Robert Mattson is the founder and principal at Intrigue Communications and Coaching. He built the firm on...
Judson L. Pierce is a graduate of Vassar College and Suffolk University Law School where he received...
Alan S. Pierce has served as chairperson of the American Bar Association Worker’s Compensation Section and the...
Published: | January 21, 2025 |
Podcast: | Workers Comp Matters |
Category: | Workers Compensation |
Being a good lawyer is a lot about great storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s often not taught in law school. Facts build the case, but effective storytelling wins the case.
Guest Robert Mattson is an experienced corporate communications leader and coach. But his skills go beyond that. He acts in and writes plays. He is also the founder and principal at Intrigue Communications and Coaching. He helps people not simply communicate but also tell a story.
When you’re in front of a jury or arbitrator, you’re performing. It’s part of our everyday lives. Are you consciously telling the story that will help your client achieve the best outcome?
Facts are vital. No argument there. But having the skills to help your audience understand those facts, embrace them emotionally, and understand what they are hearing is every bit as important. Mattson explains how understanding how stories are told makes you a better communicator. It’s more than an art, it’s a science. (Plus, he shares the three most important words in storytelling.)
If you have thoughts on Workers’ Comp law or an idea for a topic or guest you’d like to hear, contact us at [email protected].
Special thanks to our sponsor MerusCase.
“The Salesperson’s Guide To Storytelling,” by Robert Mattson
Announcer:
Workers Comp Matters, the podcast dedicated to the laws, the landmark cases, and the people that make up the diverse world of workers compensation. Here are your hosts, Jud and Alan Pierce.
Judson Pierce:
Hello and welcome to another edition of Workers Comp Matters. This is Jud Pierce from Salem Mass and our firm is Pierce. Pierce and Napolitano. Thank you for tuning in once again. Today we have a special guest on a gentlemen I’ve known for some time, Robert Mattson. He is a principal at Intrigue Communications and Coaching, which is a messaging and marketing consultancy. Rob, welcome. Do you want to talk about how we know each other or should we save that for later?
Robert Mattson:
Well, I think that it’s funny when you meet people outside of their business lives and then you get to know them inside their business lives. I originally knew Jud as an actor, and Jud has actually been in plays. I’ve written, I’ve seen him on stage many times, even though he is a wonderful lawyer and litigator. He is absolutely a wonderful actor from what I hear, a pretty fine musician as well.
Judson Pierce:
Well, thank you so much, Rob, and the same back at you. Rob is a gentleman of many talents folks. He is not only a consultant and a coach, but he is a musician. He’s an author, as he said, he’s an actor and we’re very lucky to have him on the show today. I wanted to bring you on, Rob, because I know that you’ve been speaking a lot lately on the concept of storytelling, and that’s something that we as lawyers don’t really learn a whole lot in law school and we try to learn it on our feet and practice, but we know generally what it is just from watching movies and reading stories. But how is it important in our practice and how can we perfect it?
Robert Mattson:
That’s a great question, Jud, and I think that some people lean away from storytelling because they do see the films and they see the theatricality of it. And they might say, well, that’s not authentic, that’s not real life. I’m not going to use something like that. But the thing is that we, as human beings, we have been learning storytelling our whole lives. And in fact, before there was written tradition, before, there were people writing briefs and books and all these wonderful things that the written word gets used for. There were actually oral traditions, so storytelling. So our brain is actually wired to remember things and stories. In fact, if I told you a fact, a number, let’s say 95% and a day or two, you have not very much chance of remembering that. But if I tell you a story that includes that 95%, you will actually retain that information for 22 times the length you would without the story.
So we are hard coded to embrace stories, and I think as litigators and lawyers, your job is to persuade people. It’s to make them understand information, persuade them to a particular point of view, and get them to lean in your direction when the time comes. And people, there’s an old saying in selling, and by the way, we’re all selling whether it’s selling a product or a point of view, you’re selling when you’re trying to convince your spouse to let you buy a new set of golf clubs. It’s all, why is this a good idea? And when you take a look at the emotionality of selling 95% of decisions to buy, something are made in the unconscious mind where emotions hold sway, and 5% are made it the logical mind. That’s the reason why people say people buy things emotionally and justify with facts. And I’ll prove it to you.
