Darren: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking with Scott Walker, who worked in the legal profession and now works for the legal profession, helping lawyers and solicitors become more confident and better speakers.
Why would solicitors need more confidence? Let’s find out from Scott how he does that, how he markets his business and the kinds of people he helps.
You describe yourself as an introverted lawyer. What exactly is an introverted lawyer?
Scott: That’s a great question to start with. I’ve had a long journey with this, actually. It’s funny you should mention it because I did a TEDx talk last November on this very topic:
Why the world needs introverted lawyers.
An introverted lawyer is somebody who recognises their unique strengths as an introvert. For me, I realised I was able to help clients more easily and in a better way by listening and tapping into some of those natural abilities of an introvert.
There’s certainly the listening side and the empathy side. Everybody, whether introverted or extroverted, is perfectly capable of being empathetic. However, from my experience, I’ve learned that it can be there naturally to a degree. I was able to tap into it more because I understood it better and what it actually meant.
That’s probably a long-winded answer.
Darren: What’s the fundamental distinction between an introvert and an extrovert?
The reason I ask is that, as I understand it, an introvert gets energy and power from within, whereas an extrovert gets energy and power from other people.
I’ve taken tests along these lines before. I did one, although I forget the name of it, involving a wheel that tested assertiveness, confidence and various other things. My empathy came out at one per cent.
I’ve always thought of myself as an extrovert because I like being on a stage and being in front of other people. I get more energy when I perform in front of other people, hence running this podcast.
However, I also really like being alone, and I don’t like situations where I have to make small talk with people. I hate one-to-ones. No offence regarding this podcast, but I hate talking to people on a one-to-one level because you’ve really got to concentrate and listen. I find it very taxing.
What exactly is the difference?
Scott: It is very much about energy, and I think that’s typically where the definitions lie.
Introverts get their energy from having quiet time, being alone and spending less time with people. We still need connection because it’s a human instinct to want to connect with others.
Darren: Absolutely.
Scott: From my experience as an introvert, it’s more about one-to-one connection.
The energy definition is absolutely spot on. As you were saying, it’s the reverse for extroverts. They get their energy from being with people and generally like a lot of connection.
There is a scale. None of us sits neatly at one end of the spectrum. You couldn’t be a pure introvert, for want of a better phrase. You will sit somewhere along that scale.
Other terminology has been developed over the years. An ambivert is somebody who has a mixture of both. There are also terms for people who can switch between the two.
It is always adapting and evolving. It depends on our environment, what we’re doing and the people we’re with.
I’ve realised, from both personal and professional experiences, particularly from a professional perspective, what it means to be an introvert in the working world. That’s where you begin to identify some of the natural strengths I speak about.
It’s really about self-awareness, but it’s connected to who we are, how we like to show up and what our personality style is.
Darren: There will be a lot of people who are introverts, perhaps younger people, teenagers or even children, who think, “I’m never going to be able to go to a business meeting and stand up and talk in front of people. I’m never going to be able to give a presentation.”
I remember being at university and having to give a presentation in front of the whole year. Some of us, like me, threw ourselves into it. Others were so nervous that some of them didn’t even turn up. They avoided it.
The question I’m getting to is that some really famous performers, such as Michael Jackson, were introverts. I mention him because I’m going to see the film today with my daughter.
Michael Jackson was an introvert, even though he would perform on stage in front of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
How can introverts overcome the challenges of being introverted to deliver a performance like that? You delivered a TEDx talk. If you’re an introvert standing in front of people, cameras and an audience, once that clock starts and you step onto the red spot, you can’t have a do-over. You can’t go back and start again. All the pressure is on you.
How were you able to do that?
Scott: I think there are a couple of things.
I find this so interesting because you’re right. There are many great speakers who are introverted, both throughout history and today.
For me, one part has been…
Acceptance, which connects with the self-awareness piece.
It’s about understanding exactly what introversion means for me as a person, because it will be different for everybody, and then accepting that.
Coming from the legal profession, I always thought I had to be somebody else. I thought I had to be performing. I masked a lot, and I still do to some extent. I think that was because of what the profession and society were perhaps expecting. The legal profession in particular is often seen as a very extroverted profession.
