The Next Conversation

From communication expert Jefferson Fisher, the definitive book on making your next conversation the one that changes everything

No matter who you’re talking to, Chapter 1

Never Win an Argument

I don't trust you as far as I can throw you!" he bellowed. In all honesty, it was a compliment. He could've thrown me pretty far.

In his tan coveralls with a white oval patch that had "LaPray" embroidered in black on the upper left pocket, Bobby LaPray glared at me with enough heat to burn a hole through my suit jacket.

I generally don't know what someone looks like before I meet them at their deposition. Whatever I pictured Bobby LaPray looking like, it wasn't this. Sitting at the conference room table waiting for people to arrive, I looked up to see a half human, half giant. His outline took up the whole doorway. Naturally, I stood up and walked over to him to shake his hand and introduce myself.

"Jefferson Fisher," I said with a smile.

"Hmph. Bobby," he muttered.

Now, I'm not a small guy. I'm over six feet tall. But I barely came up to Bobby LaPray's chest. He was an absolute mountain. As we shook hands, the squeeze from his ginormous callused hands left an imprint on mine like a scene from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I'd never been around someone so physically intimidating.

The case involved a bar fight, and I was representing a bystander who had gotten caught up in the scuffle. As part of the case, I needed to depose Bobby LaPray, a witness to the events. In a deposition, I get the chance to ask people questions under oath, typically to learn what they know before they testify at trial.

Clockwise around the antique conference room table sat the court reporter writing everything down, Bobby LaPray, the opposing attorney, and me. After asking Bobby to raise his right hand and placing him under oath, the court reporter gave her customary nod for me to begin.

I asked Bobby LaPray routine questions about his background and what had led up to the fight. They were easy, open-ended questions: What time did you arrive? Who did you talk to first? Did you see so-and-so or do this-and-that? It's common to use such questions to build a chronology of the events from a witness's particular point of view. At all times, I made sure I was kind and polite-90 percent because that's my personality and 10 percent out of sheer self-preservation. He was not someone I wanted upset.

But no matter how many softball questions I asked, Bobby LaPray was becoming increasingly agitated. I had seen it enough times in my experience to know. His eyebrows began furrowing with each answer. A sign of negative emotion. His breathing got heavier as he switched from exhaling through his nose to exhaling through his mouth. A sign of increased stress. He started wringing his massive hands together as he spoke. A sign of anxiety.

It didn't matter what I did. It seemed as if just my existence in the room offended him. I could sense the tension around the table heightening the more displeased Bobby LaPray looked. Like I was blowing up a balloon and it was about to pop.

Finally, I asked him, "Mr. LaPray, would you like a break?"

The room went silent.

"No," Bobby LaPray said, clearing his throat. "But I got something to say."

His words rang out louder than necessary. So much so that the court reporter jumped. I quickly glanced at the other attorney, who couldn't have been younger than sixty-five. He looked more nervous than I was. When we locked eyes, he gave me a wide-eyed look and slowly shook his head as if to say, "If this goes south, you're on your own." I turned back to look at my witness.

"Yessir?" I inquired.

Bobby LaPray took a big breath in. "You can cut all this buddy-buddy stuff."

Except he didn't say "stuff."

"You lawyers are the worst thing to happen to America," he continued. "All you do is lie."

He slammed his hand on the table, then drew it upward with a pointed finger at me, saying, "So go on and ask me your stupid questions. Just know, I don't trust you as far as I can throw you! I'm tellin' you, lawyers are the worst thing to happen to this country," he repeated.

The court reporter gave an anxious look.

At that moment, a hundred thoughts raced through my mind.

First, I'm well accustomed to this derogatory stereotype of attorneys, especially personal injury attorneys. I try very hard to work against it, though it's a reputation that some attorneys, frankly, rightly deserve. So a put-down joke or snide remark about my profession is nothing new. I understood.

Second, I didn't blame him for not trusting me. Not because I was trying to mislead him, but because to his mind, I represented all the bad things he ever thought he knew or had heard of about the law, lawyers, and "the system." Of course he had no reason to trust me. I understood.

It was the "stupid questions" that got me.

I know good and well that I do many, many stupid things every day. But what I don't do is ask stupid questions.

In that instant, a wave of anger surged through me. I felt my whole body go tense. My ears got hot as I shifted my weight in my seat. I could sense that I was becoming defensive. My questions up to that point had barely scratched the surface. Nothing about them had been difficult or even uncomfortable. Stupid? I'll show him stupid, I thought. I felt myself wanting to come back with quips about his size in relation to his intelligence. Just a few well-placed cutting words and I'd best him. I tried to tell myself that his reaction was all I needed to know about who he truly was.

But I'd been wrong before.

When I was in third grade, my school started a reading buddy program, pairing strong readers with those who hadn’t learned yet. That’s how I got paired with Evan. Twice a week, we’d sit on beanbags during our library period. I’d listen as he would struggle to read aloud books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.

Evan was physically much bigger than I was. Back then, I had a hard time understanding how he was so big but couldn't read. When he'd come across a word he didn't know, my job was to help him sound it out. But he still struggled. So I figured out ways to explain things to him differently, like associating words with memorable phrases or creating metaphors on the fly with whatever was near us in the room. I got good at crafting little tricks that engaged Evan's interests, making harder ideas more memorable.

Sometimes we'd do our reading sessions during our lunch period. While I'd pull out my lunch in a brown bag with a handwritten smiley face on it that my momma had made me that day, I'd watch as a teacher would bring him a tray from the cafeteria.

Evan's momma didn't make his lunch. I began to notice that his clothes never seemed to fit him, like they were three sizes too big.

Once, when we were going over throw, threw, and through, I tried to help by relating it to how he'd throw a ball to his dad.

Evan flatly replied, "I don't know who my dad is."

I vividly remember feeling as though I couldn't move my mouth. I was speechless. My heart broke for him. I'd later learn that Evan had been living with his grandparents. His dad had left shortly after he was born. His mom was in jail. But in third grade, I had no grasp of his reality. No clue about the true struggles he was facing. With two loving parents who read and told stories to me at night, I knew then that he was living in a world I knew nothing about.

As we continued over that fall semester and into the next year, Evan's reading level improved with each session until he was reading all on his own. I couldn't have been prouder. Exposure to Evan's inner struggles was another defining moment in my life at an early age. And it was a lesson I've never forgotten.

Zinging a p…