{"id":1340,"date":"2017-04-30T11:21:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T10:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2017-04-30T11:21:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T10:21:13","slug":"train-slow-to-race-fast-lawyers-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/train-slow-to-race-fast-lawyers-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Train slow to race fast – Lawyers‘ edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

One assumption is at the core of my approach to training top transactional lawyers: I believe that good jurists are extremely well positioned to learn at a greatly accelerated speed. This post explores some possible reasons as well as some thoughts on what it takes to capitalise on that strength.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some caveats up front: this post does not address the question what the focus of learning and practice should be for maximum impact, the exact procedures of training or similar more detailed aspects. This is far more basic, looking at some fundamentals of making stuff stick.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chess pieces<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A series of studies conducted by psychologists back in the 1960s and 1970s (with results reproduced in more recent investigations) looked at the ability of chess players of varying playing ability (beginners, intermediate and masters) to memorise the location of chess pieces on a playing board shown to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turned out that very good chess players were far better at remembering the location of pieces than beginners and the intermediate players ranked somewhere in between. However, this was only the case, if the pattern of the pieces could have resulted from a real game of chess. If they were simply scattered at random and without regard for the rules and strategy of chess, all three groups \u2013 masters, intermediate players and beginners \u2013 had a very similar and very limited ability to reproduce the pieces\u2019 positions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interpreting this data, it appears that human brains are good at linking new information to related existing patterns, resulting in a story-like narrative: the good players were able to place those chess pieces, that behaved in line with what was to be expected. The gradual decline of this ability relative to playing strength suggests that this is a trainable skill.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the flip-side, it seems we\u2019re not very good at processing isolated information without internal coherence and connection to existing mental concepts. That\u2019s why the not-so-good players couldn\u2019t remember many pieces at all and why even the masters lost their edge when the pieces were arranged in a way that did not seem \u201cright\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more details, references to the original studies and an in-depth exploration of the connection of these results to the pursuit of top performance in general, please refer to Anders Eriksson\/Robert Pool, \u201cPeak. Secrets from the New Science of Expertise\u201c in particular pages 50 and 55 subseq. of the paperback edition. Eriksson\u2019s position in relation to some other aspects is not uncontroversial, but this remains a great starting point. For a more in-depth, more integrated and complex view on these matters you can also have a look at Josh Waitzkin\u2019s brilliant \u201cThe Art of Learning\u201d- that little book is something I\u2019ll definitely come back to in later posts.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

This seems right<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

These results seem to be in line with daily experience: I\u2019m quite sure most lawyers would be comfortable to\u00a0remember details of a newly decided and presented court-case relevant for their practice, which any non-lawyer would find meaningless, random and impossible to remember.<\/span><\/p>\n

That same lawyer likely could not keep up the performance, if presented with details in a field entirely alien to daily practice (think: details of immigration law for an M&A-lawyer) \u2013 or, even more drastically, details of a comparable degree of detail and complication in, say, bio-molecular research.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lawyers\u2019 advantage<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Up front \u2013 the following is all anecdotal. I cannot cite peer-reviewed, double-blind studies to underpin the next few paragraphs. But the anecdotal indicators are\u00a0there in spades. I\u2019ve noticed these effects in myself. I\u2019ve seen them in lawyers around me. I\u2019ve seen them in my work as a trainer. And I believe they are plausible enough to serve as a very strong starting point or working hypothesis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is what I think is going on:<\/span><\/p>\n

As lawyers we are trained from day one to think in a very structured, bottom-up way. We start with broad, general concepts as first principles and work our way towards the split-hair distinctions our profession is so (in-)famous for. Each step explicitly builds on the ones before and it is not at all uncommon to use very basic (e.g. constitutional) principles as tie-breakers or guidance to deal with finer points of more specialised areas of law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether in academia or transactional practice, the rules for application of more detailed legal aspects can be rather easily traced back to basic principles that form the underlying narrative structure. I would even argue that the ability to do so is one of the markers for a well-trained, high-quality jurist. Most codified law (at least in the European tradition) also follows this set-up, starting with general principles and definitions before diving into the nitty-gritty aspects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong – this kind of thinking is by no means specific to the law. Actually (without going into any finer points of epistemology), it seems to conform to our model of the way reality functions and correspondingly appears to underlie practically all disciplines I could think of.<\/span><\/p>\n

But different from a number of\u00a0other professions, jurists are systematically trained to think and work in and along these structures. For us they are not merely abstract background or interesting-though-irrelevant history of our discipline. They define the mental landscape in which we operate every day, whether in academia or practice as a lawyer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now put this in context with the general findings mentioned at the beginning of this post. Jurists are deeply trained to look for the storyline, tracing it to first principles. We are educated to immediately investigate in relation to\u00a0new information, if these through-lines back to the source seem to be interrupted. Our brains are tuned to look for the narrative to which new information can be linked or that it can be tested against \u2013 a skill that seemingly made all the difference in the chess masters\u2019 ability to reproduce the position of pieces on a chess board.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to use this<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get this out of the way: thinking in such a structured way as a default also has its downsides. For example, being set up this\u00a0way might\u00a0require a lot of discipline in daily life in order not to drift too far to the nerdish side of things (if you really have any doubts as to what I mean by that, ask your non-lawyer spouse or friends for their general opinion on lawyers). It can take an effort to become or remain quick and pragmatic on our feet. And we should be aware of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, I am convinced both at a conceptual level and from practical experience as a lawyer and a trainer that if applied regularly and systematically, this skill can help us to learn at\u00a0a substantially accelerated speed.<\/span><\/p>\n

It requires us to stick to the procedure, though. We have to use and embrace rather than discard that structured way of thinking we have been trained to adopt. More operationally, it requires us to look for basic principles underlying whatever there is to learn and then to connect them to the more detailed elements at hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this is exactly what can be so counterintuitive when looking at learning in an environment chronically pressed for time. It\u2019s seems to be efficient to go for the result, to present or pick up just those details that are immediately relevant to the task at hand and simply ignore all that background stuff that seems to\u00a0be somewhat interesting but apparently has no direct impact\u00a0here and now.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we can see from the chess players in the studies mentioned, such a seemingly \u201cpractical\u201d approach doesn\u2019t seem to be the way our brains like to be presented with information. Shooting exclusively\u00a0for the relevant details looks quite a bit like a beginner staring at an advanced chess set-up. Or like trying to remember randomly placed pieces without internal coherence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if that feels nerdy, excessive or weird, looking for and building at least a rudimentary narrative structure from basic principles will help our brain to \u201csee the landscape\u201d and provide orientation for the finer points. Think of it like coat-hangers to put the more detailed information on. Without this, it will be very difficult to efficiently\u00a0take (and keep) on board the details.<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say that all this also has quite direct implications for the structuring of training, in particular in an environment dominated by a high cadence and general lack of time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To use an expression from endurance sport \u2013 sometimes you have to train slow to race fast. And as in endurance training, this can seem counterintuitive and require quite a bit of discipline. But if we can pull this off, we have an almost unfair advantage.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One assumption is at the core of my approach to training top transactional lawyers: I believe that good jurists are extremely well positioned to learn at a greatly accelerated speed. This post explores some possible reasons as well as some thoughts on what it takes to capitalise on that strength. Some caveats up front: this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}