Category: Collaboration

Today is the International Day of Listening

Jennifer Romig1 Comment

Today, September 20, 2018, is the International Day of Listening. This event, now in its third year and sponsored by the International Listening Association, aims to promote listening benefits and practices in a variety of ways, encouraging people to:

  • Become more aware of the importance of listening
  • Listen to each other better
  • Gain awareness on their listening behaviors

The theme this year is “Listening—even when you disagree.” Personal activities you can do to observe the International Day of Listening are suggested on the International Day of Listening website. Legal professionals who have 30 minutes at lunch may want to talk to a trusted colleague about their effectiveness as a listener. Or take 20 minutes for a meditative listening walk.

The International Day of Listening has broader aspirations than helping lawyers recharge their batteries by listening to nature, collaborate effectively in the workplace, and do an excellent job representing individual clients—although all of these are excellent goals and high on the priority list for this blog. The International Listening Association’s broader aims with political dialogue raise far more difficult questions about listening and power. Part of a lawyer’s job is to listen effectively in difficult situations. All professionals in the legal industry should have experience listening in difficult situations. Ideally, these skills from the professional realm can serve beneficial purposes in public discourse.

Repeat listening

Jennifer RomigLeave a comment

This Thursday, I will be pleased to moderate a panel on productive communication between insurance adjusters and insurance defense counsel. Attorney Jeremy Richter of Webster Henry and claims adjuster Nikki DeWitt of Carolina Casualty Insurance Company will be the panelists at the event sponsored by the CLM’s Alabama chapter.

Our discussion will focus on how attorneys and claims adjusters can use listening and other communication skills to work together efficiently and effectively. Many of these assignments involve repeat players on both the adjuster and attorney side. What I’m most interested in hearing from Nikki and Jeremy is steps they recommend for establishing solid communication early, and maintaining effective communication in later cases. Effective listening is a major part of both goals, and Jeremy and Nikki will share their observations and some examples of how they use listening skills. This conversation will be customized to the claims adjuster-attorney relationship, but I expect some broadly applicable points as well.

Registration is open to CLM members and fellows here. I will follow up here on the blog after the panel.

 

Review of Alan Alda’s If I Understood You

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ralph_anneThanks to Anne Ralph, Clinical Professor of Law at the Ohio State University, Michael E. Moritz College of Law, for this guest post reviewing Alan Alda’s new book on listening, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? 

Any lawyer who’s misunderstood (or been misunderstood by) a client, opposing counsel, or judge knows that failed communication can thwart even the best legal knowledge and skills. In If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, Alan Alda makes the case for an intentional focus on effective communication by highlighting the very real costs of failed communication: “[D]isengagement from the person we hope will understand us” [xvi]. This disengagement can “stand in the way of all kinds of happiness and success” [xvi], including, I think Alda would agree, success in the practice of law.

In Alda’s book, lawyers will find useful insights related to listening. Granted, most of Alda’s case studies and anecdotes center on how scientists communicate their knowledge—which makes sense given that Alda hosted the TV series Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. But Alda’s friendly writing voice and skill at sharing complex concepts in simple, memorable terms make the book valuable for anyone interested in improving their communication skills.

The book maps Alda’s own personal journey to improve his communication. Alda describes his communication “blunders” when he began hosting Scientific American Frontiers: He assumed he knew more than he actually did, which offended a scientist he was interviewing; he repeatedly ignored the scientist’s obvious body language showing discomfort; and finally, as he barreled along through an interview, he asked a set script of questions instead of questions that grew out of what the scientist was sharing. In short, Alda writes, “I wasn’t really listening to him” [6]. In this list of blunders, lawyers might recognize their own experiences with awkward client interviews, ineffective depositions, or unsuccessful negotiations with opposing counsel.

Alda, a prolific actor and director whose deep insights into human nature are apparent on every page, was disappointed with himself for being so disconnected in the interview. Alda’s acting experience, including his improv training, had taught him to connect to other actors in a deep and immediate sense, creating spontaneous responses between people. As a result, he had expected himself to be naturally better at listening and reacting to his interview partner.

Thus began his quest to better understand the science of communicating–or, as Alda puts it, borrowing a term from director Mike Nichols: “relating.” Relating, as Alda defines it, means “observing” another person with such awareness that “everything about them affect[s] you: not just their words, but also their tone of voice, their body language, even subtle things like where they’re standing in the room or how they occupy a chair” [10].

