Wyzga On Words

Q&A Tuesday: What Else Does Story Do? Navigate Life's Complex Social Problems.

Q:     How do stories make us human?  And what does this mean for the decision-maker?

A:    Plotlines can help change the brain when "a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged."  What David Eagleman wrote in quotes I've been saying for decades.

You might agree that the way to take anything seriously is to care about it.  Likewise, to get the listener to care about your client’s case you must endow the story with importance by treating it as an emotional experience.

Well crafted story.  How do you do that?  You take the time to produce a well-crafted story that will serve as the premium communication device to focus decision-maker attention and judgment on certain key ideas or behaviors, as well as understand the significance of that behavior.

Virtual journey.  Why is this notion critical to success?  When decision-makers follow a story, they journey - virtually - with you into a different world, an imagined reality, another mental location where the story actually exists while never having left their physical state.  The process of transition from physical world to virtual world is active with the decision-maker energetically conniving and conspiring with the attorney all the time to actually will the virtual world into existence. Why? Because the decision-maker is curious about what is going on, wants to believe the story and that they can do something which matters.

Legal to local. Does this really happen?  You have witnessed this yourself in the courtroom.  Every day decision-makers are torn away from routines, placed in unfamiliar settings and asked to make profound decisions after being handed complex legal terminology that is supposed to help them address conflicting versions of the same facts.   They hear legal judgment - the series of formal justice procedures we call case law, opinions, rules of evidence for resolving disputes in our society.

Sort and organize.  How do they decide?  By formulating a story that explains the alleged activities in familiar terms using key messages or themes that define the case from their point of view.

Parallel judgment.  Your jurors organize and sort out complex legal information, especially conflicting information, into meaningful structures that make sense to create a parallel form of social judgment that anchors legal questions in everyday understanding.

Cooperative enterprise.  In the grip of a heartfelt story artfully told, their minds are fully engaged.  When fully engaged, your jurors are working with you in a cooperative enterprise, connected and considering options, possibilities and outcomes.

Persuasion.  Storytelling persuades when the decision-maker can place herself inside the story with ease, listen deductively, absorb a story that explains the conflict early on, articulate the story in her own terms, and filter the evidence selectively to be consistent with her personal story, world experience and understanding of the world order.

David Eagleman's NYTimes Book Review of Jonathan Gottschall's work, "The Storytelling Animal," reinforces the ways in which story and the telling of stories are not mere entertainment for housebound children on a rainy afternoon.  Excerpt.

"Remember, in “Star Wars,” when Luke Skywalker precisely aims his proton torpedoes into the vent shaft of the Death Star? Of course you do. It’s memorable because it’s the climax of a grand story about good triumphing over evil. (You’d be less likely to recall a moment in which a protagonist files her nails while discussing her day.) More important, Luke’s scene provides a good analogy: It’s not easy to infect the brain of another person with an idea; it can be accomplished only by hitting the small exposed hole in the system. For the brain, that hole is story-shaped. As anyone who teaches realizes, most information bounces off with little impression and no recollection. Good professors and statesmen know the indispensable po­tency of story.

This is not a new observation, but nowadays we have a better understanding of why it’s true. Changing the brain requires the correct neurotransmitters, and those are especially in attendance when a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged. Hence successful religious texts are not written as nonfiction arguments or bulleted lists of claims. They are stories. Stories about burning bushes, whales, sons, lovers, betrayals and rivalries.

Story not only sticks, it mesmerizes. This is why WWE wrestling thrives on fake but exciting plotlines, why there are so many hours poured into prefight boxing hype, and why there are stirring back stories included in all the profiles of Olympic athletes. But not all stories are created equal. Gottschall points out that for a story to work, it has to possess a particular morality. To capture and influence, it can’t be plagued with moral repugnance — involving, say, a sexual love story between a mother and her son, or a good guy who becomes crippled and a bad guy who profits handsomely. If the narrative doesn’t contain the suitable kind of virtue, brains don’t absorb it. The story torpedo misses the exposed brain vent. (There are exceptions, Gottschall allows, but they only prove the rule.)

This leads to the suggestion that story’s role is “intensely moralistic.” Stories serve the biological function of encouraging pro-social behavior. Across cultures, stories instruct a version of the following: If we are honest and play by the social rules, we reap the rewards of the protagonist; if we break the rules, we earn the punishment accorded to the bad guy. The theory is that this urge to produce and consume moralistic stories is hard-wired into us, and this helps bind society together. It’s a group-level adaptation. As such, stories are as important as genes. They’re not time wasters; they’re evolutionary innovations."

TIP:    Use stories to help your decision-makers navigate lilfe's complex social problems.  "As such, stories are as important as genes. They’re not time wasters; they’re evolutionary innovations."

Q&A Tuesday: How Does Storytelling Help Me As Well As My Client?

