18. Don't make me use my lawyer voice

Lawyers present for clients, pitch for business and push points in court - they have to be good talkers, right? Well, maybe not. With loads of experience in the legal industry Michael has a few axes to grind!

Transcript

Legally Blonde:  You got into Harvard law? What? Like it's hard?

Sally:  Oh, Elle Woods. What an inspiration and that was almost 20 years ago. Can you believe? Now as much as I'd love to do a podcast all about Legally Blonde. Today, it's just about the, legally. We're up to episode 18 - Don't make me use my lawyer voice.

I'm Sally Prosser. You're listening to That Voice Podcast. No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters and unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.

In this episode, I chat to someone who knows a thing or two about voice and I especially hope I don't say anything to incriminate myself. Michael Bromley is my fantastic guest this week. He's gone from being a lawyer to recruiting lawyers to now running a marketing agency and a podcast where he chats to lawyers. Safe to say Michael has a fairly good idea about the legal profession. He's the co-founder of Beyond Billables. That's the name of the podcast. Look it up, and the business is branding, marketing, and content. Now, this chat has been a long time in the making. We've had all sorts of things happen. I think it started with construction next door in my apartment. Then there were internet issues, then there was a sick child. But now finally, here we are. Michael, welcome to That Voice Podcast.

Michael:  Thanks Sally. Great to be here.

Sally: Question one, could you do your job if you lost your voice?

Michael:  No, I would really, really struggle. I've done it before. I had six or seven days a couple of years ago when I was a recruiter, funnily enough and a Head Hunter and I used to make 20 to 50 calls a day and that was a really real big struggle for a couple of weeks. Very bad laryngitis. But no quite funny now. I guess with the structure of the business that I've got people in the business I think we'd be alright for a short amount of time. But I run a podcast. I need my voice to talk to people and learn about them and engage with them. So it would be really, really difficult.

Sally: Yeah. And would you say your voice has always played a big part in your life?

Michael: So I did a lot of acting when I was a kid. So certainly I, I think that has an impact. It makes you a little bit more mindful. I spent professionally a lot of time on the phone. I've always liked to talk, like, let's be honest, at law school I love mooting, I like public speaking in a certain way I find it terrifying. But when I'm doing it, it's fun and I also sing a bit and I've always enjoyed that. I think having spent a lot of time on the phone for a lot of years as well, that you become quite conscious of your own voice and what you're saying and the other person's voice and how you measure that and how you react, how you control it.

Sally: Yes. And I hear you're quite impressive with a karaoke microphone.

Michael: Yeah, that's the secret go to. But yeah, no, so I did a lot of musical theater and other things and the choice for me between, well at uni was going to law school or going to NIDA really, yeah. So I've always had that and I've always been quite conscious of that. And it's funny now with a podcast, it's in your face. I still don't like listening to myself at all. But at least doing it. You can hear the mistakes you make a lot of the time. All the UMS and AHS, I find it naturally pretty easy compared to, to what I see with clients, especially of mine. How difficult it is to get people to, to sometimes articulate a message on a podcast or a video.

Sally: And on that, what are the challenges you'd say many lawyers have with their spoken communication?

Michael: Look, it depends on - lawyer is such a broad term, they're doing so many different things. I'd say if you're an advocate, you're a barrister, you're someone who goes forward and advocates, your voice is important and your control is important and how you articulate is important. So I think people who are in the courts who or in mediations or you know, presenting like a lot of lawyers do a lot of presentation. That's really, really important. My kind of axe to grind with a legal profession is around communication just more broadly. And I think that we talk about technology and we talk about a lot of things at the moment. But we don't talk enough about improving communication and obviously delivery is a big part of it. And I'm just really passionate about improving the way that professionals communicate with their clients.

And so to bridge those gaps because in our profession you hear heaps of lawyer jokes for good reason. Right? And you see the concerns people have about lawyers for good reason. And the root of that is generally not their legal skills. It's bad communication. And so voice certainly plays into that and is important to make sure you're understood.

Sally: Yeah, for sure. And do any examples come to mind?

Michael:  Oh, certainly in say a client presentation that's really, really important. And a lot of them spend a lot of time doing that. So a lot of firms for their business development, they put on lunch functions or breakfast functions for clients and you get up there and you present. Now that's a show. And that's an opportunity to make a really positive impression. So it's important to be able to speak well and present well at those types of functions.

