While reading an article in Thursday’s New York Times (4/4/13),I flashed back forty years deep into my public defender days. Alabama lawmakers voted to issue posthumous pardons to the Scottsboro Boys,  nine black teenagers, who were wrongly convicted of rape more than 80 years ago based on false accusations by two white women.

All but the youngest of the defendants, whose ages ranged from 13 to 19, were sentenced to death by all-white southern juries before the verdicts were finally overturned. The case became synonymous with racial injustice and set important legal precedents, including a Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the right to effective counsel. I have cited to the Powell opinion hundreds of times.

The last of the so-called “boys” died in 1989. The pardons mean nothing to them nor to the racial bigots who sought to destroy them. Perhaps it means something to present day Alabama to put this emblem of racism behind them but like today’s Germany the stink is harder to erase.

I became captivated by this case and the trials it spawned through a personal connection. I started my career as a novice public defender in January 1971. Both our office and the criminal courts were in the old Metro Justice Building sitting, not too majestically, on N.W. 12th Street. At the time, the only other buildings in the area were the immensely ugly Dade County Jail and a hodge-podge of medical buildings.

The mostly empty spectator seats in the courtrooms were occupied mainly by older men who were outpatients from the nearby hospitals. Many of them were treated early in the morning and again in the late afternoon so they would hang out at the courts to amuse themselves. We saw them almost every day and we became friendly with these court watchers, and they loved to give us unsolicited advice on how to try a case. Soon we adopted them as informal shadow jurors.

One elderly man kept buttonholing me with some pretty good ideas. I finally asked him how he came by them. He was a retired judge from New York City named Samuel Leibowitz. At the time the name meant nothing to me. There was no Google or the internet in those ancient days. I soon forgot about him and thus missed a singular chance to talk to a legend. Some time later I read Courtroom: The Story of Samuel Liebowitz by Quentin Reynolds and I belatedly put two and two together. Legal history buffs will also recognize Reynolds as one of Louis Nizer’s most famous clients (see My Life in Court by Louis Nizer).

Leibowitz defended many notorious cases (albeit he refused Al Capone), but the one that still has currency today is the Scottsboro Boys. For the first trial one defendant’s mother hired a real estate lawyer for $60. Death sentences quickly followed. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in Powell v Alabama (1932) for the first time ruling that defendants were entitled to an effective lawyer.

Leibowitz was then brought in by civil rights groups and he worked for the next four years on the cases without pay or even reimbursement for most of his expenses. Leibowitz quickly became hated in Decatur, where the trial was held, when he opened his defense of Haywood Patterson, the first defendant to be retried, by challenging Alabama’s exclusion of blacks from the jury rolls. Death threats were made against him after his brutal cross-examination of alleged victim Victoria Price. One reporter wrote that after the cross he overheard several people saying, “It’ll be a wonder if he gets out of here alive.” Five uniformed members of the National Guard were assigned to protect him during the trial, with another 150 available to defend against a possible lynch mob.

Clarence Norris, a Scottsboro defendant, said of the courtroom mobs: ”Not a black person around anywhere. Everybody was white but us nine. ‘Let’s take these black sons of bitches and put ‘em up to a tree.’ I thought I was going to die.” “The courtroom,” said Haywood Patterson, the most outspoken of the defendants, “was one big smiling white face.”

Leibowitz dropped other bombshells on the prosecution’s case. One witness, a white hobo on the train, testified Victoria Price was a prostitute and an adulterer (BTW not admissible evidence today). Ruby Bates, the other alleged victim, took the stand for the defense and testified there was no rape saying that Price made up the story because she was afraid of being arrested for transporting a minor, Bates, across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

The prosecutors responded with venom. They claimed the defense witnesses were liars, pawns of Jews and Communists and traitors to the South. The chief prosecutor ended his final argument with a single question: “Is justice in the case going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?” Of course a rural southern jury was not about to let that happened and quickly returned guilty verdicts with death sentences.

Leibowitz was understandably outraged by the verdict and made a misstep by angrily insulting the jury. Asked by a reporter to explain the verdict, he portrayed white Southerners en masse as “lantern-jawed morons,” adding, “If you ever saw those creatures, those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it.” This fed right into the popular belief that the defense was insulting the southern way of life making any retrial far more difficult. But it was an all too human response to an outrageous verdict. Been there done that.

