22 Lessons I Learned from 2022
In today’s episode, I’m sharing 22 lessons from 2022 – things that I have picked up on this year, things I have studied, and things where I just had some aha moments. These are valuable lessons that have helped me and my practice big time – from keeping up to date with technology and using visuals in focus groups and even during prep – all the way to letting go of toxic clients, investing in a coach to help you level up, and investing for retirement.
It’s so easy to get lost and forget all the things we’ve learned from previous years. Therefore, it’s important to take the time to reflect on these and potentially use them as our basis for creating next year’s strategies and game plans as we move on to the future.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Double-checking your technology for uploading documents
- How virtual assistants can help you
- How to solve spam coming in from focus groups
- The power of using visual aids and videos
- Mindset is key for lawyers – and clients
- Using visuals for preparation
- Letting go of toxic clients
- Investing in a coach to help get you to the next level
- Looking for ways to save for retirement
- Why you need to have a visual aid for timelines
- Making a conscious effort to take a vacation
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Supporting Resources:
Influence is Your Superpower by Zoe Chance https://amzn.to/3IIlfTV
Retire before Mom & Dad by Rob Berger https://amzn.to/3GByVxn
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick. We are going to do 22 lessons from 2022 today as we round out this year. You may not be catching this episode at the end of 2022 and that’s okay. Most of these [00:01:00] are important no matter what year it is. But these are just things that I have picked up on this year, things I have studied or things that just I had an aha moment and I thought, you know what, that should go on the list.
Some of these are big. Some of these are little. I tried to originally put these in categories and that kind of went by the wayside. So these are a mishmash of all kinds of things. And the first one. I will say I have a few that are technology related and I always try to figure out a way to do things easier with my work and with people that I work with and two of these things right off the bat is Double checking your technology and the ability and one of them is uploading documents so we always have to exchange a lot of documents as lawyers a lot of times with clients and That has become so much easier and more accessible on more platforms you At the end of 2021, I was trying to figure out how to solve this problem.
I was trying to get a lot of documents from people to prepare for [00:02:00] clients, a lot of documents for focus groups and sharing folders with Dropbox or with Box. It just wasn’t very conducive. And luckily, thank goodness, So many platforms have now provided this service. So my service is through Dropbox because they finally changed it to allow with an upload link.
But of course, I think a lot of people have been using Sharefile for some time. But as a solo, that doesn’t always make economic sense. To have that with just one service doing one thing versus having something like Dropbox, which has a lot of different available things you can do. Which also leads me to my second thing for 2022, which is download links.
And again, this is a service that’s been offered on other platforms, but if you are a solo or a small law firm, having a bunch of single subscriptions for services that do one thing really can start to add up. And I always try to find a way to, hey, is there somewhere we can combine all [00:03:00] this? And again, Dropbox has done that, which has made sharing focus group videos so much easier where I just am able to create a link and send it to folks and they can download that video for up to 30 days.
You can give them another link and it’s so much easier. So those are right off the bat, two technology things. If you are somebody who has to get a lot of data. Documents from clients, or you need them to download things from you. Look at your platform. See what you’re using. What kind of cloud storage do you have?
Some of those services, again, are adding new stuff. Dropbox is one of those. But a lot of platforms are doing it. So just check what you got. Make it easier for yourself and for your staff. Another thing that I found here recently was an app called Readwise. I know that as lawyers, we like to read. And I love to read.
But a friend of mine Ernie Svensson told me about this Readwise app. And basically what it does is you can do it on your phone. Mine sends me notifications on my phone [00:04:00] and in my email. And basically it connects with your Kindle. I think it connects with a couple other places where you can read books, and wherever you highlight, it will pull those highlights and send it to you kind of in a, a reel where there’ll be six highlights in one day, and so it is so helpful to basically refresh your memory on things you may have learned from them.
