[00:00:00]
Hey everyone. Scott Betten 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 to your professional career as an attorney, and where we make the practice of law fun today in terms of using the success cycle.
And while this might seem a little off the beaten path, we’re going to take a look at making sure you focus on three things.
[00:01:00]
But first let’s narrow down what those three things are and why it’s important to focus on them. Now for the sake of this podcast, we’re going to be looking at how these three items are going to help you in terms of utilizing the success cycle and boosting your ability to practice law, which is largely what you’re learning about right now by listening to this podcast.
Incidentally, for the law firm that I work for, this advice came from an attorney who was not even affiliated with our firm and who made such an impression on using this idea to improve the quality of the legal work that our firm does that I really wanted to include it in a podcast episode in case you have the same positive reaction to these words and these ideas.
But, I digress, [00:02:00] so let’s get ourselves back on track. The three areas that you want to make sure you focus on are improving communication, your faith, and your family.
I’m sure you’re probably saying, well, alright, I can understand improving communication, but what is your faith and what does your family have to do with the success cycle and putting a to do list together and performing legal services and billing for those legal services? I know it looks like there’s probably not much of a connection, but hold that thought for a while while we dig in deeper and look at why those three areas are going to be an advantage to you.
Okay, let’s tackle the easy and more obvious subject to focus on, then we’ll circle back and we’ll get to the other two. The first area of focus is in improving your communication skills. Now, as the practice of law is customer centric, and that you typically have clients hire you to perform legal services for them, the point is that you’ve got a boss, so to speak, and that boss is the person who’s paying for your legal services.
So, your aim is to [00:03:00] provide excellent customer service to that person or company who’s paying those legal bills. So the baseline for delivering excellent customer service is to provide clear, concise, and comprehensible communication to the client. They need to know at all times where you are on their case and where you’re going next.
Without that basic information, it’s going to be difficult to get anything done without a lot of confusion or obfuscation, and really without making a lot of mistakes. So, no matter where you’re starting, you want to make sure you’re improving your ability to deliver a message successfully, and that you’re clarifying difficult legal concepts so a non attorney can understand, What you’re talking about and you’re delivering that in a way that omits, any legal jargon or legal vocabulary that it’s clarified.
And finally, that you’re using your communication skills to establish and maintain a bond between you and your client. Good communication is the glue that [00:04:00] really creates trust and builds relationships.
The way you improve your communication skills is simply to do it a lot and then learn from your success and then from your failures. What’s working and what could use some improvement? You really want to stay vigilant about noticing how people are responding to you and whether that’s the outcome that you want or not.
The second thing you can do is read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Now, this is a standard must read book on communications that’s been around since the 1930s. And if you do read it, you’re going to understand why it survived this long. The advice about building relationships is extremely relevant and valuable.
Now while some of the stories might feel a little bit outdated, the principles for creating strong human connections through the use of communication skills are timeless and they’ve never become outdated. So make sure that you read that book. It’s really important.
Another thing you can do is join Toastmasters, which is an organization that’s probably been around as long as the How [00:05:00] to Win Friends and Influence People book has. And no matter where you live, you’re going to find groups that meet each week for the sole purpose of studying and practicing public speaking skills.
By improving speaking skills, you give yourself a lifetime of benefit that’s going to help when you’re working with clients. And really, it’s going to help with every other area in your life.
Now, if you don’t want to go to Toastmasters, or you just simply can’t find a group nearby, There are countless public speaking college courses you can sign up for, or even workshops that you can attend, that are going to dramatically improve your speaking and communication skills.
Okay, now let’s touch on the other two areas of focus, which at first glance, they might not seem like they necessarily belong in a law practice. But they’re probably even more important than focusing on improving your communication skills, and that is that you want to focus on your faith and your family.
These are incredibly important for you to have and to build a strong affiliation with in order to maintain stability. a [00:06:00] connection with the community around you, and even an inner trust that you can and will excel in and improve your legal practice skills.
Faith, by the way, as I’m sure you probably already know, does not necessarily refer to a church or religious denomination that you already belong to. I mean, it can, but it means you stay connected to that which you believe in, whatever your faith is. And as for your family, whatever your family situation is, the advice that we got from that one attorney, and that we were able to abide by, is that your family However easy or difficult they can be to get along with, form a solid foundation for you to secure yourself to, so you can focus on your work as an attorney, and so you know that you have people who care about you as you take care of your clients.
In this way, covering all three bases and focusing on improving your communication skills, focusing on your faith, and focusing on your family fulfills such a large portion of your background [00:07:00] infrastructure, and it builds your immediate support system all around you that it’s gonna allow you to empower the use of the success cycle and provide legal services to your clients with abandon.
I’m Scott Betten. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for stopping by and hanging out with us on this episode. If you like this podcast and you’d like to get more information about us, you can always go to our website@classroomtwocourtroom.com. That’s classroom the number two courtroom.com, where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us.
You can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs that we have available for law school students and come work with us. And as always, don’t forget to share, like, and subscribe to stay on top of all of our newest episodes. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time.
[00:08:00]