When Alda consciously used his improv training in his conversations with scientists, he found his way to “responsive listening,” the key first step in relating and a concept that roughly translates to being open to being changed by the other person in the conversation.

The willingness to be changed required him to use both his natural curiosity and an awareness of his own ignorance. It turned out that conversations were hampered when Alda made assumptions about the scientists’ work based on his own limited knowledge—those assumptions led him to ask limiting questions, which reduced the value of the information the scientists provided. But when Alda engaged in the kind of responsive listening that his improv work prepared him to do, the effect was contagious, leading the scientists to become more responsive as well. Alda described it as being “drawn into a kind of dance”[12]: Responsive listening made conversations dynamic because both participants in the conversation were constantly attuned to each other, instead of just waiting for each other to finish talking.

Naturally, Alda wondered if he had stumbled onto something big: would improv training help scientists better communicate complex concepts to the non-scientist world?

The answer is yes, as the rest of the book chronicles. Alda explores how people can develop their skill in relating, leading to better communication. As it turns out, both scientific studies of communication and his personal work with improv and acting bear out the idea that responsive listening is an essential building block in communicating anything to an audience.

For instance, Alda describes taking engineering students through of a series of improv exercises, which teach an ultimate lesson: “The person who’s communicating something is responsible for how well the other person follows him” [30]. In other words, true communication is inseparable from responsive listening and observing: “Communication doesn’t take place because you tell somebody something. It takes place when you observe them closely and track their ability to follow you” [17]. After these exercises, every engineering student’s delivery of a scientific talk improved. Again, Alda uses scientists and doctors in his stories, but the lessons can apply equally well to lawyers and clients or to lawyers and their other audiences.

For lawyers who want to better engage in responsive listening, this true connection that fosters communication, Alda identifies two key capacities:

  • empathy (which Alda describes as an emotional understanding of what the other person is feeling) and
  • Theory of Mind (which he describes as a rational understanding of what another person is thinking).

Both these capacities can be learned, and the book describes how teaching these skills to doctors leads to better outcomes for patients—and, interestingly, even to lower rates of medical malpractice lawsuits.

Because not everyone has access to the improv training or Theory-of-Mind courses the book describes, this blog’s readers might find Alda’s personal experiments at improving his empathy and theory of mind interesting and compelling. Alda participated in some small studies that aimed to increase empathy through practices he incorporated into his everyday life. For instance, he practiced reading the faces of people he encountered every day—from family members to passers-by on the street to cab drivers—trying to observe what they were feeling. He also practiced silently naming the emotions he observed. The results of these small studies suggest that these interventions have the intended effect of increasing empathy, and Alda invites readers to try these themselves. (In addition to describing how these exercises can improve one’s capacity for responsive listening, Alda also covers the role that increased empathy and awareness of Theory of Mind play in effective writing and in making a message memorable.)

I encourage lawyers to read the book—its friendly tone and use of stories makes the content memorable and accessible. Until you do read the book, consider the following as big takeaways for lawyers’ listening:

Listening is an essential part, a necessary precondition, of communicating well. Effective listening requires close attention to another person, thoughtful observation not only of words but of body language, withholding jumping to conclusions, and curiosity.

Thanks again to OSU’s Anne Ralph. She also writes about narrative as it is shaped (distorted?) by the rules of civil procedure. See more of Anne’s legal scholarship here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1669761

 

 

The hothouse of law school

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The great law professor Larry Ribstein used to say that legal education has grown within a hothouse. Flora and fauna grow in different ways in a hothouse than in a natural environment.

-William D. Henderson, quoted in Katrina Lee, The Legal Career: Knowing the Business, Thriving in Practice (2017)

For sixteen years I’ve been teaching in the “hothouse” of legal education. I’m certainly aware of differences between how law and legal skills are taught in the hothouse and how they are practiced in the natural environment.

Some of these differences are unavoidable and in fact beneficial. Education is preparation, and preparation can thoughtfully sequence legal topics and legal skills in a way that law practice does not and cannot.

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But some differences between the hothouse and natural environment of practice are not necessary or helpful. It’s an essential part of the law professor’s task to be aware of this difference and make constant calculations about where to situate each assignment or discussion. A class that is all “hothouse” may leave its delicate, coddled students to wilt in the natural environment; a class that is all natural may damage and weaken its students before they have a chance to thrive.