Books you’ve read. So My Read Wise will tell me stuff from books I read this year. Psychology of Selling, writing emails that don’t suck. Those are some of the books that I read this year. Plus books I have also in previous times as well. But it’s just a really nice refresher. And a couple levels of subscription, but they also have a level where you can take that highlight and put it on your social media, which is not something that I do right now.
But if you are a big reader. And you also want to just keep learning that like sinking in again, I like to read books twice. This [00:05:00] kind of helps give you those like nuggets along the way each day. So Readwise, all one word is really good app I would suggest if you want to keep learning from books that you’ve read.
Another big technology thing for me this year was moving to a virtual assistant. I used some folks to help find a virtual assistant who could do some things for me. And again, they’re a little more tech savvy, not necessarily focused on just doing documentation, and it’s been great. If you don’t have a virtual assistant or have some kind of virtual workforce, I really suggest that you look into it.
A lot of these folks are ready. They know how to work virtually. You’re not having to teach them how to work virtually, but it’s much more about Then taking on tasks and move them off your plate. It’s been great for me. I highly suggest it. There are lots of companies that are geared towards virtual assistants for lawyers.
They are out there. But if you just need help with other smaller things or social media, which again, I’m not even going to go into that. [00:06:00] That’s another lesson from 2022. We’ll talk about in a second. There’s all kinds of folks out there that all kinds of training that can help. I just encourage you, if you can, offload something.
What I love about my virtual assistant is that she helps me a lot with focus groups and she has actually helped get me to write all of my systems down. And that’s one of those really important things that’s probably not a lesson, but it’s something that’s ongoing for me is just writing everything down that is a system that goes into what happens here at Larrick Law Firm.
So very helpful. Moving into focus group lessons. So one of the things that I have seen in comparing notes with lots of other lawyers is so much more spam coming in from focus groups. And that would be people who are applying from other countries to get into your focus group. And a lot of people, how do we solve this problem?
What do we do? Well, can we create a different form or can we require a certain documentation? I would just say [00:07:00] the one really small time hack that I have noticed that seems to be Pretty well working for me, which is super simple. It’s just, we have a Google form and that basically creates kind of an Excel sheet, Google sheet, and has all the information all line by line, very similar.
What you’re able to do is just look at the name, look at the email address and look at the profession and your brain’s going to say, Oh, that doesn’t, that does not compute, right? So you may have John Smith. JohnSmith01 at gmail, who is a lawyer. Okay. Well, hmm. And again, I always ask for city and state, right?
So you can Google that and figure out like, of course, that’s not a real lawyer’s name. So again, there’s your red flag. So that small comparison, right? Name, email address, profession. And then, you know, Run it through your brain. Does that make sense? And a lot of times what you’re gonna see is these are made up names with made up email addresses that they just pick whatever profession.
And sometimes they’re really good. And again, you can go [00:08:00] Google it, look on LinkedIn. Anyone that claims to be a teacher, professor, engineer, doctor, lawyer, right? All those things have registrations. You’re gonna be able to find those online. So that’s just a really small time hack. I know people can get really in the weeds with this.
You can check their iMessage. IP address, if it comes from a foreign country, you can do phone calls, which is another easy way to find out if they are, if it’s a real number or just a Google number. But again, just avoid the phone calls. Just do the small hack to see if you can at least try to avoid those people.
If you need to go to that second level, make phone calls. Other big lesson from focus groups. Number six, if you will, no complainers. If we get any emails about complaining about the rate of pay or what we’re going to serve or what we’re on for food, I just, nope, we, we take them off the list. We put them on a different focus group.
I used to put up with this where people would complain, well, you know, and try to have, make sense with it and email back and forth or offer alternatives. [00:09:00] And it just. It’s not worth it. You know what I mean? Just let it go. So if you’re having that kind of resistance with your focus group, people or participants, just say, no, just let them go.
They’re not going to give good feedback. Okay. Just let them go. So one of my big lessons for focus groups. And again, my lesson number seven, which helps no matter what we’re doing, but focus groups is where this one really came from. And that is if we’re creating a visual aid, be it focus group, be it mediation, be it for the judge for hearing one photo per slide, one fact per slide, one idea per slide.
