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00:00:01
Nicole Black
91 Plays12 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Nicole Black.
To keep up with or connect with Nicole:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikiblack/
✨ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Lawyers-Next-Frontier/dp/1604429208
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Career Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Nikki, thank you so much for doing this. I'm excited to talk to you. For anyone who doesn't know you or what you do, could you just introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Nikki Black. I am an attorney and the principal legal insight strategist at Affinapay, which is the parent company of my case, LaPay, Docket Wise, and Case Peer. And I'm also a legal technology journalist and author. I currently write ah legal tech columns for ABA Journal, Above the Law, and The Daily Record.
00:00:29
Speaker
How did you get into the content creation side of things? What drew you to that type of legal writing and industry communication? So I practiced law for over a decade. And in about 2003, I took a little bit of time off for a number of different reasons. And when I decided I needed to get back into legal about two and a half years later,
00:00:51
Speaker
I decided to hang a shingle. I created a website. I've always been very interested in technology. Looking back, it threads through my life, but I never understood that as a primary interest until this stage of my life.
00:01:03
Speaker
So I created a website for the law firm that I left in 2003. I insisted on making it for them. And then when I hung a shingle for myself in 2005, I created the website and i had lunch with a cousin of mine who's a lawyer in town and Told him what I was planning to do, do work contract work for other lawyers.
00:01:23
Speaker
And as he was walking away from lunch, he looked over his shoulder and he said, I heard about this thing on NPR called blogging. You might want to check it out. And this is 2005. Like, blogging was pretty new. And so i looked up blogging and...
00:01:35
Speaker
saw there was an opportunity to reach other attorneys, which was my target market. That's what I
Interest in Tech and Online Presence
00:01:41
Speaker
was doing work for. And it was a way to showcase my writing skills, summarize cases as they came down to show that I was still up to date on the law since I'd taken a couple years off and also highlight my analytical skills. So initially I started blogging with that goal in mind and I would summarize New York cases and track changes in the law.
00:02:01
Speaker
And then I asked to write an article for the local bar association just for free for exposure to potential clients, right? Like about blogging. Here's this thing called blogging. Here's why lawyers need to think about it.
00:02:13
Speaker
And then I was asked to write an article for the local legal newspaper about that, the daily record, which I still write for. And then I started including writing about blogging on my blog.
00:02:24
Speaker
And from there, I was asked to speak a couple times about what blogging meant to lawyers. And then in 2007, a lot of things happened. Twitter became a thing. Facebook became, went from, in 2006, I think is when Facebook went to public emails versus just education emails.
00:02:40
Speaker
and And those were the two things initially. I think LinkedIn was also out at that time as well, but it was pretty much an online resume. And so from there, I just started to write about social media as I started to use it. And so over the years, evolving from that, I've really been I've always wanted to help lawyers bridge of the gap between law and technology, especially as new technologies come out.
00:03:01
Speaker
So went from blogging to social media to cloud computing, which also started around 2007. to And mobile computing, that's when the iPhone came out. And then now artificial intelligence and generative AI, which are also things I've been tracking for years.
00:03:16
Speaker
So it just is, it's evolved naturally. That's really cool. And I really love what you post on LinkedIn about AI. I want to get into that. It's interesting. And it's funny, a few of our clients are lawyers and lawyers.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's like a profession where I wouldn't have imagined that personal branding or content creation is such a part of it. Do you think it's important for lawyers today to be writing? i think all lawyers need to be able to write and think analytically.
00:03:45
Speaker
All lawyers do not need to blog or use social media. The very first thing that we talked about in our book about social media was you've got to figure out why are you interacting online? What's your point? What's your goal? yeah And is this going to help you achieve your goal?
00:03:58
Speaker
Many lawyers and law firms do not need to have an online presence. They have very successful referral-based practices, and spending time on social media would be just a waste of time for them. It wouldn't add anything to their client base.
00:04:12
Speaker
But other lawyers, especially when they're first starting out or depending on their practice areas, Social media and blogging either together or social media for most lawyers, blogging for some lawyers these days. Blogging has changed significantly.