A class that is all “hothouse” may leave its delicate, coddled students to wilt in the natural environment; a class that is all natural may damage and weaken its students before they have a chance to thrive.

One key to making those calculations is knowing what happens in typical natural environment of law practice. Ann Sinsheimer and David J. Herring did a fascinating study of what lawyers really do at work. Of particular interest to the legal-writing professors, they found that lawyers they spend a ton of time meticulously crafting emails.[i]

Sinsheimer and Herring also found that lawyers spend a lot of time reading—no surprise there. But what they are reading is not nearly as case-driven as expected:

The scope of what these attorneys read was surprising to both the associates and the law student observers, particularly given the emphasis on reading judicial opinions in the traditional law school curriculum. In fact, our law student observers were surprised by the relatively few judicial opinions these attorneys read. Consider, for example, the following excerpt from the 2L observer who followed L, a third year litigation associate at a large law firm:

The types of documents L read varied based on what type of case she was working on and how big her role was within the case. What surprised me most about this was how little time she actually spent reading judicial decisions. While I was there, I witnessed her reading mostly treatises, statutes, case summaries, emails, discovery documents, and secondary sources. She did read some judicial opinions while I was there, particularly when she was researching a legal issue, but not as frequently as one would expect based on the strong focus on what seems like only judicial opinions in law school. A lot of L’s time was actually spent reading documents that most law students never see, such as discovery documents, business documents, contracts, and bids.

Thus, this study points out that legal education may in fact have a “hothouse” problem when it comes to reading. Classes on transactional reading and writing, administrative and procedural skills, and business skills would help bring their experience closer to what they will see in the natural environment.

I think there’s even more of a gap in how listening is approached in legal education versus how it’s practiced in the natural environment.

Yes, there is some excellent training in listening and communication, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. But what do most law students do, most of the time? This is what worries me because this is what I think the answer is:

Go to class. Sit somewhere between 5 and 100 feet away from the professor. Open a laptop. (Maybe) open a chat channel. Take notes. (Maybe) chat with classmates or others. Make eye contact—or not. Take good notes—or not. (Maybe) record the class and listen to it later. (Maybe) ask a question or be asked a question, every couple of weeks at best. Start to gather up books and electronic equipment in the last few minutes of the class as the professor wraps it up. Close the laptop. Leave. Get tested indirectly on listening skills during the midterm and final exam weeks or months later. Never find out if a weakness on that exam was the result of a listening, reading, or thinking deficiency.

This is bad training for listening in law practice.

A student may spend an entire semester never making eye contact, consistently multi-tasking, and never confirming whether the notes they took are accurate or complete. Not to mention the fact that these hundreds of hours spent staring at a screen conditions any human being to . . . want to stare at a screen.

This is a hothouse, big time.

There are some pockets of explicit preparation on listening—some places where legal education is closer to the natural environment of listening in law practice. Simulations and clinics present excellent opportunities for real-world listening skills. I’ve watched a video with Lyn Su of New York Law School where she brilliantly coached a law student on his interaction with a simulated client. That’s just one example of the helpful opportunities that are available for those who take advantage of them.

The Sinsheimer/Herring study did not explicitly address listening skills as such in the workplace. It did, however, suggest that preparation on listening to clients and judges, while better than nothing certainly, is not quite what many new attorneys really need:

Communication skills were fundamental to these attorneys, but the sort of skills they drew upon are not a key part of the traditional law school curriculum. Communicative acts in law school often involve preparation for courtroom appearances or client interviews. In contrast, the sort of communication engaged in by the attorneys we observed was usually intra- and interoffice or business communication. Despite what their law school experience might have suggested, these attorneys made few court appearances and had limited client communication.

So how to get out of the “hothouse” and into more of a natural environment for actively teaching these skills? Having more clinics and simulations is one solution, and the ABA’s new graduation requirement of six experiential-learning credits will definitely have an impact. But students need a lot more than six hours of credit to graduate and could still spend hundreds of hours staring at their screens and typing notes.

One highly promising solution is the idea of team-based learning, where students have to talk and listen to one another in small groups. Working in a small group that is accountable to one another means that each team member’s listening skills (and all people skills) will matter much, much more. Professor Lindsay Gustafson of University of Arkansas-Little Rock has spoken about using team-based learning not for a skills class or clinic but for . . . 1L property class.

