Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the legal learning podcast. I’m your host Jolene. And with the legal learning center, I help prospective law students save $300,000 on law school. If you’d like to ensure you are remembering everything that goes into applying to law school, visit legal learning center.com for a free law school application checklist today’s guest is Rena cook. Romina is a voice speech and presentation coach who helps lawyers get better results. And that applies to all results. Whether it’s negotiating with opposing counsel, swaying, a jury, or impressing a boss or client, well, Hey,
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I am so excited to be here. And I’m always excited to talk about what it is that I do. I’m a voice speech and presentation coach, and I work with people on the one side who are terrified of speaking in public, but need to do so as part of their job, all the way to people who are highly professional in their public speaking, but need to up their game a little bit. So they would eventually find me to, to help them just be a better speakers and that covers a whole range of things. But that’s kind of the simplified form of what it is I currently do and what I’m excited about.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, I think public speaking skills are super important for attorneys because between whether putting up a false front where we are negotiating with someone and bluffing a bit there, or, you know, a jury or conveying that confidence to our client, I mean, there’s so many different ways that we can use that confident voice and that speaking ability.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Absolutely. It’s huge. And when I started focusing on attorney attorneys in the attorney training space I recognized that they spend, or you all spend a great deal of time crafting just the right words. And often don’t spend the time thinking about what is the best way to present this in a way that the jury is going to instantly respond to me and then go into the jury room and, and fight on my behalf. So I, you know, there, there needs to be a really strong rapport and strong bond of trust and the way we speak and the way we move informs that bond of trust. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I was reading your book, her voice in law. And for those who are watching on YouTube, I’m just gonna show it real quick. Which covers, I mean, so many different angles and so many different ways that we use our voice and in the book even covers just things like body language and which I didn’t think of it this way before, but it really is part of our voice exudes a language to the jury, to the judge, to everybody.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Absolutely. And your body language can reinforce what you’re saying, or it can go contradictory to your narrative, which then sets up tension in the jury, not knowing whether to watch you move or to listen to you talk, they lose the essence of what you’re saying. If your body is not in sync with the message,
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That’s so good because I never really thought of it that way before, but I know that, you know, over years of trial and error I always did bench trial, so I didn’t have a jury. I just had the judge, but things like, you know, if he’s going to ask me do you have any further questions? You know, do you have redirect or recross just sitting there in silence and saying, I just need a moment. And then looking through my notes and just double checking, cause maybe I know I don’t have questions, but I don’t want to give up quite yet. So let me look at everything and just double check, but just the fact that you sit there calmly, not mumbling to yourself, not flipping really quickly, not being frantic, exudes a confidence, which, I mean, that’s not going to sway the judge, but it conveys the judge. It conveys to your client conveys to the opposing counsel. I’m not afraid of you. I’m in control. I’m just checking my notes just to double check. And you know, there’s, there’s something in that entire way that you flip through the papers and you’re sitting there and, and just like I said, even the under breath stuff, mix it. Right?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah. And you’re absolutely right about being confident enough to take the time that you need to get yourself squared away to move to your next step. Now, one of the things that, that I teach attorneys is the power of deep breathing. So when you know, you need a moment rather than going, oh my God, I don’t have a question. I don’t know what, you know, our brain is firing and sending those kinds of negative messages and it causes us to quit breathing and then it causes our brain to shut down. So if you have a thought in there, the panic is going to drive it out. But if you take that moment of silence to just take a deep breath, it brings your brain back online, and then you can actually see what you’ve written on your notes. Have you ever been in a state of panic and you look at what you’ve written and can’t read, it’s like, I see the words, but my brain is not computing. And, and that cleansing deep central breath brings all of that back into focus. It puts you back in the driver’s seat. Yes.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I’ve definitely been in that panic mode while we
Speaker 2 (05:56):
All. Absolutely. what did you encounter when you started your career as a woman in the law? Which of course is still a male dominated profession. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. You know, I think that one of the things I experienced early on was yeah, in my field, there’s a lot of older male attorneys and they can be very aggressive. They can be overbearing. You know, they kind of almost stand over you while they’re trying to negotiate and they almost treat you like don’t, you know, the law, I know you’re newer. I’m telling you what the law is. You better take care of this or you’re going to be in trouble kind of while there are in my industry, there’s not so much yelling, but very firm, a bit aggressive type of
