EP 712 – The Improv Advantage: What Trial Lawyers Can Learn from the Stage Part 2

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to The Jury Is Out, a podcast for trial attorneys who want to sharpen their skills and better serve their clients. Your co-hosts are John Simon, founder of the Simon Law Firm, Tim Cronin, personal injury trial attorney at the Simon Law Firm, and St. Louis attorney Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth:

Welcome to another episode of The Jury Is Out. I’m Erich Vieth I’m

Tim Cronin:

Tim Cronin. We’re back here with our improv specialist to continue our discussion. Thanks for coming back.

Ashley Rube:

Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks

Erich Vieth:

For having us. Could you talk about the various aspects of improv when you’re teaching a class? What do you teach your students or what are the components? And I’ve written down some of these like the yes and the act of listening, fully commit, things of that sort. I know I’m asking you to teach a course in one minute, but what can you tell us about it? Cliff

Tim Cronin:

Notes.

Ashley Rube:

Sure. Well, and Erich can speak to this because he just took the class. First thing I start from, and this might not be true in your specific context because there is a level of winners and losers and argumentativeness. But as an improviser, your job isn’t to be funny. Your job isn’t to be the wittiest person in the room. Your job is to take care of your teammate. If your priority is to be a really good team member and to make your teammates look incredible, it changes your posture to the whole thing and a bunch of other things start to fall into place. If I’m really preoccupied and looking inward to be like, “What’s the funniest thing I can say right now?” Then I’m going to show up very differently to the stage and to the scene, to whatever it is we’re doing. So we start with be a great teammate, and then from there we start to talk about agreement, which requires active listening, which requires presence, which requires embodiment, and then we kind of break that down into scene work mechanics.

Tim Cronin:

So we have different roles we have to play in trial. When we’re picking a jury, we are quite literally all we’re doing. We have things we want to cover is having to engage in active listening to what someone is saying and responding and based on what they say, think about if we want to get them off the jury, protect them to keep them on the jury. And depending on what that goal is, they’re either a teammate who we’re trying to get to protect them to keep them on or it becomes adversarial and we’re delicately, they know it’s adversarial. We’re trying to get them off. Opening, we’re storytelling. Closing, we’re storytelling and trying to convince more. Cross-examination, it’s more adversarial, but I think this is particularly helpful in direct exams because the person on the stand is our teammate

Announcer:

And our

Tim Cronin:

Job is not to tick off boxes of the evidence we want to get in. Yes, we need to do that, but in direct it’s our client, it’s our experts we may call an adverse witness, but I think our job should be we’re trying to make them look good and credible and just not tick through our stuff on our outline. So I think this is particularly helpful for that.

Ryan Myers:

Yeah, we say that often in improv, your posture is to make your teammate look as good as possible. So yeah, if you have an expert on the stand, your job I imagine is to lob them softballs and make them look incredible, credible.

Tim Cronin:

Engaging.

Ryan Myers:

Yeah. And so even working with them, I’m sure pre-trial, understanding how they communicate, where their expertise is, where they can really thrive and almost form your sort of line of questioning to help them pitch easier. So if I think about that in my context and I know that I have someone on my team that is really good, like physicality is an amazing physical player, I want to try to keep that in mind to make it easy for them to play with me so I’m going to lob them a softball on stage so they could potentially do something physical. Or if I know that my scene partner has a lot of knowledge about some sort of subculture and that I think of Dungeons and Dragons or something like that, I’ve seen people play where that’ll naturally come up in a scene and a scene partner will be like, “Oh, let’s go down this rabbit hole because I know you’ve played Dungeons and Dragons for most of your life or whatever.” So zooming back out, it’s a really good posture to be generous to your scene partner.

And I think that’s a really perfect application of that.