I’ll say more in future posts about Gustafson’s work and team-based learning as an escape from the “hothouse.” Professor Anne Mullins of North Dakota has done good work on team-based learning as well.

And I invite comments about what are the right communication skills for the natural environment of law practice, as well as how to teach and promote those skills through legal education.

…….

[i] Legal-writing professors talk all the time about whether memos and appellate briefs are too much like “hothouse” assignments. The rise of the email assignment and shorter assignments in general are a sign that legal-writing classes are evolving to better represent the actual nature of practice. (It can never actually “be” the true experience but only a simulacrum for educational purposes. And that’s as it should be, since it is by definition education and preparation for that experience.)

In speaking, moot court is an excellent advocacy project that is also fairly criticized for being, at times, artificial. An example of a critique is Steven Berenson’s article in the New Mexico Law Journal, Preparing Clinical Law Students for Advocacy in Poor People’s Courts. He argues that students need to be ready to speak in a much less structured and more chaotic environment.

 

#InHouseTwitter

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In-house counsel and anyone who works with them—such as, say, outside counsel—will be interested in the new hashtag, #InHouseTwitter, started this summer by @J_Dot_J. J.J.’s Twitter bio tells us she is an “employment/cyber-security lawyer, mom to a 2-boy wrecking crew, endorsed as ‘not half bad.'” She has shared some pithy—sometimes salty—advice from her in-house perspective and prompted an honest and growing discussion from other in-house counsel as well.

#InHouseTwitter is active at 4 p.m. Central on Thursdays. Follow the hashtag for announcements of upcoming topics. Most recently J.J. prompted a long thread on relationships with outside counsel:

The responses varied from the positive…

….to the negative

with many nuanced observations and anecdotes in between.

Listening to punctuation

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Thanks to Julie Schrager, counsel and legal writing coach at Schiff Hardin, for this guest post. 

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I have been desperately trying to find a way to write about exclamation points. I grew up in a time when they were reserved for exclamations:

“Congratulations on winning that game!”

or

“That’s the reason he got that promotion!”

Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, calls those uses the “Yes!”  and “Ah!” meanings of exclamation points.

And I was taught—starting in high school, then in college, law school, and in my first 20+ years of legal practice—that exclamation points had no role in business communications. Nothing we wrote was considered exciting or emotional, and exclamation points were viewed as showing too much emotion.

My teachers were in good company in disliking the exclamation point.  Fiction writers for centuries had condemned the use of exclamation points in fiction-writing. Both Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald are credited with saying that using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

But then I started sending and receiving texts. The old exclamation point rules didn’t apply there. And now I would say the rules—at least for certain legal correspondence—have changed.

This blog is about listening like a lawyer. Lawyers listen to things judges, clients, and other lawyers say out loud. But they also “listen” to writing:  opinions from judges, emails from opposing counsel and clients, and notes from colleagues. Some people read written communications out loud, but even if we don’t, we read and “hear” them in our head.

And I don’t “hear” exclamation points as exclamations anymore. I’ve started to listen to what I read from law students and new law grads and my college-age daughter. I’ve learned that exclamation points don’t say “Yes!” or “Ah!” anymore. Instead, they say, “I hear you” or “I’m not angry” or “We are in this together” or “Our relationship is on solid ground.”

Let me explain. My job involves regular email correspondence with associates at my law firm. It’s a unique position. I work as Schiff Hardin’s legal writing coach and read and comment on written work—memos, briefs, articles, web content, blog posts, and anything else summer associates or associates write. My interactions are almost exclusively with people under 35, and most are with people between 25 and 30. Sometimes associates reach out to me to ask me to review a piece of work—and sometimes I reach out to them.

This is how it goes: at the start of every week, I send around an email to all of the associates at the firm reminding them of my existence and asking if anyone would like to work together during the week. I ask them to fight against the idea that they should be able to figure out their jobs by themselves and do not need to ask anyone for help. I ask that they embrace a “growth mindset,” which holds that abilities are not fixed in space but can be developed with perseverance and hard work.

Exclamation points play an important role in our correspondence. They help young associates and summer associates win the fight against going it alone. Sometimes I’ll get a return email letting me know that the associate is writing a blog post and would like to send it my way. Often the email either starts with “Hi Julie!” or ends with “Thanks in advance!” The message is clear:  I am putting myself out there and am interested in working together.