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Dissension. Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Ah, yes. And I mean, everyone handles it differently and I know your book addresses how women can somewhat handle things a little bit differently than men and how sometimes that doesn’t go over quite as well. I know we all have to kind of find our own path, but sometimes that path isn’t maybe doing us as good a service, as we thought, can you go into the different ways that women use their voice, maybe not to their best events?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Absolutely. there are two default settings that women will go to. The first default setting is denying their power. You know, where the, the posture Kate is in the voice gets high and small, you know, and you’ve heard these women. I was, I was working with a law firm in Dallas and they, they called the, in one of the third year law student interns that was working and wanted her to sit in on the session. And she said, Judy, won’t take me seriously. And while there there’s something to that, let’s, let’s explore how to open up a woman’s voice without sending her into bossy, aggressive and shrill women who deny their power, think that if they own their power, it’s going to send them all the way to bossy, aggressive. And there is a wonderful sweet spot in the middle that I teach how to access your central deep power and open the voice so that it can be heard strongly without press.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Now, the other extreme of that is the woman who’s been very successful in a male dominated world because she has become a man in manner and in voice, right? And now I’m, for those of you listening, I am pulling my shoulders back. I’m putting my chest forward and I’m lifting my chin, don’t mess with me. Right. And so we develop that hardened exterior and the hardened voice, which says you know, I well it reads as being bossy and aggressive and juries shrink from that. They back away from that. So I encourage both types of women that denier and the bluffer, and I help them find power in the lower part of their body and not in their chest. And chin, our power does not reside. Hi. I can be very strong, very clear, very forceful by feeling that my power is low, like underneath my navel, that’s where my power center is. And I keep my head and neck and chin align and make space and breathe. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I was reading that and I could imagine so many different people that I’ve encountered over the years that just, you know, some of them, I wondered, how do you represent your clients? You know? I mean, you’re acting like a little girl and I just, I imagine you must do. Okay. Cause you have a job, but I just, it’s so weird to me. And then on the other end, yeah. I’ve definitely seen some of those. I feel like are overly aggressive. Like I feel like you could still do that job and not be quite like that. And like I said, you know, I’ve seen it in the men too, but I think in the women, we get knocked down a bit more for it. Yes. Again, some of these women who are a little squeaky, like mouses, they might get away with murder, right? No one suspects it at the same time though, they might be losing some attention. They might be losing some respect, especially from something like a jury and you know yeah. The overly aggressive ones. For sure. If you, as a juror, don’t find the attorney relatable. If you don’t like them, if you think you would not want to have dinner with them type of thing, you know, it just never want to be in a room with them. It makes it hard to be sympathetic and listen to what they have to say.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because an audience doesn’t doesn’t pay attention really to the context or to the words that we say they hear and remember how we make them feel. Yeah. Right. And, and we need to make them feel trust and safe and sympathetic toward our client and sympathetic toward, toward us. Women get a lot of comments about their voice. We’re held to a double standard. Really. We would never say about a male attorney. His is so terrible. I just can’t listen to it. Or his voice is strident or his voice is damage or his voice is high or his voice is too. We don’t ever hear that about a man, but boy, we hear it about women. And many of the women that I interviewed said that they get more comments and feedback about their voice than any other personality trait, short of their wardrobe. Right. Women attorneys get more, more discussion, more feedback about what we wear than than anything else. And then the second is our voice. And and we simply have to acknowledge that that’s the case. That’s the reality. It shouldn’t be that way, but we’re not going to change it today or next week or probably next year. And so we’re going to have to find within ourselves, our confidence and our power that is not off putting and that draws people to us rather than pushing people away.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
And I know you said it comes from lower down like Naval area, which when I was reading your book, it reminded me that, you know, I had been in competitive choir in high school and that’s what we used to do. We did warm-ups and we had to sing from the gut and I had forgotten all of that. And yet here I am doing all kinds of public speaking and I do those things. It’s just amazing. It’s kind of a, almost like a 1 0 1 that we all forget from, you know, some