Ashley Rube:

And the opposite is true. I don’t go on stage with Ryan and say, “You’re a famous tap dancer,” because I’d be setting him up to look terrible. I’m not. You know what I mean? No, we are at a level maybe in our friendship that I might do that sometimes because we have fun with that. One of the rules of yes and that I talk about is we agree to this posture and I’m not going to actively try to make it hard for you to say yes to me because why would you continue to do that with me if that was the case? So do you find that you used experts multiple times in multiple spaces and-

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, I have experts that I work with in repeat circumstances frequently, especially in medical malpractice.

Announcer:

Yeah.

Ashley Rube:

So there’s a rapport there making them look incredible and building a trust and saying, “I’m going to put you in this high risk environment and I’m going to take good care of you. ” So that the next time it’s worth coming back, because otherwise I’m going to come back a little more rigid, a little more scared on my heels and that changes how confident I appear. And then eventually that person, if they don’t look good over and over again, will be like, “I think that- I’m not working

Tim Cronin:

With you. I won’t support you. “

Ashley Rube:

Exactly. And the same thing happens on stage. Interestingly enough, this came up when I was working with a financial team that had a lawyer in the room and we were talking about yes and the lawyer said, “You’re telling me I can never get to say no again.” And I said, “No, I don’t have that power.” But it’s an important distinction because I think it’s not a zero sum game. Saying yes is a tool that we have and improvisers really lean heavily on that tool because in most parts of our life we forget that we have that option to agree and collaborate and to do the free fall with someone. But no is never not in your vocabulary. If someone’s not taking good care of you and if we’re struggling, we don’t go on stage with that person or we find ourselves in a situation where we say no to them.

It’s not that we eliminate it, it’s just we’re trying to build capacity to have access to yes more often, but that’s a two-way street. It’s not just me muscling through and saying yes to everything. It’s me working with someone and trusting them enough that I want to say yes to you because I know that the outcomes we’re going to create together are going to be probably pretty positive. So I think that’s an important distinction.

Erich Vieth:

I think this is really interesting about the collaborative process. I’m a passionate photographer and musician and I think you have sometimes one chance to make the point. And so in a courtroom, you don’t want to say, “Here, let’s try that again. That didn’t come out so well.”

So there’s this lifetime, it’s a pressure and it’s an opportunity. It’s both. You want to have maximum impact. And when you’re talking about a friendly witness, like you say, it seems like you are setting them up by gentle questions and nudges and you want them to shine. I don’t know if you know this in law, you don’t want to cross-examine your own friendly witness because you’re taking the words out of their mouths. You’re not letting them deliver the message, especially your own client who might be catastrophically hurt and then they need to say, you can imagine, well, you’re really hurt, aren’t you? That’ll destroy it. So it is very much a collaborative process where you’re setting them up gently to shine. And I think that’s really interesting what you just said about that collaboration.

Ashley Rube:

And it takes a lot of developing a lot of empathy for another person and thinking about on the front end how we show up to these situations, especially when money is on the line, when your reputation’s on the line, when there’s a room full of people and a judge looking at you and it’s scary. It reminds me of, we start out a lot of programs with this game called Five Things. Would you like to play it really quickly?

Tim Cronin:

Sure. Go ahead, Eric. Okay. You’ve taken the class. I have not.

Ashley Rube:

So it’s a really simple game. We play this with just about everybody. For improvisers, it gets the juices flowing. It’s a posture thing. I’m just going to ask you for five of something, okay? So I could say, Eric, could you just give me five of your favorite colors? And every time you say a color, we’re all going to say yes to you. So go ahead. What’s one of your favorite colors?

Erich Vieth:

Blue. Yes. Aqua. Yes. Yes. Pink. Yes. Orange. Yes. Green.

Ashley Rube:

Yes.

Erich Vieth:

Yes.

Ashley Rube:

Great. That’s five.That’s five things. And you did the exercise. Not so bad, Tim, right? No. Now we do this with improvisers, but we also do this with corporate groups. And at first it’s like, why are we doing a weird icebreaker? And they’re like, oh, okay, I guess you want to get the juices flowing. We’re getting ideas going. But I think it’s more than that. It is getting everybody else in the room saying yes to you and building this supportive environment that’s the real important piece. Every time we run this, I ask, I’m like, “How did you feel doing it? ” And usually in a room full of people, someone will be like, “Well, I felt a little nervous.” And I go, “But you’re smart. You know five of stuff.” And they’re like, “I know, but for some reason I couldn’t think of anything. I felt I blanked.” And I go, “Okay, great.

