Practice Makes Perfect: Incorporating Mental Rehearsals into your Practice
Athletes have long benefitted from mental rehearsals; why not lawyers?
I’ve written before about using visualization to prepare for a trial, but it’s a training tool that can be used in all aspects of our daily practice. Mental rehearsals help to improve performance, and to reduce the ever-present anxiety that we confront throughout our day.
Assume you have an important contested motion that’s on the horizon. You can use mental imagery to prepare for the motion, and to deliver your argument.
Prepare to prepare
Ron Friedman, in "Decoding Greatness: How the best in the World Reverse Engineer Success," observes that the rehearsal of the actions leading up to the contest are the real keys to improved performance. Focusing on the process leads to more thorough preparation, lower anxiety, and ultimately a better result. If you just imagine a positive outcome, you may gloss over the critical elbow grease necessary to get there.
Experts suggest twenty minutes as optimal. Start by actually reviewing the pleadings before you commence the mental exercise. Then visualize yourself sitting down at your computer and working on an outline of talking points. According to Friedman, the more senses you include, the more effective your simulation will be. Smell the hot coffee you have prepared in advance of your deep work. Feel the keyboard under your fingers. Are you at the office or at home? Hear Hans Zimmer quietly playing in the background. See your desk wherever you are working, and the stacks of paper surrounding you.
As you rehearse your preparation, consider what will you need to do to get ready? What research do you need to support your arguments? What facts will you use to support or refute the opposition? Get clear on the relief you’ll be asking for. Imagine preparing an order in advance encapsulating the relief.
What will your opponent likely argue? Anticipate counter arguments and how you will refute those points. Now with what you have "imagined," get to work physically, accumulating the information, law, facts, etc. that you’ll need for the argument itself.
Game day
After you have preliminarily prepared, leaving adequate time to tackle any follow up tasks, take another twenty minutes and watch the actual event unfold in your head. If you’re the movant, visualize your argument as it develops. Visualize starting with your "ask” and then move into the reasons and law supporting it.
What’re you wearing? How do you feel? What materials do you have with you? Are you sitting or standing before the bench? Are you live or on camera? What’s the demeanor of the judge as you argue. Will your opponent likely interrupt you and if so, rehearse how you’ll maintain your composure and flow.
Most of the time you’ll rehearse in the first person, feeling your heart pumping or your face perspiring. But as an alternative, visualize yourself making the argument through the judge's eyes. What is the judge observing and thinking as you proceed? Is the judge with you, or getting lost in the thicket of the argument? Do you look dignified and confident or are you babbling?
Imagine the response of your opponent. Are they confident or stammering? Is their argument coherent? Imagine yourself responding to each point when it's your turn again. See yourself keeping your composure when your opponent says something untrue or outrageous.
The great Billie Jean King mentally rehearsed her body language and demeanor between points to help her maintain her composure during the points. What’s the expression on your face? While your opponent has the stage, are you making eye contact with the judge or is your head down in your notepad. Is your face non-expressive or are you grimacing? See the contest unfold in your head.
As you conclude the exercise, see yourself reminding the judge of your requested relief. Hand your proposed order to the judge. See the judge making favorable findings and signing the order.
Be like Mike
Mental rehearsals don’t just work in contested litigation, you can mentally rehearse a thorny mediation, challenging settlement conference, or even a meeting with an angry client.
While I know this technique will sound "woo woo" to some, tell that to the many great athletes that built their careers on it. Jack Nicklaus never took a golf shot that he didn't mentally rehearse first. Visualization worked pretty well for him as well as: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Phelps and Billie Jean King. Maybe it's worth a try for you as well.