If you want to establish a reputation in your niche and expand your firm’s reach, investing in professional legal podcast production is a strong move. Long-time legal podcast producer Evan Dicharry addresses the benefits and realities of podcasting.
Highlights
- A law firm podcast is a clear representation of you as a professional and a person. It can be shared broadly and repurposed to meet your target audience where they are consuming content.
- It’s a multipurpose marketing engine. A single podcast episode can be repurposed into social media clips, blog posts, and direct relationship-building tools.
- Mind the Zoom tax. Relying on Zoom to record your podcast can compromise the professionalism of your audio and video content and undermine your brand.
- Understand the value of a true production partner. Working with a professional podcast production company —not just an AI button-pusher—protects your overall investment and reputation, and ensures a polished final product.
Should You Use Zoom for Your Podcast (Trick Question)
How many hours a week do you spend on Zoom? If you are like most attorneys, it’s a significant portion of your billable life. We’ve all grown comfortable there. Maybe so comfortable we forget Zoom video doesn’t really sound or look good. To ensure your calls enjoy that quick, near-instant communication, Zoom heavily processes your audio and video, which comes with sacrifices. And even after all that, internet hiccups and congestion frequently lead to glitches, variable quality, lost words, and worse.
Yet, when law firms look to increase their brand awareness through YouTube videos and podcasts, a surprising number of them rely on Zoom as their recording platform.
If you’re trying to convince your prospective clients that you’re worth hiring — that you’re worth your rate— you can’t have your output undermining you. Thankfully, with a little help, you can grow your brand with meaningful, high-quality audio and video content.
1. Should You Start a Podcast?
We’re all familiar with content marketing as a way to get your name out there. Maybe you write thought leadership pieces or speak at tradeshows and CLE conferences. Perhaps you spend a fair amount of time building networks on LinkedIn and elsewhere. But for all the good these projects can afford, they each lack something.
Articles and Substack newsletters can capture your tone and deliver your message, but they don’t feel like a direct channel to you as a person. CLEs and conferences tend to be locked behind paywalls or limited in their target audiences. But a dedicated podcast — both audio and video — is a permanent and clear representation of you as a person and as a professional. And, especially since over half of Americans now consume podcasts monthly, your show can be shared broadly and repurposed to meet your target audience exactly where they prefer to watch, read or listen.
When considering whether a podcast is worth doing, don’t look at it as just one project, but the source of many assets and opportunities. Need short-form content for your social platforms? Pull it from your podcast. Need content for a blog post? Leverage your podcast transcript to get you most of the way there. Want an inroad to a new client or to ensure an existing client feels engaged? Invite them on your show and help them get heard.
2. Podcasting Sounds Like a Lot of Work; Is It Worth It?
Podcasting is a lot of work, but it doesn’t all have to be work you do. Investing in professional legal podcast production early on will make all the difference.
While many think of a podcast producer as someone who will just take your recordings, clean them up, and get them live, the role can and should be much more than that. Otherwise, you’re probably just wasting your time and money. With a good production partner, your show can go through a development process that ensures a clean, compelling format that works to your strengths and meets your time availability. A partner can help you refine your hosting technique, advise and train you on proper gear, and help you understand how to craft your show to fit your target demographic.
With the increased availability of AI tools, there’s no shortage of people willing to hold themselves out as professional audio engineers. They’ll charge you and pretty much just hit a few buttons … and the final product shows it. They don’t have the experience to make you sound your best and don’t know (or care about) your show enough to spend the time editing the content to ensure clarity, pace and value. Quality legal podcast production requires a team that understands your industry as well as they understand soundwaves.
3. So, If I Hire a Good Producer, My Podcast Will Succeed?
Success is a funny thing. It’s never guaranteed. Disney can spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a new movie based on a beloved IP and still lose money. But before we can declare whether a show is “successful” or not, we need to know what “success” is.
If you’re not going to be satisfied unless the show gets millions of views, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Only a rare handful of shows do that consistently. But if you begin with a different goal of success—like generating direct consumer retainers, building a massive referral network of other local attorneys, CPAs, or corporate executives, or reducing client friction with a resource that answers common case questions before they ever sign a retainer — then a professionally produced podcast can easily become successful for you.
4. The True ROI of Stepping Out of the Zoom Room
Make no mistake, podcasting is a commitment. You need to release episodes regularly to keep your audience engaged; you need to have something to say that makes people want to listen. But its value to you and your practice, when done right, can’t be overstated. If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities and want to know how to start a podcast for your law firm, start smart by finding a good partner who can provide top-tier legal podcast production to help you set up right, sound professional, and stand out from the crowded legal market.
The Reality of Legal Podcast Production FAQ
*Disclosure: Attorney at Work is a partner in the Legal Broadcasting Company, which offers legal podcast production services and a legal podcast platform. To learn more, visit www.legalbroadcastingcompany.com.
