Speaker Bruce Givner is a Top Rated Super Lawyer

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Speaking at Sacramento Estate Planning Council
12 Oct

Bruce Givner of Givner and Kaye, APC is a frequent speaker and has been top rated by Super Lawyers.  Bruce has been selected every year since 2013.

Bruce’s specialties include tax law and estate planning.  Bruce recently spoke at our Asset Protection program and our Advanced Estate Planning program and shared his expertise and insight with our attendees.

Bethany Woodard Kristovich is our newest Featured Speaker

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12 Oct

Bethany Woodard Kristovich of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP is our newest Featured Speaker!

Bethany is a litigation partner at her firm’s Los Angeles office.  Bethany focuses her practice on complex litigation with a particular emphasis in trial work.

Bethany will be sharing her insight and experience at our 11th Annual Superior Court Boot Camp this October 21st in Los Angeles.  If you or someone you know if new to superior court you won’t want to miss hearing from Bethany or the rest of our top-notch panel.  This will be Bethany’s third time speaking at our Superior Court Boot Camp, and for good reason.  Bethany always gets top reviews from our attendees and provides valuable insights.

3 last PowerPoint mistakes to avoid

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11 Oct

Final words on PowerPoint — the visual aid I wish we could live without. Check previous blogposts in this series for some help in how to have a less-awful PowerPoint experience. But even after you’ve gotten the right attitude about not using your slides in place of an outline, and after you’ve paid attention to getting the best slides in terms of text, graphics and your delivery, there are still a couple issues that can trip you up badly about integrating PowerPoint seamlessly into your presentation.

  1. Always be sure to test your slides – all of them -– as soon as you get your A/V materials ready. Project them in a large room onto a screen or the wall so you can see them as they will appear to your audience. Besides any last typos, check to see if the colors work, if the type is legible or too small, if your slides are too cluttered, etc. There’s a big difference sometimes between how things looked on your computer screen and how they appear projected up on a screen.
  2. Practice using your slides prior to giving your presentation. Integrate them into your practice sessions until that you can transition without glitches. And work out any other kinks you’re experiencing, or, if need be, re-do your slides to eliminate the difficulties. This is especially critical if you will be presenting in a courtroom. This will help make your presentation smooth and polished.
  3. Make sure you work with your slides, and finalize them, at least a week in advance. You want to give yourself time to make any adjustments necessary. Last minute changes can be difficult and, at times, expensive. Always make sure you give your slide deck to the organizers (if you aren’t using your own laptop) by the deadline they have given. It is incredibly risky — not to mention rude — to email a slide deck to the organizers on the night before a presentation or, worse, to show up at the event and hand a flash drive to the on-site person and expect them to make it all work perfectly for you.

How to deliver a less awful PP presentation

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10 Oct

If you have been tuned in you’ve got some tips on get the most from the text and the graphics on your PowerPoint slide, even though I’m no fan of PowerPoint. But now that you’ve got some slides that are hopefully not-awful, here are considerations about how to present. This may seem like common sense, but I have seen good speakers lose major points by bad PowerPoint delivery.

 

Your audience is still out there

Number one rule: Do not, and I mean do not, deliver your presentation directly to your visual aid!

Think about it this way: When you have a conversation with a friend over coffee or dinner, do you want to be looking at the side or back of his or her head? No, of course not. Nor does your audience. Turning and delivering your presentation to the screen is a horrible habit that far too many speakers indulge. Train yourself not to do it (or skip the Power Point altogether).

Of course, if you are doing as I suggested and working from a speaker’s outline instead of using your slides as a substitute, you shouldn’t have any problem following this rule. If, God forbid, you are using slides as your speech outline, at least look at your laptop while you talk and not the screen behind you. After all, it’s not as if it were the bad old days of overheard projectors where you had to make sure they were right side up! Be grateful for technological improvements, and face forward!

 

3 (more) rules to better PowerPointing

  1. Timing, timing, timing — When using slides, always allow your audience the time it takes to absorb the impact of what is on the slide – especially when your slide packs powerful visuals. If you don’t feel like you can take that much time, then you need to cut down the number of slides you are using. The correct solution is never to rush through your slides so fast that your audience gets irritated with you. Either take your time or don’t bother.
  2. Blanks are better than mixed messages — “Blank” your screen or use empty slides when you are not talking about what is on the screen. I recommend learning how to “blank” your screen using a toggle (press on/press off) switch on your computer. Usually it is Control F5, but it depends on the laptop – ask your IT person or read your manual. It is important to blank the screen (or use blank slides at key locations) when you have moved on to a new topic because talking about one concept while another concept is up on the screen is distracting for your audience.
  3. Screen placement — Talk to the event organizers prior to your presentation and make sure the screen is off to the side and is not the center of attention. This may sound counterintuitive, but the simple truth is that the audience is there to hear you speak. You, in turn, are there to talk with them. Therefore, you should be at the center of attention. The last thing you need is a 6’-8’ screen in the front of the room, dominating the space, while your podium is pushed off to the side. Command the focal point of the room yourself.

