How Successful Content Creators are Like Lawyers
I’ve been a practicing trial attorney for nearly 10 years. And as I’ve spent more time creating video content, I’ve noticed 5 ways that successful content creators are just like lawyers.
FIRST: TIME MANAGEMENT
As an attorney, time management is perhaps the most crucial part of the job. Many people don’t know this, but most litigators bill their time in one-tenth of an hour increments, which are 6-minute blocks. And most law firms have lofty productivity requirements that mean you have to bill so many hours per year. And what that really boils down to is that you can’t afford to waste time doing things that are non-productive, i.e., non-billable.
Now, the vast majority of content creators don’t do this as their full time job. That means most people have full time jobs, spouses, kids, etc. that require a lot of time and attention. And that also means that most have to manage their time wisely to create videos. I can tell you from experience that a well thought out and edited video that’s even just a couple minutes long can take many hours to get in final form.
SECOND: TELLING A STORY
Perhaps the first rule of video is to tell a story that the audience can follow. The story might have highs and lows, and different characters, but above all else it has to be engaging and keep the audience’s attention. In content creation terms, you can usually measure the quality of the storytelling by the average view duration of a video. Put simply, people will watch a video that tells a great story.
Likewise, a trial is exactly the same thing. You have to organize the pieces of information - just like the pieces of video footage - into an engaging story that a jury can follow. You need the jury to be engaged and hanging on your every word and sticking with your story through to the end. I definitely want that average view duration of the jurors to be high, so they understand all my points and hopefully give me a favorable verdict.
THIRD: ATTENTION TO DETAIL
My colleagues know me as a details guy, and I’ve even gone through a few assistants that weren’t as detail oriented. In many respects there’s no detail too small for requiring your attention. My philosophy is “if you’re going to do it, do it right.”
Lawyers sometimes have to comb over every word in literally tens of thousands of documents, because there might be just a couple words on just one page that makes all the difference in obtaining a positive result.
Successful content creators also pay close attention to detail. Lighting, camera settings, an aesthetically pleasing background, and not to mention sometimes hours of key framing or color grading an edit. All those little details really add up to a much better finished product, and can often make a difference between something the audience wants to watch and something they don’t.
FOURTH: IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
Content creators have access to incredible analytics to quantify how videos perform, what parts the audience liked, the demographics that watched the video, etc. And it’s crucial to study those analytics so you can then either adjust future videos or know exactly what to replicate.
Lawyers also have to constantly analyze their prior performances to determine if we need to switch up overall style or how aggressive you are with examining a witness. I’ve even analyzed things like how being slightly underprepared can actually work to my advantage because it makes me stay more focused on what’s happening (just like fully scripting a video vs. just having bullet points). I then analyze that data to figure out what works better for future trials or depositions.
FIFTH: RELENTLESS ATTACK
Skilled litigators often pride themselves on how relentless they are in pursuing a great result for their client. The job usually comes with long hours and a lot of pressure. That, coupled with a career of several decades, leads to a constant state of relentlessness and pressing forward.
It’s no secret that the key to content creation success is relentlessly producing quality content, typically week over week, for years on end. On average, YouTube channels with 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers have posted 418 videos, which often takes anywhere from 1-5 years. Successful creators know the importance always getting better, always learning, and not letting up, in order to make success essentially inevitable.