Leibowitz appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Patterson’s and Norris’ convictions violated due process because blacks were systematically excluded from Alabama’s juries. When Leibowitz alleged that the names of blacks appearing on jury rolls were fraudulently added after Haywood’s trial began, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes asked Leibowitz if he could prove that allegation. Leibowitz had caused the jury roll books to be brought to Washington and he handed the jury rolls and a magnifying glass up to the Chief Justice. The documents were passed from Justice to Justice, a highly unusual event during oral argument in the Supreme Court, and the Justices indicated their disgust. The Supreme Court again reversed the defendants’ convictions in Norris v Alabama.

Before their release, the defendants had suffered constant beatings from guards while imprisoned so close to the electric chair that they could hear the executions, a regular reminder of their potential fate.

After his work on the Scottsboro Boys case was finished, Leibowitz returned to his New York practice but became much more interested in civil rights issues. Among other cases, he met on death row several times with Bruno Hauptmann, the German immigrant convicted of kidnapping Charles Lindbergh’s baby, in the hopes of convincing him to reveal details of the crime.

During the 1940s, he was appointed to serve a 14-year term as a Justice of the Kings County Court, then the principal trial court for criminal matters in Brooklyn. Leibowitz was reelected to his judgeship in 1954. When the County Courts in New York City were merged into the New York State Supreme Court in 1962 as part of a court reorganization in 1962, Leibowitz’s title changed to New York State Supreme Court Justice.

One case he handled must have been fun. He presided over the criminal trial of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher for assaulting a fan at Ebbets Field in 1945. He served until 1969 when he reached the final mandatory retirement age of 76 so he was at least 80 when I met him.

It is all too fitting that Irving Younger, author of the infamous The Ten Commandments of Cross-examinatiuon, held an endowed law professorship of trial advocacy at Cornell named after Samuel Leibowitz.

Unfortunately I don’t remember much about him at all. He was old and frail and I had no idea who he was. Today I wish I had spent more time with him and gotten the inside story of some of his cases especially Scottsboro. But it was not to be. At least I can say I was in the presence of greatness.

The cliches roll off the tongue when someone says the word “practice”:

“Practice makes perfect”
“Practice makes the master”
“Practice is everything”
“Perfect practice makes perfect”
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

I have been collecting material for a series on practicing, not practicing law, but practicing performance. But I just finished reading the Job’s biography so I decided to use Steve Job’s intense practice sessions for MacWorld as a starting point.

But first a good lesson from the Steve Jobs biography: don’t fall into the trap of having it done by a serious researcher if you have anything to hide. It is a well written book but Jobs comes off as a nasty person and is diminished in my eyes. Jobs was routinely condescending and brutish to his colleagues and staff and thinks nothing of dumping his oldest friends when he no longer needs them. Yet if someone dares to criticizes him or denies him some advantage he bursts into tears. I dislike powerful people who treat their subordinates with contempt. I am dropping Jobs behind the whiney-voiced Bill Gates in my tech top ten list. But despite his miserable personality, Jobs was a brilliant public speaker and there is much to learn from the books dissecting his preparation and style.

Carmine Gallo on the other hand can find no wrong in Jobs. Probably because Gallo has made a career out of studying Jobs the stage performer and keeps far away from his toxic private personality. Jobs was the consummate business stage performer and his MacWorld performances are legendary among the Apple afficionados.  Fortunately there are thousands of videos of Jobs both doing the MacWorld and other speeches on YouTube.

Jobs was demon for preparation and practice. He would rehearse on stage for many hours over several weeks prior to the launch of a new Apple product. He knew every detail of every demo down to the fonts on every slide. Nothing was too small to escape his attention. He was obsessed on details and design. The Isaacson biography is full of examples of Jobs feverishly working on the smallest screws to Apple computers even when they were on the inside of the machine and out of view. His obsession on the presentations made them flawless.

After over-preparing the presentation, Jobs would spend hours rehearsing every facet and every word. Each slide is carefully written, and the presentation staged like a theatrical experience. Jobs made it look effortless, due to the hours and hours of grueling practice. Jobs was not a natural presenter, nor is anyone else. If you watch video clips of his presentations going back 20 years, you will see that he improves significantly every decade. From the famous 1984 Macintosh introduction to the Jobs who announced the iPhone in 2007.  He learned how to relentlessly tweak, optimize, and improve. Isaacson quotes John Sculley on Job’s theory: “Marketing is really theater. It’s like staging a performance.”

Most lawyers are unfamiliar with the concept of practice unless it is on the driving tee. The trial lawyer can’t slavishly follow the Jobs playbook. We don’t have the time nor the enormous resources available to Jobs. He would organize teams of experts and bring in the most talented marketing, advertising and writing professionals. We, not only don’t have those advantages, have to know when to stop and perhaps have to settle still well short of an ideal product. But what matters is not this one specific outcome, but instead the striving for perfection and the deliberate practice this generates. The point is to keep getting better, not necessarily making this one presentation the best ever.

