Description

---

Are We Hearing What They're Saying? Active Thoughts Skills for Lawyers Much has been written about the importance of listening actively to what others are saying. For lawyers, the importance of active listening is threefold:

• (1) as attorneys and counselors at law, it is critical that we be able to establish rapport with people from a wide variety of backgrounds who come to us for help. Many of these people are under stress, often overwhelmed with feelings that block communication of much of what we need to know to give them appropriate legal advice;
• (2) often in the practice of law, we need to gather information from people against whom we have taken an adversarial stance. We need to have the skills necessary to gain as much information about what they know as we can, despite their natural defenses that make it difficult to communicate with them;
• • As a lawyer, writing your thoughts daily helps you to develop yourself for the better."What we are today comesfrom our thoughts of yesterday, and present thoughts buildour life of tomorrow: our life is thecreation of our own mind"― Sayings of the Buddha