Q:    How does storytelling help me as well as my client?

A:    Stories are the stuff of daily life.  When we commit to becoming part and parcel of the story we need to tell on behalf of another, the commitment expands our awareness of our humanity.  From this place we become increasingly empathetic, compassionate, and relatable to other human beings, more authentic, believable and better at persuading, too.

Some years back I wrote an article with San Diego attorney Jim Parziale entitled, "Once Upon A Client - The Power of Persuasive Legal Storytelling."  [Click on the title to access the pdf.]  It's a treasure trove of information, thoughts and ideas gained over decades of my storytelling work which became translated into the litigation arena.  I bet you will recognize in these words much of what I have been speaking, teaching and writing about for almost 15 years.

I trust that this work will be of help to you and your clients.  If you intend to use it, please remember the integrity of attribution.

Q&A Tuesday: Why Invest In Focus Group Research?

Q:   Why should I invest in focus group research?

A:    Reconnaissance.

I am often asked what is the worth of investing in focus group research.  The answers are as many and as varied as the lawsuit you have filed or are considering filing:

1. learn attitudes
2. learn opinions
3. learn biases
4. learn notions
5. get ideas for discovery
6. get ideas for strategy
7. test the legal story
8. test the experts
9. test the experts' opinions
10. test the other side's story(ies)
11. test the visuals, demonstratives
12. test your own platform skills
13. ferret out the landmines
14. learn all the ways you can (or might) lose your case
15. learn whether you should even file a lawsuit
16. value of the case
17. whether alternative dispute resolution is feasible
18. ideas for direct and cross examination
19. witness preparation
20. whether and how to go to battle
21. and so on.

Still, lawyers are not convinced that they should invest a reasonable amount of money to learn what is bad and worse about their cases, their clients, and their own strategy.

So I am forced to go to a movie to plead my case.  The other night I was watching Steven Spielberg's Academy Award nominated production, "War Horse" based on the novel of the same name.

Early on in the movie, British cavalry officers listen to a report from their scouts about the location of enemy German soldiers.  The Brits learn the number of German troops, number of mounts, artillary, best positions of attack, strategy for attack, risks of loss of men, and so on. 

As the Brits prepare to attack the German soldiers, the officer in charge tells the scout, "Time spent on reconnaissance is time well spent."   

And then they went to battle. 

Murphy's Laws Of Songwriting Can Apply To Lawyers.

Clearly at the top of the Hit Parade of Programs at the recent American Society of Trial Consultants' Annual Conference in New Orleans was the presentation delivered by trial lawyer and songwriter, E. Thomas McCarthy: What Lawyers Can Learn From Songwriters.

Among many points McCarthy made in his jam-packed 60 minute program, this one remains with me: if a songwriter can tell a story from start to finish - with a repeating chorus or refrain - in three minutes, how can a trial attorney do the same with her case story?  Perhaps three minutes is a bit truncated for an opening statement, but the appeal of brevity is a practical and formidable tip lawyers can use to ratchet down their case story to its clear, concise and cogently memorable points.

TIP:    One storytelling exercise I use with my clients is to practice telling their case as a 45-30-15 second story.  Believe it or not, you can tell your story in seconds.  The exercise proves when you know the true case story well.

TIP:    McCarthy suggested we pick up a copy of Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting by Ralph Murphy.  "In easy to grasp terms, Ralph talks about helping arm the songwriter for success by demystifying the process and opening the door to serious professional songwriting." You can listen to the entire Nashville Public Televisions program with Murphy as the featured guest by clicking here: http://wnpt.org/productions/wow/podcast/4006_RalphMurphy.mp3

TIP:     Click here to read Murphy's Law of Songwriting to learn from the master how to take the music of your spoken word from drab to dynamite.  If you can do that, then as McCarthy would say, "You hooked it!" 

 

 

 

Narrative Medicine And The Cross-Over To Law School And Law Practice.

What do internists, especially ones practicing narrative medicine, have to tell law students and lawyers? Quite a lot.  And all it will take is 39 minutes of your time.

Rita Charon, MD, PhD. a nationally renown physician, writer and educator as well as Executive Director/Founder, Program in Narrative Medicine College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University is at the top of the game of Narrative Medicine.

Click here to attend the Department of Medicine Division of Medical Humanities presentation "Narrative Medicine: Accuracy, Evidence, Allegiance, Joy" as Dr. Charon discusses the importance of the medical narrative as a tool for physicians to better understand their patients and themselves, and it's role in training a new generation of doctors.

What is so fascinating to this former pediatric nurse, life-long storyteller and litigation consultant is the cross-over between Dr. Charon's ideas on the dividends of narrative medicine and those that can be reaped in law schools and law practices.