What’s going on? ” And they’re like, “Well, you feel put on the spot. I worry about being judged.” And I said, “What was the one rule of the game? Everybody’s going to say yes to me. So what am I scared of? ” And it’s not that their fear is unreasonable, it’s that it reveals that even when people perform support, we don’t believe them. So I walk around all the time assuming a bit of bad faith of everybody all the time. Even if someone goes, “Great job.” Something in my brain is going, “You didn’t mean that. They hate me. ” Yeah, exactly. And that changes everything. I mean, the amount of bandwidth, I mean, I can have a room full of 10 people in a corporate office that work together that have good quote unquote good culture and they all reveal, yeah, I assume everyone’s judging me all the time.

And I’m like, think about how much bandwidth we’re spending on anxiety instead of on really interesting problems. And that is something that we can’t totally eliminate that we were trained into this. We have habits. We’ve all been to middle school and learned that people will be mean to us, but

We can start to build environments and relationships that turn the volume down on that static in the background and that helps us spend a lot more energy on each other.That’s basically, I go on stage with people that I deeply trust and have a good time with because it turns the static down and I can really be present to figure out what Ryan and I will do that day and find a lot of joy in it rather than get preoccupied with all the fear and anxiety.

Erich Vieth:

Tim, tough case going on. You’re the lawyer and there’s a jury looking at you. And I don’t know, it depends upon what the case, but you might think they’re leaning toward you or they might be leaning against you. Does it do you any good at all to worry about that or should you always be positive and assume that they’re with you and they’re believing it? No,

Tim Cronin:

I think you have to be acutely aware of whether you think they are currently leaning in your favor or not because it can affect the way you question witnesses or how aggressive you can be or how deferential you can be because you need to try to get them back on your side. Now we often think we know what the jury is thinking and we find out we’re dead wrong, but if I am very confident a jury is already leaning heavily in my favor, I might take a little bit more aggressive approaches. Whereas if it’s the other side, I need to more gently hope the jury will come to change their mind on their own because you can’t make somebody change their mind. If you try to force it upon them, it doesn’t work. They get more entrenched. I don’t know if this is related or not, but even when we’re cross-examining somebody, Eric, I think if we build in a long enough series of things they say yes to, they start to feel like we’re a collaborative team to get through this together and they feel like they need to say yes.

And then the jury also feels like a pattern has been established that they don’t want disruption for. So if it’s an adversarial witnesses and you’ve built in a series of yeses and then they interrupt it, the jury’s like, “Well, hold on. We were doing yeses.

We were getting through this together.”

Erich Vieth:

And it’s distressing when your client is being cross-examined and they start giving the yes, yes, yes,

Tim Cronin:

The other side. And we don’t. And you’re thinking, “Man,

Erich Vieth:

They’re leading them down a road. I don’t like this.

Tim Cronin:

” Yeah. At the same time, you want them to be agreeable to stuff that they shouldn’t be disagreeable to, but yet we try to build in, every lawyer does it. We want to build in with when you’re cross-examining somebody or somebody adversarial, a pattern of yeses because it gets more and more difficult to not agree to the next question.

Ashley Rube:

It makes me wonder a little bit too, because one of the reasons we play funny little exercise like five things is because it’s unusual to say yes out loud to people literally to say in support, our typical reaction is to say yes, sure, but also or to nitpick things, especially in work environments where we want to not just criticize things, but give critical feedback or hone things into the perfect version of a thing. So to have a room full of adults be like, yes, yes, yes. Everyone starts to smile and it changes the energy and it’s something that we make people practice because it’s unusual. It’s atypical to be super supportive. So it’s interesting that you would create the conditions to hear people say out loud yes, yes, yes, over and over in a courtroom.

