Eliminating those pesky ums

Yesterday, Kottke led me to this article about how to become aware of and eliminate your verbal tics in public speaking. The writer's suggestion is to videotape yourself and study the tape. This reminded me of one of the most useful classes I took in law school: appellate advocacy.

When I registered for this class, I was not planning to be an appellate lawyer. An appellate lawyer primarily or solely works on appeals and most of their time is spent writing briefs, with occasional oral argument to a panel of appellate judges. Nope, I wanted to be deep in the trenches as a trial lawyer! But I expected that the course would help me hone my public speaking skills, which I felt were sorely in need of improvement, given my choice to spend my spare free time in law school on Law Review work, rather than in trial advocacy competitions. In appellate advocacy, we were given case problems, wrote an appellate brief advocating one side of the case and then presented oral argument and answered questions from the "judge" (professor) in front of the class while being videotaped.

I completed all of the assignments, but not without significant stomach butterflies, shyness and self-generated humiliation. I diligently studied my videotape between classes, always making sure my roommate wasn't around to see my (to me) pathetic performances. Slowly, but surely, I began to use fewer verbal crutches, to make better eye contact with the speaker, to stand very still while awaiting the next question from the panel. What made the class special was our professor's gentle effectiveness, as he did an excellent job of building on every student's strengths and quietly, kindly, helping us to see how to improve. I was no Martin Luther King, Jr., but I began to understand the tools one must use--both superficially and substantively--to make a convincing oral argument. While I felt I still had much to learn after the class ended, I made real progress and even secured a summer job with the law firm of my professor, a practicing lawyer.

A few years back, I ran across the tape of my appellate advocacy presentations while cleaning out a closet and, curious about how I had performed back then, popped it in the VCR. I was reminded of several things: how shy I was then, the verbal tics I was so embarrassed by but worked so hard to correct and, perhaps most of all, how far I have come since then.