Lawyer Skills

Using jargon can alienate outsiders, including judges. But is there ever a good reason to use it?

Parties frequently use terms incorrectly, and that leads to miscommunication.

The bottom line is that “coequal” means “equal.”

Lessons in the art of making meaningful personal connections from Ruby's Customer Happiness Team.

Making a difference in the world starts with making an impact on the people you work with, and the people you lead. Leadership is not a position or a title — it’s a state of mind.

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 ...