Everybody wants to jam as much as possible on one particular slide and everything then gets lost. Of course, I think we have all heard the lesson about not putting too many words on the PowerPoint slides, but this is a solid rule of thumb. Generally, when I’m helping people prepare for anything, be it you’re going to trial, [00:10:00] you’ve got a trial demonstrative, you’ve got a focus group.
That’s the main thing I always do is just remove everything, put one idea, Or one photo, one thought, on one slide. That way, one, you got to make sure it’s big enough so people can read it. If it’s a picture, you want to make sure that’s for sure as big as you can get it. Because if they can’t see it or if there’s too much, they just give up.
Your brain just gives up. Ah, it’s too much. I can’t get it. And that’s so important. We’ve got visual aids are here to help us learn faster, assimilate the information, and that way you can move on quickly. Can’t do that if there’s all that information on there. I also want to tell you, they’re not going to get it all.
So, then you become frustrated. You need to say this again. I’m like, well, you got a lot of information in there. You’re asking them to process a lot of information. And so, it was going to keep our visual aids large and in charge. Okay, so make sure everybody can see it. My number eight lesson for 2022 is for witness [00:11:00] preparation, particularly for trial.
And again, I think this also helps for deposition because I’ve done it both ways, which is basically using your jury instructions, your jury questions. Like, get out that, see the pattern jury charge and get that question out and say, hey, this is the question that you are answering, right? So we need to look at this and focus on these particular things that we need and try to avoid things that don’t.
And I actually did a podcast on this because it’s, hey, this is an easy time hack. We come and sit down for trial preparation. We Sometimes learn so much more information that we didn’t know and the client didn’t know to tell us so they want to bring in All this extra stuff and hey, that’s a good way to just cut and slice and dice And this is the question that we have to answer.
So only this information is what we’re going to talk about So super helpful. If you’ve got to rein people in, keep people on task, it’s a good way to do it and it’s easy, right? [00:12:00] If you’re not coming up with it, it’s just that, hey, these are the rules. These are the questions that juries are going to be asked.
So it makes it helpful to do as well. So two things for marketing for 2022. And the first one would be. My lesson would be, I deleted my Facebook business account and my Twitter business account. It was causing a lot of disharmony, right? I spent a lot of time trying to find people to do some social media creation and at the end of the day I just realized, wow, is this really going to be helping me?
Do I really need to be prioritizing this? No, I should prioritize the podcast or possibly working on more stuff for the website. One of the things that my coach, business coach told me is where is your audience? It’s always want to be asking where’s your audience? Are they tuning in to Facebook? Are they tuning into Twitter?
No, of course not. Is it wasting your time? Yes, of course. Get rid of it, right? If it’s not helping you, if it’s getting in the way. [00:13:00] Let it go. And that’s what I did with my Facebook business page and my Twitter business page. I did keep LinkedIn and that’s my lesson number 10, which would be my live videos.
So I did a live video series once a month and 2022 was focused on focus groups. Talked about all kinds of stuff, how to do them, virtual, using the chat, when to pick to do a focus group, all kinds of good stuff. And they were great. I enjoyed doing them. Did they get a lot of traction? Not sure. But I am going to keep doing them, but they’re all going to be on LinkedIn.
And I think it’s going to be kind of a variety of things. I also will probably plan to do some of the podcasts live on YouTube. So again, just to generate some more videos, but also maybe a little bit more engagement of what’s going on. So helpful, not helpful, not really sure that’s still in the testing phase, but I am going to try it out.
That is one of the things if you are. head of the marketing in your law firm [00:14:00] or that’s your department for your solo video, video, video. That’s what they’ve been telling us for a couple of years now. People want videos. I get it. I understand. So I’m still out there still testing it out. If you’ve got questions or you’ve got a good way to do it, please let me know.
