AttorneySync

President

Legal Talk Network

Co Host

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit
Bellagio Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV 09/22/25 – 09/24/25

The Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit is where legal marketing’s most creative minds, sharpest strategists, and boldest voices unite to rethink how law firms grow.

Gyi Tsakalakis

Helping business leaders exceed marketing objectives with digital media. Digital marketing strategy. Web design & development. Search engine optimization (SEO). Paid search engine marketing (SEM). Local SEO.Licensed Michigan attorney (not practicing). Helping businesses put their best foot forward online. Founder at AttorneySync online legal marketing & EPL Digital. An unhealthy obsession with Michigan football. Moz Local trusted provider. Avvo SEO partner company. Contributor to Moz Local Search Engine Ranking Factor survey. Google certified partner.

Helping law firms hit growth goals.

The local SEO community, is the best SEO community.

Back in 2008, when I first left practicing law to found AttorneySync, I had the very good fortune of meeting "the local SEO community."

As a community, the local SEOs are some of the smartest and most generous people I have met in my career.

I am truly privileged to call many of them friends.

One particularly sharp and generous local SEO that I have a tremendous amount of respect for is Darren Shaw, founder of Whitespark.

Darren is a local SEO's, local SEO.

He's one of the people the best local SEO experts in the world go to when they need help.

In a completely unreasonable act, we asked Darren to join us on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, without any advanced notice, on a Friday, to discuss the latest Local Search Ranking Factors Report.

Being the awesome guy that he is, he hopped on.

Thank you, Darren!

Data-informed law firm growth at AttorneySync.

"OMG, I totally forgot you do that!"

Referrals tend to be the cornerstones of successful practices.

Most lawyers know this.

Unfortunately, most lawyers also take their referral sources for granted.

So, referrals "forget they do that."

This is Jacob.

You probably already "know" him.

He helps lawyers tell stories on LinkedIn.

Know what helps referrals remember you?

Yep, it's stories.

One of the things Conrad and I shared at Great Legal Marketing, LLC Summit (and regularly talk about on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing) is the value of authenticity and vulnerability in marketing.

Jacob and his clients get it.

The proof is in the pudding.

BORING professional?
Need inspiration?

Follow Jimmy LinkedIn, er Lai.

That's the post.

"Can I be in ChatGPT and teach ChatGPT to..."

"No."

One of my absolute highlights from recording Lunch Hour Legal Marketing at Great Legal Marketing, LLC, was our conversation with Filevine's Chief Legal Futurist Dr. Cain Elliott.

Dr. Cain has one of the most brilliant minds you'll find in legal tech (but really, anywhere).

One thing a lot of legal marketing folks are peddling these days is the ability to "teach AI" how to globally respond to prompts by interacting with it.

But that's not how it works.

Can you tell ChatGPT how to respond to your prompts?

Sure.

Can you tell ChatGPT how to respond to everyone's prompts?

No.

We just saved you several thousand dollars per month (at least the one of you paying several thousand dollars for GEO consultant who pitched this).

Stay tuned to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing to hear our full conversation with Dr. Cain Elliott via the Great Legal Marketing, LLC Summit.

What are you trying to build?

When I first left law practice to start AttorneySync, one the people I learned the most from was BENJAMIN GLASS.

Ben's generosity is legendary.

I challenge you to name someone who has helped more lawyers intentionally build businesses that match their life goals.

If you're not familiar with Ben, Brian, and Great Legal Marketing, LLC, now you are.

You're welcome.

In an age of consolidation, ABS, national players, mass media, scale, automation, AI, yada, unscrupulous vendors, yada, yada, many law firm owners and their marketers have lost their own plots.

What Great Legal Marketing, LLC teaches is part of the cure.

As we celebrate their 20th Anniversary at #GLMSummit, it's obvious why they've stood the test of time.

They genuinely care about helping lawyers build law firms that they love.

Thank you so much Ben, Brian, and the GLM community.

You've built a truly remarkable thing here.

Subscribe to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing to catch our upcoming live episode recorded at GLM Summit.

Stand out, not loud but clear and true,
For no one else can stand like you.

When is the right time to plan and budget?

Leah Miller, MBA: Day 1

If you're not following Leah here, you should.

When it comes to law firm finances, Leah knows her stuff.