00:04:24
Speaker
They can all be very useful things depending on what your goals are and who you're trying to reach. But it's super important to determine those things before you dive in. And that's going to determine what you're doing and how you're doing it and where you're doing it.
Co-Authoring a Book on Social Media
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. If someone listening is a lawyer and they're debating, they're like, should I be spending my time or investing in writing, blogging, email newsletters, social media, or should I just be heads down and focused on referral?
00:04:55
Speaker
Do you have any like suggested guidelines for them as they make that decision to say, these are the folks that helps and these are the folks who really don't need to be investing that time or money?
00:05:06
Speaker
Do they already have a strong source of referrals and have more work than they can handle? There's no reason to use social media, especially if you've had a consistent, busy practice for years.
00:05:17
Speaker
But if you're a new attorney or if you are a branching out into new practice areas or something like that, it is a good way to reach potential clients and or referral sources. And that's another thing you have to figure out.
00:05:31
Speaker
Am I trying to reach professional referral sources or am I trying to reach potential clients? And then you look at your practice areas and determine, are my potential clients online? Where are they? Or are my potential referral sources online?
00:05:44
Speaker
Where do they spend their time? And then you start to hone in and focus on the platforms and locations that make the most sense. And then the methods of engagement that are going to make the most sense, given your goals.
00:05:55
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about your book, The Social Media for Lawyers, and what inspired you to write it and what do you cover? and so That came out in 2010. And at the time, i no longer use Twitter, but I had a very strong Twitter presence.
00:06:07
Speaker
I think I have about 22,000 followers. And that's where I, back in the day, that's where everyone started to connect because it was a small legal community of both bloggers and people using social media. And they were all very tech savvy and tech forward. And so when you went to conferences like Tech Show, which I just got back from,
00:06:23
Speaker
you would meet these people in person that you'd met online and connected with online and talk to online and message with online and start to actually develop full fledged relationships as opposed to just when online relationships can
Role at Affinapay and Content Creation
00:06:36
Speaker
be very strong relationships as well. But so,
00:06:39
Speaker
I had met a bunch of people. There were only a handful of lawyers blogging. I would say maybe, quite frankly, less than 50 at the time. Wow. And Carolyn Elephant was one of them. And I'd actually emailed her early on because she had also read about women as mothers, balancing work-life stuff. And I wanted to get her take on that when I started to get back into legal.
00:06:59
Speaker
So I'd emailed her. early on. And she and I were both writing and talking about social media. And she was under a book deadline with the American Bar Association to put a book about social media for lawyers. And she was having ah hard time.
00:07:12
Speaker
She was behind schedule making her deadline. So she asked if I would co-author it with her. And a lot of what we did was we took blog posts from both of our respective blogs and also articles that we'd written and got permission from the entities for which we'd written the articles to rework them.
00:07:28
Speaker
So we wrote that book in six months using a lot of preexisting content that we reworked and edited and added to. That's how that book came to fruition. and It was essentially broken down into a number of different sections.
00:07:42
Speaker
The who, what, when, where, and why of social media. Who needs to use, like, how do you decide if you need to use it? You got to determine your goals. You got to determine from that. It determines which platforms you're going to use.
00:07:52
Speaker
And then we offered advice on appropriate interaction. And we had come up with a formula that still think holds true. and think it was something like 50% of your own content.
00:08:03
Speaker
that was is not promotional, but just sharing information and educational. and think it was like another 20 percent interaction, retweets, responsive things. And then we included some personal interests, which i can't remember the exact form. And then like 10 percent promotional, like it was a very minimal amount of promotional.
00:08:21
Speaker
And the rest of it was really creating content, sharing information, education, sharing other people's stuff. communicating with other people and including a small portion of the personal, because that's what makes you stand out. Otherwise, all the lawyers look the same. They're all writing about the same thing. They look the same. Literally, they all at wear suits. And so when you share a little bit of personal, as long as it's not pool dancing classes or I don't know, something that's slightly different,
00:08:47
Speaker
It can be interpreted sideways, booking or hiking or, you know, biking or people share all sorts of things. And it's what sets them apart. Another CEO of a legal tech company is an artist and he shares his art.
