Podcast Recording Gear for Law Firms (Podcast)

In this episode of AI SEO for Law Firms, John McDougall and John Maher break down the simplest, most practical podcast setups lawyers can use in 2026 without getting overwhelmed by gear. They cover easy USB microphone options, when (and if) to upgrade to professional XLR setups, how to avoid common audio mistakes like peaking and background noise, and why platforms like Squadcast or Riverside make recording effortless. The conversation also highlights the growing importance of video podcasting for AI SEO, with practical tips on mic placement, lighting, webcams, and repurposing podcast content across YouTube, social media, and search to build authority and attract high-value cases.

John McDougall: Welcome to AI SEO for Law Firms, the podcast that cuts through the tech noise to give you the exact roadmap for dominating search everywhere optimization and landing high value cases. From McDougall Interactive, I’m John McDougall, and with me today is John Maher. And today we’re talking about the essential podcast gear guide for 2026, mics, cameras, and simple setups for lawyers. Hi, John.

John Maher: Hey, how’s it going, John?

Simple Podcasting Setups for Lawyers

McDougall: Good. So what’s the simplest podcast setup a lawyer can start with today without overthinking it for podcasting?

Maher: I think the easiest thing today for lawyers who are looking to start podcasting without going nuts with getting tons of gear and overdoing it, is just to get a simple USB microphone and using an online service like Squadcast or Riverside to do their recording.

We were, for many years, we had set up an internal studio for ourselves with a mixing board and a couple of professional microphones on boom stands. And we had audio going into it for putting in the music while we were doing the recording live and that kind of thing. And it was complicated and it was something that only I could do in terms of running it, or I taught you how to do it as well for when you were doing interviews with other lawyers.

McDougall: Much more technical though.

Maher: But it was much more technical. So these days, it’s just so simple with these online services. We use Squadcast most of the time and it’s just so simple. It’s like a Zoom meeting. And ever since COVID in 2020, everybody knows how to go online now and do a Zoom meeting. So, it’s very much like that. You just set up a meeting for a time and you get a link and you can just email that link to a guest. So if you’re having a guest on your show that you’re interviewing, you just send them the link and then they just click on the link and they come into the meeting just like they would with a Zoom meeting.

The advantage of Squadcast over using just something like Zoom though, is that Squadcast records your audio — and your video if you have your cameras turned on, and we think that you should — it records your end of the conversation on your computer to get the full audio and video quality and then uploads those files to the cloud.

And then the person that you’re interviewing, it records their audio and video on their computer to get their full quality and then uploads their end of the conversation to the cloud. So, you end up with separate files for audio and video for both ends of the conversation. And then you can take those files afterwards and mix them together, and so you go into an audio program and you bring in those two files as separate tracks and edit them together.

That way you have control over the two ends of the conversation. So, if one end of the conversation is a little lower volume than the other, you can just boost up the volume on that track without having it affect your part of the conversation as well. So, having it be on separate tracks is very helpful and then…

McDougall: And there’s a failsafe, right?

Maher: Yeah. And then there’s a failsafe also, which is that Squadcast will record what they call the “cloud recording”, the mixed-together-already cloud version of it, just like you would get with a Zoom recording where both ends of the conversation are mixed together already. Same with the video. It has the two videos side by side and already put together so that in the worst case, if something goes wrong with one end of the conversation or the other, you can always go back to that cloud recording and at least have the audio and the video from that.

So, you have an automatic backup as you’re doing the recording, but the ideal situation is to have that full audio and video quality from both ends of the conversation recorded separately. And then having a USB microphone just makes it simple because you can just take your microphone, plug it directly into your computer, and then when you go into Squadcast, you just choose that microphone as your microphone and you’re done.

You don’t need any extra equipment, any extra audio interface that you’re plugging your microphone into or other things that have to sit on your desk or anything like that. So, I really think that that’s the simplest solution these days.

What About Bulky Headsets?

McDougall: And you’ve got the earbuds on. I chose not to wear the huge cans today. I mean, you kind of have pretty bulky stuff on your head if you do that. It’s really nice, but it’s a little bulky looking.

