What Benefits Will Lawyers See From Starting A Podcast?

These days it seems like everyone has a podcast. Now even lawyers are starting to get in on the action. In a recent episode of our “Everything Except The Law” podcast, we welcomed Robert Ingalls, the Chief Podcast Strategist at LawPods. He explained why attorneys may be best served using their podcast to answer FAQs, and how doing so can make it easier for their firm to attract new clients.

Check out the clip below to learn more about the benefits of podcasting for law firms.

You can also check out a transcript of the conversation below:

Host Nick Werker:

If a lawyer comes to you and asks you the question why should i start a podcast, like what is it going to do for me, what do you tell them?

Robert Ingalls:

Well usually I'll start with a question of why do you want to do it. Because a lot of lawyers will start with it, they'll say oh I like podcasts, I think podcasts are cool, I should have a podcast. And frequently they're really thinking about it in those early ideation stages. It's a random act of marketing. It's like we should just get microphones and talk.

What's going to happen after that? Who's going to listen to it? What do you want to do with it?

So I'll use a personal injury attorney as an example, because most of our clients are injury attorneys. An injury attorney comes to it and they think what am I going to do? And sometimes they'll think oh we're just going to talk and people are going to get to know us. I think that's fine.

Let's say that you are just the most interesting injury attorney in the world. You're funny, you're silly, you're going to have great guests. People are just going to want to tune in because that's what they want to use their time for.

Odds are that's not you the listener right now. It's just there's not a lot of room for that. There's a lot of people doing that really, really well and I don't know that it's a good use of attorney’s time. I mean what, it took Rogan a decade before he really became the powerhouse he is and I don't think that's what we're trying to do here.

So if I'm an injury attorney, I'm thinking what do I want to do this for. And what I want to do it for generally is I'm going to make an FAQ show. People want to know things when they land on a personal injury attorney's site. They're there because something went down. They're hurt, their mom's hurt, their cousin hurt someone and is in trouble and they need help now.

So what I want to do is I want to answer the questions they have. I know what questions they have. I know because they come into my office every day and they ask them over and over and over. There's a handful of questions I get all the time I also know because I have an SEO report. I know what people are searching before they land on my website, so I'm going to make content focused on those pain points.

They want to know, I just got in an accident, what do I do? Should I go to a chiropractor? Should I go to the ER? Should I talk to the insurance adjuster? And a hundred other things. So I'm gonna make content around that and each of those episodes is going to answer one of those pain points.

Somebody's going to get driven to your site. The SEO value is great for these types of things, because I'm going to create content that works with my existing SEO spend. So it helps drive them to the site. They get on the site, it's compelling content that they want to interact with, which keeps them on the site. Time on site goes up, which is good for SEO as well.

But now they're also listening to you. They're getting to know you. They're developing that trust that we absolutely need to get them past that friction point to set the appointment. And then when they do set the appointment, and they end up in the office, they hear you talking and already feel like they know you. You've given them a lot of information. You gave them the answers to their questions. They were in trouble and you made them feel better.

Now they already feel like they know you. They decided to set the appointment. They want to go on this journey with you, and so that was a long kind of story for there's so many different angles for so many different attorneys. Some attorneys want to do brand awareness.

I have big firms. Some of the biggest firms in the world we work with and they really want to be the thought leaders. They want to talk about "xyz" the moment it happens. They hop on them. They set an appointment with us to record. They hop on the mic. They talk about the thing. We push it out. Now they're the first person talking about it.

Now when I go to conferences and they bring up you know "xyz" topic, that's the podcast people listen to. Because they know when something complicated happens… You know, let's say the build back better act or whatever is coming out. And no one's really read it and they've heard what the news organization said, but they want a legal expert. So now they know exactly where to go. They're going to go to this podcast that talks about legislative developments and what they mean.

And so they're developing thought leadership, which is great obviously. Lawyers want to be thought leaders, but we're also thinking about that from the angle of referrals as well. We want people to know we’re the people who know the things. And when they think about oh I have a case, I think this would be a good person. Let me refer them over there.

And then I touched on it earlier when I discovered it, but the network effect is the one thing that I really wasn't necessarily trying to use as a selling point when I started the company. But so many people tell me my network has exploded because of my podcast. Because not only do they talk about things on their podcast that are relevant search topics that are relevant to what their clients want to know, they bring on experts.

A PI attorney will bring on a chiropractor. He'll bring on a doctor. They bring on different people, different experts. You now have family law lawyers that will bring on therapists, that will bring on mortgage brokers that work specifically with divorcees. They'll bring on forensic accountants and PIs, and all of these little things that people want to know about.

They're going to be very tangential to their case, whether before, during or after and they interview those experts. Now they just spent 30 or 40 minutes on a microphone with that expert. They're getting to know that person. These are great relationships to create and foster, because those are referral sources. Sometimes people, you know the PI can be a great referral source, because sometimes that's where the divorce starts. They hire the PI and they go there's something here, time to move.

I’m just scratching the surface on all the different angles that we can use for that. It's good content on your website, it's great for SEO, it's great for networking, and it's just great content marketing. Because you take it you pull it apart, and you turn it into little video clips, with your branding that you're then sharing on social media with captions. The amount of content you get with a minimal time investment is quite amazing.