Lawyer Skills

To avoid putting the proverbial keyboard in your mouth, do not use words or phrases until you are 100 percent certain of the meaning.

No, we don't mean your words go into the garbage. A tipsy vocabulary may enrich your communications. In the right case, soused language can be spot-on.

Have you seen the film “Moneyball”? Or read the book? It turns out that winning at baseball is a lot like winning at conversations.

Now lawyers use every term they can think of because some court somewhere once said the language in the contract didn’t cover the dispute. Sometimes that’s a good reason, but often it is not. Rather than a considered approach, most lawyers start ...

Do you get nervous before speaking in front of people? Even worse, do you have trouble letting go of your performance once it's over? For lawyers especially, it can be hard to shut off your mind. So it’s useful to think about another context ...

As a judge reviews your brief, they’re evaluating your argument and your professionalism. Consider the words of the Hon. Raymond M. Kethledge, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, in an article he wrote for the ABA.(1) “When I read a brief, the first ...

A growing body of research suggests that reading fiction increases your capacity for empathy. The basic idea is that imagining the emotional world of fictional characters is good practice for empathizing with actual humans. For example, have you ...

Margaret Atwood, the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has frequently noted that with all technology, there is a good side, a bad side and a stupid side that you weren’t expecting. With major advances in technology, like the internet itself, ...

As you edit your work product, pay special attention to instances where a stronger verb could replace a verb and its direct object. Besides being less persuasive, weak verbs plus explanatory words lengthen your writing [not, “make it longer”].

It’s highly unlikely that your law practice is anywhere near as noisy and chaotic as Times Square. Quite the contrary: When you go to meetings, or present to groups of lawyers or potential clients, the space is relatively calm and quiet. Most ...