In 2022, there were 160,000 minivans sold in the us but at the same period there were 6 million SUVs. It’s not because SUVs are better at doing the job per se. In fact, oftentimes they’re never taken off road and minivans are probably better for the job. It’s just that people have a stronger emotional attachment to SUVs than they do to minivans. And that’s why people will tend to lean emotionally in a particular direction to make a final decision. And as a litigator, whether you’re doing a bench trial or a jury trial, you are trying to make sure that you’re using every tool you have to shift the persuasion centers of the minds of the people you’re trying to talk to.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah, I mean, we get drowned in facts and evidence and proving the case with hard fact, and that’s important. We’re not saying drop facts altogether here in our query, absolutely
Robert Mattson:
Not.
Judson Pierce:
But to what extent can we incorporate the facts into the storytelling so that they’re sort of washed away?
Robert Mattson:
Well, think of it this way. You’ve got, and again, not being a law professional, but seeing a fair amount of things in media, there are opening statements, there are witnesses and evidence, and there are closing statements. Think of that as kind of your three act story. And that’s the way for every Hollywood blockbuster or fairytale or bedtime story, it’s usually in three acts. And in classic Broadway or Hollywood or an author, there’s act one, the intro, act two, the conflict, act three, the resolution. So you’re doing the same thing in court. Your intro is your opening statement and you’re setting the stage. This is why you’re going to see what you’re going to see, and this is what you’re going to make a decision on. Then your persuasion is when you’re coming in and you’re doing your conflict area, and that’s when you bring evidentiary, I’m not going to use that word. You’re bringing witnesses up and you are getting them to tell the story or you’re showing pieces of evidence which are showing particular facts that are coming up.
Now, you can also bring storytelling elements into the fact telling, because when you’re interviewing a witness, you can get them to tell their story and that can also hold sway with whether it’s a judge or whether it’s a jury. And at the end, you’re making a summation. And the thing is, if you’re doing a jury trial, they’re going off to make a decision, which could take minutes, hours, days, weeks. Who knows? How are they remembering? How are you leaving things with them? Because let’s say your trial segment, let’s say it’s an hour, it’s a short trial, you don’t want to win that hour if the jury goes away, you want to win the five minutes after they leave the room. What are they talking about when they’re sequestered and what do they remember and feel is important? So by using those basic concepts of how are you telling a story in the beginning, how are you leveraging storytelling elements in the middle during your cross-examination or your examination of witnesses, and how are you making a strong case at the end? And it doesn’t have to be overly dramatic, but it has to have some of those human elements. The more human you make it, the more people resonate with it.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. I mean, one of the reasons why I love to kill a Mockingbird so much or Philadelphia is because Atticus Finch played exceptionally in the movie by Gregory Peck or Denzel Washington in the movie Philadelphia crafts their openings and their closings to humanize their client. Tell us a little bit about how we should always think to humanize our client before the judge.
Robert Mattson:
Well, every story has a hero,
And a lot of times when people get caught up in what I call the three Fs features, facts, and functions, they start telling a story that is devoid of that human connection. So if you are a defense attorney and you’re telling the story about what happened on a given evening and what happened in a situation, you might want to add information about the individual, whether even as simple as they were driving home after a long day at work, what does it tell you? Well, they were in transit. We all know what that feels like. Getting caught in traffic that could give us empathy for that individual after a long day at work, meaning, well, they’re a hardworking person, they’re someone that works hard for their family, and if they came home and they were in a car accident, it could get people leaning. It’s like, well, come on.
I’ve been there. I know what it’s like after a long day at work. You’re getting caught in traffic and maybe you weren’t paying attention for a split second you got in an accident. Maybe that gets them leaning saying, okay, it’s human nature, it’s an accident. It’s not something that is as much their fault. And again, it’s not a magic wand, it’s not a silver bullet, but it gets people thinking there are mitigating circumstances just because you use the phrases after a long day work, this person was driving home and maybe he got caught in some horrific traffic. And that’s also something that you might want to use in interviewing the witness. What’s the traffic like that night when you were driving home? It took me, I had been on the road for an hour and a half on my half hour commute. So bringing that information up to bring the emotional background can sometimes help sway people in a particular direction.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah. Alright. Why don’t we take this opportunity to take our first break of the podcast and we’ll be right back with Rob Mattson. And we’re back with storytelling for lawyers with the help of Rob Mattson, coach and consultant and principal of Intrigue. Rob, you left off with us talking about the idea of the truck driver or the long distance employee who’s doing that ride and it’s a lot of traffic, very busy traffic and maybe doses off or loses focus and gets into an auto accident. We’ve had those cases in the workers’ compensation field. What are your ideas in terms of hooking or giving that essential push at the very beginning of a story to get the listeners attention?