I’ve gone the professional route. I’ve hired people to do professional videos for me, but then I realized. I can just set up my own iPhone and do the same thing. So that’s one of my lessons for 2022. One of my favorite books. I’ve got a couple books on this list, and one of the ones that I’ve read just recently is called Influence Your Superpower by Zoe Chance.
I love this book. It was really about, right, if you understand the concept of reptile brain, which I don’t Many many moons ago. That’s really how I got kind of supercharged on witness preparation was following reptile plaintiff’s revolution And Don Keenan going and doing a fellowship there, but if you [00:15:00] understand that concept, even just a little, you’re really going to want to pick this book up because it takes that concept to a much deeper level, but she explains it so well with examples and research, she talks about it with your gator brain versus your judge, and really how often We are operating with our gator brain and very rarely with our judge.
And so how thinking about in terms of what we do, how can we understand that when jurors are going to make decisions? And. Also, there, there’s lots of other really great things about framing. It’s just a really great reminder for influence and how our brains work. One of the big, other big concepts that I took from that book is how to make things easier for people to work with you.
In the book, she gives the example of how just having a text reminder Like increase people [00:16:00] showing up for court, but like 30 percent and that works, you know, most of the things to just one reminder. I get text reminder can increase and because it’s easy. And how do we make, how do we make things easier for people to work with us?
And that’s something that I’m trying to look at. Always, but now really, oh, okay, let’s make it, let’s make it easy. So it’s a great book. I’ll put a link in the show notes for you. One of the other really big takeaways for me for 2022 was mindset is key for lawyers and clients. Now, what is mindset? Mindset is what your mind believes before you begin a task, right?
So let’s say you got a mindset that you. Hate olives and you gotta go to Greece. Well, you’re already gonna put in your mind. You’re not gonna have good times. Awful olives everywhere. That’s a very large example, but when it comes to what we do, we have as lawyers mindsets that develop over time based on our [00:17:00] experience and where we work and who we have learned from and so many times I think a large majority, we have this mindset that a deposition is just, it’s a sit and suffer.
Right? Clients just got to sit and get through it. Or it’s that time to sell yourself. Sell that insurance company that you’re worthy of, of getting some money. Because it feels, it’s a necessary step. We don’t spend a lot of time on it because it’s not really something we can control because we don’t ask questions.
And with clients, right, their mindset is just generally put their head in the sand. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this. Or it’s just going to be horrible. So they go in thinking it’s horrible and it turns out that it becomes horrible. And one of the things I always try to reiterate is depositions are really, they’re so key.
Cases don’t go to trial. Two percent of cases are tried. Most settle, right? So transcripts are where it’s at. Transcripts are that evidence. And I recently had a [00:18:00] confrontation with a lawyer and he voiced his opinion that this approach to preparing clients is antiquated. Right? Lawyers can’t spend this much time with a person, right?
We don’t have time for this. Nobody does this anymore. And so where, what does that come from? Well, I think that comes from a mindset that clients, there is no value exchange in this, right? You spending time with the client for deposition prep does not translate into value into the case. Because their time is more valuable somewhere else.
And I think that’s a pretty short sighted mindset. I know we have cases, have large caseloads, I know that we are overworked as a profession and so sometimes it’s a matter of, hey, just looking at where are we spending our time. But let’s just take it back because if we think that depo prep must translate into case value, right?
That’s just one level, right? Just think of it as one level. But if we think about it more [00:19:00] about spending time with the client, right? So if we spend time with the client for deposition prep. Right? We’re spending one on one time with them, right? So that builds a better relationship. You’re going to get to know them better, right?
They’re probably going to do better in deposition. Just naturally, most deposition mistakes are preventable. Really. I mean, they are. So then the deposition itself is going to have more values. That’s value to the case, but the client walks away with experience of being valued to you. Right. So that relationship building also is going to take you to getting a positive review, which you should always ask for, referrals, right?
That client’s going to send your way. So there’s so much more to value to just this individual case. There’s value to your overall business. This is a long game. It’s a long game thought. If we think of it always as short sighted, just this case, just this thing, we’re not going to [00:20:00] be very successful business people.
