Out-of-the-Box Lawyering

Watching him litigate is like listening to Pavarotti sing or Horowitz play

Seventy-six-year-old California attorney Bert Fields has represented a long list of movers, shakers and entertainers. That list has included Edward G. Robinson, Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. (The New York Times, May 15, 2005.)

Here's what client Warren Beatty said in his paean about Fields:

“Watching Bert litigate is like listening to Pavarotti sing or Horowitz play. He brings true resonance to the word advocate.”

And here's what Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and co-chair of Miramax Films, has said about him:

“In the entertainment business, walking into litigation without Bert Fields is like walking into the Arctic without a jacket.”

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of our clients could have similar descriptions of us?

New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/fashion/sundaystyles/15bert.html (A fee to download may be required.)

Mr. Fields' bio in his firms' website: http://www.ggfirm.com/attorneys/pdfs/36.pdf

An out-of-the-box way that a law office is using speech recognition software

I've recently been seeing postings on the Internet extolling the virtues of the new Version 8 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Last week I was speaking with a secretary about it, and she told me about the out-of-the-box way how her office was using it. She told me that an attorney she works for often handwrites his papers and presentations. Rather than her typing them, as would be normal, she, as his secretary, was saving time by using the speech recognition software to herself dictate what the attorney had handwritten.

I've heard for a long time how attorneys have been using dictation software, but this is the first time that I had ever heard about a secretary using it.

Here's part of what the secretary wrote to me:

“Sometimes [the attorney] brings me 40+ pages of yellow pads on a Monday morning! I can ‘talk into the computer’ fix any grammatical mistakes as I go along, follow arrows, do inserts, or correct spelling so he gets a more complete first draft (or even a final) when I'm finished. I have saved myself time and effort and [the attorney] is happier doing things the way he is used to doing them.”

Dragon NaturallySpeaking: http://www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking/matrix/

Problem solving - What information you get may be crucial

I recently received this in an email from a friend:

Test your IQ with the question below:

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of
brushing one's teeth he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper
and the purchase is done. Now if there is a blind man who wishes to buy
a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?

Think about this before scrolling down for the answer...
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(Don't get thrown off by asking “why would a blind man need sunglasses.” The blind sometimes wear them because their eyes may look unusual to a sighted person.)

Now, if you still don't have an answer, think some more. If you do have an answer, keep reading.

If you still don't have an answer (or even if you do), let me ask the question this way:

“If there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of
sunglasses, how should he express himself?”

I suspect that the answer will jump out at you. (If you already had the answer, I suspect that you would have come to an answer quicker if the question had just been asked that way.)

If you still don't have an answer, here it is:

“The blind person just has to open his mouth and ask.”

I am not posting this just for the riddle. There's an important problem-solving principle behind the way that the two questions were asked. The first formulation gave information that probably misled you. You may have gotten the answer with the first formulation, but you more likely got the answer with the second formulation, and, again, if you had the answer with the first question, you probably would have gotten it quicker with the second one.

If you give the question to someone else, but only give the second formulation without including the preface about the mute person, the person you give the question to will probably think you need a psychiatric evaluation. That's how obvious the answer will be.

I have seen this type of example – of first information misdirecting a thought process – given in a book. However, instead of words, the problem was to put a puzzle together. When the parts were first displayed in one order, it was very hard to come up with a solution. However, when the parts were displayed in another order, the solution was obvious.

That's why sometimes, when you have what appears to be an apparently unsolvable problem, it helps to talk with someone else about it. The other person may see a solution because she is not focusing on the extraneous information that may be clouding your mind. And even if you give the misleading information first, it may be that your helper will not put as much importance on the extraneous information as you have done.

I will be leaving this posting open for comments for a short time – at least until the spammers find the posting. I would appreciate any comments you might have, including, perhaps, the technical psychological term for what I have described.