Hon. Cesar Sarmiento (Ret.) is our latest Featured Speaker!

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05 Oct

Hon. Cesar Sarmiento (Ret.) of Judicate West is our latest Featured Speaker!

Hon. Cesar Sarmiento (Ret.) is a distinguished former Settlement Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.  Judge Sarmiento served for twenty six years and led hundreds of successful settlement conferences in cases across a broad span of practice areas.

Judge Sarmiento has spoken at several of our programs and always gets great reviews from our attendees and is great to work with.  Judge Sarmiento will be speaking at our 11th Annual Superior Court Boot Camp on October 21st in Los Angeles.

Speaker Kalpana Srinivasan is featured in “Women Leaders in Tech Law” by The Recorder

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Kalpana Srinivasan of Susan Godfrey is a frequent speaker at many of our programs and is the featured attorney in “Women Leaders in Tech Law.”  Kalpana has spoken at our Federal Court Boot Camp in Los Angeles for the last three years as well as our Employment Law program in 2013 and always provides useful information for our attendees.

Congratulations, Kalpana!  You can read the full interview by The Recorder here.

Hon. Brian R. Van Camp (Ret.) is our latest Featured Speaker!

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Hon Brian R. Van Camp, (Ret.) of ADR Services is our latest Featured Speaker!

Judge Van Camp of ADR Services has been speaking for us since our 2013 Superior Court Boot Camp.  We have asked him back to speak at our Superior Court Boot Camp every year since then because he gets top notch reviews from our attendees, is great to work with and is instrumental to the planning process

Judge Van Camp spent twelve of his almost sixteen years on the bench as a trial judge and has tried a wide variety of cases, involving disputes among businesses, partnerships and shareholders, real estate financing, construction defects, employment and wrongful termination, trade secret, medical malpractice and personal injury and served as an “all purpose” judge in complex cases.

If you have associates in your office who are new to Superior Court send them to learn from Judge Van Camp at our 11th Annual Superior Court Boot Camp in San Francisco on October 14th.

What goes into a strong conclusion?

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Your conclusion should be as simple as your introduction.

  1. Summarize your three main points
  2. Make a reference to and/or utilize the attention-getting device you used in your introduction

One effective way to provide closure — with solid impact — is to refer to the attention-getting device you used to kick off your presentation. You may want to refer to the story you told, or maybe you repeat one of the statistics you used. Re-telling a joke obviously won’t work, since everyone will already know how it goes — and this is another reason not to use a joke in an introduction. But you can integrate the punchline of the joke, as you would a the moral of a fable, into the fabric and ending point of your message.

How you remind everyone of your attention-getter will vary, but it is important to work it into your message and use it to drive home your theme. If I have used a quote, for example, to kick off my speech, I will repeat it again. And I not only make reference to it — I use that same quote and incorporate it into my concluding points. This is an important difference: I don’t just re-state the quote — I work it into my theme to drive home my message.

This speaking technique requires you think about what you’re going to say at the end of your presentation almost as much as you think about what you are going to say at the beginning, Furthermore, it requires you to create the body of your presentation before you create either your intro or your conclusion. That may seem counter-intuitive, and it may seem like more work. But trust me, it pays off well in firmly planting your message.

Mara Feiger is the latest Featured Speaker on the Pincus Pro Ed website!

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Mara Feiger of Mara W. Feiger, Attorney at Law is the latest Featured Speaker on the Pincus Pro Ed website!

Mara is an experienced criminal litigator and a California Bar Certified Specialist in Criminal Law.

Mara spoke for us previously at our 2013 Criminal Law Boot Camp in California and at our Exam Prep Course: California Criminal Law Specialist Exam. Mara was instrumental in the planning process for the exam prep course. She is well liked by our attendees who rate her teaching skills and knowledge base as outstanding.

If you need to brush up on your criminal law skills be sure to check out the recorded programs at the links above.