Obviously in front of courts it's a really different thing all together. And it's so important to be clearly articulating your message because in law we have this oral tradition where it's not just all written but you have the opportunity to talk about it. Everything's always in writing anyway. And that's what people, you know, it's, you don't really see that under the surface with law, but that's an opportunity to, to have an argument essentially to have a discussion around key points that's really, really important. And to make sure that the other side, whoever that is, it might be, you know, a judge and might just be someone in a mediation or it could be anything really understands your points. I just think practically day to day in an interview situation with clients who come in who are new to your business, it's really important as well because most people shop around and you can differentiate your service by how clear you are.

How well you come across as opposed to just being sloppy, being rushed, not explaining yourself very well. And people don't really think too much about that. But those are the little bits that mean your conversion rate for clients is higher. And I'm all about fixing those little little bits. Yeah.

Sally:  And what are the main mistakes you see lawyers make when it comes to spoken communication?

Michael:  Look, we use a lot of jargon and a lot of different language. There's a perception that the other person will see it the same way as you will or they experience things the same way as you do. And for a lot of lawyers it's really hard to step into their client's shoes and actually articulate it from the client's perspective. There's a good reason for that because you know from day dot of law school, we all get together and we all think we're super special to be lawyers and we all talk 'lawyery' things and we all hang around other lawyers and suddenly we all speak and act in a certain way and we want to project out.

And a lot of the time it's about authority, especially as you're going up the chain. And so people want to be or authoritative. So they think that they have to speak in a certain way because that's all authoritative to them. But it's not necessarily authoritative to the client or how the client wants to hear you interact with. And that's a core problem that I have all the time. I'm trying to convince people, like "I need to show my expertise, so it has to be really formal." And I'm like, "if no one wants to read it or engage with it, no one cares about your expertise." And it's very hard because yeah, people are leading with authority all the time. They basically break things into trust and expertise, which is a good way to say things, but when they are in expertise mode, they speak in a completely different way and the client might not understand. And so that's a really big thing. I'm pretty sure for all professionals that you need to break down.

Sally:  Yeah, jargon comes up so much with so many clients I work with. And you're absolutely right. I think there's that perception that the bigger the word, the more jargon, the longer the acronym than the smarter you'll seem and the more authoritative on the subject. But it's the opposite - using jargon alienates your audience because if we don't understand what someone's talking about, we're definitely not going to be engaging are we? And I think it was Einstein that said, "if you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." So I'm constantly working to make language simpler. And not only is it easier to understand, it's usually easier to say as well.

Michael:  We use things all the time to make our written work more simple. Like I strive for simplicity. I use a couple of apps, one's called Hemmingway, which you put it in and it basically puts a grade on things and the lower the grade the better. So most of the stuff that gets put in there that I practice with with other people's work is like a grade 12 and I'm aiming for a grade five or six or four and people think, Oh wow, that's just too simple. But it's actually a simple way to communicate a complex message is the important thing. And so the more we can peel all of that language back the clearer our message is, and then we don't get frustrated.

Sally: So there's an app that you can put writing into and then it will tell you what level it is. Is that right? It's pretty cool.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called Hemmingway.

Sally:  Yeah. Simpler is always better. I mean, we're bombarded with so much information these days from all directions. If it's not digestible, we're just not going to take it in.

Michael:  100% and just because you think something's appropriate, it doesn't mean it's good writing either. That might be the way that you write in a legal context. It doesn't mean it's good writing and it doesn't mean that you're a good writer. And the same goes for whatever message you're articulating. Just because you're good at X doesn't mean that you're a good communicator and look, a lot of people don't want to hear that because they want to think that they're good at everything. I love those apps because I've been able to learn to go from an average eight when I throw it in there to an average five or six when I throw it in there. So that means I've improved my writing and I've improved my communication and it just reads better as well. So it's gamifying that process, which is very, very cool. But also helping you learn through, but you've gotta like I've had other people who might, you know, use that in my business and I hated it because it was an ego thing. And I just thought, wow, this is a great tool. I'm just going to learn. Yes, there's a lot of red to start with that you have to fix. But do you want to be a good communicator or not? And that's the challenge.

Sally: Yeah. And it's also about recognizing the difference between the spoken and written formats. I often say every good speech should fail an English exam and people run into trouble when they sit down at their computer and they type out their speech. And then it sounds like a spoken essay, not a speech - doesn't sound like it's in their voice.