Conrad and I had the privilege of interviewing Leah at Great Legal Marketing, LLC.

How much money do you need?
How much money can you spend?
How do you determine growth goals?
How often should you review your numbers?

Subscribe to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing to get answers to these questions and hear our whole conversation with Leah Miller, MBA.

Your AI is showing.

And it makes me scroll right past you...

Your Agency: Look at all these SEO leads from our work!

You: Something doesn't seem right.

AttorneySync: Yeah, those were referrals from former clients and colleagues.

We help law firms understand their intake attribution data.

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing 🤝 Great Legal Marketing, LLC

Massive thanks 🙏 to BENJAMIN GLASS and Brian Glass.

Great Legal Marketing, LLC Summit was a great success.

If you're looking for people to help you build a great law firm that fits your life priorities, this is a must-know community.

Yes, it's about marketing.

But it's about a lot more than that.

Stay tuned to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing for upcoming episodes about what Great Legal Marketing, LLC is all about.

Want your law firm to show up in ChatGPT?

Educate yourself.

One of the reasons we founded AttorneySync was to dispel SEO 🐍🛢️.

Today, we're playing our small part in the context of AEO, GEO, AI in Search...

If someone is guaranteeing you "ChatGPT visibility."

🚩

But don't take my word for it.

Listen to Patrick Stox, Product Advisor, Technical SEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs

Patrick is an expert's expert.

If you don't want to get burned by the latest round of 🐍🛢️, listen to Tim and Patrick via Ahrefs podcast.

Stay in touch with people in your local community across platforms.

That was the topic of my Great Legal Marketing, LLC roundtable.

 Once it clicks, you’ll completely reevaluate your performance marketing investments.

AI isn’t doing this.

Your marketing agency probably isn’t doing it either.

IYKYK

If you’re a Lunch Hour Legal Marketing person, YK.

If you don’t know, talk to AttorneySync.

🎃 But their pitch was so compelling...

A law firm owner wants to learn about the latest and greatest in legal marketing.

She decides to buy tickets to a popular conference.

While walking the exhibitor floor, she laughs to herself about how it seems everyone is selling AI. She's a bit skeptical of the whole "AI replaces most of the work we don't want to do," crowd.

Then she attends the session that changes everything.

On stage is an "AI publishing expert."

She becomes mesmerized by the expert's "research."

She thinks to herself, "this seems too good to be true. But this is a popular conference and surely they're vetting the people they put on stage."

Her law firm was growing fast and she wanted to dominate her market.

Writing and editing content was such a tedious and time-consuming task. And human-written content was just so expensive

Her current marketing agency seemed behind on implementing AI publishing. Plus, this new AI tool was a fraction of the cost of the agency services.

The expert promised that the AI could “write like a lawyer,” "handle SEO," generate legal guides, and boost rankings overnight.

She signed up.

Within weeks, the firm’s site was filled with keyword-rich posts covering every topic imaginable. Traffic exploded, and the phone began to ring more than ever.

She couldn't believe it. It worked!

Then came the problems.

A prospective client called asking for a lawyer who didn't work at the firm.
The AI had published pages implying that competitors worked at the firm.

Then came the lawsuits and grievances. The story got out.

When the partners investigated, they realized none of the content had been reviewed by anyone.

Much of it was false and misleading, some of it plagiarized, and several articles cited laws that did not exist.

Thousands of pages of false and misleading information.

Google eventually caught the issue and determined the content was generated primarily to manipulate search rankings.

Within only two months deploying the AI publisher, the site was completely de-indexed.

The damage spread quickly.

The phone was ringing a lot loss.

When it did ring, it was often about the lawsuits and grievances.

Not to mention the impact on the firm's reputation.

Referral calls were way down.

They just received the proposals for the "clean up."

What a mess.

They learned the hard way that automation without oversight can destroy a law firm’s online presence.

👻

Happy Halloween!

Write the comment!

Go to the show!

So grateful Jimmy Lai did.

Awesome to meet you.

Immigration lawyer helping you secure US visas to start, scale, and succeed in the U.S. | Need a lawyer? I’ll fight for you or find someone who will in family, criminal, personal injury, estate planning + more.

I used to be a LinkedIn lurker.

Scrolling. Reading. Nodding silently like a creep in the back row of a conference I never checked into.

