Scott Benton: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, Scott Benton here on the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. How are you? Now, this is a podcast dedicated to law students, people who have just graduated from law school, are studying for the bar, have taken the bar, waiting for the results and have just learned that they got their bar ticket and passed the bar and are now looking for their first jobs.
We are a podcast that’s interested in the practice of law and making sure that you, as law students, make that transition easily from being a student to a legal professional working as an attorney in the legal field. And we’re also interested in making the practice of law fun, which we believe it is fun.
It can be fun if you’re armed with the right tools. Now, We know that schools and bar prep exams are not going to exactly teach you how to practice as an attorney. So, we felt at the [00:01:00] Classroom to Courtroom podcast, that was our responsibility to make this podcast and go through all of the different nuances that you’re going to need to know. So that, when you step into your first job as an attorney, you’re going to be able to practice law, even though no one has taught you how to do that, except for possibly listening to this podcast.
So today’s question that we’re going to look at and try and answer, is asking questions an unnecessary interference to your work as an attorney? is asking questions, Maybe about cases or really anything else. Is that an unnecessary interference? So we’re going to get into that, see if we can answer this question.
Scott Benton: Now, we know that as you’re working as an attorney, your most valuable component is your time. Essentially, you are selling your time to clients who have retained you. And so that means that every minute of your day is extremely valuable. You, in most cases, are the revenue [00:02:00] generators of the firm that you’re working for. So you have to do everything you can to protect your time and you want to use as much of it as possible on executing the legal tasks that you’ve written on your To-Do List. As you know, we have a Success Cycle that we talk about frequently on this podcast.
It’s composed of To-Do List, that’s the first thing you do. You put your To-Do List together then you, render those legal services. You complete those items on your To-Do List and then you Bill For Your Time and then you go back to one and you go to your To Do List. Maybe you need to update it again, but you’re constantly providing legal services for your cases for the clients who have hired you and you are billing for those activities. Now, when your time starts to get dispersed, then you are not really able to bill for that time. So you want to be careful. You want to eliminate all of the distractions and sometimes those distractions are a little difficult to determine that they are distractions, but a lot of times they [00:03:00] are.
So we want to look at asking questions. Because especially as a new attorney, what’s going to happen is, you’re going to show up, you’re going to be given a list of cases. You’re not going to know any of these cases so naturally like, anybody in your shoes. You’re going to have a lot of questions. Now, there’s a difference between unnecessary questions and necessary questions. And the reason that you want to be sensitive to those differences is because, pretty much when you’re going to go ask a question, it’s going to be to another attorney. So that means that stopping your work, getting up from your chair, leaving your office, going into the office of another attorney and asking you’re sitting down in their guest chair and asking, asking your question, it’s going to interrupt your billable time.
It’s also going to interrupt the billable time of the attorney that you’re asking the question to. So you want to be very strategic about asking questions because on the one hand, an unnecessary interference type of question is going to be a question that’s [00:04:00] unfocused, that’s all over the place. Maybe you’re just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks and you’re hoping that the attorney you’re speaking to is going to be able to answer your question in a way that, you’ll be able to somehow get to the information, that you’re going to need in order to move the case forward that you’re working on.
And you might, they might answer your question, but there’s going to be a lot of roundabout conversation. It’s really a waste of everybody’s time. So you want to make sure that you’re converting the case. unnecessary interruption questions into necessary interruption questions. And so the question becomes, how exactly do you do that? How do you convert one type of question into another type of question? Well, It’s very easy and for this, it’s suggested that you always have a journal with you. This is your opportunity to write down all of your questions that you’re having about a particular case.
Now this can even be a separate file. It can go into your attorney notes. These are notes that are not transferred to the client once the case closes. These are the notes that you’re [00:05:00] putting down as time goes on and as new developments come along. But you can also have a separate file or just a notebook that you’re writing in that is kind of more like scratch paper. You’re writing your ideas down, you’re writing your questions out and you’re looking at those questions that are already in the form of an unnecessary interference or distraction. It’s going to take a lot of time to answer that question because, the question isn’t worded right.
You need to be able to get better at the questions that you ask. You want to look at that first version of your question and you want to take some time to refocus the question and make sure that you’re converting it from an unnecessary distraction and interference into a necessary interference And you do that by focusing the question, by rewording the question, by gaining clarity on what it is that you’re asking. Sometimes, it’s going to take a little bit of research before you go in and ask the question. You need to answer the question as much as you can beforehand, so that your [00:06:00] question or questions are very, instead of the shotgun approach, to asking a question. You’re doing the laser beam approached. Very, Very precise and accurate.
