Here’s a short video that covers a handful of the tips that follow below:

Presenting Effectively In Person and On Video

Speaking is a signal skill. If you are better at speaking, people assume you are better at your work. The following tips will help you make a lasting impression and achieve results.

1. Narrow the focus of your talk

Many lawyers are too comprehensive and technical for the amount of time they have and the level of sophistication of their audience. Speaking is an inefficient medium to be comprehensive—don’t try. While thinking through all the possibilities may make you a great lawyer, speaking to all the possibilities will make you a bad speaker. Prioritize your points by considering the audience’s most pressing needs and then talk about your most helpful ideas to address those needs.

2. Illustrate to Engage and Compel

The knowledge gap between the speaker and the audience creates a significant communication challenge many professionals struggle to overcome. The best and easiest way to close the gap is through examples. The top TED speakers use an example a minute. This data point is intended to be provocative, not prescriptive. Use examples drawn from your practice to illustrate your points and subtly showcase your experience advising sophisticated clients. Anonymize your examples when necessary to preserve confidentiality.

3. Talk about people

People are interested in people, which is why People Magazine is still widely circulated, unlike Popular Mechanics. Chances are your practice affects people. When you are speaking, talk about that impact. Telling stories is a great way to do so, whether they involve document destruction, Section 53 of the Canadian Patent Act, or the BIA. Create tension in your story by introducing obstacles that impede the protagonist. Animate your stories with emotive dialogue.

4. Speak from bullets

Eloquence is a trap. Unless you are a professional newsreader, it’s hard to sound natural and make eye contact while reading from a script. Worse, reading aloud may diminish your credibility; if you are a subject matter expert, you should be able to speak about your practice without reading paragraph after paragraph. If scripting helps you think through what you want to say, go for it. Then go beyond the script: Distill your prose into bullets and allow yourself to say it differently than what you initially scripted. It’s more powerful to get the essence of the message across while speaking in a conversational tone and making eye contact than it is to be eloquent and read aloud.

5. Handle your hands

Used properly, your hands can add clarity, infuse infectious energy, and enhance your presence. Listen for verbal cues that could be delineated with your hands. Some ideas to get you rolling: enumerate points by stabbing the air with the appropriate number of digits; delineate a timeline if you’re talking about something in stages; depict parties involved in a transaction; and accentuate simple adjectives and adverbs with corresponding gestures. Limit using “conversational hands” where their movement is not aligned with your content—these can be distracting. Finally, keep your hands static for at least a fifth of your talk; loosely rest them together somewhere above your belt buckle to enhance your presence and be ready to put them into action when needed.

6. Eye Contact (In-Person Meetings)

Research consistently reinforces that eye contact is the most important delivery skill in oral communication. Strengthen your presence by connecting for three to five seconds per person before randomly turning to a new person. Speaking from bullets will enable you to make eye contact for at least ninety percent of the time. Pause to reference your notes. When colleagues are talking during a pitch, appear interested and look at them approximately eighty percent of the time, using the remaining time to gauge the audience’s reaction or look at or take notes.

7. Eye Contact (Video Meetings or Presentations)

When speaking on video for meetings, webinars, presentations or direct-to-audience interviews, make eye contact with the camera or position the image of a key audience member just below the camera. If you are meeting with more than a handful of people, shrink the attendee gallery and place it below the camera so you can gauge others’ reactions without your eye having to travel far from the camera. When others are speaking during a webinar, continue to look at the camera. If it’s a conversation-style interview with an interviewer, look at the interviewer, not the camera(s).

8. Additional Notes about Notes

Unless used thoughtfully, notes can become an impediment to connecting. If you calmly reference your notes, the audience won’t notice or care if you periodically look at them. It will be easier to pluck your next point if you speak from bullets. When speaking on camera, position your notes just below the camera and shrink the digital page to approximately 2”x2”, scrolling when necessary to get your next point. You could also have a hard copy of your notes and pause to refer to it as on-air personalities do. Avoid positioning your notes on a secondary monitor or displaying a soft copy across your screen (think 8-1/2” x 11”) and read sentences; people will see your eyes track and hear your less natural reading tone.

9. Framing

You don’t have to be a Hollywood cinematographer to make yourself look better on camera. Position your camera at eye level to create a more flattering angle—and save you a trip to the chiropractor. Depending on your setup, a secondary keyboard and mouse will enable you to place your computer camera higher. Adjust the camera so your eyes are a third of the way from the top of the frame, and you are sitting arm’s length from your computer’s keyboard. This setup should allow the top half of your torso to fill the frame and enable you to use your hands periodically. Ensure you are well-lit with a soft light, not backlit. Now is a good time if you’ve yet to invest in a good mic. Many of my clients find Wirecutter a helpful source for tech recommendations.

10. Bonus

Many speakers appear formal and tight when they begin. Plan content that is conducive to starting in a warm, conversational tone while making eye contact. This could be as simple as referencing something someone in the audience said in a prior interaction, adding humanity and establishing why you are speaking. In this clip, Aprajitha Jain and Guy Kawasaki discuss how they met.