How important is the right team? Last month we watched Obama’s State of the Union address and the Marco Rubio rebuttal. The Miami Herald published a long article on the media and strategic team Rubio had working for him building his “brand.” But it is obvious to me that the Rubio team failed in its message on this occasion. Rubio flunked the Obama moment. He had a national audience to speak to and he failed to impress them. Contrast that to Obama’s speech at the 2004 DNC which catapulted him into national fame and ultimately the presidency. Rubio was stuck the next day making fun of himself to cover the embarrassment. Perhaps like Bill Clinton he can overcome the disaster or be like Bobby Jindal and fade into the Louisiana swampland.

Here are some suggestions for practicing:

You must practice to be any good.

If possible practice on the clock.

Again if possible practice with an audience.

Watch yourself practice.

Video (and audio) record your practice.

Practice as you’ll play.

Rehearse as you’ll do the presentation.

Imagine yourself in the “arena” you’ll be playing in.

Take notes as you practice, stop immediately when you notice a mistake or an uncomfortable moment and correct it. Analyze and re-analyze your presentation as you go. Make staging notes like cutting down on time on certain parts, and how to enunciate tricky words and phrases.

On your own, practice, practice, practice your opening statement or oral argument. Do it yourself at home, in the car, in the conference room, and do it over and over again. Enlist friends as your audience. Listen to their feedback. Listen to yourself talk out loud and try different ways of getting your points across.

Here is Gallo on Jobs and rehearsing:

“Steve usually rehearses on the two days before a keynote. On the first day he works on the segments he feels need the most attention. The product managers and engineering managers for each new product are in the room, waiting for their turn. This group also forms Steve’s impromptu test audience: he’ll often ask for their feedback. He spends a lot of time on his slides, personally writing and designing much of the content, with a little help from Apple’s design team.

On the day before showtime, things get much more structured, with at least one and sometimes two complete dress rehearsals. Any non-Apple presenters in the keynote take part on the second day (although they cannot be in the room while the secret parts – the unveiling of hot ticket hardware such as a new iPod or laptop – are being rehearsed).  Throughout it all Steve is extremely focused. While we were in that room, all his energy was directed at making this keynote the perfect embodiment of Apple’s messages. Steve doesn’t give up much of his personality even in rehearsals. He is strictly business, most of the time.”

Here is Gallo on Jobs and his slides:

“Practice, practice, practice. Steve Jobs spent hours rehearsing every facet of his presentation. Every slide was written like a piece of poetry, every presentation staged like a theatrical experience. Steve Jobs made a presentation look effortless but that polish came after hours and hours of arduous practice. Agencies often are forced to rely on spontaneity to provide creative energy for a pitch because they have spent all of their time on putting together the presentation and leave little or no time for rehearsal. Most unrehearsed pitches end up falling flat.”

Gallo writes about psychology professor Dr. K. Anders Ericsson who teaches refining skills through deliberative practice, not just doing the same thing over and over again, but setting specific goals, and asking for feedback. Ericsson says strive to improve over the long run by practicing specific skills again and again over many years. Ericsson developed the concept of ten thousand hours of practice which Malcolm Gladwell adopted for his book Outliers and the method to mastery. Ericsson suggests that videoing yourself can help you rehearse and manage your body language, vocal delivery and energy, three hours a day, twenty hours a week, for ten years. He noted that the Beatles played in Germany some 1,200 times for 8 hours at a stretch and credits that for their success.

I like what Gallo notes about the Texas preacher Joel Osteen who speaks in a natural conversational style. Osteen spends 4 days practicing for a 30 minute sermon and makes it look effortless. Preaching is hard work, it is weighty. But, when you stand up to preach, you should be so prepared that it looks effortless. You should know your topic, be ready, and preach so it just flows out of you.

One last thought I am stealing from Seth Godin: rehearse success not failure. Visualize your speech working perfectly. Visualize the path to success. Never visualize failure, it is counterproductive.

The Hon. Kevin Emas, a Judge on the Third District Court of Appeal, warned everyone that the Florida Legislature was once again threatening to take away the rule -making power of the Supreme Court and arrogating it upon themselves. They are particularly focused on speeding up executions and swatting away pesky claims of innocence. (Somehow our august Florida lawmakers have missed all the exonerations. I suppose they don’t read much in Tallahassee.)