Tim Cronin:

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’ve read that people are more psychologically inclined to say … It’s easier for someone to say no than to say yes. Oh

Announcer:

Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

So I think salespeople get taught if you’re making a cold call, don’t ask is now a good time to talk? Ask, “Is now a bad time to talk?” Because they’re more likely to go, “No, it’s all right.” But if you say, “Is now a good time to talk?” No, actually it’s not a good time to talk. I don’t know if that’s true or not. That’s funny.

Ryan Myers:

From my sales days, yes, I think there’s an entire book written on this called Getting to Yes. And that was something that I just remember being drilled into me and drilled into salespeople in the conversations that I was having is those small incremental yeses are potentially leading a potential client down a certain road. It is very subconsciously psychologically effective.

Tim Cronin:

And you want people to feel heard, sometimes called mirroring, which I watched you do in your demonstration and there’s, what is it, Chris Voss, he’s a former FBI hostage, much higher stakes than what we do about it’s not getting to yes, it’s getting to that’s right, where you’re trying to repeat back to a person their position or their feelings on a matter of what they want. And if you get them to go, “That’s right,” then they’re more open to agreeing with the rest of what you’re saying. So for example, if you have a disagreeable witness, if you can get to, it sounds like what you’re saying and what your opinion is, is this, and you let them get it out and they go, “That’s right, they’re more likely to give you concessions.” Yeah,

Ashley Rube:

Because you feel heard and understood.

Tim Cronin:

Validated and understood.

Ashley Rube:

Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

In improv, you need to let your partner know what they’re saying is being validated and heard and understood so your work building collaborative relationship.

Ashley Rube:

Oh, absolutely. I love stopping in the middle of a scene and going, just to be clear- Let me get this straight. … what’s going on. I think we want it to look perfect and polished, but that’s not how real life ever goes. Would you rather have someone, an expert or a witness or someone ask for clarification rather than jump ahead? Can I understand this question or get to a place of understanding before they just blurt something out or run ahead of everything?

Tim Cronin:

And jurors sit forward in their seat when they can tell something unplanned just happened. If

Ashley Rube:

You’re

Tim Cronin:

Just following along a script, they’re like, “All right, this is boring.” And then somebody says something or something happens that came out of the blue and they can tell nobody saw it come and they go, “All right. This is good.

Ryan Myers:

My show is on. ” Real

Ashley Rube:

Discovery is, I think this is why we say no so much. I don’t know about the psychology, I just know from experience myself that real discovery is so scary to people that I will say no to point us in a direction that feels very much in my wheelhouse, very comfortable, very pre-planned, at least in my own brain. But discovery is where we start to, in our case, have a lot of fun. And I’m assuming in your case, start to arrive at something closer to the truth, which is what we’re looking for. And there are a lot of good reasons to say no. There are boundaries, there are ethical reasons, there are resource-

Ryan Myers:

Safety.

Ashley Rube:

Safety reasons. There’s all these reasons to say the laws of physics. Yeah. There are all these reasons to say no, but I think what we train people to do is interrogate when they knee-jerk to a no and ask why because half of the time or maybe more than half the time it’s because no doesn’t require anything of me. I don’t have to actually have heard what you said to say no to you. It has no prerequisite for listening. I’m no longer in a position where I owe you anything. I don’t have to attach my ideas to your idea. I’m not out of control of the conclusion if I say no. So yes asks a lot from us. And so I think it’s being willing to go, “Am I doing this right now because I don’t like or trust you or am I doing this because there’s a really legitimate good reason to say no to this?

” And that self-awareness is something that I think improv is a really nice way to build in people because at the end of the day, improv is the silliest thing you’ll ever do and the most important thing you’ll ever do is what I tell people. It’s going to help you be a self-reflective person, but you’re doing it on stage about seeing the moment doesn’t matter. Your job isn’t at stake.You’re doing comedy. So noth really bad happens if we mess up and have to learn how to do this. So it’s these padded walls of improv make the self-reflective moment a little easier because your boss isn’t staring at you going, “Well, your paycheck’s at stake now.”