It wasn’t until I thought, “Actually, I’m just going to accept who I am. This is who I am, and it doesn’t matter because we are all so different.”
That helped. It was almost an epiphany. I felt that, if I could take away what was expected, I could simply show up and do some of the things I didn’t expect I could do, including public speaking, training and lecturing.
The other part is preparation.
As introverts, some of us are quite detail-orientated, which means we like to prepare. That helps so much with public speaking.
Again, everybody is different. Some people prefer to speak naturally and off the cuff, but preparation can help relieve the nerves a little and at least gives you a starting point.
Darren: Because you’re able to prepare so much, that gives you control, which fits the introverted personality.
Even though you’re standing in front of people, talking, and anything could happen, chances are it won’t because you’ve prepared so much. You know exactly what you’re going to say and how the talk is going to go.
Scott: Absolutely. Control is a great way of saying it.
It’s about having that cushion and the ability to keep something in the back of your mind, so you have an answer if you get stuck.
It doesn’t always work like that. From my experience, in some instances I’m actually quite good at not preparing and simply speaking off the cuff.
It depends on the subject matter and whether you’re talking about something you’re passionate about. That always helps, doesn’t it?
Darren: Absolutely.
You’re a public speaker and a professional speaker. Is that something that came before the TEDx talk?
Scott: It started before then, very much so. It began through lecturing.
I became a visiting lecturer for a university, and that led to more training and speaking, which eventually led to the TEDx talk.
Darren: What was the application process like for the TEDx talk?
I’ve done one myself, and I didn’t get in the first time I applied. I had to apply a second time because the theme didn’t fit.
The process can be quite rigorous in terms of how you deliver a talk. Some TEDx events can be very specific about making sure you say every word as agreed. They want to know exactly what you’re going to say.
What was your experience like?
Scott: I consider myself quite lucky because I had an advantage. The TEDx event was organised by the University of Law, which is where I lecture.
They approached me, although there was still an application stage. We had an initial interview in which we talked through potential subjects, and there were some standard questions. It then went to a selection committee, which made the decisions about the speakers.
After being accepted, they needed to see the script. We submitted our outlines and then a full script closer to the event. There were rehearsals and lots of support in between.
One of the good things, from my experience, was that support was there if you needed it. You could talk things through, or get feedback if you wanted it.
It wasn’t quite as rigorous as some events, including what you’ve probably experienced, but I was a little lucky, to be fair.
Darren: The one I did was through Chester University. I think the ones that go through academia seem to be easier because, as you say, they often approach people within academia to take part. They’ll approach professors, alumni and students.
When I did mine, one of the professors went first, and he didn’t want to do it. He was being made to do it by the university. Although you’re not supposed to go up there with notes, he went up and read the whole thing because he said, “If I’m going to be made to do it, I’m going to do it how I want to do it.”
He went first, read it and then left. He was gone. It was a very strange experience.
How have you found that doing a TEDx talk has helped you with your professional speaking? Has it been something you’ve been able to trade on?
Scott: It has absolutely helped me from a learning perspective and in getting better at public speaking.
I find the whole experience quite difficult to put into words. It was a goal of mine, so actually doing it was great, but…
The whole process was challenging.
It made me think a lot about speaking and communicating. It also gave me the prompt to seek some help.
I did get some help preparing the TEDx talk, and I’m so happy I did because that helped me understand professional speaking a little more.
It helped me get my ideas into a talk that would make sense and hopefully have some impact.
As a learning experience, it has been amazing. I’ve used the skills I developed from it ever since.
As with anything, we’re constantly learning, adapting, trying new things and testing new material. It will be an ongoing process.
Darren: It is something you’d recommend for anyone looking to become a public or professional speaker, then? Doing a TEDx talk is definitely worthwhile?
Scott: One hundred per cent.
I would recommend it so much. Going through that process and having the whole experience is worth it.
It is a challenge, as you will know, but it is very rewarding.
Darren: How pleased were you with how the talk went in the end?
Scott: On the day, I was pleased. I remember feeling that I delivered it as well as I could.