Maher: And I think people are used to that to some extent. You watch podcasts on YouTube sometimes and you’ll see Joe Rogan or whatever, like with headphones on or guests with headphones on. It’s normal and I think people are used to seeing that. So, I don’t think it’s a big deal. I kind of like to have just the earbuds so I’m not dealing with that thing over my head, like you said. And right now you’re just using the built-in speakers from your computer on your laptop and doing that.

You just have to remember to have your echo cancellation turned on so that you don’t have that feedback loop that sometimes can happen where you hear yourself back.

How Close Should Podcasters Get To The Mic?

McDougall: Which I do, yeah.

Yeah. So, that’s a good initial setup. And the advantage again is that it’s not technical at all. I mean, we teach people how to just like get Squadcast, log in, hit record and go almost. I mean, with the caveats of the things you just said, mic placement, right? Maybe what do you like to say, a fist apart or roughly, or how close do you get to the mic?

Maher: Yeah. I generally go about a hands width away from a microphone like this. This is a dynamic microphone, so it’s meant to be kind of up close to get the best audio.

McDougall: It might be angled.

Maher: Yeah. And I’ll put it in front of my mouth. I have it down a little bit below my mouth also, in part just to get it, because we’re recording video also, in order to get it sort of away from my face so it’s not blocking my face. I’ll put it down and a little bit off to the side, but still about a hands’ width away from my face.

So, that’s kind of ideal. And then what that does is that will help to prevent any pops. So, if I say the P noise, if you’re right into the microphone, sometimes you’ll get that kind of plosive sound in the microphone where it’s overloading the microphone. But if your voice is speaking kind of off to the side away from the microphone, you can avoid that without having to have a big pop filter in front of the microphone that might also, again, kind of block your face.

So, I generally just try to aim a little bit away and off to the side of the microphone, but it still picks up the full volume.

What Microphones Are Recommended For Beginner Podcasters?

McDougall: And what microphones do you recommend for podcasting for beginners?

Maher: So again, if you’re going with just a USB microphone and you want to go very inexpensive, for less than $100 you can get the Blue Yeti microphone from Logitech. I see those on sale for like $89 now or sometimes even less. For those of you watching on YouTube, I actually happen to have one here. So, this is what the Blue Yeti looks like.

These are interesting because you have it, it comes with a built-in stand. So this just sits on the table in front of you and then you have it angled this way. So, it’s different from what you might think, and I have to teach this to people all the time who do get these. They think that you speak into the microphone this way, kind of like my sure SM7B microphone that I have on a boom stand here. They think, “Oh, I’m going to talk into the top of the microphone,” because they see that on YouTube all the time.

But this particular microphone, you actually record with it sort of, I don’t know what, vertical in front of you, I guess. So you’re speaking kind of into the side of the microphone. So, I have to tell that to people all the time. But basically it just sits on the desk in front of you and it has a headphone volume control on the front of it. So you can plug headphones into the bottom of it or earbuds like I’m using, so you can monitor yourself or hear yourself while you’re talking. It has a little mute button on the front of it. So if you needed to cough or something like that, you could quickly just tap the mute button and cough and then tap it again to turn it back on.

McDougall: That’s what makes it clear that’s the side you want to be talking at because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see [the mute button].

Maher: Right, exactly. And then on the back of the microphone is a gain knob that kind of turns up the volume of the microphone, how sensitive it is. And then some other little patterns, different patterns that you can set to either have it with the cardioid pattern recording only what’s in front of the microphone and less from the side and the back, or you can set it to record, for example, 360 degrees all around. So, you could potentially even set this up in the middle of a table and have several people around a little round table and use it as one single microphone that would pick up everybody at the table.

McDougall: A few attorneys all talking.

Maher: That’s an option. And that’s again, less than $100 for that. Now the only thing, the caveat that I would say with that microphone is that that’s a condenser microphone and condenser microphones are much more sensitive than dynamic microphones. So, they pick up all the little nuances, all the highs and the lows, which can be good, but they also will, because they’re sort of intended to be a little further away from your mouth — you might be a foot or a foot and a half away from the microphone in order to pick you up — it has to be at a volume level such that you’re also going to hear any noise that’s in the room. So, if you’re in an echoey room, it’s going to pick up the little echoes around in the room. If you have a fan on or an air conditioner or something like that, any kind of noisy environment, it’s going to pick up a lot of that background noise as well.