Robert Mattson:
Well, that’s important, Jud, because of the way the brain works, unfortunately, I don’t have my physical brain model in front of me and nor can I draw it. But lemme explain a little bit about some of the pieces of the brain and why it’s important to activate certain elements of it for people to really pay attention. So on the outside of the brain is the neocortex, think of that as the language processor of the brain. Now that is the, if I say tree, your brain brings up picture of a tree, book, book, table, table. But if I say, Jud took the book off the table and read it under the tree, that goes into story. So it’s not just a noun, it’s actually a story. And what that’s doing is it’s activating some of the lower parts of your brain, which are used for memory and emotion.
So that is in the limbic system also the hippocampus, which is kind of the fight or flight aspect of your brain. So if you give someone something very, very boring and dry, what happens is the lower parts of their brain start to go asleep. So the key is to open up with something that’s intriguing. You want to capture their attention early, they give them something interesting. So if you go in there, let’s say you’re speaking before a judge and this judge has seen you 10 times before, you don’t want to fall into the habit of just saying the same type of opening you’ve always done takes a little more work, but it’s more important if you want to capture that judge’s attention and get them to think, wow, this person really is going to show me something new. It’s going to get that person to pay attention. If it’s a jury, it’s even more important because I’ve been on a jury and sometimes it’s hard to keep yourself focused on a jury. So storytelling actually can reinvigorate the lower parts of the brain to keep people awake because you need to give them change as you go along. And also, so Jed, I happen to know that you’ve got two lovely children and one’s in college, one’s going to college.
Judson Pierce:
You are correct. Yes,
Robert Mattson:
And yes. So Jud Harper is what? She’s 18 now,
Judson Pierce:
Almost,
Robert Mattson:
Almost 18
Judson Pierce:
Few more months. Okay.
Robert Mattson:
Do you remember the day she was born?
Judson Pierce:
Yes,
Robert Mattson:
I do. Do you remember things that happened on that day?
Judson Pierce:
Absolutely. What did you have for lunch two weeks ago? Tuesday? I would just guess, Rob, I have
Robert Mattson:
No idea. So emotion prioritizes memory. So when you can bring emotional aspects, human aspects to your story,
It makes them more memorable. So the key is you want to open with some intrigue, then you want to make sure that you keep the emotional aspect of that in and you want to give changes because if you change things, whether that’s tonally, you’re changing your delivery, whether it is changing the topic, whether it’s changing the speaker, when you bring up a witness, you’re changing the speaker that reinvigorates the brain and gets people to pay attention, even if it’s moving in court. So standing up, sitting down, it forces the judge or the jury to change where they’re looking. And if you have a chance to walk in the jury, a walk in court, it’s making them move their heads, which again is keeping them awake and keeping them more alert, which makes them more aware of what you’re saying. And when you are in court, whether you’re a prosecutor or a defense attorney, you’re competing against another attorney. If you use these elements of storytelling and they don’t, your information will be valued more highly and remembered longer and be viewed as more important than your competitors. Same goes with the judge. They’re human too.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah, I’m for sure. I believe in that entirely. As actors, you don’t want to stay static on stage. The audience is going to get bored If you’re not moving around and being authentic on stage, if you’re just stationary, people are going to start to tune out. But I’ve had experiences where I’ve had very emotional cases, Rob,
Some of which I’ve won fortunately and some of which I haven’t. And a few of those stick out in my mind because I felt that the emotion would carry the day, right? That the judge would want to try to fit the law to the facts, but for whatever reason, it didn’t materialize. And so what I’m saying is it’s not everything. You could be the best storyteller you could be Jerry Spence, you could be pick other lawyer, fictional or nonfictional you want and be one of the greatest storytellers there is. And that doesn’t guarantee you a victory, but it sure can help. Right?
