Gues article: Vikki Bentwood, Legal Linchpin
Last week, three different colleagues sent me variations on the same ChatGPT update. Each one with a single word: “Thoughts?”
I didn’t have thoughts. I had a growing sense that I was supposed to have thoughts.
Nobody working in professional services today is immune to AI overwhelm. Legal marketers and BD teams feel the pressure more acutely because we’re supposed to know what’s coming next, supposed to have a plan, supposed to look like we’re in control.
The result is a sense of being permanently behind, even when you’re making progress.
One bite at a time
You don’t need to understand everything, adopt every tool, or have a comprehensive strategy mapped out by next quarter. You just need to take one bite, then another.
Below are three shifts I’ve noticed in teams who seem to be introducing AI with less panic and more success.
Bite one: Stop Waiting to be ready (you won’t be)
The AI landscape is moving too quickly for anyone to feel fully prepared. In a recent coaching session, a senior partner admitted to me that they were struggling as they had no idea what to do with AI. This was someone who’d built their entire career on knowing all the details and being prepared.
Start accepting that your first attempt will be messy, you’ll feel out of your comfort zone and you won’t have all the results for the next leadership meeting.
The paralysis is often worse than any mistakes you’ll make. Give yourself permission to not know what you’re doing yet but do it anyway.
Bite two: Start small, start with the problems
A mid-sized firm I spoke to recently had several different AI projects running across departments, no shared understanding of what success looked like, and a growing sense among the team that they were behind despite all the activity.
Instead of starting with the technology, I’ve found it is more effective to start with the problems. You don’t need expensive software, or a six-month IT implementation plan. You need one boring, repetitive, time-consuming task that’s driving you mad.
If a task takes more than 20 minutes and makes you want to throw your laptop out the window, that’s your starting point.
Ask yourself: “Could AI help me with this?”
Your to-do List is a good starting point
Not sure which task to tackle first? Ask AI to help you prioritise.
Take all those scattered to-do lists; your Outlook tasks, handwritten notes, mental list and feed them into ChatGPT or Co-pilot. Ask it to organise them into one list, estimate how long each will take, suggest a first step, and identify which tasks AI could help with.
Bite three: Collaborate with your peers
Overwhelm thrives in silence. Everyone imagines everyone else is managing better than they are.
One marketing team I know introduced a simple fifteen-minute weekly check-in where people shared what they had tried. No presentations, just quick honest updates: “I used this for X, it was terrible” or “I asked it to do Y, and it actually helped.” Within a month, people stopped pretending they had it figured out and started collaborating.
The firms integrating AI most effectively aren’t necessarily the ones with the most tech-savvy people, they are the ones learning together.
AI is not going to slow down but overwhelm doesn’t have to be the default reaction.
The elephant is enormous. But you don’t have to eat it all at once, you just need to take the next bite.
If AI currently feels noisy, overwhelming, or hard to translate into day-to-day marketing work, you’re not alone. That’s exactly why Vikki Bentwood, founder of Legal Linchpin, now focuses on helping professional services marketers cut through the noise. After 20 years in legal marketing and BD, she combines strategic consultancy with AI literacy workshops and hands-on training for teams who want clarity, confidence, and practical ideas they can use immediately.
