I have had the pleasure of being a public performer for 22 years, as a gymnast, a classically trained singer, a flash mob performer and, more recently, a speaker on legal topics. Despite all of my experience, I still get nervous. Before most performances you will find me pacing backstage asking myself, “Why is this fun for me?”

The Advice That Changed Everything

My nerves used to get to me. Sometimes I would get so nervous that I would shake, and I would be so worried about being nervous that it would hurt my performance. And then I got the advice that changed everything. I was at a student singing recital at Oregon State University when one of my classmates told me, “Remember, everyone wants you to do well.”

That advice changed my life and the way I approached performing. It completely shifted my focus away from how nervous I was to putting on a good show for the audience. It became all about my audience and not about how I felt standing in front of them. That advice made me realize the audience is there for an experience, and it’s my job to provide it.

These days, I still get nervous before taking the stage, no matter if I’m performing for a full house or only a few people. I still sweat like crazy and worry that I’m going to forget what I want to say. But now, being nervous is not an excuse for doing a bad job. I try to focus on speaking slowly and keeping my message concise and entertaining so the audience will remember it.

As a legal public speaker, I speak mostly to laypersons who are artists, bloggers and businesspeople about intellectual property and Internet law issues. My audience expects me to be entertaining and to provide useful knowledge, and that’s what I try to deliver. When I step on stage, I don’t take my fears with me. I focus on making sure my audience gets what they need and everything else seems to fall into place.

Ruth Carter is an Arizona lawyer with a virtual practice, The Carter Law Firm, focusing on intellectual property, social media, First Amendment and flash mob law. A 2011 law graduate, Ruth is co-founder of Improv Arizona and she blogs weekly at UndeniableRuth.com.

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Legal puberty is real. I am not referring to one of those laws in the South regarding 12-year-olds getting married and when you can buy alcohol. I mean that, just as in your real life, you’ll go through certain developmental stages in your career—including puberty—in your life as a lawyer. The phases are similar, quite distinct and universal.

First, you are born as an attorney, crying (on the inside), scared (on the outside). Then, one day you realize you can subpoena people and it’s “Helloooo, Terrible Two’s!” You say “no” to every request made of you and only your cases are important.

Within a few years you enter your legal teens. You get the coolest laptop or iPad, bring it to court, stop shaving every day and say things like “I know, I know, that judge is totally clueless.”

Next comes young adulthood. This is when it becomes clear your school loans are not going anywhere. It’s also when you get your first client on your own and realize, “Holy sh#t, I can make money doing this!” Then you finally dive into your work.

The years pass, and you hit your midlife legal crisis. You buy the newest, niftiest gadgets, unbutton your shirt collar at depositions (no tie, of course) and say things like, “I made this firm and they don’t even realize it.”

Finally, comes the senior lawyer phase. Now you are a mature, wise lawyer. You know a few things—including all the things that you don’t know.

You Can Choose to Be a Grown-up Lawyer

You’re probably nodding your head now, identifying various colleagues who are showing the signs of all these stages of development. But wait. You do realize that legal puberty is not physiological, right? You can choose to change it, and accelerate your legal age straight to maturity and wisdom. Be a grown-up. Just follow three easy guidelines:

1. Respect all attorneys. They all passed the bar, and belong to the same profession you do. Disrespecting another attorney is disrespecting yourself.
2. Stop thinking you know it all. You don’t. The less your bosses know about technology, the more valuable they are to you. Wisdom can be learned. The senior partner may think a Twitter is a tool used during a prostate exam, but his name is on the wall for a reason. Learn from him.
3. Less is more. Talk less, argue less and listen more. Clients, judges and other lawyers love to talk. Let them.

I may not know what I’m talking about, but I think you understand.

William Melater is a young associate working at a firm focused on commercial litigation and transactional work. A self-described legal hunter and gatherer, Bill has accumulated a plethora of legal certificates and diplomas—all of which have been appropriately framed and hung behind his desk. Bill has a distaste for emails, suspenders, fake tans, paralegals who cry, sea urchins and attorneys who repeat the phrase “this is my bottom-line offer.” When irked, Bill blogs about his experiences at Attorney at Work.

Illustration ©ImageZoo.

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Attorney at Work has been after me for a post about Klout. Try as I might, the drafts are snarky. I simply can’t get past my mantra: Until my Klout score replaces my credit score, I pay it little attention.