In comparison with my rehearsals and practice, I delivered it much better on the day than I had in any of the rehearsals, so that felt good.
I haven’t watched it back yet.
Darren: You’ve really not watched it back?
Scott: I haven’t. I know.
I’ve probably watched the first few minutes. I think I got to about three minutes in, but I’m not sure why I haven’t watched the rest.
I think I’ve just been trying to find the right moment to pluck up the courage to watch it. I know I need to watch it so I can see what I’m doing.
Darren: You need to review your talk, criticise yourself and see what you could have done differently. What would you change?
I’ve watched mine back so many times.
Did you get professional photographs from it as well?
Scott: Yes, they took some photographs for us, which was really helpful.
I also had footage from a few supporters in the crowd. They helped with some photos and footage as well.
Darren: I’ve got mine on the back of a business card.
Scott: Excellent. That’s a great idea.
Darren: It has a QR code that you can scan to go straight to the video and watch the TEDx talk.
Scott: Brilliant.
Darren: It’s important that people watch it. You’ve got to get it out there.
In terms of your public and professional speaking now, what sort of gigs do you do, and how do you get the work?
Scott: A lot of the work I do at the moment is virtual.
Darren: Okay.
Scott: I’ve certainly found that, in the legal space, there is a lot of demand for virtual training and speaking.
There is a mixture, but I don’t think it has gone back to the levels it was at previously, so a lot of it is virtual.
I do a lot of associate-style work for well-known providers and organisations within the area of law in which I specialise.
That has been a great way of becoming visible and allowing people to get to know me and understand the work I do. It’s also a great way of helping their audiences and delivering training for them.
I also get work through LinkedIn. I’ve found LinkedIn to be a huge part of my marketing strategy since I became self-employed.
I’m probably only scratching the surface of what it can actually do, but I find that people see you, recommend you and approach you directly. I’ve had a lot of opportunities through LinkedIn.
Darren: LinkedIn will only work if you make it work. You have to use it and post on it.
What sort of things do you do that get you seen as the expert in your industry?
Scott: I’ve been on a bit of a journey with LinkedIn and have tried lots of different things.
What has really helped me is sharing my story
…and being honest about my experiences within the legal profession.
I’ve started talking a lot more about well-being in the legal profession and some of the challenges the profession faces.
I think that has helped people trust me and see that I’m somebody who is willing to have those types of conversations.
That has increased since I first started doing it. I became self-employed in 2022, and even within this relatively short space of time, there are now so many lawyers posting. It’s fantastic to see because we are beginning to have more interesting and important conversations.
Sharing what I’m doing has also helped. There is a lot to be said for social proof and telling people what your week looks like and what you’ve been doing.
Even if it’s just a quick post saying you’re going to an event, it shows that you’re out and about and doing things.
Darren: You’re keeping yourself in people’s minds.
Scott: Absolutely.
Darren: Do you have a fixed strategy for what you do on LinkedIn, or do you post as and when you think there’s something worth sharing?
Scott: I’ve done quite a bit of training in LinkedIn, so I’ve learned some of the tricks.
I used to have a strategy because I connected my content with webinars. I used to do a lot of webinars.
Darren: What platform did you use for the webinars?
Scott: I used Zoom, and I still do when I go back to them.
Darren: Zoom Webinar?
Scott: Yes.
Darren: You were posting on LinkedIn and referencing the webinar, including when it was, what time it started and how people could sign up?
Scott: Exactly.
I used LinkedIn Events as a way of marketing it, but it was also connected to my content.
I would have a strategy for the lead-up to the webinar. I’d post educational content about the subject, what I was doing and what the webinar was going to be about. I’d then show that I was delivering it.
Between those posts, I would publish personal posts, journey posts and what I call connection posts.
It was still a mixture, but it was more focused because I had something happening around it. It was a good way of planning.
I noticed it was easier to have a content strategy because you could select particular types of content to create.
Darren: What types of content were you doing?
I’m interested in how you were promoting the webinar. Was it a mixture of video, images and text?
Scott: Most of the content I did, and still do, was written, normally with a picture.
I tended to focus on text and picture posts. I have done video in the past, which works quite well.