That’s different from a dynamic microphone where you have to be a little closer to the microphone to get it to work right, because the volume is less, but then that by nature kind of also makes it so that it’s not picking up as much of the background noise either. So, there’s a little bit of a tradeoff there.

It’s a nice sounding microphone. It’s very simple and easy to use. It’s USB…

McDougall: A little more durable?

Maher: Actually, the condenser microphones are generally less durable than the dynamic microphones.

McDougall: Like what is it, like in music, a Shure SM58, what type of mic is that?

Maher: That’s a dynamic microphone. Yeah. Those are the types of mics that you see in rock concerts all the time, like up on the stage. They’re never going to break. They could fall and land on the stage floor, and then you pick them up and keep using them. They’re never going to break.

Condenser vs Dynamic Mic Durability

McDougall: You could remember that by saying a “dynamic” mic, it’s so dynamic you can whip it across the room.

Maher: Right.

McDougall: Is that right? But a condenser mic…

Maher: Condenser mics are more fragile. The internal element of them is more fragile. So, yeah, they’re more for like in the studio where you’re not going to be lugging it around on the road. So, they’re fine for on your desk. You’re generally not going to be dropping it on the floor if you just have it set up on your desk. So, they’re fine for that.

But they are somewhat sensitive. So, you do have to be a little bit careful with that. If you wanted to go with something like a dynamic microphone for about $269 I just saw recently, the Shure MV7+ is very similar looking to this professional SM7B microphone that I have from Shure here, but it’s a USB microphone. So, the Shure MV7+, less expensive than this Pro microphone here. And it’s a dynamic microphone, and again, USB for plugging directly into your computer.

Another one that you could go with is from the company called Rode, R-O-D-E. The Rode PodMic is right around $200. I think I just saw it for $196 and that’s a microphone. Again, it looks fairly similar to the one that I’m using, the Shure microphone. You do need to have a little desktop stand or a boom arm like I’m using to hold that, but that’s about $200.

Yeah. So, those are a few of the other options. Rode has another one that they call the Podcaster microphone. That’s another good option as well.

Upgrading Your Podcast Gear

McDougall: And I was going to ask this after another question, but I think I’ll ask it now, is what about stepping up the gear? If a lawyer wants to upgrade, like I’ve got the RE20, Electro-Voice RE20, you’ve got the Shure like Joe Rogan.

Maher: Yeah. It’s called the Shure SM7B. I think Michael Jackson recorded the Thriller album on it.

McDougall: Pretty crazy, right? Yeah. People even use this for music stuff. But this is really like a radio station mic. My dad, when we had an ad agency in the ’80s, he sold it in the ’90s, but in the ’80s, I remember we had two of these in the recording studio, and when they moved offices, they got rid of the recording studio and I had two of these and I sold them for like 50 bucks each. I didn’t know what they were when I was playing in bands. We played with, oh, like the Shure SM58, which is a much cheaper microphone. And this would break if you brought it around gigging probably. You really wouldn’t want it for gigging, but I should have kept them because they were really high end mics.

Maher: Nice mics. Yeah.

McDougall: Yeah. You just don’t know. You just look at this thing like, oh, this doesn’t make sense, but this is a very famous radio station broadcast mic, like for Dana Hersey, our buddy, that type of … it gives you a little bit of that sound, and some people even like that for their voice for singing, but more so I think the mic you have, and we have a couple of those for singing…if you wanted to double for singing a little bit, that Shure is a little more universally used maybe.

Maher: Yeah, it’s a lot used for both, like you said, in the recording studio and also for podcasts. And yeah, I worked in radio for a while after college and we had those RE20 microphones at the radio station as well, so I’m familiar with those.

Interface Options for Podcasting

McDougall: But those are pretty big decisions. If you’re going to get one of these $400 or $500 mics, then you’ve got to get … talk about the interface for that a little bit.

Maher: Right. So, when you step up to these more professional microphones, what you’re dealing with then is that they’re generally not USB microphones where you can just have a plug on the back of it that goes right into your computer. So, what you need to get then is an “audio interface”. And on the video, John’s showing the Focusrite Scarlett. There’s a couple of different variations on that.

I have a slightly different one that I’m using. And then you have … So you have XLR, the cable is called an XLR cable. It has a big jack on the end of it with three prongs on it. That goes into the microphone and then the other side goes into the audio interface.

