March 23, 2013

14 of 65

Communication 101

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
–Cool Hand Luke (1967)

The practice of law is to a great extent the practice of communications.  It may be oral, such as questioning a witness, making legal arguments to a judge, discussing the law with a client or negotiating a resolution to a dispute.  It may be written, such as writing a contract, drafting a pleading, preparing a brief or filling in the blank spaces in a deed.  To some extent, communications skills are tempered through law school training and honed in an attorney’s daily practice.  They are formed much earlier in life, though.  It seems almost miraculous that some of us – including me –are able to communicate at all.

I was born in Illinois and moved to Texas before I was even one year old.  That’s where I learned to walk and talk, but then the family moved to Colorado when I was three.  I was shown by my parents how to make a few letters and numbers before I started my formal education, however most of that learning came after I began kindergarten in Arvada, Colorado.

One early communications problem was that my kindergarten teacher felt that I had a speech defect.  On her recommendation, I was taken to a speech therapist who diagnosed the “problem” as a Texas accent.  After some years of exposure to the “normal” way people talk in Colorado, the accent faded.

Still, it seemed that I was having problems learning and understanding what my teacher wanted me to know.  In second grade I had my eyes tested and found that I needed glasses.  After I got them, I could see what was written on the blackboard and began to learn more easily.

At Fremont Elementary School, students who received straight A’s throughout the year were awarded with tickets to watch the Denver Bears, a Triple A minor league team, play a baseball game.  As fourth grade came to end, the teacher announced the recipients of the tickets.  I was not one of them.  However, she did tell the class that I deserved the award as much as anyone else, except my penmanship was so poor that I was a lucky to get a C.

It is difficult to communicate when the spoken word is marred by infant years spent in Texas and the written word by plain sloppiness.  Luckily, children are resilient.  I learned to speak slowly and articulate carefully, though I never felt very comfortable speaking up in class, even through high school and college and law school.  After my first semester at law school, a list of the students who were ranked in the top 10% of the class was posted when we returned from Christmas break.  I was standing in a crowd looking at the list and heard fellow students commenting:  “He deserves it.”  “She’s really smart; she always has the answers.”  Then someone pointed at my name and asked, “Who is Weltzer?”  Another student replied, “He always sits in the very back of the room and doesn’t say anything.”

True enough, but he can still learn because he wears glasses and can see the blackboard from there.

By that time, I had learned to type, which is an excellent way to overcome poor penmanship.  I learned to speak up when it was appropriate.  During my last few years of practicing law, I was recognized for my ability to handle appeals.  Other attorneys would often turn a case over to me after a trial was concluded and one of the parties had appealed to a higher court.  I spent a great deal of my time writing briefs and arguing before appellate judges – both of which may be categorized as pure communication.

I believe that skills needed to communicate can be developed, sometimes in spite of the education system, because those skills are essential in our society – and because children are resilient.