Lawyer Skills

I once defended a product liability case where the client was adamant that the product always be called a “personal watercraft.” It most definitely was not, he insisted, a Jet-Ski. The issue was the use of a trademark to refer to a similar ...

Some words sound like they mean one thing when they actually mean something very different. Using one of these false friends incorrectly could cause you a problem. But It Sounded Right … The term “false friends” traditionally refers to words ...

You may find people taking pictures of their device screens with their own (or other people’s) phones. Don’t do that. There’s an easier way. Instead, investigate your device’s built-in ability to take screen shots — also known as screen grabs or ...

We all struggle with conveying complicated ideas, whether in spoken or written communication. The issue is particularly acute in the fields of law and medicine, where professionals work to explain issues and situations in which the audience ...

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.

Email is the global de facto communication standard. Business use of email continues to grow. Email is also a hybrid form of communication — a written form used conversationally. This hybrid nature, coupled with habits developed early in its ...

Sanctions. That word has always troubled me. It’s a contronym, a word that has opposite meanings. Lawyers know that a motion for sanctions asks the court to penalize an adversary’s bad act. But other English speakers define a sanction as a ...

To use a comparison from my days as a high school teacher, tactics are to objectives as strategies are to goals. You and your client are in different businesses (unless you do legal malpractice work) and have different business goals. But ...

Secure client communication is a major concern for lawyers. Encryption is your best option for protecting confidential and sensitive information you exchange by email, text, voice and video calls with your clients. ABA Formal Opinion 11-459, ...

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 ...