Highlights with my comments in [brackets]:

*    Medicine must go beyond the bounds of knowledge with differential diagnostic brains.  That kind of fact-based thinking is inadequate to the task.  [Likewise, our reliance on "the facts and only the facts" gives us a distorted view of what happened to our clients and what matters to them.]

*    Illness unfolds in stories.  The thing that is amiss in the body tells the self that there is something the matter and eventually that story comes to the attention of the healthcare provider who will turn around and tell it to a colleague.  The idea being that the telling and retelling should lead one to know what to do.  [How do you see yourself in the internist's shoes?]

*    Medical stories are a matter of ongoingness.  A doctor's duty is to develop a sense of story that takes into account devastation, loss, grief, magnitude of hurt and pain.  [Our clients are in the same boat - and we are there with them.]

*    The big question: Are you available to receive the story, to “co-hear” the narratives of illness, to train yourself to know accurately and fully what the patient expresses to be more effective in care?  [For lawyers, are we available to hold the space for the client so we develop different skills interviewing our clients, determining what the problem is and how to remedy it?]

*    You must learn to heed the story, learn from the story, learn the skills to recognize it, stand in the gathering of the story and work with the patient and family - to experience what the patient and family go through and for the patient to learn what the healthcare people experience.  [Who here has often desired that ability to co-hear with our clients and our clients families?  We are walking parallel roads with these internists.]

*    What are the dividends?  We find this practice helps improve cohesion of healthcare teams, minimize burn-out, increase empathy, encourage taking on the perspective of another person, feeling a growth in affiliation with their colleagues and others, listening attentively and less defensively, recognizing the unique dimensions of colleagues, using parts of the brain that had gone fallow, and recognizing that stories are total storms rather than the typical pattern of beginning, middle and end.  [What would you give for similar practical and human dividends in your practice?]

*    Narrative medicine helps medical students and doctors stop squandering evidence by learning to retrieve it in narrative, grasping the patent's story in words and learning to plumb the meaning of the evidence.  [For lawyers that meaning will carry over to the trier of fact.]

*    When doctors are fortified with the competencies of listening, curiosity, empathy, imagination their practice changes, they make authentic contact with the patient cleared of biases and other fsact-gathering screens.  [All anyone wants is to be heard, even for a moment.  After you have given the client the chance t tell their story you can go back and collect the data you need for the lawsuit.] 

Dr. Charon's makes this introduction to every patient: " As your doctor I face you so you can express to me what you are going through in words - please tell me what you think I should know about your situation."  She sits with her hands in her lap and absorbs what happens.  By inviting the account she can learn without shoe-horning the patient into her own fact list.  [Beginning with law school we can encourage the development of attentive listening. It wil flow over to practice.  Imagine th transformations.]

I invite you to spend 39 minutes and change your practice with practical and human dividends.
                                   
















                          

13 Minutes With Bill Harley - Storyteller - TEDx: Stories Out Loud.

Back in the day I fell in love with the storyteller Bill Harley.  But then so did many many many folks: storytellers and listeners alike.  We knew so many of his stories and song by heart.  Bill made us happy and nostalgic and giddy and wistful at the same time.

Over the decades, articles, blog posts, and presentations to thousands of lawyers, I've said the same things about the importance and power of story:

1. To make your story emotionally meaningful to the listener, you must marry content (facts) to context (circumstance).
2. We are wired to hear narrative, to sort matters out - even legal matters - in narrative.
3. Narrative is how we figure out the ways to carry on despite the problems in our lives.

TIP:    Click here to take 13 minutes to listen to Bill Harley in his recent TEDx talk on the power that stories have which no media, no social network, no list of facs (or factoids), no computer can match.

A few highlights:

TIP:    We are creatures of context.  Context gives order: what happened before and what came after.  Order gives meaning.

TIP:    Stories are how we assign meaning to our lives, and the lives of others.

TIP:    The stories we create are how we answer the riddle of the problem so we can carry it through our life without it dragging us down.

TIP:    We are not built to remember lists of facts - we are wired to recall narrative.

TIP:    Stories work because they are cognitive & emotional: safe to think about because it’s not about us: we take the story & apply it to us & take us & apply to the story.

TIP:    Know when to speed up & slow down.  Know which visual underscores the narrative.

TIP:    Rely on this: we are genetically encoded to pay attention to the person in front of us. 

AND, if the one in front of us is you, the storyteller, imagine what you can do with the power of story.

 

 

Q&A Tuesday: How Often Should I Use A Comma? Less Than You Think.

Q:    How often should I use a comma in my writing?

A:    Here are a few tips from The Most Comma Mistakes.  Excerpt:

"Identification Crisis
If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times. I’m referring to a student’s writing a sentence like:

I went to see the movie, “Midnight in Paris” with my friend, Jessie.