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Absolutely. And you know, I try to take shortcuts myself sometimes. And the minute I try to take a shortcut and not warm up, not prepare before I go into a speaking situation, I am not going to be as good when I am warm and ready and connected to breath. I am already in the head space to succeed. If I rush in, you know, it’s like, oh my God, I’m late. And you’re rushed in and you’re frantic and frazzled and you start your job. You’re not going to be in your grounded and centered place to be the most effective. And I encourage all of my clients and I teach this as well to do a brief warm up before they speak. And this could be depositions. It could be just the client. One-On-One whenever I’m talking to someone and using my voice to communicate important things.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
I want my voice in my body and my brain to be all on the same page and ready to go. That’s going to ensure my success. And the warmup consists of just releasing habitual tension. And that can be just moving body parts, you know, putting a circle in your shoulders, circling your hip, moving your arms in a windmill pattern or yoga. I love to dance. So sometimes I just put on some music and I just move and dance. And that relaxes my body and that relaxes my voice. And then I spend some time in the warmup humming or humming a tune just to get the vocal folds warmed up. And then I do some connecting to deep central breathing because when all else fails, if I go back to the breath, I am going to be okay. The breath is my anchor. The breath is my grounding. So there’s a whole series of exercises that help us connect with that bit. So that does harken back to choir. Doesn’t it?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
It does. It was so amazing. I thought, wow, you know what? This is stuff I learned so long ago and just moved on. Never really saw it as applicable to what I do, but it really is. I mean, when I’m there, even just with a judge and opposing counsel, you know, doing my bench trial. Yeah. I still need to sound secure, sound assertive and just be prepared in every way. And just, yeah, these are really basic exercises that I had forgotten and yeah, in the book, it talks about physical exercises as well as stretches and so forth. And I loved it because it really just, I can see where it would get you in the clear mindset that really helps you Excel because certainly I’ve shown up to trial and oh, I left one of my binders at home or, or, you know, at the office and I’m okay. I’ll be okay. But your mind goes off.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yes. Yes. It’s that moment of panic. Oh my God. And just letting panic in just a little bit can be dangerous. Cause it’s hard to then to shut the door. Right. Cause it gets a foothold and you’re like Morgan early mess her up right now. And and if you can just refocus go back to the breath, take a couple of deep breaths, monitor yourself, talk in the way that you know, you were this’ll be fine. I’m prepared. We’re going to be fine. Deep breath and go. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I think it would just help so much more because of course, all right, I need to go through my materials. What do I have? What am I missing? How can I get that material? Can I get it over my computer? But again, with those deep breasts, just starting, that whole thing off would make it so much better,
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Much better. And another thing that, that I work with women on is how to find space in our mouth. Our mouth is our megaphone. And if you think of that as the place that controls the volume, right? And it controls the quality. It’s like if I, if my quality is just really obnoxious, it’s happening here in my vocal track. And I can change that if I want to warm up my sound, you know, I want to say to the jury, you have got to understand what was driving this action. Right? I can warm that sound by making space in the back of my mouth. So it’s like between my tongue and my soft palate, I just think more space. And that warms up my sound right now. I’m speaking with space in the back of my mouth. Now I’m speaking without space at all. My lips are really tight and I’m not opening my mouth much. And so it goes into that place that we find nasally and annoyed, and it’s all by controlling the space in my mouth, I’m breathing and I’m making space and the voice will be totally present.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Wow. That’s so amazing. It was such a drastic difference in your voice. And I’m sure again, with the podcast where it’s just sound, the listeners are really going to hear that. I hope so. Yeah. So, okay. So stretches both speaking from the stomach and, and, and doing stretches within our mouths and so forth, and then physical stretches deep breaths. What else can we do to better our voice?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, I, I teach a practice technique. Most attorneys, unless they bring in a focus group, don’t practice out loud, you know, they will read their notes and maybe close their eyes and look up and mumble the words to kind of get the phrase in their body. But if you do a whole practice of this speech, focusing on breathing at punctuation, that becomes the only focus of that practice and that grounds you in the breath. It teaches you where you need to breathe and you need to breed at every punctuation. That’s every comma that separates a clause, every period question mark, colon dash, whatever you’ve put in, you need to stop for breath. Then the next run through could be for four vowels. I’m just going to make more space in my mouth for my vowels in this one through, right? And so I give myself a focus for each practice, which layers on my technique, so that by the time I’m ready to be in front of the judge and jury, all of that technique is supporting me.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