Listening like a lawyer means matching the tone of the person speaking to you. So I respond with exclamation points of my own: “Thanks for reaching out!” or “Sounds good!” or “My pleasure!”

And I submit that the exclamation point has a new meaning and a legitimate role in business correspondence.

Silence and group work in legal education

Jennifer Romig1 Comment

I wasn’t able to attend the AALS (Association of American Law Schools) meeting this year—an annual gathering of thousands of law professors. As a sort of substitute, I’ve been saving an article to read from the Journal of Legal Education, the AALS’s journal on legal education, the legal profession, legal theory, and legal scholarship.

The article is A. Rachel Camp, Creating Space for Silence in Law School Collaborations (volume 65, 2016). Professor Camp co-directs the Domestic Violence Clinic at Georgetown. Here’s an informal outline of the article:

  • the importance of collaboration to lawyers
  • the relative dearth of collaborations and (especially) thoughtfully managed collaborations in legal education
  • the problems students experience with an overly individualistic and competitive culture in law school
  • countervailing forces encouraging more collaborative work in law school
  • the difficulty of collaboration in a somewhat dichotomous world of introverts and extroverts
  • why a seemingly easy solution for collaborative work—brainstorming—produces surprisingly bad results
  • several teaching methods for effective collaboration and group work, avoiding the weakness of brainstorming and capitalizing on ideas from both extroverts and introverts
  • a clinical model of thoughtful collaboration in the Domestic Violence Clinic

Collaboration is intertwined with the skill of listening, which is what drew me to this article. And it turns out that listening can actually be part of the problem with group work as it is often practiced.

For the following scenarios (thought up by me and inspired by the article), assume the following: Professor X has just told the class, “Break into groups of three and critique this draft paragraph. Then come back to share your group’s suggested improvements.”

Scenario 1: 

Student A, B, and C start reading the paragraph. Student A reads quickly and begins to share critique before B and C have looked up from the paragraph. All three eventually share some thoughts. When it’s time to pick a group speaker, Students B and C defer to A, who paraphrases the ideas that A previously stated.

Scenario 2:

Students A, B, and C start reading the paragraph. Students A and B begin to bounce ideas off one another. Student C does not attempt to speak. When it’s time to pick a group leader, A and B decide that B can speak for the group and ask C if C is okay with that. C nods.

Scenario 3:

Students A, B, and C start reading the paragraph. Student A suggests that all three of them brainstorm as many ideas as they can, not criticizing anyone else’s idea but just adding. The group quickly agrees to this method, and Student C goes first. Students A and B then add a few follow-up ideas. When it’s time to pick a group leader, B agrees to sum up their ideas.

So which of these scenarios left students feeling the most satisfied with their brainstorming? In order from most to least satisfied, it would go like this:

Scenario 3

Scenario 2

Scenario 1

And which of these scenarios created the best ideas? In order from best to worst ideas, it would go more like this:

Scenario 1 or 2

Scenario 2 or 1

Scenario 3

Why is this? Classic brainstorming feels satisfying but produces the worst ideas. That can’t be. Actually, Camp’s article reviews the surprising results of research:

[N]early all studies have found that group brainstorming leads to lower productivity when compared with the combined productivity of . . .  individuals brainstorming in isolation.

Group brainstorming is ineffective for several reasons suggested by the scenarios above, both in the experience it creates and the results it delivers. Not that Scenario 1 or 2 above is much better. In Scenario 1, Student A might have had the best ideas but would be unlikely to get another invitation to work with Students B and C. And in Scenario 2, Student C may have had the best idea of all, but never spoke to share it.

Differences in personality and communication styles are at the core of many group problems, particularly differences in extroverts and introverts. These differences may cause conflict and even resentment of domineering group members and others considered “social loafers.” In fact, dominant group members may be working in their preferred style, and “loafers” may need time to process.

Thus the interpersonal dynamics in a group can lead to worse results from that group. The biggest weakness is “production blocking,” which means that some ideas are never generated at all or are generated but then lost:

The idea is forgotten and/or replaced while a group member is listening to others, waiting her turn to speak. . . . Listening to ideas shared by others may be distracting and interfere with the member’s independent thinking [or] determining that his idea is not relevant or original . . . .

More subtly, a person waiting her turn to speak may delay fully forming her idea until her turn arrives, by which time the idea may not be as good.

