A purely evaluative approach to listening may serve us well in the courtroom, but it causes problems when we need to build rapport and trust with clients. Effective listening builds rapport because it communicates our interest and concern, and helps us reach beneath our clients' words to learn what is really troubling them.
It’s growing and it’s infectious. Could we be experiencing an epidemic of civility and candor among our fellow lawyers? Collaborative Law, once contained to the family law sector, may be breaking through to the resolution of business and other civil disputes. A recent rash of events evidences the spread of the contagion.
Are you buried under an avalanche of email? Do you lose important information hiding among the emails clogging your inbox? Here are 10 tips for digging out of the email avalanche. These tips reference features available in Outlook, but most email programs have similar features.
1. Use automated features to sort your emails into folders as they arrive. The Outlook Rules Wizard (under Tools) will let you create rules for automated sorting of incoming emails by sender, subject, text and other filters. Incoming messages are routed to the designated folders, which change to bold print to indicate an unread message. Set up folders (select File, New, Folder) for your clients so that you can see at a glance that you have email from them, and keep all your correspondence together. Replies to an email in that folder automatically will be stored in that folder as well. You can also route newsletters, listservs and other high volume, low priority emails to special folders to keep them from clogging your inbox until you have time to read them.
2. Drag and drop emails to your task icon if they have “to-do” items associated with them. The task will be included in the task list, and a copy of the email will be visible in the details window for the task. You can set a due date and reminder for the task. Delete the email or move it to a storage folder. You will get a pop-up reminder at the designated reminder time, even if you have deleted the original email. If the task is not marked as complete by the due date, it will turn red in the task list as a further reminder.
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“I’ve tried delegating more. It doesn’t work.” That’s a common lament I hear when I work with overwhelmed lawyers. Yet, the quickest way to reduce your workload is to pass some of it off to someone else. It’s true that ineffective delegation doesn’t work. So how can you delegate more effectively?
Does someone in the firm just rub you the wrong way? Tempted to snarl, “Get to the point!” to that smiley, gabby assistant? Does it drive you crazy that someone works slowly and methodically on one project at a time? Or do you feel like firm co-workers are cold and abrupt? You may be experiencing the friction of your firm co-workers’ differing behavioral styles.
In 1928, William Marston, a Harvard University psychologist, published a study that demonstrated that most people tend to have behavior patterns that fall into one or more of four different categories, together known as DISC: D for dominance, I for influence, S for steadiness and C for conscientiousness. The DISC behavior patterns are easy to learn and easy to recognize. Lawyers who understand DISC behavior patterns are better able to eliminate some of the friction in working relationships at the firm, enhance jury selection and improve rainmaking skills.
Here’s an example: By understanding DISC, John Doe, one of my lawyer clients, revolutionized a struggling relationship with his boss. The boss rarely had time for Doe to brief him on the status of projects. Then he would appear unexpectedly, ask a lot of pointed questions and tell Doe to change his course of action. The boss seemed suspicious and distrustful of Doe, who in turn felt boxed in, criticized and undervalued. Doe’s dominant DISC behavior pattern style was influence. T folks are people-oriented, talkative and friendly. They like to motivate and persuade. Often, they are good communicators, although they may tend toward telling long-winded stories. In fact, Doe’s boss once complained to him, “I ask you what time it is, and you tell me how to build a clock.” “people like flexibility and freedom from control. They dislike following up on details, and their greatest fear is personal rejection.
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