And I just have to think about what my mission is, connect with this jury, tell my client’s story. And all of that work is supporting you there. I love to coach openings and closings, you know, for attorneys and and every, every coaching session looks different because every attorney needs something a little bit different. Sometimes it’s just slow down there, right? That’s important information, give it to them clearly or pick up the pace care. There’s nothing going on here. Interesting. Get through that. Or don’t drop off at the ends of your sentences. You know, we do that typically if it’s a chronic American disease called falling inflection disease, and it’s at the end of every sentence, we kind of fall away. Like that’s the way we talk. And if we do that in front of the jury, the last thing we say before, the period is always the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
And if I’ve already fallen off and stopped projecting or caring, but at the time I get to the important word, right? So I may say something as simple as just lift that final word, direct it to the jury and not to the floor. So those are the kinds of things that I would work on with an attorney I’ve worked with teams of attorneys that were parent preparing a whole case, you know, and each one would have a different part of the case to talk about. And I would train the whole team. I’ve done some work with large firms. When they’re training onboarding, then the new, the new hires some firms have even offered the voice work as, as a perk to attract the top talent. Oh, I get to do this voice work that I’ve never been known, never done, or presentation of work or whatever they’re calling it. This is going to make me a better litigator.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
That’s fantastic because there are so many different skills that go into being a good litigator. And when you’re a new attorney, you don’t know any of them. So, but knowing that your voice is taken care of and that, okay, so now I just need to work on, you know, how do I analyze a case what’s important to put into an opening or closing, you know, they can do all that through their training hopefully.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Right, right. Knowing
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That your presentation is going to be good, that you are going to come across well. But just knowing that our body language is also going to be taken care of that, you know, okay. Maybe put one foot forward a little bit. So you’re not just standing like a soldier or, you know, whatever it be to make you look more personable. And I know I’ve seen reports on things like when you’re a criminal attorney, especially how you sit next to your client can make a big difference to the jury as well. You know, if you’re angled away from them, like don’t touch me versus, Hey, best friend I’m taking care of you type of thing. You know, it makes somebody look more or less guilty depending on how you treat them.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Exactly. Yeah. There’s
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So much that goes into these trials that it’s overwhelming and scary. And it’s amazing for most firms, how little training we get. And it’s really up to us, it’s
Speaker 2 (24:23):
In the how to, you know, you get lots of training and how to write an argument, how to structure the things you can and cannot say, but the actual, how you say it and how you, you meld the movement and gesture with your words. Nobody ever thinks that my body language supports what I’m saying. And if it doesn’t support what I’m saying, then it’s detracting from what I’m saying, because the body speaks louder than the voice. If you’re moving too much or you’re doing the wrong things with your body, that jury is watching you move and not tracking your verbal argument. Right. So, so figuring out what is the gesture that’s needed here to reinforce what I’m saying and, and we choreograph gestures and then practice them over and over until they become totally natural.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, that’s so great. I know that in my industry, we tend to sit for the majority of the trial. We don’t have to stand up even for our introductions. When we say who we are and who we represent, we can just sit. And my very first trial, we were just submitting papers to the judge. There was no need for any testimony or anything. It was very, very simple, which is why they gave it to me as my first trial. And, but they didn’t give me the technical, here’s how you do the introduction and stuff. And so opposing counsel, I think also was new. And so we were sitting there before the judge and the judge asks us to introduce ourselves and who we represent and this guy stood up and he was so staunch and he was a booming voice in a small room. It was just so over the top that even though I was new, I was like, I don’t think that’s normal.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And you know, the judge also gave him a look. And so I recognize, okay, this is not how we do it, but I don’t want to be out done either. So I will stand to introduce myself. But I think my conveyance with my body language was more casual of I’m just standing. Cause he stood. Here’s who I am, here’s who I represent. And I tried to convey, I’ve totally done this before and it’s no big deal. I don’t know how successful I was. But again, it’s all that body language. He looks so nervous to me. So it made me feel better. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Sure. Absolutely. And, and we need to get every edge that we can, any little thing that makes us just a little bit more convincing or more compelling or more trustworthy, all of those things there, they’re small things that we can do that add up to be very big things.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah. It’s that confidence that you have, again, in everything that you do, just how you sit in the chair type of thing, or introduce yourself to a jury or to a judge. Oh, maybe she has something, you know, maybe I got to look a little closer what she’s saying or what she’s asking or her document, because she looks like I’m not worried. Right?