Tim Cronin:

Well, yeah, but it seems like it helps you learn how to be more present and open to life, which is good to then let bleed into your regular personal life and sometimes in your professions. Definitely. Eric, having taking the class, what kind of skills can improv offer to trial lawyers?

Erich Vieth:

One thing I’ll offer first is I think you have to learn to be fluid in your thought. You have to get used to the idea that there’s going to be something that you don’t anticipate that’s going to be said next. And I’m kind of a control freak. I want to prepare for trial and I want everything to go according to the recipe. But there’s those moments where a judge will, you’ll say, “Your Honor, I have this case. This case is right on point. This case says I should be successful in my argument here.” And the judge says, essentially, I disagree with you and you’re shocked inside. Not

Tim Cronin:

Putting on that evidence. Or the other side is putting on this evidence.

Erich Vieth:

The most important thing in the case just might have vanished. And so the first thing is it’s like a physical shock to your system. Because you spent hours looking at this case and knowing it was the perfect case and 99 out of a hundred judges would say, “Absolutely.” So you got a physical shock and you’re frozen and you’ve got to know what to do. And there’s certain tactics that you could do as an attorney. You can ask for a briefing. You can say, “Could we take a break and talk about this in chambers? Or maybe I need to explain it better.” Or maybe there might be a way, but sometimes you’re caught in the moment where you just got kicked in the stomach and you got to know what to do and you have to not look … I think it’s important for the jurors to see that you’re okay.

You didn’t get hit upside the head and you’re stunned and that’s the person we want to believe in. And now they’ve been destroyed.

Tim Cronin:

There’s a scene from a few good men. I try to steal something from that movie in almost every trial.

Ryan Myers:

It’s great.

Tim Cronin:

That Tom Cruise’s character says whatever happens in that courtroom, you want the people on the jury make it look like it’s exactly what you thought was going to happen and want it to happen no matter what happens, seem confident like, “Yep, this is what we knew this was coming and this is what we wanted.” It’s really tough sometimes.

Ashley Rube:

It’s sort of a silly connect, but we’re on a musical improv team. We do a 45-minute Disney style musical all made up. All the songs are made up. We have an accompanist who’s improvising the piano and we improvise songs. It’s very fun. And I’ve never lost audiences faster than in that show because everyone is terrified that it’s going to be bad.

Ryan Myers:

They’re bracing for impact.

Ashley Rube:

Do you know that feeling of secondhand embarrassment is in the room? Yeah. And one of the best early on doing improv, one of the best experiences I had was I went for this big note, my voice cracked really hard and then I kind of laughed it off and kept going and I felt like the audience relaxed because failure is kind of inevitable or mistakes are inevitable. We’re making this up. I didn’t practice a song. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And the fact that we were able to get through this wrinkle and for me to go, “I’m okay. I’m still having fun.” They’re like, “Oh, I can have fun too.” And it just is so helpful to have a level of not even just confidence in myself in the moment, confidence that at the end of the day, everything’s going to be fine that puts people at ease.

Ryan Myers:

Yeah, I see this too just very quickly at the top of shows. I can typically tell within the first 30 seconds of how a team walks on stage, I go, okay, how are they feeling? Ooh, I see the hesitation and even how you address the audience for how you’re going to play almost. And then I can also see the inverse when people walk out and they’re just relaxed and at ease. And me as the audience member, my blood pressure goes down a couple of points because I’m like, “Oh, cool. They’ve got it. ” It really is deeply affecting.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. Eric, how many times have you crossed somebody at trial and you thought you really had a pledising or you thought you had a point they weren’t going to get out of and they responded with something. It may be something factual that you missed or you asked a question you didn’t know the answer to and they come back with something that proves that that point you were just trying to make us wrong. How many times has that happened to you in your career at trial?