The Hon. Darrin Gayles, a Judge on the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, and a member of its professionalism committee, spoke on civility and professionalism of advocates. Interestingly, most of the questions from the lawyers asked how often contempt citations are issued. I guess they are getting a little nervous.

The Hon. Wifredo Ferrer, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida (and an excellent public speaker), focused on fraud in Florida.  (Shocking! There is fraud in Casablanca?)

Rebekah Poston, a partner at Squire and Sanders and a long time trial lawyer, gave a humorous retelling of her experiences in the trials of the Black Tuna gang, the Miporn case and Bon Jovi (she denied dating him). Not a bad line-up. Her next appearance will be at The Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd.

Ironically, the audience had more legends than the panel: Chief Judge Fred Moreno; circuit judges Thomas Rebull; Richard Hersch, Milton Hirsch and, making a special appearance, was best-selling crime novelist Paul Levine (no doubt seeking new grist for his mill). And I am sure I am missing others.  (Please forgive me. I was trying to remember my lines at the time.)

My talk is reproduced here. I broke it down into bite sized phrases as Churchill recommends:

Present at the Creation

“Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries.”

Words of wisdom from Justice Hugo Black

as codified in Gideon v. Wainwright,

a case which approaches its 50th anniversary this March 18th.

Question: why did we wait 175 years after the Bill of Rights

to recognize this necessity?

Gideon is our nation’s most important decision

in its enduring quest of equal justice for all.

It changed the course of legal history.

With one minor problem – no one wanted to pay for it.

It reminds me of Andrew Jackson

who said of another supreme court decision

“Chief Justice John Marshall has rendered his decision,

now let him enforce it.”

Gideon’s promise has fared no better.

When I started as a public defender in January 1971,

Gideon was anemic and on life support.

The deep south was not ready to accept public defense

for indigent, mainly black defendants,

just like it refused to accept Brown v. School Board.

Indigents received a defense in name only.

The bright light of Gideon was barely flickering.

Just another empty promise.

Phil Hubbart recruited a young band of ten lawyers,

fresh out of law school,

too young, too naive and too inexperienced

to know what they were getting into.

Only ten to represent all the poor people arrested in Dade County.

The office budget that first year was $125,000 and

we assistants were paid a salary of $8,500.

Despite our youth and inexperience

we were a substantial upgrade.

The previous office had part time lawyers

who came in on Tuesdays and Thursdays

and waived jury in every case.

We 10 were horrified what we learned

of the so-called system of justice:

– outrageous bail terms;

– innocent people languishing in prison

for many months or years before trial;

– they were forced to plead guilty just to get out of jail;

– onerous sentences for minorities and poor people.

We shocked the system by demanding a jury trial in every case.

A heresy which outraged the incumbent judges.

Little by little things began to change.

Ones that couldn’t always be quantified.

It was not linear

but zigged and zagged.

We were visionaries who believed

that justice was possible

even while being immersed in

a notoriously unjust system

and we could not have thrown ourselves into that system,

day by day, into that machinery

without believing we could change it.

It was ultimately an act of faith,

and by our very presence – we changed it.

Gideon was a beginning. Albeit a brave beginning.

Gideon has power because it stands for more than what it is.

We are not fighting for a ruling;

We are fighting for what the ruling protects.

Sadly Gideon’s promise remains unfulfilled.

Today the Federal Government has

targeted drone strikes on defense lawyers.

The attorney general of the United States, after 911,

so distrusted lawyers that he refused

to allow them to even speak to suspected terrorists.

Some for years.

The government in the KPMG case

threatened the firm with indictment

if they dared to follow their partnership agreement

to pay legal fees for indicted accountants.

The government has threatened to indict lawyers

with money laundering if they dare to

represent defendants in drug cases.

The United States Attorney can

legally impoverish a criminal defendant

by filing an indictment with civil or criminal forfeiture,

freeze a defendant’s funds,

and eliminate experienced and able defense counsel.

Nothing guarantees the conviction of innocent defendants

more than an incompetent, underfunded, or ineffective lawyer.

The National Registry of Exonerations,

reports 1,050 people released from prison

because they were innocent –

142 of them from death row.

In total these men and women

spent more than 10,000 years in prison

for crimes they did not commit.

So – We have come back full circle to Clarence Gideon.

It is as if Gideon’s Trumpet never sounded.

Once again the system is designed to get defendants into

prison as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Like Mr. Gideon, these men and women

are forced to defend themselves as best they can.

Unlike Gideon they have lost the right

to pay for what it takes

to exercise a basic constitutional right –

the right to pick their own lawyer.