00:09:01
Speaker
And I remember him because of that. Another person I knew went mushrooming. When I mentioned that at a conference once and some guy came up afterwards with his iPhone and held it out to me and had mushrooms. And I'm like, what's that is I like to mushroom too. So who knew there were two lawyers who mushroomed?
00:09:13
Speaker
You guys need to meet each other. And then the rest of it was just the platforms. Here's the different platforms. Here's what you can accomplish on each. And also chapter on the ethics that lawyers need to think about when they interact online. So that's essentially, if I recall correctly, what was in there.
00:09:26
Speaker
I'd say a lot of what you're saying, even on the frameworks, feel... pretty relevant to today too. Like across the board, when Medbury is working with clients, we definitely have, I'd say there's always exceptions to the rule. And sometimes a person's strategy ends up being, we do this exact type of post over and it works. And there are certainly people on LinkedIn where that's their thing.
00:09:48
Speaker
But that framework of this percentage personal, this much adding value, this much interacting and lifting out others in the network still feels very much in play. And it seems to me like you're pretty ahead of your time insofar as thinking about how a particular profession essentially utilizes personal or the people behind the brand to get get the word out. I think it's so cool. I'll find the link to the book and I'll pop it in the show notes. So if anyone listening wants to give it a read, they
Utilizing LinkedIn and Personal Branding
00:10:16
Speaker
can.
00:10:16
Speaker
That's pretty outdated. 2010 was a long time ago. Yeah. in Online age. right. So you're currently at Affinapay. Can you talk a little bit about what Affinapay does, what customers you serve? Yep. Affinapay is company that provides financial and business tools for lawyers and accountants to help them run the business side of their practices.
00:10:37
Speaker
Then Afinapay acquired MyCase, which is practice management software for lawyers generally. CasePure, which is practice management software for personal injury lawyers. Docketwise, which is practice management software for immigration attorneys.
00:10:51
Speaker
They acquired those companies of which I was a part in 2022. I was employee number one for MyCase. Wow. I was hired by MyCase in 2012. two thousand and twelve And it was me and the three founders. And six months after that, we were acquired by a company called Appfolio.
00:11:06
Speaker
which owned us for about eight years. They're based in Santa Barbara. And then in the middle october of October, the pandemic, this was fun. They carved us out, it's called, and sold us to a company called Apex that owned us for 18 months. And then Affinapay acquired my case and the companies that we'd acquired, the ones some of the ones I just mentioned, out of from Apex in 2022 June.
00:11:28
Speaker
Wow. how is that very So what does an average day in your life look like if such a thing exists? How are you? What are you focusing on at Affinapay slash my case? and I'm also curious to know where and how you carve out the time for your content creation and what you're doing.
00:11:47
Speaker
So i actually do have a pretty that routine when I'm not traveling. So either I'm traveling, in which case I'm just traveling and I'm doing whatever I'm doing. like i have a hard time working when I travel because I get out of my routine.
00:12:00
Speaker
So when I'm traveling, I'm at the conference, I'm covering the conference as press. I'm at the Affinapé office in meetings or off sites. So when I travel, i do what it absolutely has to be done and fit it in between.
00:12:12
Speaker
When I'm not traveling, I have a pretty set routine and a good portion of it in the morning is devoted to staying up to date on the industry because part of and then figuring out what I'm going to be writing about for my articles and also then social media as well.
00:12:27
Speaker
Because a ah big part of what I bring to the table is my my brand, my reach, the exposure that I can create for the company and my connections and relationships also in the industry.
00:12:38
Speaker
all of which are maintained through that morning process, which is initially. So my mornings are different from my afternoons. so I'm on East Coast time. Most people are on Central or West Coast time in my company.
00:12:49
Speaker
So my mornings tend to be pretty quiet. I wake up, I check out LinkedIn and see just what's happened since I haven't been there the day before. And then decide what I'm going to post on LinkedIn. Oftentimes I already know I share an article or I will post write about either something that's on my mind, share a podcast I was on. If I um have a speaking engagement coming up and they provided me with information or they recently posted about it, I'll reshare that or write about that.