We need to be thinking in long game, getting referrals, talk about marketing again, people got to have good, got to have good reviews, got to ask people for reviews. That’s what people want to see. It’s true. Think about when last time you looked for a restaurant. Look at the Google reviews or try to find anything, right?
Look at those Google reviews. So keep in mind, right, all these things. You want the long game here. Also, you will feel better, right? We sometimes doing our jobs just sucks and it’s difficult and it’s hard. Why not do something that is going to Make you feel better, right? This is sometimes what we came into this whole profession for, is helping people.
And this is just one of those really small places you can do that. And, you know, what I have encouraged people is, if you are not sure, and you just said, you know what Elizabeth, I still don’t believe you. I challenge you. To take an hour, [00:21:00] split it into 30 minutes, do two 30 minute meetings with your client and just see, just test it out.
All right, is this going to make it better? Right now, you have to go in with your scientific mind and you have to be awake during the deposition to see. Did they get tripped up? Did they get those, make those mistakes that are easily preventable from knowing the rules of a deposition? Mindset. We have to understand what is our client’s mindset?
What’s my mindset? Mindset. Before I approach to, to start something, is it, am I dooming it before we begin? So that’s one thing that I’m going to keep in mind for 2023 and looking out for that, which is important and talking to people about that to make sure, hey, how are you looking at this, right? Is this a sit and suffer?
Are you going to do good? Always checking in to make sure we get that straight because if we don’t straighten our mindsets before we begin, it doesn’t really matter what other work we’re going to do because our mindset, Our [00:22:00] subconscious mind is going to take over. It will, right? It’s like gator versus judge here, right?
Our gator’s going to sit and take over when it comes to instinct time. So, all right. Lesson number 13, which is to stop resisting technology. I generally do not like to add more technology to my plate. I’m busy. I have to learn it. And I know it’ll take time to learn it, read the instructions, whatever it may be, but I did have three wonderful pieces of technology that I was super resistant to try.
And I just said, okay, I’m going to try it. If I don’t like it, I can like ditch it. And that’d be Slack. My virtual assistant and I use Slack to communicate. My business coach and I use Slack to communicate. It’s so helpful to not clutter your email up. It’s just makes it way easier versus all the clutter that we get and all the spam and the, and the noise that’s in the email inbox.
So if you haven’t tried it, I really suggest that you do it. If there’s somebody that you need to communicate with, but keeping that email [00:23:00] down, In your inbox, Loom, which is a great way to make short videos. Again, this kind of goes back to my virtual assistant. I made a lot of videos for her, how to videos on how to do processes for focus groups and for witness prep.
Super easy, you can get a free account. And then Otter. Which is a transcription AI technology. You can add it to your Zoom and it’ll transcribe during the Zoom or it’ll create one afterwards. It’s so much, it’s so much easier sometimes to go back through and read the transcript to understand more about exactly what was said.
It also helps, if you want to take it to the next level, to have the video playing and reading the transcript at the same time. Anyhow, great pieces of technology to help you do your job easier, or with Loom, it’s making videos, just doing it once instead of having to continually repeat it or have it written down, which is also a big part of getting your systems into place.[00:24:00]
Having a video recorded is so much easier. And then you can have that transcribed, so you don’t have to type it all out. Number 14, lesson from 2022, which would see, had a In focus groups, I’ve had a big kind of swing in the rates of paying participants. And I’ve tried to equate that to, well, it’s the economy and it’s the inflation, but I really also think it’s tied to the pandemic and people, you know, the great, everybody retiring, not retiring, but everybody leaving their jobs to go somewhere else.
and demanding more. I mean, I get a lot of complaints on my Facebook page about, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you only pay 25 an hour. Everybody else pays 150. I’m like, well, no, not everybody else does that. But also, bye, you don’t have to apply for it. But I have seen and a lot of other lawyers, again, comparing like what we were able to pay people to show up versus what we’re having to do now.