The good thing about the webinars was that they gave you video content. You could repurpose the footage and post it.
Darren: Excellent.
Scott: You could also put links to it on your YouTube channel, which helped with the video side.
Most of my content has been text and images.
Darren: Was LinkedIn the only thing you were using to promote the webinars?
Scott: It was the main source I had.
Some people came through my email list, which was very small at the time. I would also promote it through people I knew. Anybody within my network who was willing to share it could help spread the word.
I think I used Facebook at the time as well.
Darren: Was that paid or organic?
Scott: Just organic.
Darren: How many people were you getting on each webinar, and how regularly were you running them?
Scott: The idea was for them to be monthly.
I didn’t give it long enough, in all honesty. As I’ve learned since, consistency seems to be so important. I guess it depends on your business model and what else you’re doing, but monthly was the plan.
I managed to do them for six months in total.
Had I carried on, I think the consistency would have led to higher numbers.
Considering it was all organic, I think I was getting between 30 and 40 people.
Darren: All right.
Scott: It varied throughout that six-month period, and of course you get people dropping off.
Darren: Of course.
On the webinars, were you signing people up for a consultation call afterwards, or were you selling a service directly from the webinar?
Scott: Consultation calls were my call to action. I framed them as strategy calls.
At the time, that was slightly easier for what I was selling, which was mainly legal services.
For the work I was doing, it was important to understand a little about the client’s background. It was easier to have a consultation call so I could get to know the clients and they could ask me questions.
I know that selling directly from webinars can also be useful.
Darren: It can be, but that’s a skill in itself.
Scott: Definitely.
Darren: If you were selling legal services, that wasn’t aimed at the legal profession, which is your target market now.
Was that aimed at businesses or individuals?
Scott: Businesses and individuals. That was before the pivot into full-time training and speaking.
Darren: What made you stop the webinars? What made you decide you’d had enough?
Scott: If I’m being honest, it was a lot of work.
Darren: They are, aren’t they? They’re a commitment.
Scott: That’s a great way of saying it.
It’s a huge undertaking. You might see a spike in attendance at the beginning because it’s something new and people may not have seen it before, but maintaining that is difficult.
There’s a lot of outreach and messaging, and I struggled with that, in all honesty.
It was also around the time I knew I wanted to move away from client work, so I think that played a part.
The funny thing was that they worked.
Darren: Yes.
Scott: It was a great way of meeting people, generating interest, nurturing clients and getting people into your world.
I absolutely saw the benefits of doing them.
It was a mixture of changing what I was doing and realising there was a lot of work involved. With the AI tools we have now, some of that work can potentially be taken away.
Darren: That’s true.
We used to do webinars either monthly or every six weeks, and I was the one delivering them. I absolutely hated them.
They were always done at either six or seven o’clock at night, so you’d finish at eight or nine. I despised doing them.
They worked. We sold from them, but performing to nobody drains your energy. It’s really energy-sapping, and afterwards you get this huge comedown. You feel like you can’t do anything. You’re so tired, you don’t want to speak to anyone and you don’t want to do anything at all.
The next morning, it feels like you’ve had a heavy night, even though all you did was a webinar.
If the sun was shining and the weather was beautiful, you knew you were going to have a low turnout because everybody was going to be outside in the beer gardens.
I despised it. I’d much rather be in front of real people and get that connection.
Now that you’re targeting law firms and lawyers, have you thought that you could go back to webinars, target them and start that up again?
Scott: It’s interesting you should say that. It is something I’ve been looking at quite recently, in fact only earlier this month.
I realised that legal professionals love a webinar.
Darren: They love a webinar.
Scott: It felt like quite a natural fit. I’m just trying to get my head around it.
Darren: Particularly if you can arrange it so they can get CPD points for it. Then they’ll really love a webinar.
Scott: Absolutely. That’s the idea.
Darren: They’re learning while they’re being sold to. That’s the way to do it.
Have you got a way of targeting law firms, or would you do that through LinkedIn again?
Scott: Absolutely through LinkedIn because, as I’ve said, it has been amazing for me. It has made a huge difference to my business.