Robert Mattson:
Think of storytelling is the frosting. You still have to bake a great cake.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah,
Robert Mattson:
And it’s one of those things where from, I work a lot, I work a lot with salespeople because they’re trying to convince people of buying a product every single day. And the things that I always tell them, there are three keyword to being a great communicator, and they’re selfish, lazy, and smug. I’m not saying you have to be any of those. Assume that you’re audience, those are negative words to me. Yeah, assume your audience is a little bit of each. They’re selfish, they want something out of the interaction. So how quickly are you giving them something of value to them?
And the world of sales, a lot of people, they like to credential themselves, tell them all about themselves or their company, or it’s like people don’t care. They want something out of it. So the judge is looking for the points that are going to make it easy for he or she to make a decision. What are the things that are important? The jury is looking for that as well, but they’re not as skilled. So they’re looking for probably learning about the background and also learning about what is the law. And I know that the judge is going to be giving them what’s important legally, but the lawyer is also helping them understand things. So that’s selfish, lazy is none of us want to do a lot of math. We don’t want to have to do a lot of,
Judson Pierce:
That’s why we became lawyers.
Robert Mattson:
But what you’re doing is you’re doing kind of the math of human interaction. So how clear and clean are you making it for your audience to understand it?
And that is looking at from their point of view, not yours, their point of view. Think of who the jury is or who the judge is, what you need to tell them to get them to a point where they understand what you are trying to put forth and then make it simple for them to do it. I see it in the world of sales a lot of times where people put up big slides full of data instead of picking out the important elements of it. In your case, it’s picking out the most important elements of the case.
This is not about, so if you’re doing a case where someone has been there for workman’s comp, this is not a case about falling asleep at a wheel. This is a case about the brakes on the vehicle not being maintained by the company because that person, they woke up at a time where if the brakes were put in the right level of care, they would’ve been able to stop. So you’re trying to get them to shift their thinking to the most important elements that you want them to remember and think about. And smug, we deal with it in the world of sales because people, they know they’re being sold. How are you making the connection with the judge or the jury to say, you’re not just a lawyer trying to get money for their client or get their client off the case, and you are trying to help them understand what is right and making sure that you make that emotional connection with them or the judge. It’s like, your honor, I’m just trying to make this as easy as possible for you to understand what the true facts are. I’m not trying to put anything over on you, I’m just trying to put everything up there so you can make a decision as quickly as possible, because I truly believe that this is the most important elements of this case. So creating that relationship.
Judson Pierce:
No, you said a couple of good things there that resonate.
Robert Mattson:
I’ve got a couple, Jud, it’s really important. I had a couple things that are good.
Judson Pierce:
Well, you’re going to be saying a couple more because we’re going on our last break of the podcast, and we’ll be right back with Rob Mattson and Storytelling for Lawyers. And we’re back with Rob Mattson. Rob, before the break, I was thinking about how as lawyers, were not always in the Courtroom, but we’re behind our desks, we’re on the phones with our clients, and we’re trying to build and maintain our business, our practice. That is something else they didn’t really teach us about in law school, which is the practicality of this business, of retaining and growing our client base. How do we do that effectively by using storytelling?
Robert Mattson:
So the bad part of this, Jud, and we’ll start with the bad before we get to the good, is that anyone can be viewed as a commodity, as good as all the lawyers are. There are a good number of lawyers out there. If you drive down a highway and see a billboard, you’ll know, especially in your area that there’s a lot of advertising. There is the question is when you’re looking at different things, you choose to be a commodity or not. And the way you could fight that is your unique worldview because let’s say you’ve got someone who’s looking for a lawyer, they’re probably going to call two or three or four lawyers and try to get at least a conversation going. And the thing is, are you just going to tell them about your win percentage or how you focus in this area or things like that?
And I would say, no. What you want to do is you want to teach them something of value. This gets back to selfish, lazy, and smug. You want to teach them and show them that you’ve got a unique worldview when it comes to, it’s not about winning the case, it’s about how you maximize your opportunities to win the case, because that’s the work that has to get done. And if you don’t focus on the conversations before, or the research you do before when you get into the Courtroom, your chances are slim. So at your organization, what we do, so Jud Pierce is a lawyer. What I do is I tend to focus a lot on my pre-work because then everything gets easier down the way. And some law firms you talk to, that might not be their focus. So even if it is their focus, by the way, you are choosing to talk about it. So picking something that you feel is a strength of yours and put it in a way that is both unique sounding, but also shows it how it benefits them. Because if someone walks up and says, I can see now we in a podcast, but I can actually see you right now, and I see all of these certificates and diplomas behind you, you’ve done a lot of work to get where you are, but it’s not about you. It’s about how you change the lives of the people you work with.