And, in your case, you have another little device that’s in between there called the Cloudlifter. And what the Cloudlifter does is just boosts the audio signal, because some of these microphones aren’t very strong with their signal. So, unless you have a very strong pre-amplifier that really boosts the signal up. Sometimes the volume level that you get out of these is a little bit low. So, having that Cloudlifter might be necessary for certain microphones in order to boost up the volume level a little bit. But basically then the microphone with the XLR cable goes into that audio interface, and then from the audio interface you have a USB output that goes into your computer. So, basically the audio interface is just a…

McDougall: For people watching…

Maher: Yeah. So you’re seeing on the video, the back of the audio interface and that red cable there is the USB cable that plugs into the computer. So, it’s basically, an audio interface really is just a way to convert the signal from your microphone (or other things like musical instruments) into a signal that can go into the USB on the computer. It’s a way of getting your audio equipment into the computer.

McDougall: And these two jacks on the back, you can put in studio monitors if you wanted to listen back.

Maher: Right. Especially for doing music recording that’s used more often where you want to be able to hear it back on nice quality speakers.

Is The Premium Equipment Worth It?

McDougall: And it sounds complicated, but it’s a pretty common setup. I mean, I think if you do want to step up your game beyond say the Blue Yeti or the Rode podcast, you don’t need to really. I don’t think people are going to notice a massive difference, but if you want kind of that ultimate sweet sound, you get one of these $400 or $500 mics and then you spend another few hundred bucks on the Cloudlifter … I forget if the Cloudlifter might be a hundred bucks, and the Focusrite? You can get the “Solo”, maybe a hundred and something bucks or the … I’ve got the two slot one, which I only use one, for $300.

Maher: And you’re probably going to need some sort of a boom arm stand so that you can get the microphone in front of your mouth.

McDougall: It adds up a little bit. More stuff than the little Blue Yeti, it’s got a stand, that thing, like if you want simplicity.

Maher: Right. It’s all built into one and you just plug it right into your computer and go. Yeah.

Mistake New Podcasters Make

McDougall: And one little basic microphone and you’re solid, rock solid, but yeah, you want to sound like the super pros, step it up a notch, just be prepared for those other things. What about the biggest mistakes? What do you see people make most commonly getting podcasting started?

Maher: I’d say the first thing would just be, for somebody who doesn’t do a lot of audio recording, they’re maybe less familiar with the concept of getting the levels right and having your volume level set correctly. If you have your volume level on your microphone set too low, then your recording will be so that when you bring it into an editor, the wave form will be just very low and it’ll be so quiet that you’ll need to amplify that signal in order to boost it up and get a good volume level.

But then the problem is that any time you’re boosting up in the audio software afterwards, anytime you’re increasing the audio volume, you’re also increasing the volume of any background noise, any hiss, or anything like that that’s coming from the microphone or through the cables or something like that.

McDougall: It might be correctable, but it’s just not ideal.

Maher: Right. And then the same thing, if you have too high a volume where it’s starting to what we call “peak”, where you’re hitting … If you see a little meter, it’s like when that meter’s getting up into the red, and it starts to distort, especially with digital recording, you get this like kind of awful, harsh, distorted sound.

How to Speak Into a Podcast Microphone

McDougall: If I speak here, now I’m getting into the red and you can maybe … We can intentionally hear on the recording, this is probably going to be a little harsh and you can see that it’s red. But if I start to back off and when it’s green, I get a little bit in the sweet spot now it’s nice and present. Maybe I lower my Adam’s apple and speak a little more lower tone because I’m taking the Roger Love singing course.

And apparently if you work on making your Adam’s apple a little lower, like talk like Yogi Bear, like, “Hey, Yogi.” That’s one of the tricks he says to make the lower speaking voice. But, if you speak a little lower, that’s like, again, the Dana Hersey thing, he’s got that amazing deep radio voice. You can train and learn that. Just don’t be always so nasally and so right at the microphone. I mean, so speak a little more calmly and the right distance from the microphone, you see the light turning green, not orange or, God forbid, red because then you get that peaking awful distorted kind of sound.

And can you correct that? I mean, sort of, I guess.

