CBA Record November-December 2023

your practice, working to communicate that you have put in effort to understand where another person is coming from will improve your communication with that person. A simple “I’m so sorry that hap pened to you” can immediately soften an intense situation. Responsiveness. Unfortunately, we live in a society that increasingly expects things to happen instantly. Clients are likely to expect to hear back from you quickly when they call or email. Responsiveness is important and will help keep your clients satisfied. You can’t live up to impossible standards, but you can outline reasonable expectations in your engagement agree ment. Clearly outline when you do and do not respond to emails or phone calls and specify how quickly clients should expect to hear back from you. Drawing boundar ies helps avoid frustration. Volume and tone. Yelling is almost never an appropriate communication strategy. Be mindful of your volume when speaking, as increased volume injects stress into a conversation and makes other strat egies more difficult to implement. And in written communication, be particularly mindful of your tone. Written communi cation that might seem perfectly pleasant in your head can come across as terse and harsh to the recipient. Get a second opin ion if you have doubts about your tone. These skills aren’t magic bullets, and you can’t control how another person tries to communicate with you. How ever, using the above skills increases the likelihood that you can take agency in a conversation and steer it in a positive direction. These are skills that aren’t rep licable by artificial intelligence and will only grow in value as humans spend more and more time behind screens.

LPMT BITS & BYTES BY ANNE HAAG Soft Skills: Tough to Master S ince the most recent version of ChatGPT launched earlier this year, talk of how the bourgeoning

technology both threatens and benefits lawyers has been incessant. While genera tive AI does not in its present form pose an existential threat to lawyers, future ver sions do seem poised to threaten the cur rent legal landscape. Lawyers worry that they will trend towards obsolescence as clients wield increasingly powerful tools. While such a future may not be on the horizon, lawyers can take certain steps to demonstrate their value. Soft skills are a major asset that set human lawyers apart from artificial intelligence. A client might be able to use ChatGPT to answer their more basic legal questions, but ChatGPT won’t extend empathy or use reason based on their specific circumstances to recom mend action. Soft skills are one of the most valuable intangible assets a lawyer can provide within their service. What are soft skills? They include per sonality traits, aptitudes, and skills such as critical thinking, time management, empathy, leadership, integrity, commu nication, and teamwork. Soft skills are not strictly interpersonal skills, but many determine how effectively you interact with other people. Individually focused soft skills are important too, but inter personal soft skills are a big piece of what will truly set lawyers apart from a data driven world. Soft skills are traits that cannot be faked; they must be cultivated and practiced. Here are a few that might be particularly useful to consider trying to

implement when working with clients. Active listening. Being a good listener is an essential communication skill. If you’re glancing at your phone or are dis tracted by other things happening around you, you aren’t listening well. Minimiz ing distractions and making strong eye contact are two strategies to demonstrate to someone that you’re really listening to them, but you can take them a step fur ther with active listening. One way to practice active listening is by paraphras ing what a person has said back to them. “I’m hearing you say that you’re feeling __ because of __” is a good example of this. You can also use short verbal affirmations to demonstrate that you hear what they are saying. Empathic communication. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another individual. In any communication scenario, always try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Many practice areas involve working with clients who are distressed, stressed, or traumatized. Even if that isn’t the norm in

Anne Haag is the CBA’s Practice Management Advisor, a certified crisis counselor, and volunteers as a patient advocate in the ER.

Learn more about cultivating interpersonal soft skills by watching “How To… Use Soft Skills to Better Interact with Clients” at learn.chicagobar.org (IL PR-MCLE Credit).

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