Comma after “movie,” comma after “friend” and, sometimes, comma after “Paris” as well. None are correct — unless “Midnight in Paris” is the only movie in the world and Jessie is the writer’s only friend. Otherwise, the punctuation should be:

I went to see the movie “Midnight in Paris” with my friend Jessie.

If that seems wrong or weird or anything short of clearly right, bear with me a minute and take a look at another correct sentence:

I went to see Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Midnight in Paris,” with my oldest friend, Jessie.

You need a comma after “movie” because this and only this is Mr. Allen’s newest movie in theaters, and before “Jessie” because she and only she is the writer’s oldest friend.

The syntactical situation I’m talking about is identifier-name. The basic idea is that if the name (in the above example, “Jessie”) is the only thing in the world described by the identifier (“my oldest friend”), use a comma before the name (and after it as well, unless you’ve come to the end of the sentence). If not, don’t use any commas."

Click here to read more about The Missing Comma and Splice Girls, and Boys.

Draw To Reveal The Story.

Who here doodles?

When we draw we are using a basic visual tool to help make sense of complex concepts, thoughts or ideas.  Drawing can help clarify and articulate our visions to ourselves as well as others in a conversation, presentation, meeting or trial.

I often use Post-It flip charts and Magic Markers when working with clients or audiences.  Drawing provides insight and problem-solving in a myriad of ways that mere conversation or brainstorming simply cannot accomplish as effectively.

Perhaps it's true that seeing is believing.

To see for yourself, visit Legal Sketchpad:

"BUSINESS SKETCHING FOR LEGAL CONFERENCES, STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETINGS AND TRAINING.

Legal Sketchpad promotes the use of basic visual tools in legal communication. As direct as possible, as low tech as possible."

I have no dog in this fight.  I am just pleased to help spread the word that PowerPoint is not the only game in town. 

TIP:    Fall back on what came naturally to you when a box of Crayola 64 helped unleash your imagination and creativity.

What Do I Mean When I Say "Power, Passion & Precision"?

 

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

For decades now I have repeated my "3P Mantra" when speaking and teaching communication skills, story skills, and platform skills.  I use the "3P Mantra" on my office voice mail.

Power means coaching yourself to practice like you play.  The team plays to win.  The team practices to win.  You play to win - so practice like you play - with power.   A coach at my gym was training a member to get ready for her first tri-athlon.  It was the coach who kept reminding the trainee that she was getting ready for a race, a competition, to beat other people - not just taking a bike ride or a swim.  She took the advice and came in 4th in her class.

Passion means having life.  Does your case story come alive?  Or are you putting lipstick on a corpse?  Do you have a sense of affection for your work, for your client, for this case?  When my clients express exhaustion I always ask them, "For what do you have affection?  How do we marshall that for the task at hand?"

Precision means that state of being exact.  To be exact you must consider all the ways to get it right. To get it right you must develop the right story, right facts, right issues, right language, and right mindset. It can't be wrong when it's right.

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

Q&A Tuesday: Moot Court, Written Briefs & Oral Argument.

Q:    If written briefs pull the laboring oar in the judges' decision-making, what's the point of oral argument?

A:     To serve as a sounding board for the judges.

Time out of mind I argued the final rounds of Moot Court Competition in front of then sitting chief justices of state supreme courts.

One by one each member of the panel gave the winner (me) and the runner-up (the other guy) their evaluations and suggestions for our future practice.  This one I took careful note of: "In oral argument, do not evade a judge's questions.  The court is asking you questions so it can learn and understand your position.  Participate.  Give the court your best answer."

Imagine my surprise to read similar advice from the United States Supreme Court.  Adam Liptak writing for the NYTimes, "Are Oral Arguments Worth Arguing About?" informs us that the nature of oral argument is to involve the lawyers in the debate.  Excerpt.

"In an interview with Bryan A. Garner published in 2010 in The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, Justice Clarence Thomas was asked how often he changed his mind thanks to oral arguments.

“Almost never,” he said, adding that they may make a difference for his colleagues “in 5 or 10 percent of the cases, maybe, and I’m being generous there.”

That is as it should be, said Mr. Estrada, who has argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court.

“Somewhat refreshingly to our citizens,” he said, “the administration of justice has to do with the merits of the case and not entirely to do with the skill of the advocates.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who argued 39 cases in the Supreme Court before joining it, told students at Columbia Law School in 2008 that lawyers play a relatively minor role in that highly stylized discourse.

“Quite often the judges are debating among themselves and just using the lawyers as a backboard,” he said. “One of the real challenges for lawyers is to get involved in that debate.”

Oral arguments are in any event far less important than the written briefs.

“Of the two components of the presentation of a case, the brief is ever so much more important,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Mr. Garner. “It’s what we start with; it’s what we go back to.”"

TIP:    Write your best brief.  Give your best oral argument.  Answer the court's questions with a "clear, concise and cogent" reply.  Participate in the debate.