But the part I am interested in is Harvey’s dramatic delivery of this poetic gem. He used a staccato rhythm with long pauses for effect. In my last post on business books I pointed out that Churchill and Reagan believed in using the power of the pause for dramatic effect. Just listen to Paul Harvey in this commercial and you will find the finest example of it.

Here is how Harvey would start his daily radio news broadcasts:  Hello Americans! [pause] This is Paul Harvey! [pause] Stand by [long pause] for news!” If you have ever listened to him you can hear him in that last sentence.

I also bet that Harvey wrote out the text of his speech like Churchill did in a sort of meterless, rhymeless poem. It makes it easier to read and signals him where to pause. Perhaps like Churchill (and Shakespeare) he even wrote in the staging directions.

The commercial enhanced the power of his rhetoric with stark photographs of farmers at work. Chrysler commissioned ten noted photographers to create the scenes. This is an example of images and slides supplementing a speech not overwhelming it. The photographs were timed to Harvey’s phrases and added to their impact. The perfect example of how a final argument should work.

Harvey was similar to us trial lawyers in another way. He wrote and delivered his sponsors’ advertisements himself, selling them with the same sincerity as his folksy world-view. “I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is.”

Here is the text of his speech. Notice how effectively he uses the refrain “So God made a farmer”:

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the township board.” So God made a farmer.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to cradle his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure to come back real soon and mean it.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year,’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse, who can fix a harness with hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, up in another 72 hours.” So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to help a newborn calf begin to suckle and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower in an instant to avoid the nest of meadowlarks.”

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, brake, disk, plow, plant, strain the milk, replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with an eight mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his family says that they are proud of what Dad does. “So God made a farmer.”

The next book revolves around one of my favorite people in history — Winston Churchill. This man not only saved the free world from Hitler and the scourge of fascism, but along the way also won the Nobel prize for literature. Quite an accomplishment. Churchill was not the best of the public speakers but he wrote some of the best political speeches. He was a better writer than performer especially since he had a small but obvious lisp. Some of his phrases will live forever:

“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ “

“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Speak Like Churchill, Stand like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers by James C. Humes

I enjoyed looking back into this book because it has so many usable ideas for the public speaker. It also is a treasure trove of quotes and how to dramatically deliver them. It is a how-to book stuffed full of practical ideas which one can put to use instantly. Humes presents 21 tips in the form of chapters that he has found through his research into the foremost politicians and writers. Humes is the perfect author for this book. He is famous for his one man shows playing Churchill. He really gets into the man’s skin so he knows what worked for Churchill.

Here are some of the best ideas from the book:

I am a firm believer in getting impact right at the beginning of a speech. I have written several posts on this blog called the first minute. Humes has great advice on to do it.

“Before you speak, try to lock your eyes on each of your soon-to-be listeners. Force yourself before you begin your presentation to say in your own mind each word of your opening sentence. Every second you wait will strengthen the impact of your opening words. . . .  Stand, stare and command your audience and they will bend their ears to listen.”

“The prime time of any talk or presentation you give is during your opening words. Everyone in the audience is waiting to see what you look and sound like. Do not waste that psychological edge with trite blather.”

Instead of thanking people, which always sounds insincere at the beginning of the speech, or even worse fall flat with a mildly funny joke, capture their attention. Make a dramatic statement. A great example from FDR: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

I love to use quotations in speaking and writing. I collect them in files on my hard drive. I also love to put them into PowerPoint slides and use them during speeches. Humes gives excellent advice on how to make the most of the perfect quotation. “Use only one quotation per speech and dramatize it. Stage it, perform it, act it out! Put power into your quotation!”

Humes also allows the speaker one statistic a speech. He advises to make it as memorable as possible just like the quote. Example– pull out an index card out of your jacket pocket, carefully put on your glasses, only then read it to the audience.

He gives one I would love to use in a tax evasion case: “We ought to make May 15th instead of April 15th the deadline for filing your income tax – because until May 15th every dollar we make goes to the federal government.”

Humes was a speech writer for Ronald Reagan and passes on a tip from the former president. He said that Reagan never ate before speaking. He would only drink plain hot water. Reagan said he learned this trick from Billy Graham and Frank Sinatra. The hot water loosens the vocal chords while cold water constricts them. I have tried this and it works. The only downside is that the waiter thinks you are a little nuts.