Maher: Not really. That’s an even worse problem than having the volume be too low because you can always increase the volume in post-production and you get some noise, but at least you’re not getting that distortion. But if you’ve recorded your voice too loud with the distortion in it, there’s no way to get that out of the recording afterwards.

McDougall: Because we’ll process this podcast, but that part where I was intentionally making the microphone peak, even if we [apply] that nice audio processing, you’re still going to hear that distortion.

Maher: Even if we lower the volume to make it a normal volume sound, you’ll still hear that harsh recording, that distortion.

McDougall: Right.

Maher: One way that you can fix that is there’s … Well, first of all, look at your meters. So for example, on Squadcast while we’re doing this recording, there’s a little audio meter down in the bottom right hand corner of each one of our videos, and it has three little green lights and then three yellow lights and then a red light at the top. And so as I’m talking and I’m looking at that now, I can see that I’m in the middle to the top of the yellow, but I’m not going into that red line. So, you want to kind of avoid…

McDougall: You want some of that yellow?

Maher: Yeah. I would say you want to get into that yellow. You want to be filling up the green area and starting to get into the yellow. And I think that that’s a good level, but once you start to get into that red, then you’re going to have some problems. And I’ll often purposefully talk as loud as I’m going to talk during the podcast just to make sure that, [speaking louder] “Hey, if I say, Wow, that’s great”, and I sort of emphasize something, I don’t want that to peak, so I’ll try to set the volume levels for that kind of level there. So, on an audio interface, you can change the gain on your audio interface.

Adjusting Audio Levels

McDougall: If I had backed that off, if I knew I was going to talk that loud, I could just back that off. I know I’m not talking that loud.

Maher: On something like a USB microphone, it might have a built-in gain or volume level that you might have to adjust on the microphone itself. And then the other way to check that is by going onto something like the Adobe Podcast Tools. Adobe has a set of tools at podcast.adobe.com. There’s a number of tools there. One of the ones that we use a lot is the Enhance Audio Tool, which is like an AI tool that you can dump your MP3 file into after you’ve done the recording and it will take out a lot of the little echo or the room noise and things like that. And actually, if you’re kind of far away from the microphone and it sounds like you’re in a little bit of an echoey room, it will make it sound like you’re speaking right directly into a nice microphone. It’s a pretty awesome tool.

McDougall: Peaking, getting into that fuzzy, awful, distorted area that you’ve cleaned some stuff up where I’m like, wow, that went from someone recording very poorly on the other end, but you cleaned it up with that. It’s crazy.

Maher: And then there’s another tool that Adobe has on that Adobe Podcast series of tools called “Mic Check”, which is just a simple microphone checker where it asks you to hit record, talk into the microphone for a few seconds, and then it gives you a little analysis of that. It tells you, “Yeah, you’re too far away from the microphone. Get a little closer,” or, “You’re too close to the microphone. Get a little further away.” Or it checks your volume level. “Yep, your volume level sounds good” or “nope, your volume level’s too loud or too soft”. So, that’s actually a good little checker before you jump onto Squadcast or even onto a Zoom meeting or something like that. Just if you’re checking your microphone volume levels, go to that Mic Check tool from Adobe podcasts, which is free.

And the tools overall can be used for free, some of them. The Enhance Audio tool, when you want to step up to a little bit more, more ability to adjust it and things like that, there’s a little bit of a monthly cost to it, but the Mic Check tool is free all the time. So, you could just sign up for the Adobe Podcast Tools and use that to check your microphone volume and how close you are to the mic, etc.

Getting Started With Podcasting

McDougall: And basically with these simple tips, you can get rolling. I mean, podcasting can be started in a day or two. Technically, if you had a basic mic or you just use your laptop mic to start, you could start podcasting within an hour, really.

Maher: Set up an account on Squadcast and get a USB microphone and hit record and you’re done.

McDougall: And then use ChatGPT to say, because again, this wouldn’t be considered AI slop, like crappy AI content. If you say, “ChatGPT, give me five podcast questions around the idea of beginning law firms getting started with podcasting and then give me an SEO optimized title. Think like an SEO and podcasting expert such as Neil Patel and Pat Flynn or Joe Rogan or something, and give me an SEO optimized podcast title in five questions about getting started with podcasting”, bang, you probably have pretty good little set of questions to ask someone. You could do it monologue. It could be one person, but certainly if you have an administrative assistant interviewing an attorney or something like that with Squadcasts with, what, I don’t know, 40 bucks a month or so. I forget what the current price Squadcast is.

