [25:47]
You know, I don’t think I bet on myself early enough. I did a lot of things in the last few years. I took too long to do, especially with public speaking and writing. I think I’d always done stuff in writing, but I didn’t get involved in organizations the way I wanted to, and didn’t put myself out there. Public speaking was just kind of petrified and appearing in front of anybody saying anything. And you know, my best advice to lawyers, especially younger lawyers, is there’s a difference between knowing your strengths and weaknesses and then understanding, appreciating your fears and concerns. And those are different. And I, I think I had the potential of being a really good speaker, but I was just too afraid, and I just assumed I wasn’t. And so you have to determine: Do I not have that skill, or am I just afraid not to try to pursue it? And you really have to put those in different silos. And if it’s a fear that’s holding you back, you just have to get over it, try it, do it over and over again, put in the reps, and eventually you’ll feel comfortable in your own skin.
Steve Fretzin [26:36]
Yeah, and there’s that that old adage: fear stands for false evidence appearing real, which is made up, but it kind of it does sort of make sense. There’s all these things that we are afraid of that are not real, and once we like, you know, even doing business development, lawyers are in some cases petrified or posting on LinkedIn for that first time, like, oh my God, what’s everybody gonna think of me, and how unprofessional that I’m putting myself on social media, and then they do it, and they get this amazing reaction and positive, you know, comments and reactions of like, “Oh my God, what have I been waiting for?
Frank Ramos [27:07]
Right,
Steve Fretzin [27:07]
all this time, you know, it’s just it was nothing, but we just built it up in our heads. So
Frank Ramos [27:12]
yeah, I think we all have this misconception that everybody’s looking at us at every moment, and no one really cares, and that’s actually pretty liberating.
Steve Fretzin [27:19]
Yeah, right. Nobody cares about anybody but themselves. Nice. It’s kind of true, sadly. Well, listen. Let’s take a moment. Thank our incredible sponsors. Of course, Rankings.io, lawyer.com. and Lex Reception. Fantastic. And Frank, people want to reach out to you. They want to read your column. They want to be one of those 50 voicemails or 2000 text messages or whatever you’re getting each day. What’s the best way for them to reach you?
Frank Ramos [27:44]
You know, just find me on LinkedIn, Frank Promise. I should be on the top of that list, and I encourage everybody to follow Steve. And he has great content. The I think he posts most every day. Yeah. Now you mentioned they have a weekly article, and the great thing about Above the Law is you can go there and they have all his articles archived and go back and look at some of his old material.
Steve Fretzin [28:00]
Yeah,
Frank Ramos [28:00]
which is still very relevant.
Steve Fretzin [28:02]
Yeah, I mean, people can go into the little magnifying glass and put in your name or my name, and just just go down the list. Like, what article sounds interesting? I’ve got video articles from this podcast, and I’ve got my written articles of things like you know The Walking Dead and Seinfeld, and there’s all these different things that I take from my life and bring into you know how it relates to something that’ll help a lawyer. So, but I appreciate that. I appreciate your friendship, and and I’m not going to wait too long between next this time and next time we get together. Okay,
Frank Ramos [28:30]
sounds wonderful. Sounds wonderful. Great time, and appreciate the opportunity.
Steve Fretzin [28:34]
Yeah, awesome, and thank you everybody for hanging out with us for the last 30. Hopefully, you got a couple of good ideas. We didn’t scare you too badly on AI. I think most of it was very constructive in helping you to be that lawyer, building your book, owning your future, and make sure that you’re that lawyer everybody’s thinking about. Take care, everybody. Be safe and well. We’ll talk again soon.
Frank Ramos [28:51]
Thanks so much.
Narrator [28:56]
Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer: 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.
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