He is a firm believer in long pauses. The worst thing a speaker can be is anxious and rush through the words. We all experience anxiety when speaking but we can’t let the audience feel it from us. Thus, instead of a rush of words in an effort to fill in pauses, we should be liberally using pauses to give effect to our words. Pauses allow the audience to absorb our ideas and they dramatize them. When you pause before a sentence, the audience perks up their ears waiting to hear what you have to say.

One technique I use on every public speaking opportunity is laid out in the chapter “Power Poetry.” Why poetry? Churchill would break down every one of his speeches into a rhymeless, meterless verse. Churchill wanted to read the lines as if they were poetry. It is set out phrase by phrase on the paper. Each line in its own paragraph rather than an impenetrable  block of sentences. The chapter demonstrates how to do it. Trust me, it works.

Humes does not just describe things — he shows on the pages how one can do it. He has broken the book up into 21 chapters which span the spectrum of writing, preparation, delivery, and even spontaneous speaking. It is an easy format to work with. Here are the chapters:

1. Power Pause
2. Power Opener
3. Power Presence
4. Power Point (no, not that kind of PowerPoint)
5. Power Brief
6. Power Quote
7. Power Stat
8. Power Outage
9. Power Wit
10. Power Parable
11. Power Gesture
12. Power Reading
13. Power Poetry
14. Power Line
15. Power Question
16. Power Word
17. Power Active
18. Power Dollar
19. Power Button
20. Power Closer
21. Power Audacity

Friday February 8, 2013
Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building
Ceremonial Courtroom (4-1)
Refreshments, 11:45 AM
Presentation, 12:15 PM
Here is the Friday link to RSVP:

http://go.fiu.edu/GreatLegalStorytellers@REGJB

The law school has made enormous strides under the stewardship of Dean Alex Acosta. The last time I was on the campus Alex gave me a tour of the school’s new facilities and they are first class. The law school has a dedicated group of students, especially in the trial advocacy program. I was fortunate to work with their class doing trial exercises. Expect more great events from the FIU Trial Advocacy Program.  Click here for more information and to register for this free program.

Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking with Purpose and Vision by Shel Leanne

What does it take to inspire? Don’t we all aspire to this? For Obama it all started with his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. It catapulted him into the national spotlight, a seat in the Senate and ultimately the White House. All in all a pretty good result. It is his gift for oratory, combining style and substance, that turned a little known state senator from Illinois into a star. Even his most vocal critics admit he is one of the finest orators of the modern political era. This is not a political book but rather a “how does he do it” book. Let’s face it — a rational student of public speaking wouldn’t buy a “Say It Like Bush” book, but would instantly grab a “Say It Like Bill Clinton” one.

Ironically Obama was so good at public speaking that his opponents used it against him. They kept warning the public not to be mesmerized by his speeches. That he was too articulate. Oh, if only people said the same about us!

This is a “user friendly” instructional manual on the art and craft of public speaking. It examines the many techniques that Obama employs to drive his agenda. The book deconstructs Obama’s speeches, including the 2,800 word keynote speech that electrified the audience both in the Democratic National Convention hall and on television. Leanne also analyzes Obama’s high-profile speech in Berlin, his acceptance speech, the inauguration speech and others. Barack Obama’s well-practiced techniques made him a highly effective speaker before audiences numbering 30 to 200,000 and “fired up” millions of enthusiastic supporters with his inspiring vision, rousing rhetoric, and charismatic presence.

The book focuses on body language, mannerisms, alliteration, repetition, pacing, and most importantly, how to tie the speech into one’s own life. A popular Obama technique is using his own struggles and then comparing such to that of the struggling American.

He uses repetition, attention to key themes, and how to make them memorable. Learn the rule of threes; understand the power of rhetorical and non-rhetorical questions; exploit the use and non-use of “and” in a sentence. Particularly useful are the chapters on Breaking Down Barriers (3), Driving Points Home (6), and Persuading (7). The Obama keys are: Make a strong first impression; Use body language and voice; Establish common ground; Gain trust and confidence; Win hearts and minds; Drive your points home; Convey your vision through imagery and words that resonate; Build to a crescendo; and Leave a lasting impression.

The book does not only print the speeches, but also has text notes indicating specific hand gestures, body language, delivery, pausing, among other techniques he used throughout the speeches. For example here are some notes while discussing the keynote address: “Let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. [he reaches out to the audience with open hands, conveying his gratitude] “that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock at the door” [Obama knocks a balled fist on an imaginary door] “we have a solemn obligation” [he rests his palm over his heart]. The notes point out tone, emphasis, mannerisms, volume and even details like “U-ni-ted-States-of-A-mer-i-ca” [scrawling his fingers as if writing it in cursive].  This type of emphasis drives his points home. All concrete details and personalization of his speeches. He paints pictures in the minds of the audience.