I say “little attention” because rarely a day goes by when I don’t see a tweet along the the lines of “I just gave so-and-so +K in fill-in-the-blank” or “I just received +K for fill-in-the-blank.” As if on autopilot, I click on my profile in HootSuite so my eyes can take in my current Klout score. At one point, I experimented and added my LinkedIn profile and Google+ profile. My score went up.

Fascinating. For all of 30 seconds. Still hasn’t replaced my credit score, thus requires little attention.

Oh. Wait. Perhaps I should backup for a second and explain Klout so you can better judge its uselessness … er … usefulness …er … draw your own conclusions.

In a nutshell, Klout “believes everyone has influence” so its goal is to “help you understand and leverage that influence.” To arrive at a number, or score, that accurately reflects your “sphere of influence” Klout uses a secret algorithmic sauce that makes any Google Dance (the changing of its algorithm and subsequently shuffling of search engine results that tends to upset webmasters and SEO specialists) look like child’s play.

So when this piece, “What Your Klout Score Really Means,” from Wired’s tech blog, came across my Facebook feed, I clicked through with mindless curiosity. What does my Klout score really mean? My inquiring mind wanted to know.

More than I knew, apparently. From the Wired article:

Matt Thomson, Klout’s VP of platform, says that a number of major companies—airlines, big-box retailers, hospitality brands—are discussing how best to use Klout scores. Soon, he predicts, people with formidable Klout will board planes earlier, get free access to VIP airport lounges, stay in better hotel rooms, and receive deep discounts from retail stores and flash-sale outlets. ‘We say to brands that these are the people they should pay attention to most,’ Thomson says. ‘How they want to do it is up to them.’

In other words, Klout is creating another class system. Or, perhaps a little less bluntly, another online competition that impacts your offline life. This was hammered home with the example of hotels checking the Klout scores of guests, unknown to the guests, and giving those with high scores free upgrades. Nice perk. Will it also give me a discount on a home loan? Car insurance? I thought not.

Klout, then, is not for everyone, which significantly reduces its chance of replacing credit scores. Which, of course, begs the question: Should lawyers care?

Answer: Maybe.

As the first part of the Wired article demonstrated, checking Klout scores isn’t out of the ordinary. And if your clientele is the kind who makes decisions based on things like social media interaction and Klout scores, then it might very well be worth your while to invest some time and energy into increasing or maintaining a high Klout score.

That is, of course, if you want to take on a client who only picked you because you have a certain Klout score.

This Forbes article is more to the point: You shouldn’t care about your Klout score.

Gwynne Monahan is best known by her Twitter handle @econwriter5. She has written several articles on open source applications for lawyers and legal professionals, and has presented on open source as well as issues surrounding social media. She is currently Community Manager for Clio and is spearheading Small Firm Innovation.

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Are you, too, remembering Maurice Sendak this week? Perhaps reliving the deliciously scary times you spent Where the Wild Things Are? Recalling bedtimes when you snuggled with your little one and a well-worn copy of In the Night Kitchen? Then this Friday Five is for you! We declare today “Wild Rumpus Day” at Attorney at Work, and invite you to rediscover your inner child. (Let’s see … where did I put her?) Come on, indulge in a little purposeless, passionate, non-goal-oriented but very important Friday nonsense. Just for the fun of it!

Baby Yourself, You Deserve It

Everyone needs to be a child now and then, even if it’s only to see your grown-up life from a fresh perspective.

1. Be curious. Remember mixing all the kitchen cupboard’s contents just to see what you got? Melting crayons in the sun? Vinegar and baking soda volcanoes? Do something you’ve never done before. Play. Experiment to find the answer. Mess around. Do something “uncool” just to see what happens. Some of the best discoveries are made after you stop being all serious and start being all reckless about it. Take the Slow Mo Guys, for example. Is that a … Whoopie Cushion?

2. Be outrageous. But in a nice way, of course. Now you’re an adult and there’s no one around but convention to enforce proper etiquette rules, maybe it’s time to inject a sense of humor into your electronic exchanges. Mashable feature writer Christine Erickson offers a wonderful selection of animated GIFs for that very purpose. There’s nearly one for every occassion.

3. Be adventurous. Put your newspaper to it’s highest and best use then head out on a journey of discovery. You don’t have to traverse the Tetons, maybe just the path to that coffee house you’ve been meaning to visit, or the local nursery’s aisles of spring garden arrivals. The child in you grows weary of the same old routine and the same old scene, so “second star to the right, and straight on till morning!”

