Professional Development

How can you learn confidence? Sometimes you have to figure out how to act like you're confident until you feel it. Here's one way to go about it.

There are places where you can tell a joke and places where you definitely shouldn’t. Generally, the courtroom is not the first choice for stand-up comedy. Unless you’re Paul Farahvar. Farahvar took improv classes at Chicago’s Second City comedy ...

Good improv comics have an ability to walk onto a stage and connect with an audience effortlessly. It may seem like this is because of their innate acting talent, but that's only part of it. Improv training gives these actors a toolbox of ...

Athletes often discuss the fact that each time they advance to the next level the game “speeds up.” The leap from high school to college ball is a significant one. Players are bigger, faster and stronger, and the game moves at a more rapid pace. ...

A great deal has been said and written about the epidemic of the unhappy lawyer. Surveys suggest that career dissatisfaction among lawyers, and even rates of depression, are on the rise. Law firm associates are not immune. In fact, a survey from ...

A law student is working on a direct examination during a trial skills program. She is practicing her presentation — how she stands, gestures and speaks. Each time through the examination, she asks exactly the same questions, with ...

I'll begin by pulling the Band-Aid off quickly: After 15 years, I'm leaving the e-discovery space. For those who know me, this will come as a really big surprise — especially given my longtime social media moniker "eDiscovery Gold.” In truth, ...

Your legal career comes down to a choice between two paths. One feels safe, the other fraught with risk. One requires conformity, the other originality. One leads away from fear, the other straight toward it. Building a successful personal brand ...

When we talk about generational issues — and we do that frequently — we tend to focus on millennials. That’s only natural because we depend on them to carry law firms into the future. But we also need to pay close attention to baby boomers, the ...

Every group of listeners is a multi-eyed monster that a speaker must confront, eyeball to eyeball.