How to polish your presentation style
At first glance it may sound odd, but being an attorney does not guarantee good public speaking skills.
In the past, say eminent communication consultants Brian K. Johnson and Marsha Hunter, such a deficit might have been offset by brilliant writing, but that’s no longer sufficient in today’s client-centered world.
In the fully updated second edition of their book “The Articulate Attorney: Public Speaking for Lawyers,” Johnson and Hunter teach attorneys how to polish their presentation styles so they can effectively explain complicated issues to any audience imaginable, from clients to colleagues to boards of directors.
Among the questions “The Articulate Attorney” answers are these:
• How do I channel nervous energy into dynamic delivery?
• What is a reliable way to remember what I want to say?
• How do I stop saying “um” and think in silence instead?
• Why is gesturing so important? What do I do with my hands?
• How can I make PowerPoint interactive?
“Speaking well is a teachable skill, using scientific principles from a range of studies,” Hunter said. “We constantly monitor cognitive, gestural, and linguistic research, sports psychology, and human factors studies.”
From the body to the brain to the voice, “it often requires extensive nurturing to reveal a lawyer’s supposedly ‘natural’ speaking abilities,” Hunter said.
According to Hunter, the new edition of ‘The Articulate Attorney’ conveys “the very best of what it takes to do exactly this.”
Johnson and Hunter also collaborated on “The Articulate Advocate: New Techniques of Persuasion for Trial Lawyers,” published by Crown King Books in 2009.
Johnson has worked as a communication consultant to the legal profession since 1979, teaching persuasion to trial lawyers and public speaking to transactional attorneys.
He has been a communication specialist for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy since 1981 and has trained all new assistant United States attorneys for the past decade at the Department of Justice National Advocacy Center.
For 25 years, his courtroom communication skills lecture/demonstration with Marsha Hunter has kicked off the NITA National Trial Skills Session in Boulder, Colorado.
Hunter teaches persuasion for trial lawyers and public speaking for corporate attorneys.
Her specialty is the science of human performance in high-stakes environments.
Her teaching is both technical and practical, focusing on how people think, speak, feel, and act in dynamic situations.
Hunter is the communication specialist for NITA’s collaborative programs with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women.
A well-published author in legal publications, her in-house clients include firms that occupy the top 50 in annual lists as well as half of the Wall Street Journal’s “fearsome foursome” of litigation.
“The Articulate Attorney: Public Speaking for Lawyers” costs $24.99 and will be available beginning Saturday, June 1, at Amazon.com; BN.com;
CrownKingBooks.com; and IPGBook.com.