He uses vivid language, symbolic words and personalized ideas. He paints pictures in the minds of his audience. He repeats key themes. He talks about hope making the listener visualize it. He seeks out common ground in the audience. Do they have a common history? Common values? Common experiences? Common goals? He focuses on the areas of commonality in order to build a bridge to them. He keeps it personal – I, you, and we. It puts him closer to his audience.

And Obama always has a powerful ending. None of this tailing off into an almost embarrassed silence we see so many do and lose the power of their message. Powerful endings like his keynote in 2004: “Tonight! If you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do – if we do what we must do, then….”

I recommend reading them while watching and listening to them on YouTube.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

C H A P T E R 1: THE SPEECH THAT STARTED IT ALL
C H A P T E R 2: EARNING TRUST AND CONFIDENCE
C H A P T E R 3: BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS
C H A P T E R 4: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
C H A P T E R 5: CONVEYING VISION
C H A P T E R 6: DRIVING POINTS HOME
C H A P T E R 7: PERSUADING
C H A P T E R 8: FACING AND OVER COMING CONTROVERSY
C H A P T E R 9: MOTIVATING OTHERS TO ACTION AND LEAVING STRONG LAST IMPRESSIONS
C H A P T E R 1 0: THE SPEECH THAT MADE HISTORY . . . AGAIN

When I first started at the Public Defender’s Office I avidly read all the trial advocacy texts looking for the key to great speaking. I never found the answer there. I soon came upon the stunning jury speeches of Clarence Darrow. I was mesmerized by his eloquence. It was an eloquence of simple words. Not the complex showing off of a Bill Buckley or Shakespeare. He used words everyone knew.

I sought his secret for years and wrote about it in an earlier post in this blog. I found out that Darrow extensively gave public speeches, political speeches and wrote essays published in the newspapers. This is how he formulated his ideas and style of speaking. Each aspect of his public life provided the practice for his legal skills. All you have to do is compare his public speeches and writing with his fabulous final arguments. Trust me, you will find the roots in there.

So while I recommend to you the same path as Darrow, I am writing this to give you a set of books to start with. Throw out all those trial advocacy books. Don’t listen to lawyer war stories. They are fun but hardly instructive. Instead, I recommend books written for businessmen on the methods of persuasion. Yes you read that correctly  — business books, not legal books. I tell lawyers this all the time. I proselytize it.

So why do these books work? Who knows more about selling than those in the business of selling? Oh you don’t like the selling part. Well get over it; everyone is in selling. They may sell major appliances but we sell ideas. The method of persuasion is the same.

The legal profession is based on precedent and tradition, which can limit advancements. Trial lawyers can learn from marketing because they are both trying to “sell” something. A lawyer’s products are intangible: case themes, his or her view of the facts, and how the themes and facts apply to the law. Trial lawyers have an advantage over businesses with large audiences as they only have to sell to a small group at a time. So, why do trial lawyers continue to use a horse and buggy approach to presenting evidence when state of the art technology is available?

The book Moneyball is about a baseball manager challenging conventional wisdom with data:  the core message of the Moneyball philosophy that Billy Beane tried to champion. “It’s about an intellectual idea which is essentially: ‘If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this how we would do it?’” That’s the question that every lawyer or law firm, no matter how large or how small, needs to ask right now. We are problem solvers just like engineers, physicists. If we are working on a problem that the old tools aren’t capable to solve, then time to try new ones. How can we ignore a generation of immensely varied and empirical research? We are left with a hollow discipline based on tradition not research.

Billy Bean: “Baseball thinking is medieval.” So is ours. Time to dump the accepted wisdom. So stop all those subscriptions to the expensive looseleaf binders and updates. They are not worth the paper they are written on. Read the business persuasion library and you will be far better off. I am starting this series off with my favorite of the business books. I have used its suggestions more than any others. I will follow up with others in the days to come.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath (2007).

This book clearly presents 6 principles that will change how you communicate. It teaches how to formulate and then communicate ideas that “stick.” Ideas that “are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact – they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.” Ideas must “stick” to have any visibility and “traction” to have any impact. As Thomas Edison noted: “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

“Business managers seem to believe that, once they’ve clocked through a PowerPoint presentation showcasing their conclusions, they’ve successfully communicated their ideas. What they’ve done is share data.” It is sticky ideas that shock, move and convince us. “If you want your ideas to be stickier, you’ve got to break someone’s guessing machine and then fix it.”

