This past Thursday and Friday, I attended the Ohio State Bar Association. What made this unique is, I am not a member of the Ohio State Bar. My intention started out relatively simple; to be a vendor at the event to promote my national training program. The results of the two days created a pleasantly surprising experience by reminding me of the great things we do as lawyers.
The 1 hour plenary session, which all attorneys attended, featured Paul M. Lisnek, JD, PhD. Mr. Lisnek spoke on communication skills. I was quite surprised and pleased to hear this topic as I personally have been committed to the importance of communication skills to get into the perspective of clients for many, many years. The speaker was right on the money when he indicated lawyers are not sued because they make mistakes; they are sued because they lose their client's trust or they are arrogant. The presentation, although, only an hour, was very insightful and reminded me of the MPS Power–In-Partnership™ model we train, and the importance of making sure attorneys are able to communicate at the client level with the client to solve their problems.
As the convention continued, there was a highly contested race for president elect to the State Bar. Everywhere you went was infiltrated by paraphernalia to promote one candidate over the other. At first glance, it was frustrating and I thought an invasion of this great event, but, at the luncheon where the State Bar officials spoke, it became quickly evident this group of lawyers was very collegial, all speaking well of each other. In fact, the current year's president elect, rather than speaking of himself, acknowledged the other attorney in the audience whom he prevailed against. He also acknowledged staff people on the Bar Association which is not typically seen but very honorable. As lawyers, we often get caught up in our world and our importance, but seeing professionals at the Ohio Bar Association reminded me, we can take our integrity to a new level and have common decency and respect for our fellow members of the Bar, even if we disagree with them, and in this case, even if they are running against us.
As the two day event continued, I noted the programs offered covered virtually every area of the law. The speakers came in different shapes, sizes, and had different speaking styles. Most, unfortunately, were the traditional lecture style. The materials were good, but few of the materials were able to be implemented into the practice of any attorney who attended to enable immediate results. Again, great education, great effort, but it reminded me of the importance of our Teach, Show, Do, and Go™ strategy our training follows. Teach the law, show how it's applied, teach a tool that follows the law, have the participants do an actual case study using the tools, and then send them home with the tools so they know they are doing it properly and can implement it immediately. What a critical difference on the impact of these attorneys, but most will not even realize it because this is all they know.
Lastly, while I came here in a “sales” mode, within an hour of arriving, it was gone and immediately began friendships. Instead of trying to convince someone why they needed my program, I merely started to find out about their pain and what it was about their practices they were experiencing. Being an active practitioner, I was able to relate quickly to their frustrations and share mine as well as some potential solutions. What resulted from this were new friendships based on common goals and objectives to help people discover the best ways to do it. I believe they call that collegiality. In fact, one of the friendships formed was with a well recognized attorney in the area of Asset Protection whom is affiliated with individuals who have spoken ill of our iPug™ Trust. In getting to know this gentleman, I realized how similar we were and in fact, have come to really respect his level of knowledge in the area of asset protection. On the other side, he got to understand me and our use of the asset protection strategies and was quite surprised at the applications and how the use of the iPug™ trusts are viable. Amazing isn't it.
As the event closed, the greatest thing I took from this two day event is an appreciation of what we do as lawyers. I am privileged to work with so many competent, caring, hardworking lawyers whose primary goals in life are to represent their client and help achieve the results clients didn't think were possible. It's very rewarding to realize that as lawyers, we are blessed with the ability to actually change the world because we know the rules by which the law is built and we can challenge it when we think it’s not being followed. What a special privilege this is for all of us to positively impact the world.
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