How I Built an AI That Finds Clients First

I've recently started building AI systems that track leadership appointments for a few clients, and I'm learning that new executives equal new opportunities—if you can find them fast enough.

The first handshake wins. Smart firms track new execs before the competition does

The Challenge

Manual tracking doesn't scale. Google Alerts are noisy. By the time you hear about a new GC, your competitors are already at the table.

What’s Working

Start Simple, Then Layer Intelligence Google Alerts are overwhelming but essential. A few key industry publications cover most of what matters. The magic happens when AI does the heavy lifting at multiple stages.

Multi-Stage AI Filtering First, basic triage—if I'm tracking manufacturing executives, I don't want stories about student manufacturing competitions. Second, background research and deduplication—AI figures out that "Bob Smith" in one article is the same "Robert Smith, VP" mentioned elsewhere. Third, relevance ranking—I can even set up committees of AI systems to score each appointment by importance.

Automation Changes Everything These systems run daily, adding structured data to a database I check when convenient. No more remembering to search or missing time-sensitive opportunities.

Smart Pattern Recognition I'm experimenting with embeddings to automatically categorize news stories. When a new story comes in, the system checks: "Have we seen similar situations before?" If yes, it gets the same topic tag. If not, we've identified a new trend worth tracking.

From 1,000 alerts to 10 real leads — This is how layered AI filters—deduplication, triage, and relevance—turn noisy headlines into focused business development opportunities.

The Bottom Line -> Small $$ Investment Leads to Big Results

The best part: This isn't a $50K enterprise system. I can build this for you in a week using tools that cost hundreds, not thousands, per month.

Instead of drowning in alerts, you get curated intelligence: "Sarah Johnson was just named General Counsel at TechCorp. Here's her background, the company's recent challenges, and why they might need outside counsel."

Your Move

Leadership tracking is just one application. The same approach works for regulatory changes, industry developments, or any information that affects your practice.

Curious to see how this might work for your practice? Email me at adam@lawsnap.com or click here. I can show it to you in about 15 minutes.