A second updated edition of Jose Maria Martinez Selva's book Manual de Comunicación Persuasiva para Juristas has just been published by La Ley, a publishing house belonging to the Wolters Kluwer Group. The first edition appeared in 1999, and was reprinted in 2000.
Practising law not only requires knowledge of legal doctrine and technique, but also a series of skills common to other professions, keyed to promoting services, developing a client portfolio and building reputation. In addition to these general needs arising in day-to-day work, there are specific changes that take place during lawyers’ careers – growing competition, the growth of large legal firms, Internet, varying client profiles and client-lawyer relations – that make it even more necessary, if this were indeed possible, to insist on the importance of the aforementioned skills.
Along these lines, it is common knowledge that the aim of a large part of lawyers’ work is to persuade, and to reach many of their professional goals it is essential that they be good communicators and skilled in the art of persuasion in all its different facets and an variety of settings: making themselves known to others, speaking well in public, reporting in courts of law, and negotiating in the name of their clients at meetings, interviews and interrogations. To achieve this, they must express themselves adequately and transmit messages well.
This second edition of Manual de Comunicación Persuasiva para Juristas deals with a broad range of skills:
- Marketing and advertising professional services
- Managing client relations
- Interview and questioning techniques
- General and forensic oratory
- Negotiation techniques
- Time and work organization
- Managing in-house relations and personal conflicts
