Larry Bodine, The Daily Record Newswire
My wife, Lita, and I recently returned from a safari adventure. The route was Seattle to Dubai, Dubai to Cape Town, Cape Town to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Botswana, and Botswana to the Safari Camp Mombo. Thirty hours of flying time.
I spent yesterday on the motion calendar involving a case on which teams of defense lawyers have already filed more than 100 pre-trial motions. Perhaps my weary, jet-lagged state was affecting me more than I wanted to let on, but as I listened to the lawyers make their arguments, I was struck by what a hard job it is to be a judge or a juror while counsel drones on. Instead of a focused, to-the-point presentation, attorneys too often offer up a show seemingly based on the notion that the more words they use and the longer they talk, the better their chances.
Don’t fall into that tortuous trap. All of the communication research indicates the opposite is true. Why is it that we know effective communication means keeping it short yet we do the very opposite? We know the key to effective communication involves using simple and easy to understand language. We know that when we use words beyond the level of an eighth-grader, when we talk too long, when we include a lot of unnecessary details, we don’t help people understand us better. Instead, we frustrate them, and they resent us for it.
Why do we use abbreviations and acronyms with technical or legal jargon and expect everyone to know what we’re talking about? Is it because we want to appear smarter than everyone else? Sorry, but it has the opposite effect.
We should work hard at learning to keep our messages short, to the point and in everyday language. We should unlearn what we learned in law school and convey information simply with easily understandable words, in an organized fashion. We need to talk a lot slower and a lot shorter than we normally do as lawyers. Do a self-check the next time you present something to a jury and listen in their ears to what you say.
When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, it contained only 271 words — and 202 of those were just one syllable. It took only two minutes. When he sat down, the paper reported that someone next to him asked: “Is that all?” Lincoln said it was. One reporter called the talk “an insult to the memory of the dead.” Another said: “We pass over the silly remarks of the President.” A third wrote that it was “flat and dishwatery.”
Today, of course, it ranks among the great literary treasures of history.
To quote a slightly more current reference, Simon and Garfunkel once wrote: “People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening.” That’s our problem. We too often talk without speaking, and we more often hear without really listening. Let’s try to learn to focus our communications on the short and simple and re-learn listening actively to others.
—————
Larry Bodine, a legal marketing expert, is the editor-in-chief of Lawyers.com.