Maher: Yeah, I think it’s even less.

McDougall: It’s an afterthought or like Riverside is even less. But with the video version, like they do get 30, 40 bucks or so per month. You can get it audio only, but I wouldn’t recommend that because now more podcasts are listened on YouTube than, I’m pretty sure, anywhere else. I think it’s now over 50%. So, you really can’t think of podcasting in 2025 and 2026, which we’re just about to hit 2026. You really can’t think of it as audio only because with Search Everywhere Optimization, as we’ve talked about in earlier episodes and our AI SEO for Law Firm book coming out, you need to signal to AI that you’re an authority, and YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, different places like that.

Amazon, if you have a book published from the transcripts of your podcast, you’re sending signals to AI. The giant brain of AI is scanning all over the internet, including people reviewing your book on Amazon, commenting on your YouTube videos and judging if you’re an authority.

And if it’s only audio, yeah, you can beam it over with an RSS feed to Spotify and iTunes. That’s great. You’d be a little more of an authority, but the ultimate is record with, say, Squadcast, download the files, get them to someone in the Philippines for short money or edit them yourself, with our training with Audacity, or hire us and we’ll white glove it and do it soup to nuts.

And then we put the audio player on like a SoundCloud or LibSyn podcast hosting, on a blog post with a transcript underneath it. That’s awesome for SEO. But if you’re not also putting it on YouTube, like the summary of the whole podcast as one video and then a bunch of shorts that you can make with Opus Clip and video.ai or tools like that, where you put little captions and emojis, make them a little more fun, not cheesy, but like a little bit of spice to the shorts. Those are reasonable shorts. Ask a question, answer a question. You got a short, like a 60 second short, something like that from your podcast. If that’s being shared on YouTube with the whole podcast, YouTube shorts, Instagram, TikTok for the shorts, you’re really making not just SEO, but AI SEO. You’re generating content across the board.

Podcast Lighting

So yeah, I think these tips are enough to get you going. I’d say the last tip maybe would be about lighting to talk about before we close it out. Any quick thoughts on that since video is so important?

Maher: Right. So since you are, like you said, you’re doing it as much for the video and putting it up on YouTube as you are for the audio, one thing to watch out for would just be your camera, whatever you’re using for your webcam. Maybe it’s just the camera that’s built into your laptop. Just make sure it’s a good quality camera so you’re getting at least 1080P quality, or you can have an external camera.

I happen to have a little Logitech camera that I have actually mounted on a little tripod stand that’s in front of me and I have it set up that way so that I can get the camera at eye level so that I’m looking directly into the camera as I’m talking to you. And that’s one thing to think about as well, that when you’re having a conversation with somebody, it’s best to train yourself to look at the camera instead of looking at the picture of the person.

So, you happen to be over here on my screen. So, if I’m having this conversation with you and I’m looking over there, the video is going to look a little bit funny because I’m looking off to the side, but if I’m looking into the camera, then it looks a little bit more natural. So, just kind of train yourself to look at the camera instead of at the video of the person that’s on your screen. So, that’s one thing.

Try to get the camera at eye level. If you’re using a laptop, if you have to throw it up on a little stand or get a couple of books to prop your laptop onto, I think that’s a good idea. And then in terms of lighting, of course you want to have the lights kind of in front of you. So, if you’re up against a wall, maybe you have a window behind you.

If you do, you might want to consider having some sort of a sheer kind of curtain over that to maybe diffuse the light a little bit so that you don’t end up with a harsh line of the sun. The worst thing to have happen would be in the middle of a conversation to have the sun all of a sudden come and be like halfway down your face and your face is half lit by sun on one side and then it’s tracking across your face as you’re talking. That’s kind of like the worst situation. So, having some kind of a curtain to help diffuse that. Or even better, just not even have any harsh light coming in through a window right in front of you, but instead maybe get some LED lights that you have on either side.

McDougall: I just turned mine off.

Maher: Oh yeah. So you had the LED lights and now you’re a little bit darker.

McDougall: Right. I forget the brand, but they’re like puck lights on boom stands, maybe 100 to 200 dollars.

