Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, here we are. LawyerTalkPodcast.com Getting biblical today. Look, I'm not going to preach at you. I have my own beliefs and I hold them very dear to my heart. And I like to study the Bible, if nothing else, believe it or not. I have in my desk upstairs a list of lessons that all lawyers should learn in their career. And I was going to do a 25 years for 20. I haven't done it.

Steve Palmer [00:00:19]:

But one of them is read the Bible because it's instructive. It's like. It's like a rule book for life. And I will just quote this. Moses tells God, o my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since thou has spoken unto thy servant, but I am slow speech and of slow tongue. He further pleads that he has uncircumcised lips. He suggests he cannot effectively convince the pharaohs that they need to go to the wilderness. Anyway, I'm not going to preach, but I have often give.

Steve Palmer [00:00:50]:

I often give talks on law students. So they don't teach you this in law school?

Troy Henricksen [00:00:54]:

Nope.

Steve Palmer [00:00:55]:

And they should. I often give talks to law students about how to talk in court because, you know, you're going to graduate law school and they're going to say, go forth and prosper, young man. Go into court. And maybe you've taken a trial advocacy. Advocacy class. Yeah. So you got uncomfortable. And maybe during the Socratic, they hardly ever teach that anymore, but they should force you to stand up and talk.

Troy Henricksen [00:01:15]:

They do that a lot still. First year, they do it a lot. After that, it's like, but here's what I found out.

Steve Palmer [00:01:20]:

And this is what you and I talk about all the time, both in written word and in spoken word. Maybe not even at court, not even just at court, but elsewhere in the world. What Moses is saying is, look, I'm not a silver tongue devil here. I'm not Barack Obama or Abe Lincoln or one of these great communicators. I'm no good. I don't give speeches very well. I'm shy, I stammer, I stutter. But the message I always tell people is, look, you're focusing on the wrong thing.

Steve Palmer [00:01:51]:

There are two issues when you speak to people in public or in writing, maybe even a conversation, you take it for granted. The first is what you say, and I put that first. And the second is how you say it, and most people reverse that. So what do I always tell you when you give me something that you've written? We're talking about an argument. The first Question I always ask you.

Troy Henricksen [00:02:13]:

Is, did you read out loud?

Steve Palmer [00:02:15]:

No. What are you trying to say? What are you trying to say? So if you're. And what happens is people focus on how they're trying to say it. So they want to sound eloquent and use big words and say things. And, you know, it's like, I'm so, like refined, whatever. And the problem is you can't do that until you know what you're going to say. And so that's like 101 here, what you're going to say, and like 401 or PhD series over here. Because I will tell you how you say it doesn't make a hill of beans difference if you don't know what you're going to say.

Steve Palmer [00:02:50]:

So you stand up in court and you want to sound eloquent. You get all focused on, on sounding eloquent, and then like Moses, you freeze. But God says, look, I'm going to give you the substance of this. You fit like, I got that. And what he's saying is, look, here's the message. Just go give the message and don't worry about how you sound. So give the message first. And then you'd sound good.

Steve Palmer [00:03:14]:

So if you're writing something and you send me, you give me four paragraphs of stuff and I read it and, well, I mean, there's a lot of big words in there and there's other stuff in there and whatever it is, but I don't understand what the heck you're trying to say. And this is not a criticism. But. And usually what I tell people is, I asked that question, what are you trying to say? And then you tell me all the time, well, here's the argument. This guy was doing this. The court said this, and we're arguing this, this, and this. I say, all right, go write that. And ordinarily it takes about half as much space on paper and about half as much time in a courtroom to say something definitively and persuasively because then you're not worrying about how you're trying to say it.

Steve Palmer [00:03:55]:

Now look, when you get to be Justice Scalia and you can talk about this is a sheep in wolf's clothing or wolf in sheep's clothing? I mean, he's great with metaphorical references. Well, you're not Scalia or his book.

Troy Henricksen [00:04:07]:

It's coming in tomorrow.

Steve Palmer [00:04:08]:

I've got read his book. It's great. But, you know, if you can't get, if you can't get rid of the first hurdle, you can never get to the second. So, look, a little biblical lesson today. But they don't teach you this in law school.

Troy Henricksen [00:04:17]:

No.

Steve Palmer [00:04:18]:

If you're a law student out there and you're writing a paper, I would suggest first, this is why study groups are great, because what are you doing?

Troy Henricksen [00:04:24]:

Study group, we just talk about it. We bounce stuff, ideas back and forth. And it's like, okay, I kind of like how you do that. I like how you do that. And then you. It kind of just little hodgepodge it all together.

Steve Palmer [00:04:33]:

And this is why people who are like this all day long, we tell them to go touch the grass because you don't interact with people. If I can tell you what my argument is, then I can write it. You know, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball, right? So if I can explain it to you, then I can write it and just do that. And it doesn't. And you. I would. I would encourage you to use words that are less than five letters or whatever. You know, try and make it simple.

Steve Palmer [00:04:58]:

So anyway, lawyer talk, off the record, on the air, a little public service announcement from the Bible.