I mean, in person has to go up even more because people know, well, if you do [00:25:00] virtual, well, I want to do virtual. I don’t want to get dressed and get in the car and drive somewhere, fight traffic, find parking. Yeah, okay, great, you’re gonna give me a sandwich, that’s not enough anymore, so. I think this is a trend that’s not going away, it’s not going to go down, and I’m just preparing people out there, if you’re running your own focus groups, or if you are going to do focus groups with somebody else, then just know that there’s a lot of shift with participants and getting people to come and show up, and again, I think it’s just a conglomerate of what’s going on with the economy, conglomerate of what’s happened post pandemic, and people just looking at how they value their time differently, so just keep that in mind when you’re doing focus groups.
so much. One of the fun things about focus groups, which would be my number 15, is so many of our things that we worked hard to do with virtual focus groups, right? Electronic signature for confidentiality, electronic Google Forms, contactless payment with PayPal. Some of those things are going to translate over to in [00:26:00] person, which again, Oh, gonna make it so much easier.
And again, one of those main things would be contactless payment. I always wanted to, always did pay people cash when we were in person. I could have paid in PayPal at that time, but I just didn’t even think about it. So we’re definitely gonna keep up with the PayPal. It still gives you a receipt, but people get that cash instantly.
So I would encourage you if you were doing in person, you never did virtual, Figure out some way to get a contactless payment system going. Venmo, which is It’s owned by PayPal, PayPal, Cash, Zelle. There’s all kinds. Most of the time your bank account comes with one of those apps already. Zelle has lined up with Chase and I think a few other ones.
So just look and see if you’ve got it and make it easy on you. Make it easy on your staff. And it’s again, a good way to recruit people with getting instant cash. So keep that up. All right. Number 16 for 2022. [00:27:00] Switching back to witness preparation, either deposition or trial, and that would be visuals. We got to work on using visuals for preparation.
It’s gonna significantly speed up your time preparing folks, and they’re gonna get it so much faster. Understand what you’re saying faster by using a visual aid. It could be as simple as writing words on a page, right? Drawing a diagram, writing out a timeline, which timelines are on here. Here pretty soon is one of my big lessons.
But for 2023, visuals are. on my list. I’m really want to figure out how to translate creating visuals, using visuals in, in all that we do to prepare for focus group for trial, because it just is, it’s such a great way to get information through. quickly. And I love the idea of us practicing with [00:28:00] our clients, right?
It doesn’t have to be perfect with them. They’re trying, you’re trying, but it really does help speed up that process of learning when it comes to preparing for testimony. 17, lesson from 2022, which would be toxic clients have got to go. I had several. Toxic clients come through the door in 2022, and I’m obviously hardheaded as they are, but psychology and brain science tells us that folks become more entrenched in their own beliefs when faced with resistance.
So try as you may, They ain’t changing their minds and they’re gonna be right. So you just got to let them go and have a system for spotting this kind of resistance early on so that it’s not as painful to disengage. And I know we as, again, as a lawyer having clients, I know the exact, oh, we got to get it in, got to do it.[00:29:00]
Just let it go because that resistance is going to creep into every single part of the case. There’s no part that’s going to be easy. And so many of our clients have to follow our advice. That’s why they come to us. And the longer it goes, the more resistance builds, the worse off you are. So, you got a toxic client, you just got to let them go.
All right, number 18 lesson from 2022, which is coaching. Having a person watch, critique, analyze you while you’re doing what you do is so helpful. We have so many blind spots, and I’ll speak for myself. I have so many blind spots, so many things that I wasn’t even aware of that I was doing that were hindering.
My ability to do my job and having a coach is just so helpful. And I talked a little bit about this before about with witness prep, some people call it witness coaching. And I was always resistant to that. But [00:30:00] that’s what it is. I mean, really, we have all the information. We are trained, right? Lawyers. We know what’s going to happen.