I would also use joint partnerships and relationships with other organisations.
Through the associate training work I do, I have something that would hopefully be great for their audiences. It is educational, and as you were saying, they can receive CPD.
It creates an opportunity for me to say, “I could provide this to your audience, as long as you don’t mind me doing a pitch at the end.”
From what I’ve been learning, there seems to be power in those joint partnerships and in using other people’s audiences.
Darren: Have you done any live talks yet that are aimed specifically at lawyers, with a view to selling to them?
Scott: No. That’s still under development, shall we say.
Darren: But it’s coming?
Scott: It’s coming, hopefully.
A lot of the training work I do is virtual and webinar-based. Lawyers do seem to like that.
Darren: If it’s training, they’ve got to do it anyway.
The reason I ask questions like that is that we have a lot of solicitors as clients. We work with many solicitors, but we haven’t deliberately targeted the legal industry. We just seem to have picked them up.
I would love to give talks to solicitors about marketing and growing their businesses, but you cannot get in with the Law Society unless you’re what they call a sponsor, advocate or something similar. That is really expensive.
There are people who do that and then sell to solicitors.
I don’t want to cast any shade here, but lawyers get ripped off.
Most people never feel sorry for lawyers, but I’m starting to feel sorry for them.
We recently had a solicitor who sent us a quote she’d received for a website. I won’t say who it was because I can’t breach confidentiality.
She’d received a quote for a very basic brochure website, but the price was between £17,000 and £25,000.
I thought there must surely be some functionality specific to the business. Perhaps there was document uploading, version control, a secure server, monitoring and automatic deletion after a period for GDPR purposes.
No. It was just a simple brochure website for between £17,000 and £25,000.
We would do a website like that for £99 a month, and this was so basic.
The cheapest website this company offered was £6,500 to £7,000, and that was a template. You couldn’t have a design specific to your business. It was just a template with the colour and logo changed.
They then charged another £120 a month for hosting.
Those are the kinds of companies targeting solicitors. I feel sorry for lawyers because you’re getting completely ripped off, and I don’t understand why.
I want to go in and help you. It’s madness.
I don’t know whether you’ve seen any of that during your time in the profession.
Scott: I have.
I think it’s a great point, and you’re spot on about the Law Society. It is all about sponsorship and how much people pay.
Darren: Exactly.
Scott: It isn’t always the right providers, which is the frustrating thing.
I’ve seen that, and it sounds very challenging.
Darren: It’s disgraceful.
It isn’t just solicitors, either. It’s the same with other industries.
We’ve seen it with accountants because we’ve done a lot of work for accountants, and they get ripped off as well.
There’s one company that provides websites to accountants all over the country and says it specialises in accountants. All the websites look the same.
They even provide all the content to the accountants, but they use identical pieces of content on every accountant’s website. That means it is all duplicate content, which Google doesn’t like.
It isn’t just solicitors. Companies that specialise in particular industries are ripping off those businesses because they’re paying to be the sole or recommended provider.
The individual companies are paying a premium because the provider is paying an industry body to gain access to them.
There is something wrong with the whole marketing economy when that is the case. It really annoys me.
However, you’re out there to help them. You’re helping them get better.
Scott: Hopefully.
I think lawyers struggle with marketing.
Darren: They do because lawyers have a bad reputation.
Scott: They do.
I’ve certainly seen this over the years. It was one of the things I talked about in my TEDx talk: the public’s perception of lawyers.
It’s quite nice to hear you say you feel sorry for lawyers because it’s usually the other way around.
Darren: I don’t say it often, but in this instance I really feel sorry for the lawyers.
One of the things you do is help solicitors build their confidence.
Firstly, do solicitors really need help building their confidence?
I was always told at school that I should be a solicitor, largely because I liked arguing and could win an argument from a lot of different angles.
Obviously, a barrister is very different from a solicitor, but if you’re going to be a solicitor, you’re typically used to having confrontations, whether verbal or written.
You’re used to confronting people and winning them over, which means you need a certain level of confidence to do that.
How are you helping solicitors build confidence, and do they need it in the first place?
Scott: It comes from the gap between education and practice.