The book is proclaims there are six principles of persuasion:

1. Simplicity: Your idea should be stripped down to its core, and your most important concepts must stand out. How do you deliver your message in a brief and compact way? Simplicity is the key and the first step to make a message sticky. It is critical to find the core. According to the authors, “finding the core isn’t synonymous with communicating the core.” Your message needs to be simple and important to make your message remain not just in your mind but in others’ as well.

The ultimate simplicity goal is “a one sentence statement so profound that an individual can spend a lifetime learning to follow it.”

The book provides excellent examples of “Commander’s Intent” used by the military to simplify operational instructions for battlefield units confronted with the fact that “No plan survives contact with the enemy;” paring down the ’92 Clinton campaign message to “It’s the economy stupid;” following the generally applicable rule in journalism of not “burying the lead”; the “a bird in the hand” metaphor and its multinational variations; Hollywood high-concept pitches such as Alien being “Jaws in Space,” the use of “generative analogies” such as “staff as cast members” at Disneyland.

2. Unexpectedness: the idea should disrupt your audience’s preconceived notions. This disruption forces people to stop, think, and remember. “We can’t demand attention. We must attract it” says the authors. In order to grab people’s attention, your message is made attractive with unexpectedness. Breaking a pattern is one way. I like films such as Memento which startle the audience with reversing the time sequence. An example from the book is the old emergency siren was too monotonic to stimulate our sensory systems and failed to attract our attention. As the siren gets audibly improved, people hear much brighter and more stimulating sound and become more aware. The lesson is to catch people’s attention, break the ordinary pattern. According to the authors: “Our brain is designed to be keenly aware of changes.”

3. Concreteness: avoid statistics, and instead use real-world analogies and stories to help people understand complex ideas. Humans can imagine in visual, audible, or any other sensory pathways. When we use all our sensory systems to visualize ideas or messages, then the ideas get much more concrete. As an example, the authors provide in this chapter, “a bathtub full of ice” in the Kidney Theft legend is an example of abstract moral truths that makes it concrete. “The more hooks in your idea, the better.”

I particularly like the chapter on concreteness. The authors explain how vivid concrete images help to drive the audience’s memory. The human brain is hard-wired to retain concrete images. Language is abstract but life is not. It is hard to grasp an abstract idea. If you can examine it with your senses it is concrete.

4. Credibility: if people don’t trust you, they won’t listen to you and may even become openly hostile, and they will actively dispute your message. When you are a scientist, you are persuaded by the things that are scientifically proven or that are referred to in many other studies or to the words or the theories that the well-known scientist has established. Credibility makes people believe your ideas. We present results, charts, statistics, pictures and other data to make people believe. “But concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.”

5. Emotional: Information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow’s hierarchy. What’s in it for you? It is a good example of the power of association. Sometimes, we need to grab people’s emotion. It does not mean tear jerking, dramatic, or romantic. It means that your idea must pull out people’s care and attachment to it. However, we don’t always have to create this emotional attachment. “In fact, many ideas use a sort of piggybacking strategy, associating themselves with emotions that already exist.” People can make decisions based on two models: the consequence model and the identity model. The consequence model can be rational self-interest, while the identity model is that people identify such situations like what type of situation is this?

6. Stories: telling a story makes people pay closer attention, and feel more connected to what you are saying. The author uses the Jared Subway commercials as an example. It is the story of the college student from the Subway campaign who lost hundreds of pounds eating Subway sandwiches. The story inspires people and connects them to real life. The book itself uses stories to help readers understand in each chapter, stories allow people to understand how your idea can affect or change their mind.
Stories get people to act. stories are told and re-told because they contain wisdom. They are the best teaching tools. They illustrate how people solve problems. We talk shop because we learn from others’ experiences. They are part entertainment, part instruction. Stories put pictures in our heads.

One of their interesting notations is that 63% remember stories while 5% remember statistics.

Here are some good passages:

The Curse of knowledge: Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind. (pg. 20)

If you say three things, you don’t say anything. (pg. 33)

Simple = Core + Compact. (pg. 45)

Statistics aren’t inherently helpful; it’s the scale and context that make them so. (pg. 146)

If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will. – Mother Teresa. (pg. 165)

Why does mental stimulation work? It works because we can’t imagine events or sequences without evoking the same modules of the brain that are evoked in a real physical activity. . . .  Notice that these visualizations focus on the events themselves – the process, rather than the outcomes. No one has ever been cured of a phobia by imagining how happy they’ll be when it’s gone. (pg. 212)