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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and attorney. where we make the practice of law fun. Now today we’re going to talk about the importance of breathing during a trial.
[00:00:24] Scott Benton: Yes, breathing.
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[00:01:14] Scott Benton: Now, if you’re still a law school student and you’re going to pursue litigation, it still may be a while before you find yourself in a courtroom, but It’s important to know that breathing is going to be an important tool for you when you are eventually in a courtroom. Now this episode is for attorneys who plan to become or will become litigators during their career, and it’s intended to address lead attorneys representing a client in a courtroom in front of a judge. For new attorneys who do go into litigation, this there’s going to come a point where you bring a case to trial and as we’ve heard from many attorneys who have gone through the same experience, it tends to bring up a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and stress.
[00:01:56] Scott Benton: We hear about sleep difficulties the night before a trial or the pain. [00:02:00] feeling of your heart racing and pounding 200 miles per hour for probably about the first 20 or 30 minutes in the courtroom before your stress levels finally abate and go back down. We know some attorneys find themselves in a state of tunnel vision during that time and with heightened levels of stress.
[00:02:17] Scott Benton: And if you haven’t yet learned to lean into that kind of stress, you’re probably gonna have a more difficult time thinking clearly until that fear state when you’re in trial returns to a more manageable level. Additionally, we’ve heard from more experienced litigator attorneys that trial fear never really goes away.
[00:02:36] Scott Benton: And while you’d think that after doing maybe 5 or 10 trials that fear would disappear completely, from what we understand, even if you have, let’s say, 50 or 100 trials behind you, that fear is still there. still always present. The difference, of course, is that the more experienced attorneys learn to work with the energy of that fear, and they tend to lean into it to [00:03:00] help them navigate the trial process with a much more heightened sense of vigilance.
[00:03:05] Scott Benton: They actually take something that’s potentially negative like trial fear and they turn it around into a net positive to help really bolster their effectiveness as a courtroom litigator which is something that you might be able to perfect and use over time as well. So that’s something that you want to consider and it’s a goal that you might want to set when it comes to trial and the trial fear that’s going to be a part of that whole environment.
[00:03:31] Scott Benton: One way or another, you’re going to find some method to turn that fear into a benefit. And while one way of accomplishing that goal might work for some people, it might also not work for others. But at some point, you’re going to find what does provide the ability for you to turn a high level of fear and stress into something that’s going to fuel your effectiveness as a litigating attorney who remains in command of any courtroom space that you occupy.
[00:03:59] Scott Benton: Now, the [00:04:00] problem with being in that freeze state, depending on how much it interrupts your ability to represent your client effectively, is that typically, You’re not really going to be able to provide legal services to your client at the 110 percent level that you really need to be at. Now fortunately, as we’re told by the more experienced attorneys that have really already gone through this several times, your effectiveness comes back once the fear and stress levels start to go back down.
[00:04:29] Scott Benton: The good news is there’s one thing that tends to work for generally just about everyone, especially attorneys doing their first few trials, and that is to remember to breathe.
[00:04:41] Scott Benton: Now, while that might sound fairly unscientific or maybe even a little glib at best to say that here, this piece of advice comes up over and over again from litigation attorneys who remember their own first couple of trials, and this is almost always what they advise others to focus [00:05:00] on. So they went into their first trial and they remembered to keep themselves breathing at a steady cadence.
[00:05:06] Scott Benton: It’s filling up the bottom portion of their lungs, and they made sure that they weren’t shallow breathing at the top part of their lungs. Breathing deeply means that you’re getting more oxygen into your brain and into your bloodstream, and that’s going to help keep you from becoming lightheaded.
[00:05:22] Scott Benton: Sometimes, when you’re under stress, you breathe with shallow breaths, or maybe you just forget to breathe at all for a period of time. quite long periods of time, which you really do need to avoid. If you become lightheaded, your ability to think clearly and to process information, it becomes compromised.
[00:05:40] Scott Benton: So under stress, it becomes really easy to stop breathing fully. So it’s going to take a little bit of effort to keep reminding yourself to just breathe and breathe. And keep breathing. You might even have to say that to yourself in your mind if you’re going into that tunnel vision state or starting to feel like your heart is [00:06:00] racing. Always go back to your breath in those moments. And if you’ve ever done any kind of meditation or relaxation exercises, for instance, there’s usually the idea of returning to the breath that re centers and brings your stress levels back to a low plateau.
[00:06:16] Scott Benton: And the exact same thing is going to happen to you here. Now you don’t want to make yourself so relaxed that you stop paying attention to what’s going on in the courtroom. And believe me, the stress levels alone, they’re not going to let you get that comfortable. But it will keep you well within the reach of the window of tolerance where you can perform at your best and still have control of your thinking capacity.
[00:06:37] Scott Benton: The idea is to keep yourself in a well functioning state until the trial fear stress levels abate naturally and go back to a much more normal and tolerable level. Fortunately, this useful breathing idea is about as basic and easy to do as it gets. And at first, while you might be thinking about it to keep yourself breathing [00:07:00] fully, after you’ve done this several times consciously and thoughtfully, at some point, it’s going to transition more into the realm of a habit.
[00:07:09] Scott Benton: In fact, once it crosses over and becomes a habit, merely stepping into a courtroom, along with all the fears and stress that you’re bringing along with you into that environment, it’s going to automatically trigger your breathing pattern into a series of steady, deep, oxygenated breaths to help moderate the stress levels for the first 20 or 30 minutes of every trial you attend. Getting to a place where you’ve focused on breathing enough so it becomes a part of your trial and courthouse routine is a productive goal that you can shoot for. But however you’re able to navigate the trial fear obstacle.
[00:07:45] Scott Benton: Regardless of whatever advice you receive either here on this podcast or from others in the legal community about this particular subject, really whatever works best for you is probably where you should maintain your focus.
[00:07:59] Scott Benton: My name is Scott [00:08:00] Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you’re finding this to be valuable information and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:08:12] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. courtroom dot com. You can leave us your contact information there and we will send out an alert. So that you know a new episode is available. Don’t forget to share and subscribe. And we hope you’ll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:08:30] Scott Benton: And we also hope you’ll join us in the meantime of making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
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