By Anthony Murgatroyd, Murgatroyd Law Group
Employing certain strategies to restructure my thinking process helps me enormously in depositions and trials. If I feel a bit wound up, I make a conscious effort to slow down my response. Slowing down your performance in a task that requires judgment, decision-making, and problem solving skills (like trial work or depositions) improves the soundness of your thinking and judgment.
It may not initially feel comfortable to pause silently in front of an adversary in a deposition, or a jury during a trial, but in time I’ve found that there is power in getting comfortable with owning the silence. Pausing and becoming grounded means you have control over what you say and when you say it. When you can get comfortable with that self-imposed moment of silence, it can be liberating.
Whenever I find myself feeling anxious before a speaking event or a trial, I try to remember that my nervousness almost always means I’m worried I may fail in some way. To keep those concerns at bay, I try to view the situation not as a crisis, but as a challenge, or a sharing opportunity. Remember, people coming to see you speak at a seminar really are there to hear what you have to say. When it comes to a trial, if you’ve done your job properly and picked a fair jury, they want to learn the facts and get to the truth as much as you do. While it may be tempting to think you are being judged, the fact of the matter is that neither the judge nor the jury are there to judge the attorneys; they are there to judge the
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