4. Be loud. That’s right, why not shout it out? Or better yet, have a really good howl. If you’re going to take this rumpus thing seriously, it should be of little concern what people think of you. So grab one of your pals, go outdoors, throw your head back and HOWL like a coyote. There are few things as wildly liberating. Even the coyotes do it just for the sheer joy of it sometimes.

5. Be a love. Remember your mom on Mothers Day this Sunday—all the best kids do. Whether it’s an elegant brunch, something handmade or just volunteering to take over some of the chores, make your mom feel loved. And if you’re a mom yourself, get together with your progeny and “let the wild rumpus begin!”  

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Seems like you’re always under the gun, doesn’t it? Time pressure is the very nature of a lawyer’s life. But now you’ve found that your new iPad makes your load lighter, let’s make it quicker, too. Get beyond the basic 101-level of iPad use, and you can apply all kinds of micro-efficiencies to speed things up. Just as Microsoft Office and other programs have shortcuts, there are shortcuts for the iPad2 and iPad as well.

With a little practice, these techniques will help you work more quickly, with fewer interruptions. They may even attract the occasional admiring glance when meeting with clients or partners!

Multi-Touch Gestures to Help Navigate More Quickly

How many fingers am I holding up? Did you know that your iPad2 or new iPad can tell how many fingers you have on its screen and will respond accordingly?

• The Five-Finger Pinch. To return to the home screen, spread all five fingers out on the screen and slide them to the center. I find this works more quickly and smoothly than leaving the screen to find and click the Home button.
• The Four-Finger Swipe (up and down). To show the multitasking bar, swipe up with four fingers. To hide the multitasking bar, swipe down with four fingers. I find this more convenient than double-clicking the Home button.
• The Four-Finger Swipe (right and left). Swiping left with four fingers, as if you are rifling through a phone book, will take you to the program you used last, and swiping right with four fingers will take you back to the program you were using before you swiped left. You can continue to swipe in either direction until you reach the first or last open program. When I was a practicing attorney, I was constantly bouncing back and forth between two open programs  such as legal research on the web and the brief I was writing with the research findings, so this is a real help in multitasking.

If you find working with the multi-touch gestures difficult, try turning on the Assistive Touch feature under Settings/General/Accessibility.

Tap and Hold

Your iPad registers when your finger lingers on its screen and will often respond differently than it would to a straightforward tap and release. Learning a few tap-and-hold shortcuts can improve your iPad typing experience. Tapping and holding a key on the on-screen keyboard will often bring up shortcuts to characters on another keyboard. For example, tapping and holding the letter “e” on the main keyboard will display a selection of all of the accented “e” characters that you would find on the other language keyboards. This is great, of course, if you are working with foreign-language or international clients. Slide your finger from the key you were holding onto the character you would like to use and then lift your finger off the screen to type the character. The other vowels and several consonants work the same way.

The chart below shows a few more of these useful tap-and-hold shortcuts.

You are likely to find other shortcuts as you explore the keyboard. For keys that have only one tap-and-hold alternative (the comma on the main keyboard, for example), you can simply swipe up.

I haven’t found a way to type a paragraph symbol, or pilcrow (¶), from the iPad’s keyboard, but if you type the symbol on your computer in an e-mail you send to yourself, you can then open the e-mail on your iPad and copy and paste the symbol into an iPad Shortcut (Settings/General/Keyboard/Shortcuts). The iPad’s Autocorrect feature will then insert the symbol whenever you type the shortcut’s trigger.

Tap and hold will also allow you to type one character on the number keyboard and then automatically return to the main keyboard.  For example, to type an “@” sign in an e-mail address, tap and hold the “.?123″ button for the number keyboard and then, without lifting your finger, slide over to the “@” and then lift your finger up.  Not only will you type an “@,” but your iPad will switch back to the main keyboard so you can continue typing.

With a little experimentation and practice these advanced iPad maneuvers can certainly work to your advantage.

Carol J. Gerber, JD, MA is the Owner and Founder of Gerber Amalgamated LLC, a legal technology consulting company devoted to helping attorneys make better use of technology in their practices. Carol’s class, “Practicing Law with an iPad,” has been approved for 1 credit by the New York State CLE Board and can be customized for your firm or legal department.