Persuasion
The importance of being tough as nails along with being compassionate
Not long after I posted yesterday’s blog entry on the persuasive power of treating the battlefield as a playground, I benefitted again from keeping those principles in mind when maintaining equanimity when an unanticipated arrow was sent my way, disintegrating the arrow into a spot of...
The persuasive power of treating the battlefield as a playground
My teacher Ram Dass talks of everyone being connected to everyone and everything else, to the point that if we reached non-duality, we would perceive of everything and everyone as an indivisible whole. See page 173 (apparently from Ram Dass’s 1970’s lecture in Maryland). If...
Going to court vibrating highly and with positive energy, not judging
When one sees and experiences all the rights that get trampled on in court, and by so many cops and prosecutors, the temptation is repeatedly present to get angry at such situations, and to call the rights violators fascists, tyrants, and low lifes at best. Anger, however,...
Does your judge or jury want to be in the courtroom? What can you do to change that?
A colleague who has known many local judges since childhood and through the old boy/girl network recently told me that half the judges he knows in a particular county do the work out of a sense of public service, with numerous of the remainder dreading...
Finding the magic to great speaking and writing
So many people are afraid of public speaking, seeing the audience as a potential source of judgment, criticism, ridicule and shaming, rather than as connected to the speaker or as akin to the speaker’s closest friends. Many people write in stilted fashion, reaching constantly for...
Seizing the crossroads moment as an opportunity, not as a crisis
“You do not care about me or my case! I am going to get another criminal defense lawyer!” The foregoing question is a crossroads statement. A defensive and indignant lawyer might reply: “You ingrate! I have been working my fingers to the bone for you, even...
The persuasive and life power of loving ourselves and all, even our perceived enemies
I loved my first tie-dye shirt. I wore it proudly at my summer day camp and beyond during the 1971 summer before third grade. I guess I had not read the t-shirt closely enough before, in response to my annoying a camp counselor about his...
Owning the courtroom and the competition
During the Vietnam War, the United States government drafted a slew of people not long past high school age who were ill-prepared to go to war. Plenty had little real-world experience. Plenty had never been on a plane, let alone one to halfway around the world. Plenty...
Let the courthouse walls disappear and the unblocked testimony begin
Repeatedly in my initial discussions with them, clients and witnesses recount the events leading to my client’s arrest not only with descriptive words but with conclusions, opinions, and the occasional (usually with younger witnesses, which seems to be a generational way of speaking) "so I was...
The power of the pause
The naturally-placed pause has power. I only wish the following people knew it and applied it. One day, I took a taxi in Washington, D.C., and at the destination the driver quoted a fee that was at least fifty percent higher than the then-in-force zone...