Taylor Bell runs Arizona ABS Law, a boutique firm built entirely around Alternative Business Structure compliance. Seven months ago he started a free Substack with no promotion beyond his own network. It's up to about 200 subscribers now, and that small list has already landed him speaking gigs, revived leads who'd gone quiet, and gotten him recommended by name when people ask ChatGPT or Claude who handles ABS work. He runs the whole operation on roughly one hour a month:
Run it on free tools and you'll never have an excuse to quit. Taylor drafts in Google Docs, publishes on Substack, and pastes every post into his WordPress blog too. The blog copy doubles his footprint for search engines and AI tools reading the same post.
Build two repeatable series and you'll never stare at a blank page. His first is "Five Questions With," where he sends an expert seven or eight questions, they pick five to answer, and he formats the responses into a post in under 45 minutes. His second is a recap of Arizona's monthly ABS committee meeting, which he sits on. He publishes the highlights before the official minutes come out. Those two series fill most months, and he only writes something new when news breaks or the mood strikes him.
🤖 💰 Train AI. Earn more. HeyCounsel members interested in training frontier-AI models can now bill time in between their client work. This is a good opportunity to de-risk your practice between big projects or while you’re getting your practice off the ground. If you’re interested, reply to this email (or message Brian Scherer on Slack) for more details.
Turn your dead leads into readers instead of ghosting them. Instead of an awkward "just checking in" email, Taylor forwards his latest post to everyone who took a consultation and never signed. It reminds them he exists, proves he's still active, and hands them something to read that isn't a pitch. He does the same with every attendee list from a speaking gig.
Giving away your whole process doesn't cost you clients. Taylor is writing a multi-part "ABS 101" series that walks through the exact application process clients pay him to run. He worried it would talk people out of hiring him. Instead, readers who work through the whole how-to still hire him to run it.
Consistent publishing is what gets you recommended by an AI. Taylor is "99% sure" his Substack and blog are why ChatGPT and Claude surface his name for ABS compliance work, and he's never run a Google ad. When a new client says an AI tool sent them, he credits the newsletter. Neutral, informational content on a regular schedule is what these models pick up and repeat.
Treat writing like a work task and it'll actually happen. Taylor writes during business hours because he knows Saturday-him won't do it. The two formula posts take about an hour total each month. An original post takes longer: he drafts it, sleeps on it, rewrites the half he doesn't like, then has his brother, also his paralegal, read it before it goes out.
A stale blog costs you more credibility than no blog at all. When a prospective client lands on a firm site and the last post is from 2019, they wonder if the lawyer is still current. In a practice area where the rules keep changing, a recent post is proof you're still paying attention.
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A few more quick tips from our conversation with Taylor:
Build a recurring series, an interview format, a committee recap, anything repeatable, so most months take no creative effort.
Send your newsletter to warm leads who didn't convert instead of writing another "just checking in" email.
Give interview subjects plenty of lead time, but set a hard deadline. Lawyers without one will stall forever.
Publish neutral, informational content on a consistent schedule if you want AI tools to start recommending you.
Don't chase subscriber count early. Two hundred people in a tight niche can out-earn ten thousand general readers.
Give away your process. People who read the full how-to still hire you to do it.
Use Claude or another AI tool to turn rough notes into a publishable draft and cut your editing time.
Check what your competitors' blogs look like. A stale one next to yours makes you the obvious choice.
What’s new this week inside HeyCounsel?
🚀 Legora + HeyCounsel: HeyCounsel announced a new partnership with Legora: a discount on their product for members and educational programming they're building for the group. Announcement / Landing Page
🤖 @HeyCounsel now works everywhere! Members now have the ability to tag the community AI assistant in any public channel, not just the main four. Announcement →
🎤 Brian's looking for Podcast guests re: Small Firm AI use: a short interview series where members walk through something they've built with AI in their practice, for the newsletter, social, and inside HeyCounsel. Thread →
👋 Warm welcomes: Heather Cantua went solo this week, launching Cantua Legal for fintech and financial-product regulatory work out of Washington state. Ed Williams introduced himself too, bringing a civil rights and constitutional litigation practice out of Virginia. Thread →
💻 Vendor watch, a Clio alternative? The community flagged Miru.so, an open-source (and cheap) client management platform expanding out of billing into fuller practice management. Thread →
⚠ AI regulation alert: a member sounded the alarm on California's SB 574, which bans "delegating the practice of law to generative AI." The concern: lawmakers added that language late and pushed the bill through with little scrutiny. Thread →
📢 Speaking opportunity: friend-of-HeyCounsel Carolyn Elefant is looking for solo and small-firm lawyers to join a panel on AI, litigation holds, and discovery for her Bellwether Litigator conference on September 17-18. Details →
🤝 #04-ask-a-lawyer was busy: referral requests spanning California employment severance disputes, hostile board observers, tokenized fundraising rounds, ed-tech HIPAA compliance, Pennsylvania land and mineral rights, forensic accounting referrals, and cross-border immigration status questions.
💼 Referral Opportunities: 10 new opportunities posted this week are still live and accepting bids. Check them out on the dashboard.
📆 HeyCounsel’s Upcoming Events
Thu, Sep 3 → Under Pressure: How High-Functioning Anxiety Leads to Ethical Blind Spots (presented by Lauren Turner). Normally $199, free for members via NBI — https://nbi-sems.com/products/102687
Fri, Sep 11 → The Big Bad B Word - Bankruptcy 101 (presented by Patrick Patino) — https://luma.com/heycou-00aa
Thu, Sep 17 → AZ ABS Model Primer: How Lawyers Got a Monopoly, and How Arizona Gave It Back (presented by Taylor Bell) — https://luma.com/heycou-4ns4
Tue, Sep 22 → Demo and Q&A with Praxis — https://luma.com/heycou-siq9
Tue, Sep 29 → (Workshop) Helping the ‘maxed-out lawyer’ make the transition from successful practice to growing firm — https://luma.com/heycou-l8ju
Tue, Oct 6 → Community Session: AI & Firm Wellness (presented by Rachel Johnson) — https://luma.com/heycou-p4bf
📚 HeyCounsel Edu is our learning hub packed with interviews and educational videos of practitioners sharing what's actually working. Check out our Business Development and AI Native Firm learning tracks here.
Thanks for reading! See you next week 🤙
- Brian Scherer, Co-Founder & CEO