Law school is great for teaching you the law, the theory and some of the skills.
You begin to develop as you go through law school, although the qualification route has now changed. There is still a skills element.
You might begin to learn about advocacy, so you gain some experience in speaking and, if you’re going down that route, public speaking.
You also complete the theory work and start to develop your research and written communication skills.
However, there has always been a gap between what happens at university and law school and what happens in legal practice.
A lot of it is about client skills, but it’s also about people generally. It includes getting on with people and your colleagues, understanding your colleagues and how they work, and understanding your clients, their needs and their challenges.
The confidence issue is very much within that skills-based arena.
Perhaps a better way of saying it is that it’s about improving confidence. You’re right that the confidence is often already there, but it’s about bridging the gap.
You then have the technicalities.
Depending on the area of law you work in, there can be a great deal to learn. My area was probate, tax and trusts, which is very technical.
Particularly in the early days of your career, you may have some exposure to it. However, during my training days, a lot of my time was spent helping with some of the more mundane tasks, dare I say it.
Your real-life experience is therefore very limited.
That is where the confidence building comes in. It’s about increasing technical understanding, which can sometimes be difficult to achieve in practice because everybody is so busy.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t an open-door policy, but those are the realities of working in law.
People talk about how pressurised and demanding the legal profession is. I don’t necessarily see it that way, incidentally, but it is what people say.
It can limit the skills and confidence you’re able to build.
For me, it’s also connected to the introversion and extroversion piece. It goes back to understanding ourselves, understanding other people and understanding how we each like to be communicated with.
That is something I draw on in the training I deliver because I think it is the missing piece in some aspects of the profession.
It’s about understanding personality, energy levels and how those things differ depending on whether we’re introverted or extroverted.
Darren: That comes quite heavily into sales training, doesn’t it?
One of the things sales trainers cover is understanding that the potential client you’re speaking to will have a preferred way of being communicated with.
Some people want all the detail. Some people only want the headlines or the Cliff Notes.
Some people prefer to be communicated with in writing. Others prefer voice notes or phone calls, perhaps because they’re dyslexic or simply don’t have the attention span to read everything.
Understanding what somebody wants is a sales technique.
You’re teaching solicitors to understand their clients better, serve them better and ensure they represent them properly.
Scott: Absolutely.
From my experience, it isn’t something you’re taught. It isn’t something we talk about explicitly.
I made the connection when I started speaking about introversion and the journey that led me to deliver the TEDx talk.
I realised that all of this applies to the workplace and to what we do as lawyers.
I deliver that training using DiSC, the personality-profiling tool, which you and some of the listeners may know.
My work is centred around introversion and extroversion because it comes from my lived experience.
Darren: One per cent empathy. I think that makes me a borderline sociopath, but I think that’s fine.
I imagine that, in your area of wills, trusts, tax and probate, there are a lot of introverted people who are very focused on the technical aspects of the job.
It’s an area where you can’t make a mistake. If you did make a mistake, you could massively affect somebody’s estate after they had passed away. There would be a whole world of pain and arguments about what you’d done.
I would therefore presume that many of the people you help are already quite introverted.
Scott: I think they are.
That is a great point. There are probably a lot of introverted lawyers.
Strangely, I hadn’t made that connection until recently. I hadn’t appreciated how many lawyers were probably introverted, particularly those working within the private-client-law spectrum.
That includes wills and probate, which is what I did, but also areas such as property law, employment law, family law and, to some extent, criminal law.
It is all about detail and people.
Darren: Contract law must be even worse.
Scott: Absolutely. Contract law is detail-orientated all the way.
Darren: How easy do you find solicitors to help?
You might have people who are very introverted and focused on detail, while you’re essentially trying to teach them soft skills so they can communicate better.
How receptive are they to that?
Scott: It varies.
It’s an interesting question, and I often draw on my experiences of delivering training.
You can almost identify the people who are a little happier to share. They like to help the group and engage with the training.
Those who are more introverted, like me, may prefer to listen. That is partly how they like to learn. They listen, absorb and watch.
You can pick up on aspects of somebody’s personality through that and through your experiences of training them.