That’s what you want your questions to look like. When you go in and ask them, you want to sit down, you want to reference the case, you want to ask the question and you want the attorney that you’re sitting in front of to answer that question for you in a very succinct, specific way. So that you’re not going back and forth and again, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks, so that you might come up with an answer, a partial answer or a direction to go.
That is going to really take you off track. So you need to do the work before you ask a question. You don’t just impulsively want to get up, run across the office, to the other person’s desk. So the attorney that you want to ask the question to and ask them the question. You want to be prepared before you walk into their office. And again, you want to focus it like a laser beam. You want it clear and you want it simplified. That’s the thing about asking questions is, you want to [00:07:00] refine them and refine them until they’re clarified and until they’re simplified. A simplified question is going to give you a far more accurate answer than one that’s really sort of wordy and vague and all over the place. So you want to make sure your question is as tight and focused as possible. In this way, you’re not wasting your time, that is your bread and butter as an attorney. Because, the time that you’re selling is the time that ends up on your paycheck. That’s money in your pocket, whether it’s in the form of your weekly salary or maybe a bonus.
So you don’t want to compromise that time. You want to be quick and efficient. You want to get in, you want to ask your question, get your answer and then get out and get moving. And you want to continue to bill your client for the legal services, the high quality legal services that you are rendering and delivering for the clients who have retained you.
Now lastly, it’s really important that when you get your answer that you create [00:08:00] an action. The answers that you get are going to take you back to your To-Do List. The answers that you get are going to give you a more specific pathway that you’re going to take with your case. You’re going to know what the next step is that you need to complete. Sometimes, you’re going to know what the next 5 steps are maybe the next 10 steps are that you’re going to need to complete. So you’re going to go back to your office. You’re going to write those items down on your To-Do List in terms of The Success Cycle. Now you have your To-Do List, you know what your next steps are. Now you’re going to execute those steps. When those steps are completed, you’re going to bill for those steps and you’re going to get paid. Go back to your To-Do List and start over again.
Now it’s important that you convert the answer you get from the attorney into actionable steps. What you’re doing is you’re trying to figure out how to move the case forward. You want to know what the next step is or steps. So when you come back to your office, when you’ve gotten your succinct answer from your succinct question and you know what the next steps are that you need to take, [00:09:00] that is going to refer you back to step one in The Success Cycle, which is the To-Do List and you’re going to write those items down. Now that you know what they are. Once those are on your To-Do List, you’re now going to execute those items. You’re going to complete those particular items that you’re going to bill for them, get paid, go back to the To-Do List over and over and over again. So that’s the real value of a necessary interference type of question.
You want to avoid all unnecessary interference type of questions and you can do that simply by focusing in on the question and learning and practicing how to ask better, more focused questions. You don’t want the shotgun approach, you want the laser beam approach. You want it to be very, very precise. You can get in, you cannot waste anybody else’s time because, the attorneys that you’re going to go and talk to, they are also, their most precious component is their own time as well. So understand that when you’re asking questions that you’re utilizing not only your time but you’re utilizing the [00:10:00] time of another attorney as well.
It’s kind of a double whammy that way. You want to avoid that as much as possible, even though necessary questions need to be asked. It’s expected of you and especially as a new attorney in a firm, you’re just going to naturally have questions that are going to need to be answered on cases that you’re unfamiliar with. But just make sure that they’re all focused and don’t go in and ask one question at a time.
Make sure that if you have several questions on a case that you’re asking them all at once. You want to focus in on all of those questions and make sure they’re clear, make sure they’re simplified. Let’s say, you have 5 or 10 questions. You go into the office of that attorney and you ask those questions one right after another so that you get all of your answers. You get out, you go back, complete your To-Do List, complete those tasks. I hope this has been helpful. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. And if you’d like to be alerted every time we put out a new podcast episode, you can go over to our website. Our website is ClassRoom2CourtRoom.com [00:11:00] that is Classroom, the number 2, Courtroom.Com. You can put in your name and your email address. And every time we have a new episode that we put out, you’ll get an alert telling you that there’s new material that you can go and listen to. So I hope you’ll share, like, and subscribe if you like this podcast. And until next time, we hope that you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