Michael:  Yeah. Well you know, you find your voice one way or the other, you can still write in your voice. It might not be classically grammatically correct. I'm sure a lot of things I write when I write in my own voice aren't but you've got to find, whoever you are like no matter what you're creating and, or making half the battle is just whoever you are. When I'm making video with clients, you know, I always think the first session is waste of time and I tell everyone, we're just practicing and they look at me and I think you're going to waste your time coming back. And I'm thinking probably you have to come back because actually everyone starts up really tense and thinking I have to say things in a certain way, I have to say. And I had a recent case and we're an hour and a half into doing lots of shots and I just turned around and I said, mate, tell me, like you told me last week when we were talking about this exact same thing and you could physically see it, the stress drop off. And guess what? Articulated it so much better. And I did that as a recruiter a lot. So I would prep people for video conference interviews. These are people making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they only had one shot at an impression over a video conference. And so who you are and what you are had to come through. And every time people pretended to be something that they weren't, they, they fell in a big hole. And, and so for me it was pulling the armour off most of the time. And you know, giving them the confidence to say actually be who they are, who they are is bloody good it got them there so they didn't have to be anything else.

And, and be able to talk about who you are. And if you can strip that back, you don't sound like a robot and you don't sound fake because as soon as you try to play a different part, everyone can see like i made that many phone calls to people that it took me, you know, 10 to 30 seconds most of time to work out if someone was bullshitting me or not. And I could hear on the phone, I could hear in her voice. I didn't need to see him. I knew if I could trust them or not within the first minute. And we all can do that. So if you think you can fake someone else, then you can't. Yeah.

Sally: Yeah. We're definitely on the same page there and some people ask me, Oh, why do you get people to put on a voice? And it's really the opposite. The work I do is to help people find their real voice and let that out because there's a lot of people walking around trying to be something and trying to sound like something that they're not. So Michael, would you say that more lawyers could do with a bit of voice and communication training?

Michael: Look. We all have to be better communicators and we can all be better at different things. I know like the last few years signing a new business, I had the opportunity to pitch a few times. The first few pictures were abysmal, abysmal and I got feedback from friends and, and it was really great. And the pitches are held a lot better now. Just the way I can articulate it. So I think whoever you are, don't think that you know, I've got a podcast, I do video, I pitch things, I'm working on this all the time. I listen to myself. I try to improve all the time. So it doesn't matter how good or how much of a beginner you are, there's scope to improve your communication.

Sally: Amen. Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone was a better communicator? I'd say there'd be a few happier relationships as well. So Michael, important business now - law shows. So big fan love, Boston Legal. Love Suits. Love our homegrown Rake. Legally blonde, which I've referenced in the intro. I actually did a law degree, never ended up practicing, partly because it wasn't as Elle Woods as I would've liked also because I probably spent too much time at the actual bar. So my question is, do you think the actors playing lawyers do a better job than some real life lawyers?

Michael: It's not even close to what lawyers do most of the time, sadly. Sadly. If it was, I'd probably still be a lawyer to be fair. So no, being a lawyer generally requires a lot of time spent in a room going through documents. So look, they do a great job at that. But I know a lot of lawyers who are bloody good actors and who are amazing advocates as well.

Sally: Yeah, I remember from when I was a reporter, some days in court it would feel like I was watching a scene out of a movie. So Michael, where can people find you?

Michael: Yup. So beyondbillables.com is my website. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you'd like, that would be fabulous. I do a lot of video and podcasts on LinkedIn. Please connect. I love making connections with anyone and you know, everywhere around the world.

Sally: Michael Bromley, thank you so much for joining That Voice Podcast.

Michael: Thanks Sally.

Sally: Now, you might remember, Michael mentioned earlier in the episode that as a recruiter, he would make between 20 and 50 phone calls a day. So it got me thinking about phone calls. Next week I'll share a few tips for how to sound amazing on the phone. Making phone calls is almost like a dying art these days. We need to bring back the phone call because whether we're calling or answering the phone or leaving a voicemail, if we can effectively make that voice to voice connection, it'll leave a much better impact on the other end of the line. I will see you next week. Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast. If you're on the Gold Coast, come along to my last event of the year - Voice and Vinho - tickets are on my Instagram page @SallyProsserVoice.