Podcasting for Attorneys With Phil Tower

Podcasting for Attorneys With Phil Tower

On Legal Marketing Radio, host Chip LaFleur talks with Phil Tower, a longtime West Michigan radio broadcaster who spent decades at iHeartMedia before reinventing himself as a podcast consultant, and who now manages the community station WYCE, about what actually makes a podcast worth listening to. Tower traces his own path from broadcast radio into podcasting around 2007-2008, through managing iHeart's spoken word stations, to helping local brands launch shows after his full-time radio role ended. He makes the case that a person's own voice is the most authentic way to tell a story, unfiltered and entirely under the storyteller's control, and tackles the question every new podcaster asks: how long should an episode be. His answer is that it should run as long as it needs to and no longer, with West Michigan's roughly 20-25 minute commute offering a natural sweet spot, even though national research points to 20-40 minutes as the broader industry standard. Tower introduces the content triangle he built his radio career on: being informative, being relatable, and being entertaining, and unpacks how attorneys already think in similar terms through the "three legs of the stool" in injury cases. He argues true entertainment isn't about being funny but about being vulnerable enough to create a driveway moment, and shares a personal story about breaking format on live radio to talk about euthanizing his dog, and the flood of listener trust that followed. The conversation turns practical with advice to get niche rather than broad, to mine a firm's most common case types for content ideas, and to ditch the script in favor of an outline so the conversation can go off the rails in useful ways. Tower and LaFleur close by trading real examples, including Michigan Auto Law's recurring "worst intersections in West Michigan" list as a model of relatable, shareable legal content that any firm could adapt to their own data and market. 00:00 Phil Tower's Radio Roots 02:00 Reinventing Into Podcast Consulting 03:00 Why Your Own Voice Wins 04:00 How Long Should an Episode Be 05:00 The Commute Time Sweet Spot 07:00 Landing at WYCE 08:00 Podcasting Is a Long Game 09:00 The Fear of Not Being Famous Enough 10:00 Why Voice Matters for PI and Professional Clients 11:00 The Content Triangle: Informative 12:00 The Content Triangle: Relatable 13:00 The Content Triangle: Entertaining 14:00 Chasing the Driveway Moment 16:00 Packaging Content Into Bite-Sized Pieces 17:00 Storytelling Skills Lawyers Already Have 18:00 The Three Legs of the Stool 19:00 Getting Started and Finding Your Angle 21:00 Niche Beats Broad 23:00 Mining Your Top Cases for Content 25:00 Learning From Adam Savage's Authenticity 26:00 Pulling Back the Curtain 29:00 Vulnerability Builds Listener Trust 30:00 The Dangerous Actor and Going Off Script 32:00 Wrap Up and Appreciation 34:00 Finding Interesting Guests 35:00 The Michigan Auto Law Example 37:00 Worst Intersections as Content Marketing 38:00 Stealing Good Ideas for Your Own Firm

AI, Compliance, and Legal Risk With Hal Ostrow

On Legal Marketing Radio, host Chip LaFleur interviews Hal Ostrow, a shareholder at Rhodes McKee who leads the firm's technology transactions, privacy, and cybersecurity practice, about how businesses and law firms can adopt AI responsibly without putting their data, clients, or reputation at risk. Ostrow explains that while there is no single federal law governing AI yet, the existing patchwork of roughly 20 state consumer privacy laws and industry specific rules like HIPAA provide the framework through which AI use policies should be built, with the guiding principle of using the least amount of information for the shortest possible time to get the job done. He walks through the risk differences between consumer AI tools, walled enterprise platforms like LexisNexis Protégé which uses Claude, cloud hosted private instances, and on premises deployments, explaining that the right choice depends on each organization's appetite for risk and the sensitivity of the data involved. The conversation digs into agentic AI as the biggest risk multiplier, where errors compound across tasks without human review, hallucinations become harder to detect and undo the further down a chain they go, and the question shifts from whether a human is in the loop to where in the loop that human actually lives. Ostrow also flags an emerging and underappreciated risk: NDAs are now including clauses prohibiting the use of confidential information to train AI models, meaning organizations running self training agents could unknowingly violate agreements before anyone has a chance to review what was ingested. The episode closes with a look at AI driven dynamic pricing concerns, the importance of updating your insurance broker when your AI use profile changes, and the throughline that responsible AI adoption is not about avoiding the technology but about building the right guardrails before you need them. 00:00 AI Risk and Where It Lives 01:00 Meet Hal Ostrow 02:00 Building Compliant AI Policy 03:00 Privacy Law as the AI Framework 05:00 Consumer Tools vs. Enterprise Platforms 07:00 On Premises Hosting and Cybersecurity Risk 10:00 Agentic AI and the Risk Multiplier 12:00 Hallucinations and Professional Liability 14:00 Human in the Loop and Where It Matters 16:00 AI Slop and Output Accuracy Standards 18:00 Fact Checking as a New Job Function 19:00 Dynamic Pricing and Consumer Profiling 21:00 Updating Insurance for AI Risk 22:00 NDAs and the AI Training Clause 24:00 Agentic Memory and Unwitting NDA Violations 26:00 On Prem as a Privacy Strategy 27:30 Wrap Up