They aren’t. And so we need to coach them because they’re gonna have to go out there on their own, right? And do their own thing. And we can help them get there. By watching and then offering again, helpful ways to do it better. If you want to do anything at the next level, got to get a coach, right? And it can’t be a friend.
It can’t be a family member. It’s got to be somebody who was trained in doing this, right? Think about sports. Anybody who’s a professional athlete has some kind of professional coach that helps them. Some things is like running, right? They give a running coach that helps them or a quarterback coach, or Steve Jobs, right, had his own coach.
Getting to that next level is going to require an extra set of eyes outside yourself to see all those blind spots. I highly encourage you to do that. There could be something specific that you need help with, or maybe you just want to learn [00:31:00] to play piano. Either way, you’re going to get way further down the road if you’ve got a coach.
Number 19. One of my personal goals for 2022 was to learn. And pay much more attention to finance and the economy, and specifically savings and retirement. Small law firms, solo law firms, sometimes we can forget to do this. It is a tax write off, yay! But sometimes setting up that system can be complicated.
I’ve read several books, but one of my favorite books that I read this year was called Retire Before Mom and Dad. I found Rob just wandering around the internet and found him on YouTube, and the way he talked about it was helpful and simple. He’s a former lawyer, so maybe that’s why I was like, Oh, he knows what he’s talking about.
I’m not sure if that made a difference for him, but he found Rob. finance, his personal hot topic. And he was a lawyer for a really long time and then started Doughroller Podcast, and [00:32:00] now he writes financial articles for Forbes, but he’s got this YouTube channel and this book. And it’s been so helpful to listen to him and his commentary as we’ve gone through the inflation changes and the economy changes and really understanding Retirement and he does this great newsletter that links to all these other folks that have good thoughts and takeaways.
But if you are curious, if you haven’t started retiring or you want to make a change or switch up something, I would strongly encourage looking him up to see if you like him. I check out a couple YouTube videos. He does a live YouTube every Wednesday where he answers questions from the audience, but lots of things that are out there right now.
But don’t be overwhelmed. That’s what I would say is I was overwhelmed, but once I started to really see things repeat themselves, you think, Oh, I just read one book. I don’t need to read more. Well, I’ve read [00:33:00] several at this point and seeing a lot of repeat information is comforting and knowing, okay, there’s not this vast amount of information.
I just don’t know. There’s really not when it comes to retirement. And ways to save for retirement, but you know, there’s some questions that you should look at and think about and ways, creative ways to save for retirement and as Solo, a small law firm, I think there’s, that’s something we should be looking at, at all times.
But really, like I said, I’ll put a link in the show notes to his book, but if you’re just curious, I would just check out a YouTube video and see if you like what he says. So back to work related stuff, timelines, uh, think medical treatment timelines, case event timelines, job history timelines. I spent a lot of time in 2022 creating timelines for clients, whether it be focus group, whether it be trial, whether it be witness prep.
And this just an easy [00:34:00] way to organize things in their brains. We want things, chronology, we want a chronology, and if you put things out of order, we don’t go back and rearrange it the best way, and my best example is we did a focus group recently where somebody read a narrative to the focus group, and it was about a situation that occurred at a bar, and he told the story unfolding chronology, like chronologically, and then after he finished that, he went and added a detail about something that happened earlier in the evening.
Now, They, it was, they were red, right, so it was just an auditory, right, so they had to take information, they had one picture of the bar. And they didn’t put it back in order. They assumed something negative because it was placed in the narrative a little bit. It was out of order, but they didn’t go back in and say, well, that fact actually goes and fits up here in the chain of events.
They don’t do that. And so that’s why, like, having that visual aid of a timeline is [00:35:00] so helpful. And again, super, you get a whole lot faster, but I always think people lose track of time. Things come at us so much more quickly than they used to. Email, text message, news, things change so fast. And our brains can really only take in so much, so some of it’s got to go somewhere.
Especially when we’re getting ready for, you’re trying to get a jury. i. e. a viable downloading of copyrighted content software. So it’s important to remember this. You’re not doing it for the copyright. Right. You’re doing it for the beneficiary of that right. You’re doing it for the beneficiary of removing copyright.