Erich Vieth:

My instinct is to act like nothing happened and to move on unless you got a response to that.

Tim Cronin:

And

Erich Vieth:

I don’t know, that’s not very satisfying,

Tim Cronin:

Is it? It’s not.

Erich Vieth:

It is like you just ran away.

Tim Cronin:

And so I have done this and I’ve seen lawyers where they’ll freeze and it’s heavy, uncomfortable air because the jury watches you just fail, they feel uncomfortable, that moment becomes more and more memorable. And over time I’ve come to learn and get comfortable with like, I’m going to get punched in the mouth sometimes. Yes. I’m not. And you can actually take that moment to gain credibility where I’ll go, “You know what? You got me on that one, got me on that one. Let me try to get to another point.” And the tension goes down in the room and they’re like, “This person is credible. I can trust them. I felt uncomfortable. They helped me not feel uncomfortable.”

Ashley Rube:

People love rooting for humans. And that’s why people go watch improv is they want to see humans being human, which is to say not perfect all the time. We don’t trust completely perfect. There’s something a little uncanny about it.

Ryan Myers:

So I feel like you broke the seal on lawyers and pop culture and I’ve been secretly, because you brought up a few good men and I just recently read the entire Lincoln Lawyer series and it’s just a fun series anyway. I really enjoyed it. But one of the things I like about that character just in terms of just presence in the courtroom is exactly like you’re saying, just trying to use a moment and think of how can I use this moment in context for what is being presented to me instead of really fighting back against it. So yeah. I

Ashley Rube:

Have a game for this. Do you want to play another game?

Ryan Myers:

Sure.

Ashley Rube:

I’m curious. You have to play this time too. All right. Okay, great. So this is called mind meld. We’re going to attempt to read each other’s minds, which is not really possible. So it’s going to take a few rounds, which is okay. It’s going to start, Ryan and I are going to look into each other’s eyes and I’m going to try to figure out what he’s thinking. He’s going to try to figure out what I’m thinking and we’re going to say a word at the same time. Okay. Do you have a word in mind. Okay. So you’re going to count to three and we’re going to say it together. Ready?

Tim Cronin:

One, two, three.

Ashley Rube:

Sky. Breakfast. Okay. So you said sky, I said breakfast. So we haven’t arrived at the same word, so I’m going to look at you, Tim, and between sky and breakfast, we’re going to try to figure out the word that connects us in between. It’s between sky and breakfast.

Ryan Myers:

Okay.

Ashley Rube:

Do you have a word in mind?

Ryan Myers:

Sure. Okay.

Ashley Rube:

So y’all are going to count to three?

Ryan Myers:

One, two, three

Ashley Rube:

More. Sunrise. Okay. Sunrise and morning. Good. So now you two, you and Erich are going to turn to each other and try to find the word in between looking into each other’s eyes.

Tim Cronin:

How do we pick a word in between morning and … All right.

Ashley Rube:

Exactly. So now all the other words we’ve already used, you’re kind of going to throw out. We’re not going to recycle them. We’re just going to keep trying to move towards this word we haven’t discovered yet. So sunrise and morning, there’s an idea in between there somewhere.

Announcer:

All

Tim Cronin:

Right.

Ashley Rube:

Yeah. The answer is in each other’s eyes.

Tim Cronin:

You have to look deep into my soul there.

Ashley Rube:

Yeah, there you go. There we go. Okay. Ready? One, two,

Ryan Myers:

One, two,

Ashley Rube:

Three,

Ryan Myers:

Early.

Ashley Rube:

Dawn and early. Okay, good. So you and Ryan, dawn and early.

Ryan Myers:

Dawn and early.

Ashley Rube:

Got something?

Ryan Myers:

Yeah.

Ashley Rube:

One, two, three. Booster.

Tim Cronin:

I mean, I think that’s it.

Ashley Rube:

Bird and

Tim Cronin:

Rooster. A rooster is a bird.