Then I stumbled onto Gyi’s posts about law firm marketing. Every one felt like a mini-MBA, and every time I thought, I should say something.
And every time, I didn’t.

Until one morning I typed a comment… then deleted it… then typed it again.
And for reasons I still can’t fully explain (maybe caffeine, maybe courage) I hit “Post.”

That tiny moment changed everything.

I started commenting regularly. Not perfectly. Not brilliantly. Just… honestly.
People responded. Conversations happened. The platform suddenly felt less like a stage and more like a room I was allowed to walk into.

Fast forward to today: I met Gyi in person.
The guy whose posts I was too nervous to comment on was now smiling next to me in a selfie.

That’s the part I never saw coming.

Here’s what I learned: Growth doesn’t come from consuming. It comes from participating.
You don’t need the perfect post or a massive following.
You just need to stop lurking and say one thing out loud.

You never know who might say something back.

P.S. Follow Gyi Tsakalakis if you’re serious about law firm growth. 

P.P.S. Maybe he will invite me to be a guest speaker at his conference in 3 years if 250 more attorneys follow him 👀 (I’m joking, I’m an introvert and will have stage fright).

Not all 👀 are equal.

You run a Facebook ad for your firm.
👀 1,000,000 impressions.
📱 Zero calls.
💸 Zero clients.

Why?

Because no one who saw it needed a lawyer or knew someone who did.

Now let’s flip it.

#1 Google local pack position for bottom-of-funnel, high-intent search.
🔍 “car accident lawyer + city + state”

🎯 100 people see it.
🗣️ 10 know someone who needs you.
💰 1 calls and hires you.

Get it?

This isn’t about choosing between:
❌ Social vs. Search
❌ Organic vs. Ads
❌ Direct Response vs. Brand

It’s about remembering that attention isn’t equal.

Who, when, how, and why folks see you matters.

Real example:

One of our AttorneySync clients (a PI firm) improved their average position for non-brand queries in the local pack from 13.5 to 1.5 year-over-year.

👀 10,000 impressions of the GBP tracking URL.
📱 55 first-time callers to the GBP tracking number.

Not all visibility is equal.

Diversify your marketing mix.
Integrate campaigns across channels.
Understand your marketing data.

Shift to additive content.

Over at Search Engine Journal, Kevin Indig recently published:

AI Is Breaking The Economics Of Content

From Kevin:

Pre-AI, the economics of evergreen content were net-positive because it attracted clicks from Google, some of which converted into customers. LLMs like ChatGPT, AI Overviews, or AI Mode are not incentivized to send out traffic but to give the best answer, which makes the experience more similar to TikTok than Search.

***

Over the last 12 months, sites offering additive UGC have gained LLM visibility:

Reddit, Inc.
LinkedIn
YouTube
Quora
Yelp

What can lawyers do?

Share:

🤔 Data
🤔 Research
🤔 Client stories
🤔 Expertise

What sources of net-new insights do you have at your firm?

Publish them on sites offering additive UGC.

Better: publish them on LEGAL UGC sites.

This is a core strategic focus for us at AttorneySync.

Need CLE?

Register for Smokeball - Legal Software's Free CLE Webinar

Ethical Marketing for Modern Legal Professionals
November 13, 2025 at 2:00 PM EST
https://lnkd.in/eppN6dNR

Webinar duration: 60 minutes.
This webinar is eligible for CLE credit in multiple jurisdictions (check landing page for your state).

Ethics?

Yep. ✅ 

But also, a bunch of tactical marketing tips that don't even approach the line of ethical gray areas.

The best marketing IS ethical.

Don't believe me?

I'll show you specific examples.

Skeptical?

Bring your issues.

Google Local Services Ads announces Messaging experience and pricing changes

What’s changing?

Google is launching a “Request multiple opinions” feature, which allows consumers to message multiple providers in one go.

Only the businesses that are opted into message leads will be part of this experience.

These leads will be annotated with the text “This consumer has contacted multiple businesses” to give advertisers visibility into consumer intent.

Google is also introducing value-based pricing where they offer discounts on message leads that are based on the estimated value of the lead (as opposed to a flat 50% discount on the equivalent call lead price, previously).

Finally, they announced they've improved their lead qualification system to more strictly filter out (and not charge for) spammy or otherwise irrelevant message leads, with a goal to save advertisers time and money.

So many thoughts...

taplio

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