Gift of the gab lawyer wins Golden Gavel

HARVEY Specter, Jack McCoy or Arnie Becker doing verbal battle in a court room is a common media image of a lawyer’s daily life.

Language is the weapon they use in front of judge and jury to deliver a convincing argument.

Adrian Dean, Heinz and Partners Associate Lawyer, delivered a five-minute speech to recently win the Golden Gavel, the Law Institute of Australia’s top prize for public speaking in Darwin.

“In front of the Chief Justice of the Northern Territory Court and the Attorney General I had to speak on dealing with the wrath of the judiciary,” Mr Dean said.  “I did a funny take on some Family Law judges who have been fairly harsh and noted in the press recently.

“I drove home how sometimes family law clients can be particularly needy and that certain truth resonated with the audience.”

The competing lawyers are given their topic 24 hours before presentation and they have to come up with a five-minute humorous monologue.

For the state competition in August, Mr Dean was allocated The Dallas Buyers Club, the 2014 film starring Matthew McConaughey, and the topic was how to deal with difficult clients.

“As a family lawyer you have some pretty good stories on how to deal with difficult clients,” he said. “So obviously I redacted some names and information and it came fairly naturally to me.”

Lawyers have a long history of being quite witty and funny people. Media personalities Sean Micallef, John Cleese and Julian Morrow all studied law.

Mr Dean considers his first degree in drama from the Ballarat Arts Academy probably went a long way towards helping take out the national title.

“There is an inherent kind of thing where your language skills and your ability to twist words as a lawyer coincides with comedy,” he said. “So much of court work is about reading your audience, when you are an actor you know when your audience is ready to party and want you to go the extra mile for the extra laugh.

“Infront of a judge who is in a good mood you can play along with that, if they are in bad mood you know when to shut up.”