Presenting is part of professional and business life: presenting at professional conferences, briefing colleagues at internal meetings, or informing audiences at educational seminars or webinars.
For many people, presentations can seem daunting. And in the world of law, presenting can be especially tricky. How do you manage the content so that it is informative but at the same time the audience does not feel deluged? How do you engage with the audience - using story-telling, visuals and the personal touch - without diluting the quality or the tone of the presentation? How do you deal with difficult questions? There are many other challenges too.
Many of us will have attended presentation skills training in the past. In my experience, that training can be very good, but it only takes participants to the first stage. It focuses on body language, eye-contact, speaker set-up, pace and tone of speech etc. But such sessions don’t address the distinctive and specialised challenges which lawyers face.
I have been a legal presenter for 25 years. I recently retired as a partner from law firm Bird & Bird, and have decided to convert my experience as a presenter into a service to train and equip others.
I won’t focus on court advocacy and formal ‘pitching’ for business, because there are many techniques specific to each of those scenarios, but hopefully the tools and techniques I do share will be useful for those situations too.
Focussing on four main areas are key to success:
- Knowing the audience: How do you ensure that your presentation meets the needs of those who have invited you to present? How do you ensure that you are on a wavelength ? It is well-known that a major item of audience feedback is that lawyers fall down in this area - the approach was too lightweight, or too detailed, or told the audiences things they already knew. There are techniques you can use to ensure that this does not happen
- Giving your presentation human touch and impact: How can you ensure that your presentation is engaging and empowering, rather than dry and one-dimensional? So many times I have heard audience members at events roll their eyes and comment that the lawyers presenting were flat and unengaging. There are techniques you can learn to help address this, including messaging, how to structure the presentation, planning the opening and the close, story-telling, war-stories, the use of business context and humour. How do you engage with virtual or ‘hybrid’ audiences rather than face to face, and how do you facilitate questions and discussion in a way that empowers people and does not 'derail' the session?
- Addressing the practicalities: So many times, presenters are well-prepared, but ‘on the day’ they slip up on the practicalities. They are too far away from the microphone and can barely be heard; they try to hold a hand-held mic together with presentation notes and a clicker and fumble with their papers; they are not positioned well in the room for Zoom etc. It is truly annoying when a fine presentation is diminished because of such issues but here are practical steps you can take to help ensure these do not happen.
- Ensuring continual improvement: Finally, it’s important to think about continual improvement in your presenting - by the use of mentors, watching recordings, and the use of AI tools. Some of the best tools from TED Talks coach Chris Anderson can be a great help.
Join me in my Presentation Skills for Lawyers: Maximising your Impact session where I’ll share all my tips, tricks and best advice to help you become the best presenter you can be.
While some presentation attributes are innate, a large amount can be taught and refined - join this session and we can explore the challenges together.
Published on Jul 24, 2025 by Andrew White