About Tony Prieto

In 2017, I graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor’s in English Literature and Creative Writing. Of course, you could count the number of available entry-level writing positions on one hand back then, so I wasn’t able to use my passion for writing in my career right away.

I’ve always had an interest in lawyers and the legal profession, since my mother is a lifelong court stenographer. When I saw a position open for content marketing at Answering Legal in 2022, I jumped at the opportunity.

Writing

I’d like to think I’m a quick learner, but becoming a subject matter expert on things like legal marketing and law firm management was no easy task. As much of my training and research went into learning about the legal field as did learning about marketing.

Luckily for me, I didn’t need much help in the writing portion of my training, having learned from the best at Columbia. However, one of my core values is self-improvement; I believe that with practice and iteration, I can always improve on my prior performance. I learned a lot from my fellow marketing department members about how to best structure my blogs so they’re interesting and easy to read.

The best way to learn how to do something, I’ve found, is just to do it, so I immediately took over writing for Answering Legal’s blog. I’ve written surveys on the effectiveness and ethics of AI tools, deep dives on local services advertising, and inside looks at our answering service since then. I’ve also written a few of our 10,000+ word annual lawyer’s guides, not to mention many of the words you see on this very website!

Marketing

As much as writing will always be my passion, I didn’t join Answering Legal just to be a writer. After some time learning the ropes, I started working with the rest of the marketing department to craft advertisements, develop our brand, and talk long-term strategy for the service!

I’ve used my marketing skills to craft interview questions for our guest experts at events like our annual Law Firm Summer Re-boot Camp. I love taking marketing issues at stake for lawyers, which are often at stake for us here at Answering Legal as well, and putting them in front of marketing agency heads and other experts with decades of combined experience. It’s gratifying to know that if I’m learning a lot from these conversations, the attorneys listening likely are too!

Personal life

When I’m not writing blogs and webpages or reviewing SEO strategies, I’m usually on my couch or in a theater, watching a movie. I’ll give any film a fair shake, but my favorites are usually horror movies, classics, and, of course, horror classics!

If you ever have any questions for me about something I’ve written (or a recently released film), please feel free to reach out to me via email at [email protected]!