It’s your own permission. Because that’s the final item you need to use to protect your internal system. That’s stems from what I feel like is the purpose of that excuse. story. All right, 21. 2022 was a big [00:36:00] lesson of record it, document it, write it down. And I’m really good about taking notes. I’ve got about a thousand little pieces of paper I’m staring at on my desk right now.
And I had to start training myself to put it down. into the system. So a couple of ways that I did that was zoom. If you’ve done any kind of zoom with me, I generally we’re going to record it, right? Cause we’re going to talk about stuff and I’m going to take notes, but I’m not going to remember everything that’s said.
So I want to make sure record so I can go back and watch it again. And I encourage everybody, you got a focus group video, you video your witness prep, right? Watch it again, but just speed it up. Watch it on two times, right? Get it done quickly. You’re still going to get all the information out of there.
But if you got Zoom, hit the record button, right? Even free Zoom will give you 40 minutes free, right? All ideas, write them down. Call notes, write it down. I got the Adobe app on my phone that will allow you to basically scan anything using the camera and it’ll make a PDF and email it to you. [00:37:00] Then that goes straight into the file.
Or, a couple other apps is Obsidian, which is a pretty extensive note taking app that you can go on any laptop, and Kraft. I use Kraft on my cell phone to take notes. A lot of times, I may be somewhere, either traveling or sitting, waiting for an appointment or sitting somewhere and, oh, I get an idea or something comes to my head.
I gotta write it down, otherwise I’m gonna lose it. And, lawyers, I feel like we’re pretty notorious about carrying so much information in our heads. We get it out and then we remember it, or it’s there for later. So record it, document it. That’s a huge lesson from 2022. I’m going to get better at doing Obsidian, which allows tagging and all this like crazy organization of things and recall.
As I go further into it, I will definitely keep you all updated. Last lesson from 2022. And this is probably a lesson that is helpful to remember every single year. And that is. Take more vacation. Take time [00:38:00] off. Life is short. People around you want to spend time with you. I think that we’re all reminded of somebody that we’re not as close to, or somebody that we lost from this world.
And sending that thank you note, send that text message, it really makes a difference. And there are people in our lives that we should probably hug on and appreciate more. And it’s just a good reminder that If we need to take a little vacation, we should just do it because at the end of the day, you don’t want to look back and think, gosh, I worked all the way through that and I really, I wish I had done it differently and we can do that now.
You can do that today and I encourage you to do that. I made a conscious effort to do that [00:39:00] this year and I am so glad that I did. I’m not going to regret. Sending those notes. I’m not going to regret taking that time because it’s so much more sweet and precious when it’s limited, but all of our time is limited.
And we, I feel like sometimes we forget that. So 2023, it’s going to be about doing the same thing and telling people how much you appreciate them, saying thank you. And maybe even just smiling, asking people how they’re doing, to make them feel better. It’s going to make you feel better because it’s just moment to moment and we can get lost and forget all the things we learned from 2022 or 2021.
But sometimes when it comes down to just doing that one thing, giving someone that one hug, that really, that’s how you make people feel. And that’s, I think, what we always need to be reminded of. It’s [00:40:00] how we make people feel. So with that, thank you so much for listening. This was a really long podcast.
Lots of lessons in here. I just want to know, just real fast, we’re almost done, what you can look forward to for 2023, we are going to do more interviews, going to have at least one interview a month with somebody, we’re going to really try to hone in on persuasion and influence. We’re also going to do, Try to do some more book reviews.
Again, books that can help us in our profession and do better and prepare better. So all that being said, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate hanging in there. It has been a wild ride for a year and I appreciate your patience because I know not all these podcasts have probably been humdingers, but sometimes that’s what happens.
As I have also learned in the podcast world. So thank you again. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate or view it on your favorite platform. Share it with somebody who may want to try to prepare better. All right. Thank you so [00:41:00] much.