Key takeaways
- Active listening helps lawyers build trust and better understand clients, witnesses, and colleagues.
- Questioning assumptions improves decision-making and helps avoid misunderstandings.
- Creative problem-solving improves when judgment is suspended and ideas are explored before being evaluated.
- Adaptability and communication help lawyers navigate uncertainty, difficult conversations, and changing circumstances.
- Human skills like listening, collaboration, creativity, and resilience are essential to effective legal practice.
The skills that help improv performers set the scene and command a stage can also be used by lawyers to serve clients, work with colleagues, and navigate difficult conversations.
A recent Chicago Bar Association program, “Building Practical Lawyering Skills Through Improv Techniques,” explored how improv can strengthen many of the skills lawyers rely on every day, including listening, collaboration, and adaptability.
The CLE was organized by Karen Munoz, founder of Roaring Grace and co-chair of the CBA Well-Being & Mindfulness Committee, and Jonathan Safron, vice chair of the CBA Media & Entertainment Law Committee, and led by members of Wolf Town Improv.
During the session, Wolf Town actors asked attorneys to participate in a series of improv exercises designed to focus on the human skills that, according to the blog post “Thriving with AI: Why the Future of Law Is Still Deeply Human” by the Commission’s Executive Director Erika Harold, lawyers need to effectively serve clients.
The exercises described below highlighted improv techniques that lawyers can use to build these skills and improve their practices.
1. Listening requires letting go of control
In the program’s first exercise, participants paired up and spent two minutes answering the question, “What’s not wrong with your life?”
One person spoke while the other listened without interrupting, commenting, or asking the speaker follow-up questions.
The exercise challenged participants to step outside the normal flow of conversation. Many listeners wanted to guide the discussion or ask questions, and speakers found that talking uninterrupted about positive aspects of their lives for two full minutes was more difficult than expected.
By removing the usual back-and-forth, participants discovered how much they could learn by simply listening. The exercise required listeners to let go of control and speakers to share without prompts or direction.
For lawyers, that skill can be especially valuable during client meetings, witness interviews, negotiations, and other conversations where understanding another person’s perspective is essential.
2. Challenge assumptions before taking action
Another exercise required participants to stand in a circle, make eye contact with someone across the room, and then switch places. Participants could not move until they received verbal confirmation from the other person that they could take their place.
The activity required patience and attention to a series of dependent steps. Many participants focused on moving quickly and began acting before receiving confirmation. Others assumed they understood how the exercise worked, only to discover that they had misinterpreted the instructions.
The exercise highlighted how quickly people fill in information gaps with their own assumptions. Success depended on slowing down, paying attention, and responding to what was actually happening rather than what participants expected to happen.
The lesson applies throughout legal practice, where assumptions about clients, colleagues, opposing counsel, or the facts of a situation can lead to misunderstandings and missed opportunities.
3. Adapt to the information in front of you
In another activity, participants worked together to tell a story. After agreeing on a title, each person added a sentence, which had to begin with the final word of the previous speaker’s sentence.
Participants quickly learned that each contribution affected everyone else’s. Even when a sentence moved the story forward, the final word presented a new challenge for the next person to continue.
The exercise highlighted the experience of working without complete control over the outcome. Participants sometimes expected the story to move in one direction, only to find that another person’s contribution had changed its course.
Lawyers similarly work in environments where they cannot control every development. To be effective when clients share new information, opposing counsel raise unexpected arguments, or colleagues contribute different perspectives, lawyers must listen, adapt, and adjust their strategy while keeping the client’s goals in focus.
4. Creativity improves when judgment is suspended
One exercise asked participants to generate intentionally bad solutions to examples of everyday problems. The participants were encouraged to propose ideas regardless of their feasibility or effectiveness, and to continue building on one another’s ideas.
Lawyers can often be perfectionists who like to be correct. This exercise was aimed at helping them be more willing to propose imperfect ideas and to consider ideas that may initially be perceived as wrong.
For example, a group decided to solve the problem of people texting while driving. They proposed eliminating all cars, designing vehicles that stop whenever someone sends a text message, and relying on a carrier pigeon riding in the passenger seat.
Two groups chose to solve lawyer incivility. They proposed solutions such as providing attorneys with stuffed animals and cotton candy upon entering a courtroom, and detailing grievances to opposing counsel in long, hostile letters.
The participants found that their ideas flowed most easily when they embraced imperfection. Expanding on previous suggestions rather than judging a suggestion too quickly, despite how outlandish or incorrect it was, also inspired different lines of thinking than if they had brainstormed alone.
Wolf Town Improv member Eric Pedersen noted that people often evaluate ideas as soon as they hear them. Instead, improv encourages participants to first accept an idea and explore where it leads before deciding whether it ultimately works.
Lawyers can apply this principle when negotiating settlements or structuring transactions. Instead of responding with an immediate “no,” consider which parts of the other side’s proposal have merit and build from there.
That “yes, and” mindset can open the door to more creative solutions that might otherwise be overlooked.
5. Become more comfortable with uncertainty
One participant noted a common thread that ran through every exercise. Participants could not fully control the outcome and had to respond to new information as it emerged.
Wolf Town Improv member Jordan Reichardt shared that, in addition to becoming a more confident public speaker and listener, improv helped her think on her feet and respond with an open mind.
In legal practice, cases change direction, negotiations evolve, and conversations often produce unexpected information. The improv exercises provided an opportunity to practice adapting to changing circumstances while remaining engaged and attentive.
Communication skills require practice
Lawyers spend years developing substantive legal knowledge, but human skills also require practice.
The improv exercises highlighted several techniques lawyers can use to communicate more effectively, including active listening, challenging assumptions, supporting others, remaining open to new ideas, and adapting to uncertainty.
The exercises were playful, but the lessons reflected situations lawyers encounter every day.
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Thriving with AI: Why the Future of Law Is Still Deeply Human
The post Five Improv Techniques Lawyers Should Use in Their Practices appeared first on 2Civility.