Ashley Rube:

Do you want to get to the same one? Yeah. Okay. One, two, three, chicken. Chicken. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So this is a fun exercise just to get you on the same page, but it sets you up. The challenge with this one is people hate having the wrong word. The thing is there are many words that could make sense. And the goal is not to … When I see people looking at the ceiling or the floor, they’re looking for the right word. When I see them looking at the other person, they’re trying to think of, well, how are you thinking about this? And we get to the word faster when we’re willing to quote unquote fail. I can’t read your mind, so I need to express how I’m thinking and I’m willing to think about you really hard and be like, “What’s the path of least resistance here?

What do I think is going to put us on common ground the fastest?” And then after several rounds, you go, “Oh, actually we got somewhere.” And I think it kind of speaks to that being willing to go, oh, our brains are working a little differently and I have to be flexible to that rather than rigid and frustrated that you didn’t think exactly the way I think because that’s just not probably going to happen most of the time.

Erich Vieth:

So if I can go back to a word you said, Ryan, you said muscle and it seems to me that improv can offer you

Maybe the idea that thinking differently is okay even though we’re so structured. And it’s tough because we live in two worlds that sometimes drive me nuts because the one is highly structured and the one is you want to be creative. What else can I do here? And in the moment, I’ve had this Tim where I stand up in an argument and then some word comes in. It’s like a monkey mind. It’s like banana. And I’m thinking, no, shut up. That has nothing to do with what I’m about to say. And so I want to be able to reach into those alternative ideas because sometimes they’re gold and many times a lot, they’re terrible. So trying to steer that path between what you got to get done, which is often formulaic sometimes. When you’re in front of a judge, they want to hear that the buckets are being filled with evidence.

These buckets, that evidence, and then you can see it on their face like, oh, you filled the buckets with that evidence, good for you. But the other part is like, can I feel it better or with more panache or

Something to make it not just acceptable, but where they go, Bravo, that you really did a good job. And so there’s this tension between what … And hopefully you figured that out before the trial or the motion, but you can’t always because things go wrong. Things happen in unexpected ways. So I’m wondering if this muscle, this practice, because it is like a practice. Tim, you asked what I got out of this. It’s like you can read all the books you want on improv and noth compares to getting up in front of people and doing it. Then you’re feeling it. It’s like, oh, they’re looking at me. The person just talked to me, eight people are waiting for a response. And I think that was very good for me to just get used to saying something, like picking the best thing that made the most sense.

Tim Cronin:

This is usually the first thing that pops in your head oftentimes sometimes.

Erich Vieth:

Because the

Ashley Rube:

First person you say no to is yourself.

Erich Vieth:

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like just getting used to that idea. And so what that plays into is you’re not looking anxious. Hopefully if you do this a bunch of times, you’re not looking as anxious. Ashley, did we look less anxious as the class went on?

Ashley Rube:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You start to have room to have fun because you’re convinced that there’s fun to be had, not just a judgment in anxiety and failure.

Erich Vieth:

In my Worry is that if you’re looking anxious as a lawyer or if a witness looks anxious, it can be misinterpreted as dishonest. And so I want everybody on my team-

Ashley Rube:

To be comfortable. … to

Erich Vieth:

Look comfortable.

Ashley Rube:

Well, I mean, there are a lot of things we train improvisers. We’re actors. So there’s stage craft, there’s character, there’s voice, there’s physical, there’s all kinds of things we do. Same with lawyers, same with a marketing team.

Tim Cronin:

We do the same thing in life, but we do the exact same. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s your tone. It’s flexion. Sure. And there

Ashley Rube:

Are all these special skills to your specific craft, to how you fill the buckets with evidence for a marketing team, how they approach brainstorming. There are all these skills that we’re usually trained really well on in our careers. The goal of improv as a tool that we leverage is to quiet the parts of our nervous system and our self-judgment that crowd those skills and make it hard for those skills to really shine. So it’s not about replacing any skills as a lawyer. It would be, well, how do we calm you down enough so that your incredible mind that is working on crafting an argument and convincing a jury can actually rise to the top rather than get drowned out by the jitters that crop up when things don’t go your way.