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah. You mentioned the, the kind of the pump is the male attorney. And I call that in the book, actually my writing partner, Laurie Kohler, who is an attorney, she talks about the Mr. Lawyer suit and, and that’s, you know, the, and it can be a Mrs. Lawyer suit too. It’s, it’s not just for men, but that idea that I am important, I am the attorney and I am here to deliver you from confusion. And so when I, when I’m working with an attorney, if that’s what they’re bringing in, I try to help them soften that so that they are authentic and look natural and comfortable and real and not pompous or putting on because the jury spots pompous and putting on that quick. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It looks like an act. And I don’t know, it’s never gone over well with me. So I can’t imagine it goes over well with other people. And again, a lot of times it hides what you don’t know, right.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Or, or a masker hides, what you really do know. You know, you’re not getting through to the good stuff because you’re hiding it under your armor. And that’s why a coach can be really helpful because someone can say you come across phony or you come across pompous. People don’t know what to do with that kind of feedback. Right. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know how to stop. What is it that I’m doing? Exactly. And, and so what a coach does is look, listen, and see exactly where the issues are coming from and where just a simple adjustment can make all the difference.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Now, I know you told me before that you were working with somebody. I don’t remember if it was Laurie or somebody else where every time you guys worked together, she just got better and better results. And she was just bringing in more and more money or, oh, something along
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Was that was Lori story, Lori Kohler. She sought me out initially because she had been told that all attorneys would benefit from voice coaching. So she found me she was living in Tulsa at that time. And I was in Oklahoma city and she drove once a month, two hours to come spend that time with me. And she just took to the work and just grew and grew. And finally, after several years, she recognized that she was winning more and that the, the number, the financial figure was larger and that she was feeling that the men she worked with were being more respectful to her. So it had a tri-fold kind of effect on her. And then she was the one who said, Rena, let’s write a book because the things that you shared with me need to be shared with everyone. And what Lori was able to do for me was since I’m not an attorney what, what is the language? What’s the context? What do they really call this thing? What is really happening in here? And so we worked hand in hand as we structured the book. And and I was able to go into the kind of detail that you mentioned because she was on board. It was a very gratifying collaboration.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah. The book is so amazing aside from all the different ways you can warm up, it talks about how you can use your voice to, you know, bring in more clients you know, convince them that you’re amazing how to refine your elevator pitch. I mean, it goes into everything sales. I mean, it just really covers anything in attorney might need.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s what we tried to do. I wanted to share a story that’s in the book I was coaching an attorney, a young attorney, and we were working in front of his focus group and it was a very detailed opening and very crucial because an innocent, an innocent man’s life hung in the balance. So he was feeling a great deal of weight and, and, and there was so much detail and he kept losing his place. Right. He’s like, I have no idea where I am. And so I dismissed the focus group and I took him back to his office and I didn’t know yet what we were going to do, but I said, now just read the first paragraph. All right, now look away from your notes. What is it that you want the jury to see? What’s the picture? And I put a piece of paper in front of him and I said, write, draw the picture.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Well, I’m not an, I don’t care if you’re an artist, just draw the picture that you want the jury to see. And then I up the picture and I said, now describe what you’ve drawn. And he was able without worrying about what’s the next word. He was able to describe what it was. He wanted the jury to see. And then we went to the next section and I said, what’s the picture, draw the picture. And then I put every one of those pictures up around his office and said, now step back and looking at the pictures, you’ve drawn, describe what you want the jury to see, give me your opening. And he was able to do this whole complex story then without losing his place, because he was working from pictures rather than what is the next word on the page.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
That’s awesome. And you know, all of our minds work differently. Some are, you know, more like actors, right? You can memorize that script and just have it down. And other people really need to hear that story more than that picture story. And it’s nice to know there are more than, you know, there’s more than one way that you can do this. So,
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Absolutely. And, and when I’m working with attorneys, I go by what they’re bringing, it’s like, I don’t have an image of what you need to look and sound like. I look at what you already look and sound like, and how can I make you be even better version of you than you currently are by looking at your assets, by looking at the things that you instinctively bring and then helping you make them better and stronger. That’s awesome.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
All right, Reena. So I know we covered your book, so it’s her voice in law. Where else can people find information about you work with you all that good stuff? Ah,
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Well my website is my vocal authority.com. My email address is arenaCook@cox.net. That’s cox.net. And either one of those is a great place to find me. My books are available on Amazon. I have another book, shameless, commerce moment. Another book called empower your voice for women in business politics and life. Coaching women running for office is one of my favorite things to do. And, and I addressed that in the other book as well.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
That’s wonderful. And a lot of our lawyers do go into politics. So that’s good to know.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Well, we need lawyers in politics because they need to understand how the law works when they are creating new laws, that knowledge of how the law works is
Speaker 1 (35:22):
For sure. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Reena. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Before we get into my top takeaways, a quick word from our sponsor. Juno, if you need to take out loans, check in with Juno. First, Juno can often offer law students one to 2% lower interest rates than the federal government and with no origination fees and oftentimes cash back as well. Visit advisor.legal learning center.com for slash Juno. For more information, my top takeaways from this chat with Rina. Number one, speaking is a whole body experience. It involves body language speaking from the gut deep breaths and so much more. Number two, you need to warm up both your voice and your body before speaking. And number three, voice work can result in greater returns and just everything you do. Now, if you miss last week’s episode about trial advocacy class, I want you to make sure to go back and check that out. It really ties into what we talked about today. Now all the show knows, and the full transcript is available@legallearningcenter.com for slash Rena. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to leave a review. It helps the show help more people. Thanks.