Episode 51 - Entrepreneurship in the AI Era with Yulia Chiaburu

On Legal Marketing Radio, host Chip interviews Yulia Chiaburu, a Solutions Architect Leader at AWS with 24+ years of experience across startups, enterprises, and Fortune 500 companies, about how AI is fundamentally reshaping the SaaS business model. Chiaburu explains that the traditional playbook — seat-based subscriptions, switching cost lock-in, and annual price increases — is cracking under three pressures: agents replacing human users, the rise of vibe coding lowering the barrier to build custom software, and a buyer shift toward paying for outcomes rather than access. She introduces concepts like "services software," outcome-based and usage-based pricing, and the importance of AI-native platforms where AI is core to the product rather than bolted on. The conversation covers real-world examples including a law firm's AI-powered intake and case management system, internal AI adoption challenges, the value of peer learning networks, and the competitive advantages West Michigan holds — domain expertise, lower burn rate, and a growing university talent pipeline — as AI lowers the barrier to founding a startup without coastal VC funding. 00:00 SaaS Is Cracking 01:00 Meet Yulia Chiaburu 03:30 What Is SaaSmageddon? 05:00 Services Software and Outcome-Based Pricing 06:30 AI-Native vs. Bolted-On AI 07:00 Should You Still Build a SaaS Startup? 14:00 AI Adoption Inside Organizations 22:00 Walking Teams Through AI Unlocks 24:00 Peer Groups as a Learning Strategy 26:00 Local vs. Open-Source Model Choices 28:00 West Michigan's Startup Advantages 29:30 Wrap Up

Episode 50 - AI and HIPAA Compliance With Steve Goulet

AI and HIPAA Compliance: Governance, Observability, and Human-in-the-Loop Safeguards On Legal Marketing Radio, the host interviews Steve Goulet, a healthcare technology executive with 20+ years' experience, about using AI in healthcare while staying HIPAA-compliant. Goulet emphasizes AI must remain a tool with a human in the loop and should not independently make clinical decisions due to hallucination risk and unclear regulatory alignment. He describes AVI's AI uses—operational AI, ambient listening scribes integrated with the EHR, and a custom support bot for the website and patient/support portals—plus moving to Claude Enterprise under a BAA for enterprise controls and observability. He stresses auditable monitoring, data retention, guardrails to limit PHI exposure, and minimizing third-party data sharing by hosting an open-source stack internally. The discussion covers prompt injection risks, system prompts, automated testing using prompt libraries and tools like LangFuse/LangSmith, DevOps-style release practices, and cautious, state-by-state regulatory engagement for emerging interfaces like digital human avatars. 00:00 AI and HIPAA Overview 00:11 Meet Steve Goulet 02:01 AI as Tool Not Clinician 07:08 Building Compliant AI Stack 09:50 PHI Control and Vendors 13:09 Auditability for Small Teams 16:35 Testing and Guardrails 20:13 Prompt Injection Risks 23:21 System Prompts and DevOps 27:26 Regulatory Caution and Litigation 29:43 Digital Human Avatar Plans 31:59 Wrap Up and Next Steps

Episode 49 - The AI-Augmented Law Firm With Eric Romano

AI in Legal Practice and Marketing: Eric Romano on Adoption, Workflow, and Emerging Liability Trends Host Chip LaFleur interviews Eric Romano of Romano Law Group about how AI is being adopted in legal practice and AI-powered marketing tools. Romano describes his long-standing focus on technology and revisits predictions he made in 2016, including the rise of "digital attorneys" (inspired by IBM Watson), autonomous vehicles shifting negligence claims toward product liability, and the "internet of things" driving discovery of wearable-device data in injury litigation; he also expects growing drone and passenger-drone liability. LaFleur shares an earlier predictive-analytics model for PI intake and notes how quickly websites and campaigns can now be launched with AI. Romano explains current AI uses in his practice: generating initial drafts, summarizing and querying large document sets, and brainstorming, while emphasizing review, guardrails, and leading teams through change resistance by demonstrating AI's efficiency and quality benefits. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:57 Why Tech Matters Now 01:54 2016 Predictions and Watson 03:57 Predictive Analytics in PI 05:49 Autonomous Cars and Liability 07:47 IoT Data in Discovery 08:32 Drone Claims and New Niches 09:34 AI Powered Marketing Sites 11:34 Building Sites from Transcripts 12:52 How Eric Uses AI Daily 14:42 Claude Tools and Cowork 18:00 Training Teams and Guardrails 23:06 Never Stop Learning Wrap Up