00:13:14
Speaker
And sometimes I'll write about something that's happening personally. Those tend to get the most likes, whether it's Yeah. We want people at this conference that let's get back
Personal Stories and Professional Insights
00:13:24
Speaker
from. How's the puppy? like Everyone knows we have a new puppy. I try to tie those things into law somehow or legal tech.
00:13:30
Speaker
Oftentimes I primarily only talk about certain things. There's some topics I'll avoid. I decide what I'm going to post on LinkedIn. I post that. Usually I will use ChatGPT to help draft the post.
00:13:43
Speaker
when it's summarizing like an article. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and summarize the article I just wrote. I'll have chat to kind of help with that. And then I spend the next hour or so going through my RSS feed, which is old school, but it's the easiest way for me to pull in all the blog posts and see what everybody's talking about, both in legal tech and in technology in general, and even some science publications.
00:14:05
Speaker
And from there, I will save articles of interest that I may create the content that I may want to include in the newsletter. i have a newsletter on LinkedIn. so that' i But it also lets me know what everybody's talking about, lets me know what's trending, lets me know about new ethics opinions that have come down. And it's just a way of for me to step to speed and also decide about what I'm, locate content that I'm going to write about for my different articles.
00:14:29
Speaker
And then I'll sort through my email and see if anything needs a lot of attention. ah respond to LinkedIn messages and that type of thing. Then after lunch, I often have meetings. That's an all right.
00:14:41
Speaker
If I have an article deadline coming up, I'll do my writing after lunch. I co-author, I author our industry report, and I'm also going to be writing another report this year. So for the Affinapay side of things, I would do a survey, I analyze the data, I draft, have to write the report. And so that's a whole process that takes months. And then working with the team to get it in final.
00:15:01
Speaker
So I do that. I also have to do presentations, both externally and internally. So I'll work on decks or work on my talks. And so the afternoon is more of that kind of work. And I also, on Fridays, I'm on Bob Ambroji's Legal Tech Week.
00:15:15
Speaker
It's me and a bunch of other journalists. And every Friday, we go over the news of the week. That's what I do on Friday afternoons. It's a live webcast. That's very cool. i'm always curious about, especially people who are writing a lot, what their routine is. And i appreciate that. Also, I have to ask, what kind of puppy do you have? Because my husband I thinking about getting a puppy. We're like dog obsessed right now.
00:15:34
Speaker
but We have three dogs. We have two senior dogs. The oldest is a Border Collie Lab Mix. We think she was a rescue. We don't know exactly how old she is, but we think she's about 13. And then we have an 11 year old Australian shepherd.
00:15:48
Speaker
And then we got um Mochi. She's one just jumped up here. She's a nine month old chocolate lab. And we've also previously had a Australian shepherd that died of old age. And,
00:16:01
Speaker
ah What I will tell you is that my husband is not much of a dog person. I like the dogs. He's finally, he's grown to like them over the years, but he's infatuated with this lab. He's like, remember said, why you like dogs the you like him until he got her. And he feels guilty that he likes her more than the other dogs.
00:16:15
Speaker
Like he's infatuated with her. yeah las for the And I grew up with Goldens. There's something about labs. They're silly. They're super affectionate without being too clingy.
00:16:26
Speaker
They're just like goofy. And they're very smart. She is at least. And they just like to be with you and by you. Although they can be like destructive if they're left alone. They get bored. They're like wonderful dogs. I would recommend a lab only because my husband, like I said, he's infatuated with her. I've never seen him like this with another dog.
00:16:44
Speaker
Penny, the lab did it. The lab's the one. And he's like, all right, I get it now. well All right. Thank you so much for that. You've covered a bit already, but I do want to dig into your newsletter. What inspired it?
00:16:55
Speaker
I feel it might from what I've heard and seen, you had a ton of follower or subscriber growth like super quickly. So why did you start it and why you think it's going so well?