Darren: Your speciality is within a particular area of law, but are you able to help solicitors working in any area?
Scott: Pretty much.
I have concentrated on private-client law, including the areas I mentioned, because that comes from my experience.
However, whatever area of law you work in, I see personality awareness as being central to the way a law firm operates.
It is also connected with well-being and mental health.
We talk about those issues a lot more nowadays, which is great.
As with any sector, there are well-being and mental-health challenges, but I think they are a particular issue in law.
It is all connected.
Whatever area of law you work in, if you can understand yourself, your colleagues and your clients a little better, I think that bridges an important gap.
Darren: One phrase that came to mind while you were saying that was “teaching old dogs new tricks”.
Are you predominantly working with younger solicitors, or do you also get heads of firms and senior partners involved?
Are they too far gone to accept these fancy new ideas about listening to what their clients want?
Scott: That’s another great point.
I’ve realised that it perhaps needs to start with senior lawyers, leaders and managers because that is a great way of making change and changing how we used to work.
From my experiences, a lot of the firms I worked for were quite traditional, so it is about changing working practices to some degree.
I think that starts with senior people.
They may experience the stress more than junior lawyers and those with less post-qualification experience.
The expectations of younger lawyers are probably a little different because they come from another generation.
Whatever we do within the law, we’re always on the go and constantly busy. There are many different demands on our time.
Hopefully, senior people and leaders can relate to that and become more open to exploring how we might overcome some of those challenges.
Darren: We’re almost out of time, would you believe?
What does the future hold for what you want to do?
You stopped doing the webinars, although you might start them again, and you’re looking at new ways to target lawyers.
What have you got planned for the next few months?
Scott: I’m focusing on how I can help and support the people who need it most.
That includes the lawyers and firms that need a different approach to working within the profession.
A lot of what I’ll be doing over the next couple of months is working out how I can deliver that in the best way.
How can I reach these people? How can I help them think a little differently?
That is very much the plan.
Behind the scenes, I’m also working on the next iteration of the TEDx talk.
That is something I’m passionate about because it taps into the idea that we can be great lawyers as introverts. We need both introverts and extroverts within the profession.
I hope to help junior lawyers and the lawyers of tomorrow see and understand that.
Darren: Are you looking to take the TEDx talk and expand it into a keynote, or are you looking to do another TEDx talk?
Scott: I’d love to do a second TEDx talk, funnily enough, but hopefully there’s also a keynote in there somewhere.
I’ve just got to find it.
Darren: I’m sure you will.
I’ve taken the TEDx talk I delivered and expanded it quite a bit to use it as a keynote.
I’m sure yours is story-based, as mine was, so it’s something you can flesh out. It gives you more time. You should definitely do that.
I love your TEDx talk, by the way. I have seen it. I watched it, even though I sang near the beginning, which almost lost all the viewers straight away.
Scott, for anyone listening to this and thinking, “I love what you say and what you talk about. I’d love to find out more about you or connect with you,” what’s the best way for them to get in touch?
Scott: The best way is through LinkedIn.
People can message me there, and my contact details, including my email address, are also on my profile. LinkedIn is the best place to find me.
Darren: Fantastic.
I’ll put a link to your LinkedIn profile below the podcast notes.
Anyone listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible or elsewhere can scroll down and find it in the show notes.
If you’re watching on YouTube, look in the description below and you can connect directly with Scott there.
Scott, thank you very much for being a guest on the podcast.
Scott: Thank you so much, Darren. It’s been fantastic, and thank you for inviting me on.
About the guest:
Scott Walker is a former legal professional, trainer, visiting university lecturer and professional speaker who helps lawyers and law firms improve their confidence, communication and people skills. Drawing on his experience in private-client law and his own journey as an introvert, Scott delivers training on personality awareness, introversion, extroversion and effective client relationships. He is also a TEDx speaker and advocates for recognising the valuable strengths introverted lawyers bring to the legal profession. You can connect with Scott here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottwalker1/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSiErn5QEE99wT-2Ca0rkUg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scottwalkersolicitor/
Complete Family Law Limited Profile: https://www.completefamilylawltd.co.uk/profile.php?id=17
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
