What I Told Lake Forest College Students About AI — And Why It Matters for Your Firm

A few weeks ago, I stood in front of a room full of students at Lake Forest College's Entrepreneurial Club. The topic was supposed to be straightforward: how to stand out in hiring when AI can do what junior employees used to do. But the conversation quickly became something bigger — a discussion about what AI actually changes, what it doesn't, and how every industry is about to go through the same reckoning.

I left that room thinking about you — the insurance agency owner on Deerpath, the managing partner at a law firm in Highland Park, the financial advisor in Wilmette. Because the same forces I described to those students are heading straight for your firm. And the firms that understand this shift first will be the ones that win.

What I Actually Told the Students

The core message was this: AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor aren't replacing people. They're amplifying the people who know how to use them. The students who learn to build with these tools today will look like senior employees tomorrow. The ones who ignore them will be competing against people who can do three times the work in half the time.

Three ideas really landed.

1. Personal Connections Still Outperform Everything

AI can generate a hundred polished resumes in an afternoon. The thing that still cuts through? Genuine human connection. I told the students that "genuinely connecting with people who work in the space you care about" will always outperform mass-applying online. Every great hire I've made came through a referral — someone who already knew the candidate was good.

This isn't just a hiring lesson. It's a business lesson. (I wrote more about what hiring taught me about business efficiency.) Your best clients didn't find you through a Google ad. They came because someone they trusted told them about you. So the real question is: are you making it easy for those referrals to happen?

At Bace Agency, when we work with professional services firms on the North Shore, one of the first things we automate is the referral and follow-up pipeline. Not because relationships don't matter — but because the administrative work around maintaining relationships is exactly what AI handles best. You focus on the conversation at Starbucks in Lake Forest. We make sure the follow-up email goes out on time, the CRM gets updated, and the next touchpoint is scheduled.

2. AI Is a Force Multiplier, Not a Replacement

Everyone's worried AI will take jobs. Here's what I actually told them: AI is coming to take tasks. The people who understand the difference will thrive. The people who don't will struggle to keep up.

Think about what a junior insurance agent does in their first year. They're answering phones, entering data into Applied Epic, routing documents, sending follow-up emails, scheduling renewals. It's necessary work, but it's not the work that builds client relationships or closes policies. AI can handle most of those tasks today — not in theory, but in practice. I've built these systems for agencies right here on the North Shore.

The result isn't fewer employees. It's employees who can focus on the work that actually grows the business. The agent who used to spend three hours a day on data entry now spends that time meeting with prospects. The paralegal who was buried in document formatting now reviews case strategy with the partner. The financial advisor's assistant who was manually compiling portfolio reports now prepares for client meetings.

The students who learn to build with these tools today will look like senior employees tomorrow.

This is exactly what I told the students, and it applies to your team just as much. The question isn't whether your firm will use AI. It's whether your firm will figure it out before your competitors do.

3. The AI Paradox: More Noise, More Opportunity

Here's the paradox I described to the room: AI is simultaneously flooding every channel with generic content while making it easier than ever to deliver genuinely personalized, high-quality work. The students who use AI to mass-send identical resumes will get ignored. The students who use AI to deeply research each company and craft tailored applications will stand out more than ever.

The same paradox exists in professional services. AI chatbots are popping up on every website. Automated email sequences are filling every inbox. Generic "AI-powered" tools are being pitched at every conference. Most of it is noise.

But the firms that use AI thoughtfully — to genuinely improve client experience, to respond faster, to catch details that humans miss, to personalize every interaction — those firms will create a competitive advantage that's hard to replicate.

How This Translates to Your Insurance Agency

I've seen these patterns play out with the firms I work with through Bace Agency's automation services.

Here's what I see in most North Shore agencies. Phones ring after hours and nobody answers. Leads come in from the website and sit in an inbox for 24 to 48 hours before someone responds. Renewal notices go out late because someone forgot to update the spreadsheet. Policy documents get routed to the wrong department because the intake form wasn't filled out correctly. CSRs spend hours entering the same data into Applied Epic that was already captured on a paper form.

Every one of these problems is a task problem, not a people problem. Your team isn't lazy or incompetent. They're buried in repetitive work that AI should be handling.

Here's what it looks like in practice:

AI phone answering: Someone calls at 8 PM. The AI picks up, captures their info, figures out what they need, and routes it to the right person by morning. Urgent? It escalates immediately.
Automated client intake: A new lead hits your website. Within seconds they get a response, a qualifying questionnaire, and they're in your CRM. Your agent already has context before the callback.
Renewal management: No more missed renewals. AI watches every date across your book and kicks off personalized outreach at 90, 60, and 30 days out.
Document processing: Documents come in, get classified, data gets pulled out, and Applied Epic gets updated — without anyone retyping anything. CSRs just review and approve.
Follow-up sequences: Prospects who don't convert aren't forgotten. They get relevant, personalized touchpoints based on what they actually asked about — not some generic drip campaign.

We've implemented variations of all of these for agencies in Lake Forest, Highland Park, and the broader North Shore area. The results are consistent: faster response times, fewer dropped leads, happier staff, and more policies written. You can see some of the specifics in our insurance case study.

What This Means for Law Firms and Financial Advisors

Same story for law firms and financial advisors. Different software, different terminology, same problems.