00:17:05
Speaker
So when I used to be active on Twitter, That's where I would share news that I thought was relevant. It was really easy to just send a tweet with, and every day I would send five tweets with links to different news stories with a very short take at the beginning. Then when I decided to stop using Twitter for any number of reasons, it had deteriorated over the years, even before all the political issues, before Musk took it over.
00:17:27
Speaker
And then I've tried the other platforms that were like that. They just there what weren't enough people there from my space for it to be useful. So I ended up on and I started to get tired of Facebook and I just ended up on LinkedIn as the my primary outlet, which is super surprising to me, given what I thought about it over the years. It's really changed. They did a good job flipping that around and making it more relevant.
00:17:49
Speaker
You can't just do 15 posts on LinkedIn a day. Like you just can't. You have to limit it to, I think one of the most a day, maybe a repost sometimes. And I don't even do fully. I do about four posts a week plus some reposts.
00:18:01
Speaker
So I couldn't just share the news as I came across it the way I'd been doing. So on Fridays, I would do a link roundup. And i saw some other people had newsletters and that they had a decent number of followers. I didn't really understand what the point was.
00:18:16
Speaker
of a newsletter was and why it would need to really do that. And I can't remember what made me think about it one day. Maybe I'd seen someone else post about it on LinkedIn. I don't know. and i remember having a conversation with ChatGPT about like, why would you want to do a newsletter?
00:18:29
Speaker
Then I realized that newsletters, because of they want that engagement on LinkedIn, they get emailed to people and they will show up in more people's feeds. And so I decided to start a newsletter. It worked out that my subscriber count increased dramatically in a very short time.
00:18:44
Speaker
But if it hadn't, that would have been really bad. So I probably should have thought that through a little bit. I don't think I fully understood that the subscriber count was public and that people might see it, but it worked out. And so the other thing is, if it had not been for ChatGPT, I definitely would not be able to create this newsletter that I create because I curate the content and I can do a quick little Yeah, good about it.
00:19:07
Speaker
But I wanted it to be funny and witty and not just dry and boring. I prompt ChatGPT and it still takes me every Friday, I would say at about an hour and a half to two hours to curate it, to edit it. to But it would otherwise take me, I would say at least six or seven hours or even eight if I was doing it myself.
00:19:23
Speaker
i don't know if I do it myself and fit it into my schedule without ChatGPT helping. And so i'll I will tell it what I, this is the article. Here's what these sections look like in the prior one. You base it on this and use this format.
00:19:36
Speaker
Make it snarky, make it witty. I think this one's really interesting because of X, y and Z and funny because of this. And then tell it to give me a summary for that one article or one new news item.
00:19:48
Speaker
And so then I just do that for each one as I work my way through. And then I decided to... Somebody suggested on Bob Ambroji's webcast, how come you don't highlight the stuff you've written?
00:20:00
Speaker
So I said, I don't know. I was just highlighting the news, but so that's why I put that at the beginning. So it just sums up what I've done each week. And then I decided just to include a little section right after that just very shortly has some actual legal technology news that company news just from different companies.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's super. Anyone listening in the legal space, I think should definitely go find it and subscribe. It's very cool. And I think it makes total sense for you. I would say if anyone listening is like, what, what even is the LinkedIn newsletter product? It's an interesting product. It's free to use to what Nicole is saying.
00:20:30
Speaker
As soon as you start it, it prompts anyone who connects with you freshly to subscribe. it prompts existing followers in some type of cadence to subscribe. And what's so cool about it is there's such a low barrier to entry. People just have to hit a button when they're prompted. Do you want to subscribe? They click yes and they're in.
00:20:49
Speaker
um And to your point, like it's really cool because it goes up as a post. And I do see like the posts get a bit more than average impressions over time. So LinkedIn amazing.
00:21:01
Speaker
invested in promoting it and then it goes to people's inboxes and it doesn't penalize you for links the way a lot of the way linkedin will typically penalize posts that have external links and so there's so much benefit there i think the one downside is that you don't get the people's email addresses for your subscribers you get their names but not their email addresses and i feel like If LinkedIn ever changed that, it would be a game changer. But I don't think they could. It would just be such an, the access, information sharing would be too much.
