idealawg

Upcoming interview: David Rock and Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz

This interview has been postponed. You may read some of the other idealawg posts about Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz by clicking on the five word links throughout this sentence.

Click for more about Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, including links to various interviews of Jeff, as well as articles he and I have coauthored.

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I am very pleased to announce that David Rock (on left) of Work Place Coaching and Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz (below) of UCLA School of Medicine have agreed to be interviewed for idealawg. I believe you will appreciate their expertise from which they wrote their cutting-edge strategy+business article "The Neuroscience of Leadership." With excitement, I posted about their article before.

I know that what neuroscience is finding will affect the practice of law in ways that are wide-ranging: jury selection, examination of witnesses, client relations and development, associate training, law firm management, and I could continue on with this list. It is because of my deep conviction about how greatly our growing knowledge of the brain will impact legal practice that I asked them to answer some questions about neuroscience. We will discuss neuroscience in general and the promising knowledge it holds for lawyers in particular. By the time you have finished reading this upcoming interview, you just may share my excitement. In fact, I am betting on it.

Have you seen storytelling standing in the shadows? Show it into the light and tell a story each time you want to get your message heard (and remembered)

People who fail to couch what they have to say in memorable stories will have their rules fall on deaf ears despite their best intentions and despite the best intentions of their listeners.
--Roger C. Shank, Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence

I have wondered before here at idealawg how many law firms are using the powerful tool of storytelling. Storytelling is a critical part of the practice of law, can be a dynamic and time-saving strategy in law firm management and leadership, and seems to be an often-shunned way of communicating. Using storytelling when acting as an advocate, perhaps even as an advisor, is probably more accepted than utilizing it in the non-billable hours of a lawyer's day. In activities such as firm management, to quote Stephen Denning, "Real leaders don't tell stories, just as real men don't eat quiche." (This quote is taken from his thoughts on why storytelling is resisted in work organizations; more about what he says below.)

"Talk" to Carol Metzker now

Carol Metzker, the first person interviewed here at idealawg, is now in the main tent where you can discuss with her and others the concepts presented in her new book Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn. The main tent is located at Virtual Chautauqua. For those of you not familiar with Chautauquas, Susan Doherty of Group Jazz tells us:

Before Monday Night Football, before talk radio, before web surfing and chat rooms, there was Chautauqua.

The fun, fun fundamentals of success

I am a strong advocate for the use of humor in the legal profession. In this article "Don't Deck the Clown: Inviting Humor into the Law Firm", mentioned at idealawg before, I write about several benefits of humor, including:

1. Creative problem solving
2. Collaboration and teamwork
3. Stress reduction and health promotion
4. Improved client relations.

I also discuss some of the reasons why humor may be resisted and how to incorporate some humor into the practice of law. Yes, some of the suggestions may be a bit over the top but being over the top, testing  boundaries and assumptions, is part of allowing into a person's life (maybe your life) more humor.

Because I am convinced of the physiological value humor holds for us, I was delighted to see Daniel Pink link from his blog to an interview of Dr. Lee Berk about laughter's reduction of stress hormones. Berk and his colleague Dr. Stanley Tan are two of the leading researchers on the positive effects of laughter on the immune system.

In his A Whole New Mind, Pink presents 6 skills he says are essential in our new century:

Why stop thinking straight? Doing so will tipping point you in the right direction

I am pleased to announce that one of my next idealawg interviews will be of Irene Sanders, author of Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos, Complexity and Change.

[The interview of Irene Sanders posted December 6, 2006]

Sanders is one of the minds in the vanguard of applying the latest in certain areas of science to advantageously guide our 21st-century analysis and action. She recommends nonlinear thinking and teaches people how to stop thinking straight. Since nonlinear thinking is essential in times of change in law firms and in the legal profession, I am looking forward to hearing what she tells us.

Sanders has written about a wide variety of topics. Here are a couple of quotes which can apply to the current and coming changes in the legal arena. From a Christian Science Monitor article "US must invest in science of dot-connecting:"

This is your lawyer brain on blogs

In their post "Brain of the Blogger" at Eide Neurolearning Blog Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide contemplate the effects blogging may have on our brains.

Why ask this question? The primary reason can be found in one of the central tenets of modern neuroscience: "The neurons that fire together, wire together." What this basically means is that our mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our brains--not only what we think, but how we think as well.

(In an earlier post I discussed this brain changing.)

Given such activity-directed change, it always makes sense to ask whenever large numbers of people start using their brains in new and different ways, what effects these new activities are likely to have on brain structure and function. Blogging, which only seems to be accelerating in popularity, is a prime candidate for such investigation.

The Eides exercised my brain with the following conclusions. Be sure to click over to "Brain of the Blogger" to read much more about each of these five points. What they have written is well worth the click.

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.

"Legal blawgs gaining popularity": Role of blogging in the legal profession

From "Legal blawgs gaining popularity"

When Denise Howell started writing her first Web log in 2001, there were about 10 law blogs in existence. Since then, she’s created a new word – blawg – and watched its numbers leap into the thousands.

“Participation by the legal community has increased not just dramatically but exponentially,” said Howell.

The California technology lawyer’s “Bag and Baggage” blawg is one of the most popular links from blawg.org, a Web site for law blog links and information. Blawg.org lists 1,304 blawgs on 211 topics. The numbers keep going up, too: Seven sites and three new topics were added in the last week.

The blawging phenomenon is eliciting mixed reviews and questions from attorneys. Blawging enthusiasts like Howell predict the growing popularity of blawgs will produce positive changes in the law profession, its clients and American culture.

Howell said that blawgs allow lawyers a remarkably efficient way to examine and share knowledge with each other – and anyone else curious about the law.

“Our legal system is supposed to be a participatory one, but until now that hasn’t really been the case,” said Howell. “It (blawging) helps society by improving access to and participation in legal thought and lawmaking...and by de-mystifying our sometimes incomprehensible legal system.”

Yet blawging champions admit the medium has its pitfalls. Howell said the broad definition of a blawg allows for negative effects, as well.

Read the rest of the article.

Note: Received notice of this article via Google Alerts. On her blog, Howell highlights "why lawyer advertising rules deserve considered reexamination in the era of the Live Web."