Ryan Myers:

And also increase that through building that muscle, increase that batting average when you talked about sometimes you respond in the moment and sometimes it’s gold and then a lot of times it’s tough. I feel that way in improv scenes, especially with new improvisers where it’s like maybe the first thing that is said out of instinct is potentially a harder scene to play because a new improviser doesn’t have as much instinct or as much of a muscle built to make a choice that is generous and creative in serving the scene. But as you do scenes and you do that more and more over time, that muscle gets built and you make better choices more instinctively a higher percentage of the time. And I would imagine for you as well getting that comfort and building that comfort, you’ll be panning for gold a litle bit more often and coming up with gold more often.

Erich Vieth:

There’s good research that when you’re stressed, your ability to see laterally is diminished. So you’ve got more tunnel vision. So if you can actually get more calm, you will see more. And then I think that time slows down a little bit in your own head. So you become better when you’re used to things that are unusual. And I don’t know why I’m thinking about this, but you two sitting here very calmly. Tim, a couple of days ago I was watching as he’s popping a vein on the stage and Ashley is telling him to unclench and he’s shouting it at the top of his voice. I mean, when you get calm and have fun, it’s like you turn into different people. Of course, as a lawyer, we don’t want to shout in the courtroom.

Ryan Myers:

But it is. But also in that context, I am popping a vein and I’m yelling, but I tell my students, I’m like, I’m not actually, I’m doing it. I’m having so much fun. I’m yelling because I am calm. Yeah. That makes sense.

Ashley Rube:

We’re shaking hands under the table like, oh, we’re going to have a good time acting stressed right now and having a fight. But we’re always friends at the end of the show.

Erich Vieth:

So tell us more about where people can find you if they want to take a class, if they want to see a performance, what do they need to do?

Ryan Myers:

Yeah. So like we said, I think towards the top we teach at the improv shop in St. Louis that’s located in The Grove. We have shows every Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And we also have a website that has all of our information on there about classes, about corporate services, and that’s www.theimprovshop.com. As for Ashley and I specifically, we do have an Instagram for our improv team where we post things like shows, updates, things like that. That’s touch baseball improv if you’re so inclined to find that out.

Ashley Rube:

And if you’re interested in learning more about improv in general, we have a Substack called Notes on Improv, but we also, you can reach us on our website. Any of the form fills will come to one of us at some point through the email landscape and you can learn about how your team might benefit from improv or just have a conversation about whether it’s a good fit for you. But we do all kinds of workshops on team building, creative solutioning, managing friction and tough conversations. We build programs for folks. We do a public speaking program. We’ve

Ryan Myers:

Traveled all over doing that as well.

Ashley Rube:

So we love collaborating with groups that think there might be value here but want to have a deeper conversation about what that would look like in their very specific context. So if you’re up for it, we’ll help build it with you.

Tim Cronin:

There’s no profession I can think of that can’t benefit from some aspects or many aspects of what you’re doing in your teaching.

Ryan Myers:

Yeah, because there are people in every profession, there’s always that human element. There are all of these soft skills. No matter how many outlines or frameworks or plans or strategies you have, those things have to move between the people that are implementing them and that’s where a lot of friction lies. And so I do agree. I wish everybody could take an improv class.

Ashley Rube:

But we are going to clip what you said and put that on the website or on our business cards.

Erich Vieth:

Well, yes. And thank you for joining us. This has been awesome.

Ryan Myers:

Yeah.

Ashley Rube:

Thanks for inviting us.

Ryan Myers:

Thank you for having us.

Erich Vieth:

Ashley Rub, Ryan Myers, thank you for joining us.This has been awesome. Oh,

Ashley Rube:

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Erich Vieth:

This has been another episode of The Jury Is Out. I’m Erich Vieth

Tim Cronin:

I’m Tim Cronin. We’ll see you next time.

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