00:21:33
Speaker
and I think I would never use it that way. and I know that email is the way to reach people. Everyone always trashes everything because they're so sick of it too. But I mean, you can put a link in your bio that says subscribe to my newsletter. And yeah and every time I publish it, I get new followers. I started it in mid-November and I have 25,500 plus subscribers right now. Every time I publish it, I get another 500 or followers each week to the newsletter.
00:22:00
Speaker
It's a great way to provide longer form content, focus on slightly different things and provide something else so that is interesting, that isn't about me, that isn't about things I'm writing. And it just provides points of interest. People seem to really like it. So
Balancing Personal and Professional Content
00:22:13
Speaker
your LinkedIn, I think you have more than 200,000 followers. and Maybe you know the exact number. If someone is thinking about starting to create content for LinkedIn, are there any bits of advice that you have for them about how to approach it or the mindset even that you think would serve them well?
00:22:30
Speaker
I would suggest trying new features as they come out on LinkedIn because at some point someone from LinkedIn messaged me and said, we want to feature you as someone to follow on our mobile app. This is maybe several years ago.
00:22:41
Speaker
So that certainly helped amass a lot of those followers. There are... worldwide, not just in the United States. I think it would be hard to replicate the follower base that I have, especially in my niche.
00:22:54
Speaker
I don't think I've seen anyone else that has even close to that number of followers, but it was because of what I was doing at the time caught someone on LinkedIn's attention. I think it's when they were just starting to roll out articles and other types of long form content.
00:23:07
Speaker
Nobody was interacting on LinkedIn and I was trying to. So I think it caught someone's attention, which is why they reached out to me. So that's, I guess it would more be. If you try some of those new products, like if they come out with new ideas, new feature sets or whatever they're doing, it might be a way if you're using it creatively in your space that they might notice you.
00:23:28
Speaker
I don't have a blue check though, so and I don't know. I'm surprised by that. at That blue badge, like the not, yeah. It could be a check or something and then they changed it.
00:23:40
Speaker
Now that they started to let you verify yourself. Yeah. then they have the badges that they hand out. I feel like the special blue badge is like really good. Sometimes clients will say, should we be trying to get that like top voice yellow badge or whatever it is? And I'm always like, for anyone listening who's thought about it, no.
00:23:55
Speaker
Like you know to get that, you need to be contributing to... I forget what they're called, like collaborative articles in a very consistent way. It's a numbers game. And then once you get it, you have to maintain it.
00:24:08
Speaker
And it doesn't matter in so far as impression. But that blue badge, I feel like you should definitely have it. And that's so cool that they reached out to you and featured you that way. Nikki, thank you so much. I really am so impressed with the amount of stuff you put out and the presence and brand that you built.
00:24:22
Speaker
And super grateful that we had this time to talk. Is there anything we didn't cover that you feel like you'd want to say around this particular topic or space? I think the one, I would just reemphasize what I always tell lawyers, which is nobody wants to interact with an entity or they want to interact with a person.
00:24:41
Speaker
they want and and they want to feel like they know that person. So sometimes lawyers are uncomfortable with sharing relationships. finding one hobby or something that is part of your life, that is something you're willing to share makes a huge difference. And in terms of people remembering you, and oftentimes that's where the referrals will come from because people forget, it's really hard to remember who practices in what area in the legal space, even when they're in your own ah region or um metropolitan area.
00:25:09
Speaker
So it's just another way to stand people's radar and be top of mind when they are thinking about referring cases. I think it's really important to understand the value of sharing a little bit of the personal along with all the other professional information.
Conclusion and Resource Sharing
00:25:22
Speaker
I think that's amazing advice and I agree. We'll put your book and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Is there anything else we should add or any other place you'd like people to follow you?
00:25:34
Speaker
I don't think so. Primarily LinkedIn and doesn't hurt to put the, maybe the legal industry report link. Okay. That was just published and that's based on a survey and it's statistical data about the legal industry and how it's using technology and lots of interesting stuff in there.
00:25:50
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. We'll get it in there. you so much Wonderful to get to talk to you. Thanks so much for asking me. Thanks.