For law firms, client intake is the critical bottleneck. A potential client calls your office at 6 PM on a Tuesday. Nobody answers. They call the next firm on Google. You never even knew the lead existed. AI intake systems solve this immediately — capturing the inquiry, running a basic conflict check, and scheduling a consultation before your staff arrives the next morning. The integration with Clio or your practice management system means everything is documented and filed correctly from the start.

For financial advisors, the opportunity is in client communication and compliance. Portfolio review reports that take hours to compile manually can be generated automatically. Compliance monitoring that requires constant vigilance can be handled by AI systems that never sleep. Client check-ins that fall through the cracks during busy seasons can be automated without losing the personal touch. Integration with Wealthbox, Salesforce, or Redtail means your CRM is always current.

The principle is the same one I shared with those students at Lake Forest College: AI amplifies what you're already good at. It doesn't replace the expertise, the relationships, or the judgment that make your firm valuable. It removes the friction that keeps you from spending more time on the things that matter.

The Firms That Move First Will Win

I told the students something that stuck with them: in five years, every resume will mention AI proficiency. The advantage goes to the people who develop that proficiency now, while it's still a differentiator.

The same is true for professional services firms on the North Shore. Right now, most of your competitors are still doing things the old way. They're still answering phones manually, entering data by hand, sending renewal notices from spreadsheets. The window of competitive advantage is open — but it won't stay open forever.

One of the comments from a student after my talk really captured it. Daniel Paul put it well — the students who treat AI as a tool, not a crutch, are the ones who pull ahead. The same distinction applies to your firm. AI isn't a magic button you press to solve all your problems. It's a powerful tool that, when applied thoughtfully to specific workflows, transforms how your team operates. That philosophy of no hype, just building is central to everything we do.

What I've Seen Change on the North Shore

Since I started working with professional services firms in this community, I've seen the same thing happen. The firms that adopt AI early don't just get more efficient — they get more confident. Their teams stop dreading Monday mornings because the inbox isn't a disaster. Their owners stop worrying about missed calls because the system catches everything. Their clients notice the difference because responses come faster, renewals happen on time, and nothing falls through the cracks.

I've worked with an insurance agency in Lake Forest that went from losing an estimated 15 to 20 leads per month to after-hours voicemail to capturing every single inquiry with an AI phone system. The leads that used to vanish into the void now get a response within seconds — a professional, context-aware response that qualifies the inquiry and schedules a callback. The agency didn't hire anyone new. They didn't extend office hours. They just stopped losing the business that was already coming to them.

I've seen a similar transformation at a law firm that automated their intake process. Before, a new client inquiry took an average of 36 hours to get a substantive response. Prospects would call two or three other firms in that window. After implementing AI-powered intake, the response time dropped to under two minutes. The firm's consultation booking rate more than doubled — They weren't getting more leads. They just stopped losing the ones they had.

These aren't hypothetical scenarios or Silicon Valley case studies. They're firms in your community, run by people you probably know, serving clients who live in the same towns you do. The technology isn't futuristic. It's available right now, and it works.

Where to Start

Here's where I'd start. Don't try to "implement AI" as some broad initiative. Instead, pick one workflow that's causing pain right now. Maybe it's the phone calls you're missing after hours. Maybe it's the renewal notices that go out late. Maybe it's the client intake process that takes three days when it should take three minutes.

Start there. Understand how the work actually flows — not how you think it flows, but how your team really does it day to day. Map every step, every handoff, every manual entry point. Then ask: which of these steps could AI handle while maintaining or improving quality?

That's exactly the approach we take at Bace Agency. We start with a free AI audit — a 30-minute conversation where we map your most painful workflow and identify exactly where automation would have the biggest impact. No pitch deck. Just an honest look at where AI fits.

Because the lesson I shared with those Lake Forest College students applies to every business on the North Shore: the technology is here. The question is whether you'll use it to amplify what makes your firm great — or whether you'll wait until everyone else figures it out first.

What You Can Do This Week

You don't need a full AI implementation to start making progress. Here are a few things you can do right now:

Audit your after-hours call handling. Call your own office at 7 PM tonight. What happens? If the answer is voicemail, you're losing leads every week. Write down how many calls you estimate go unanswered after 5 PM.
Map one repetitive workflow end to end. Pick the task your team complains about most — renewal notices, intake forms, document routing — and write down every single step. Every click, every handoff, every manual entry. You'll be surprised how many steps there are.
Time your lead response. Submit a test inquiry through your own website. Start a stopwatch. How long until a real human responds with something substantive? If it's more than an hour, that's your biggest opportunity.
Ask your CSRs what they re-type most often. The answer will point you straight to your first automation opportunity. If the same data is being entered into two or more systems manually, that's a workflow AI can handle today.
Check your CRM data quality. Pull up ten random client records. Are the emails current? Are phone numbers formatted consistently? Are notes fields actually filled in? Clean data is the foundation of any automation — and a quick spot-check will tell you where you stand.

Michael Pavlovskyi is the founder of Bace Agency, an AI workflow automation consultancy based in Lake Forest, Illinois. He works with insurance agencies, law firms, and financial advisors on Chicago's North Shore to eliminate manual work and modernize operations. He also hosts the RedNote Podcast.