Listening contributes to another problem as well, “pluralistic ignorance.” This happens when “a vocal minority expresses an opinion or idea and the majority group members fail to speak up based on an overestimation of support for that opinion by the other group members.” Basically, someone listens to another opinion, overestimates its support, and therefore does not engage in further constructive discussion.

Camp describes how this problem is related to the “illusion of transparency” (not really a listening problem, more of a speaking and writing problem). People labor under “an erroneous perception [they] are better communicators than they actually are.”  For example, a relatively introverted member of a group may speak up, but that person’s intentions may not in fact be clear to the rest of the group, causing further frustration.

So these are a lot of problems with misunderstandings and inefficiencies in brainstorming and other group work done in intuitive yet ineffective ways. What’s the remedy?

In the law-school classroom, part of the remedy is creating a space for silence.

Camp summarizes some teaching techniques that void early blocking of ideas, and bring out a wide variety of views. Law professors reading this blog post should consult section IV of her article for detailed teaching notes on “brainwriting,” “chalk talks” “the Nominal Group Technique” and alternative brainstorming by email. They will definitely bring out the quiet students and generate a plethora of thoughtful ideas and responses.

As I was reading these ideas, I was thinking they are great for the law-school environment, but there’s not a lot of intentional silence in groups in law-practice. An introvert won’t be assigned to do any brainwriting in a team when practicing law, ensuring that his or her ideas are formed and shared. Partners and supervisors do not carefully construct chalk talks to elicit broad participation from their teams. But even if these techniques don’t translate to practice at all, creating a more inclusive environment for both introverts and extroverts can improve the isolating effects of traditional Socratic and competitive legal education. Professor Heidi K. Brown is another leading voice in this area.

And Camp acknowledges the end goal of preparing future lawyers. She argues that law schools should be teaching collaboration itself as an essential lawyering skill. For example, Camp teaches an in-class seminar on collaboration. She treats it as a skill that can be learned just like fact investigation and client counseling. Camp recounts how this seminar helps students “move past the pervasive assumption—often based on their own past, negative experiences—that collaborative relationships simply ‘are what they are,’” and, if not going well, must simply be endured. Breaking through this assumption means giving tools for better communication. Students assigned as partners examine their communication styles and discuss the results; they also anticipate conflicts in the partnership and make plans ahead of time to anticipate challenges. These seem to me like pretty good practices for any team of professionals preparing to work together.

Collaboration is certainly not a recent phenomenon for some in legal education, particularly in clinical legal education. (Camp cites a 1993 by Sue Bryant as foundational: Sue Bryant, Collaboration in Law Practice: A Satisfying and Productive Process for a Diverse Profession, 17 Vt. L. Rev. 459 (1993)). And lots of people are doing lots of active work in this area. I’ve recently read and benefited from Anne Mullins, Team-Based Learning: Innovative Pedagogy in Legal Writing, 49 U.S.F. L. Rev. Forum 53 (2015). Camp points out that collaboration is not a mandatory part of any law school curriculum. But it’s now one of the options identified by the ABA for law schools to consider when implementing the ABA’s mandate to teach the “professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession.”

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As further non-legal reading on the topic of effective teamwork at work, see Charles Duhigg, What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, New York Times (Feb. 25, 2016). I’ve heard of professors assigning this article to their collaborative teams, and I’ve encouraged some teams I work with to read it as well.

 

 

Categories of listening

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Katrina Lee from Ohio State tweeted earlier this week:

The article referred to in her tweet is by  Jim Lovelace, Director of Talent Development at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and was published in the ABA Law Practice Today.

As Katrina said, it is a quick read. And it’s a pretty powerful read, too. The essential premise is that to be effective, a listener must move beyond “self-focused listening.” What does that mean?

In my 25 years of experience as a practicing lawyer and legal career development professional, I have observed that lawyers spend the vast majority of their work time—when they are not talking, that is—as self-focused listeners. When they hear others’ stories, their minds are occupied with: What are the flaws and where are the potential liabilities? Where is the “good stuff” on which I can build a case? They dig for facts, often asking for more information to construct their narratives and theories. This is not surprising. This is what lawyers have been taught, from law school onward, to do.

