by Jeff J. Keiser, JD, December 2020.
Know your audience. This isn’t just good advice for your legal career. It’s advice for life. But in order to really understand why, we have to go back to the basics of communication itself. In fact, we should start with asking what communication even is.
What is communication?
When we communicate, the goal is to convey information. It doesn’t matter whether that information is high-level legal theory or what you want for dinner. To communicate is to give information to another person. That means that we, as the sender, have to deliver to someone else, the reader. Think about it. The writer or sender of information is only half of the equation. The reader is the other half, and they don’t get nearly the attention they deserve when it comes to communication, especially legal writing.
Impacts of Forgetting Your Audience
Have you ever been forced to sit in a lecture or discussion about a subject that you didn’t understand? I have. I remember being sent to a seminar about how oil wells worked, and while I’m a skilled litigator and attorney, hard sciences are less my friend. Sitting in this seminar, hearing words and numbers buzz over my head, I realized that the people giving the presentation were not thinking about me at all. They had ignored their audience, and I was lost as a result. Ok. Maybe they didn’t ignore the entire audience, as the rest of the room appeared enthralled, but as to me, I was most certainly forgotten.
This happens all the time. We forget or ignore who we’re talking to, and our communication suffers for it. If we’re writing or speaking with a client, we need to factor in their background and how it relates to the communication. Maybe the client is an attorney, and we can get right to the point. Or maybe they’re an elderly woman, who may need a bit more care. Maybe your boss is very serious and very strict. Or maybe they’re light-hearted and like to see wit from people. These are all things that we learn over time through our relationships, but it’s important to remember them before we start writing or speaking.
So who is the audience?
It’s different or each writing. If we know who the person is, we know the audience. Of course, we know people better or worse than others, so our knowledge bank helps us know our audience better. Maybe we just know someone’s name. But even that can tell us something about our audience. And as I was recently reminded in one of my classes, we have to be careful with stereotypes. Use them but use them carefully.
Sometimes, we may be asked to write or speak to someone that we don’t know, and that’s where knowing your audience really becomes a challenge. But we’re lawyers! And that makes us smart! What do we do when we don’t know something that we need to know? We research! Social media can often tell you a lot about a person, even if you don’t know them personally.
At the end of the day, knowing your audience is a skill that takes practice. It’s one of the little things we can do to make our writing just a bit better.
My number one tip is to at least think about the person reading your document, even if you have to make it up in your head. How will they read it (paper, online, phone, tablet)? Where will they read it (home, office, bus)? What do they physically look like? One you make your mental image of this ‘audience,’ at least you have this person in mind while you’re writing, and your message will come out in one tone.