Maher: And then you could get ones that mount onto your monitors as well.

McDougall: If I turn that on there’s a lot of light there. So I really want the second one on as well.

Maher: And ideally if you use two lights, having one be bright and then have the other one on the other side at a 45-degree angle be like half the brightness of that one, which gives you nice lighting. So, like your face has a little bit more light on the right-hand side than it does on the left-hand side and that’s good. That’s kind of what you want to shoot for.

I have a little bit more washed out kind of look from my Logitech camera. I think I’m going to be upgrading that actually eventually. And I have like an LED light that’s in my room shining up into the ceiling away from me. And then it’s bouncing off of the ceiling and just sort of giving me general light. So, experiment with it a little bit. I’m getting away with kind of one light, but on the other hand, I may be a little bit washed out on my face.

So, having a different setup where there’s two lights on, one on either side of you at 45-degree angles would be the best setup. So again, you do what you can. If you’re just starting out and you just want some basic lighting, you might be able to even just get away with whatever lights you have in your room. Just make sure that the lights aren’t all behind you and not in front of you where they’re shining on your face. You don’t want to have your background completely lit up and bright, but your face be dark. That’s sort of what you’re trying to avoid.

Podcast Webcams

McDougall: Yeah. And I had just done, because we both have Logitech webcams that are solid, but they’re like $70 webcams or whatever. I don’t even remember. I’ve had that Logitech for so long because it’s been reliable and good. But I would like to be able to do background blur from the webcam itself. So, I did a little Google Gemini deep research. It said, “Best blur for optical bokeh,” or however you say the background blur. The Razor Kiyo Pro Ultra or the Opal C1 or OBSBOT Tiny 2.

We were just at a law firm, a personal injury lawyer of ours in Salem the other day, and I think they had the OBSBOT. It looks almost like the Blue Yeti. It has its own stand. It’s kind of big. It looks like a security camera or something. Kind of cool. Best value for Background Blur, Elgato Facecam Pro MK.2, although they’re saying that these require a higher end NVIDIA sound graphics card — Insta 360 Link, OBSBOT Tiny 2 again. Logitech MXBrio, and then summary and verdict if you want the best look at the Razor Kiyo Pro Ultra, creates real blur that looks like a DSLR camera. If you have a powerful PC, Elgato Facecam Pro or Insta 360. Or I think the Logitech MX Brio, Brio 4K, I asked it because I’ve interviewed Rock Felder from Squadcast. His sound was great. His light was great. So when I did the deep research, I said, “Think like a podcast expert and look at what Squadcast recommends for webcams.” And actually, I think they had some kind of post that said, if you don’t want to get that super high end $500 to $1,000 webcam, I think it was the Logitech Brio, I forget if they’re like maybe $200 or something. There’s sort of tiers. There’s like $20 to $100 all day long, 50, 70, $80 Logitechs that are quite good.

But yeah, if you want to start getting…you can literally dial like a camera lens on the webcam…now you’re talking hundreds of dollars, but is it worth it? It might be. More important though, and the deep research said this was like, don’t go upgrading your webcam till you figure out your lighting because even a good webcam isn’t going to perfectly solve the lighting. So, number one, probably before you upgrade your webcam, if you already have a decent, like half decent Logitech, is make sure you have good lighting. And then if you want advanced features and just crazy high quality video, yeah, some of those are options.

Maher: Or I’ve been seeing people use their DSLR camera as their webcam. And there’s ways that you can get those DSLR cameras to be plugged into your computer and be using that as your webcam.

McDougall: I know people that do that even for Zoom. Oli Billson from our mastermind group, he was always so clear, what webcam is he using? He’s got like two cameras and he can just get angles, in just like a Zoom meeting. That’s pretty out there. But getting started, Logitech webcam, Blue Yeti mic, a couple of basic lights for a hundred bucks just so it’s reasonable, get it at the right spot, test your audio level, you’re golden. And within an hour you can do that. And then you can [work on] the high end stuff. Yep. All right, cool. That was good info, John, and thanks for speaking to me today.

Maher: Absolutely.

McDougall: And thanks for joining us on AI SEO for Law Firms. If you’re ready to stop losing high value cases because of outdated SEO, subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And for a deeper look at your law firm’s current AI strategy, visit mcdougalinteractive.com for a free audit.