So the key is to start with a unique worldview, decide what it is as a firm, this is who we are, this is our brand. We’re the people that do the homework before or we’re the people that make sure that everyone in our chain. So you don’t just call up and get someone at the front desk, the person at the front desk, we introduce you to everyone that you’re going to deal with, and you know what their jobs are. So the right people to talk to,
Judson Pierce:
That’s the human connection that builds trust, right?
Robert Mattson:
Yep. It’s about them. It’s about what they get out of it. And I think you have to, at any business, find your unique benefits and then go from inside out. This is what we do to outside in, this is what you get because of what we do. You don’t lead with you, you lead to you. And that’s a key element to any business and how you can use storytelling, tell your client’s stories, not yours.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, I think that this is applicable not only to plaintiff’s lawyers, but to insurance defense lawyers who might be listening to this program too, right? I mean, they’re trying to attract the businesses of business entities rather than people. So they want to represent necessarily a large organization to defend them against claims that might not be meritorious. So this is also applicable to both sides, right, Rob?
Robert Mattson:
Absolutely. And if you are a small firm, you might say, Hey, being a small firm has its advantages. If you’re a large firm, you might say it’s about our breadth and our depth. So you pick the things that, what do they get out of those arguments,
Judson Pierce:
Right? Right. Well, you’ve been doing this a long time. Sounds like it to me anyway, but I know you have other interests. Tell the audience just briefly who you are and how people can reach you if they want to retain you and your good advice and counsel, how can they get in
Robert Mattson:
Touch? Well, you can simply go to intrigue.cc no.com, no.org, no.edu, intrigue.cc, and you can connect. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I post a lot of things about you do. The way I see the world of business and the way I also see the world of the world. I posted something today about shooting some photography at a college basketball game and sharing that with the visiting team because I was doing it to practice. But I thought, Hey, I’ve got these photos. Some are pretty decent. Lemme send it to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and let them get the benefit. I wasn’t looking for payment or attribution. I just had something that I thought could help the world. As I tell my son who’s a year older than your daughter,
I tell Sam, I said, Sam, try to make the world a little bit better when you go to bed than it was when you got up. That might be letting someone in traffic and if it is, you’re in good shape. But yeah, I do a lot of work for a lot of different people. It’s all under storytelling, whether it’s story creation, how do you represent your company, how do you create those stories and that brand that leads people to you to coaching. I do a lot of workshops with companies about how do you wrap stories around your messaging to things like photography and video work as in fact, I was fortunate enough, Jed, to work with you and I shot your pictures for your law firm.
Judson Pierce:
Yeah, we probably have to renew those because I think I had a little bit of hair on the top of the dome a few years ago. It’s completely gone now, thanks to the hard work we do. But I also wanted to mention to the folks out there that you have a book coming out that I noticed on LinkedIn could tell us a little bit about the book.
Robert Mattson:
Sure. It’s kind of a consolidation of a two day workshop that I give on storytelling. It is called The Salesperson’s Guide to Storytelling and it’s Wind Deals by being more intriguing, persuasive, and memorable. It’s going to come out on Amazon on February 4th. It’s a Tuesday. I didn’t want to get involved with all the Monday activity, so I’m released on a Tuesday. There’ll be print, a paperback version, a Kindle version, and
Judson Pierce:
I will be doing an audiobook version of it in March as well. That’s excellent. Rob travels, so if you’re listening Out of state, out of Massachusetts, Rob, we’ll come to you. I know he’s a wanted man around these parts, so thank you again, Rob, so much for being such a good friend these years and for being such a great professional and coming on the program and telling us what we really need to think about, which is storytelling and being authentic so we can persuade. Absolutely. Thanks, Jen. It’s been a pleasure. For all of you listening out there, thank you for listening. And remember, make it a Day That matters. Take care.
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Workers' Comp Matters encompasses all aspects of workers' compensation from cases and benefits to recovery.