Climbing the Ladder: The art of listening

By Kamau Coar
Ungaretti & Harris

Along with many of my friends from law school, I decided on the law school route because we thought that the fact that we enjoyed arguments and debates would help us become good lawyers.

My friends and I certainly practiced as much as possible, arguing about everything from where to study to where to go to dinner, and everything in between. On more than one occasion, we would argue so long that a restaurant would fill up its reservations and we would have to go somewhere else.

Looking back, I cannot help but laugh at us — not just for missing out on a good meal, but also for choosing to go to law school because we like to argue. We all made the right choice, but for the wrong reasons.

Those 10 years since we decided to go to law school and become a lawyer have shown that when it comes to being a good lawyer, listening is a far more important skill than arguing.

It seems obvious that listening is an important part of any job, but the particulars of when to listen and why it helps you be a good lawyer are sometimes forgotten. While as lawyers we are often called upon to argue and persuade on behalf of our clients, it is our ability to listen that sets apart a good lawyer from a lawyer.

Everything we are able to accomplish for our clients as lawyers necessarily begins with how well we listen. A good lawyer starts any engagement by listening to the client paying specific attention to what the client wants to accomplish in a particular engagement.

In litigation, lawyers often assume that clients want to win the case, getting all of their claims granted and the other party’s claims denied. But, for clients, there are often many other considerations at work — how long the case will take, how much litigation will cost, what sort of precedent the case may set for other lawsuits and employees — all of those could cause that client to define a win quite differently.

Similarly, there are a number of factors at play in negotiating transactions that cause clients to define a win as something other than getting the most favorable terms. Clients are not all the same, and must be treated accordingly. To be a good lawyer, first and foremost, we have to listen and understand what the client wants.

As a good lawyer, this is usually just the start of when and what we have to listen to in order to best serve our clients. It is extremely rare that a client asks for a result and then leaves a lawyer to his or her own devices to accomplish that goal. It is just as rare that a client’s initial goals remain unchanged throughout the engagement. Reality often intercedes.

As more information is discovered throughout the process, the client’s specific goals change as well. Sometimes the facts of a situation alter what a client considers a favorable outcome. Sometimes there are facts that a client is aware of that he or she did not initially think were important, but end up being critical.

Sometimes an opposing party provides information that changes your client’s opinions or bargaining leverage. Sometimes the answers you get as a lawyer are incomplete. In order to best advise your clients, it is essential that you have as much relevant information as possible.

Arguing does not flesh factual issues out, listening does. A good lawyer must always listen to make sure that you get all of the necessary information to advise your client. Once you have all of the information and it finally comes time to argue, listening remains a critical part of being a good lawyer.

The first part of communicating arguments on behalf of clients is to convey the client’s position as completely and accurately as possible. But this, by itself, is not enough.

Communication is actually a two-part process.

The second, and most important, part of this process is to make sure that the information is shared in the best possible way to persuade the intended audience. It does your client no good to state their case in a way that is factually accurate but not persuasive to the judge, jury, adversary, or whoever else you are trying to convince. A sports analogy, for example, will not be very persuasive to someone who is not interested in sports.

A good lawyer has to ”listen” to the intended audience to make sure that what you are trying to communicate is what the audience is actually taking from what you are saying.

I still speak frequently to a good number of my law school classmates. While we still argue about some things, now it is usually about who picks up the tab. Arguing doesn’t seem to get us nearly as far along in life as listening does.