Enhance Your Practice Skills in Unconventional Ways

At a moment when we keep hearing about the art of storytelling, and how we must all become better at it, can we agree that form and content go hand in hand? That even the best of speeches will be lacking effect if delivered in a monotone, by a speaker standing stiffly at a lectern, reading directly from a prepared text? That all sorts of theatrical gestures won’t save an argument ultimately lacking in substance?

And, yet, as lawyers, can’t we recall moments in history when speakers had a command of content and used their voices and motions to inspire action or make compelling points? Defense attorney Johnny Cochran’s assertion about gloves at the O.J. Simpson trial that “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit ”comes to mind, as does President Bill Clinton’s finger wagging while discussing White House intern Monica Lewinsky (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). Watching President Barack Obama deliver the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney in Charleston and then sing “Amazing Grace” was inspirational. Seeing him at a photo op shake hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the United Nations fostered quite a different response, one of wariness. Earlier generations may have had the same reaction upon seeing Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev pounding on a desk at the United Nations and later saying “we will bury you.”

Call it storytelling, call it theatrics, call it rhetoric, but call it effective. Imagine less vivid and dynamic characters delivering any of the speeches mentioned above. Try practicing in a mirror: Are you convincing?

As a lawyer, you need to be. Yet, how can you become a compelling presence?

• Take a course in rhetoric. Here you are likely to learn the classical approaches to discourse and can adapt them to more contemporary means. If local options are not available, online choices exist via MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera, and other sources. Get ready to assess invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, the canons of rhetoric.

• Learn how to do standup comedy. Win over an audience, make people laugh, have them following your every sentence — there may be any number of similarities between standup and litigation. Online opportunities to learn standup are available through Udemy and other venues.
• Become a clown. What better way to learn about exaggerated expressions and the importance of being able to make fun of yourself? You will also appreciate fashion choices a lot more, too.
• Discover scouting. If you can get a group of kids to do anything, and especially anything rugged, in a group, you can persuade a judge to rule your way.
• Mimic the mannerisms of someone you admire. Some people ask themselves in tense situations what their higher power would do. A timid speaker in my younger years, I’d instead ask myself, What would Barbara do? My friend was assertive and bold and she empowered me to enter intimidating sitautions confidently in ways she knew nothing about.
• Participate in a poetry slam. Stretch your boundaries and deliver a dramatic recitation of a poem in a competitive atmosphere.