But there’s more to listening than this self-focused approach. Lovelace introduces empathic listening and comprehensive listening, two other categories of listening that may not be right for a contentious deposition but are very, very right for interpersonal situations at work. Lovelace uses a hypothetical in which a trusted senior associate blindsides the senior partner by announcing he’s leaving the firm. Different listening methods can affect not just the tone but the outcome of such conversations.

Lawyers love categories, and somebody this blog will have a pull-down menu listing the many categories of listening that communications experts have identified. When it comes to (1) self-focused listening, (2) empathetic listening, and (3) comprehensive listening, Lovelace’s article is an excellent introductory resource. It doesn’t take long to read, and it’s really good. Thanks for the tweet recommending the article, Katrina!

A Day of Listening      

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Thursday, September 15, 2016, will mark the International Day of Listening, an event envisioned and promoted by the International Listening Association. This Day of Listening has its own website with some excellent listening resources and ideas.

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For lawyers, law students, law professors, and legal professionals, I will highlight a few ideas for what to do on the International Day of Listening. Or any day, really. The big idea is that listening is helpful on any given day.

Invite someone to a conversation.

The website provides a template form for inviting someone to a conversation. The template looks a little bit like a subpoena or affidavit, so lawyers wishing to make a personal connection with someone may want to avoid or modify the actual form and focus on the concept. The form envisions providing a topic for the conversation; this isn’t randomly generated small talk but a purposeful conversation. Even more important, the person initiating the conversation makes a commitment: “I promise to give my undivided attention and to do the best job of listening I can.” This is a one-way promise offering something valuable without expecting or demanding something in return.

Invite a group to a conversation.

The website also provides a template form for initiating a group conversation also centered on a stated topic. Here the group makes a pledge to one another: “We will all pledge to give our best efforts to listen well to one another.”

The phrase “best efforts” stuck out at me as an interesting term for lawyers. Ken Adams has analyzed the history and meaning of this phrase in contracts. Interpreting “best efforts,” various courts have imposed a good faith standard, something more than a good faith standard, a reasonableness standard, and a diligence standard. Because the idea of “best efforts” can be vague in a legal sense, it helps to compare efforts against a benchmark, Adams points out. Benchmarks can include explicit promises made during negotiations, industry standards, the same party’s practices in similar situations, and how the parties would act toward one another if they were united in the same enterprise.

Fortuitously, the website for the International Day of Listening does offer a nice benchmark-type resource. They don’t call it a benchmark or a bookmark but actually a “ListenMark.” It’s available both here and here in the Professional Activities section of the website. I think the intent is for people to use the “ListenMark” as a bookmark or other tangible reminder. Although the name is kind of corny, the content is excellent. From putting electronic devices away and giving undivided attention to giving nonverbal signals and being familiar with others’ expectations about how to show respect, it’s a solid overview of good listening practices. It could be a good review to glance over just before key meetings.

The Professional Activities section of the website is structured around lideas for professional activities to try on September 15:

·          Tech-Free Meetings
·          What Happens When You Tune Out
·          Free Listening
·          Listening to Opposing Viewpoints
·          Listening to a Life Story
·          Listening Café
·          Discussing Issues
·          Listening to TED
·          “When am I listening or being listened to”
·          Successful Listening Strategies
·          First Hit the Pause Button

One of my favorites on this list is “Listening to a Life Story.” Carole Grau submitted this idea, and it’s a good way to learn more about a longtime coworker—perhaps someone you see every day but don’t know that much about. The core of the activity is this:

Have the listener identify a significant company employee or a long­time employee/member that they (the interviewer) can interview about that person’s (the interviewee’s) life story and their experience within the organization. What have been significant events in the company/organization or in the person’s life while they have been employed or a member?

Bar associations encourage activities such as “take opposing counsel to lunch.” What about dedicating some listening time to a longtime contributor within your own firm or organization? The longtime courthouse runner at my old law firm recently passed away; he was a consummate legal professional with so many great litigation stories. He would have been an incredible interview along the lines Grau suggests.

The outline for listening to a life story gives more details on conducting such a conversation and listening effectively. It recommends resources such as an app offered by  StoryCorps, which itself promotes a National Day of Listening the day after Thanksgiving every year. (In a world of so much talking past one another, we really can’t have enough listening days.)

These are just a few of the ideas and resources available on the website supporting the International Day of Listening. The purpose of this post is to encourage lawyers, law students, law professors, and all legal professionals to recognize and practice listening on September 15, 2016, and other days too.