Jennifer Gardner | Using the Art and Science of Influence to Be a More Persuasive Lawyer

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge podcast. Welcome back for another episode. I am speaking with a fantastic guest today, Jennifer Gardner, who is based in Los Angeles. We're going to talk about how you can grow your influence and impact as a lawyer and a leader. So stay tuned for the whole conversation.

Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the coaching team at The Lawyer's Edge, a training and coaching firm which has been focused exclusively on lawyers and law firms since 2008. Each member of The Lawyer's Edge coaching team is a trained, certified, and experienced professional coach and either a former practicing attorney or a former law firm marketing and business development professional.

Whatever your professional objectives are, coaches can help you achieve your goals more quickly, more easily, and with significantly less stress. To get connected with your coach, just email the team at hello@thelawyersedge.com.

So now to the good stuff.

My guest today is Jennifer Gardner, a Los Angeles-based trial lawyer and persuasive communications consultant. Her three-decade career as an attorney spans entertainment litigation, serious criminal cases, and business and real estate disputes. When she's not lawyering, she educates high-performing leaders on how to grow their influence, impact, and executive presence through her program The Art of Influence and The Power Lab.

She educates lawyers through her various CLE workshops, including Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins! How you can have BAD law and BAD facts and still WIN your case. I love that. She also consults with lawyers on strategic messaging for their cases and helps them with their courtroom presence.

How did she get to do all of that? Part of it is that she has studied numerous communication methods, has trained at the Trial Lawyers College using the Gerry Spence Method, and has received multiple certifications from Wharton Business School in Influence and Persuasion, Leadership, and Using Neuroscience to Obtain Better Business Results.

Jennifer, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Jennifer Gardner: Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Elise Holtzman: Absolutely. I'm thrilled to have you today. I'm curious because I'm obviously a lawyer that turned her attention to doing something other than lawyering, and I talk to many lawyers who do different things. What made you decide to pursue all of this additional education beyond your law degree in communication, influence and persuasion, leadership, business growth, all of those sorts of things? What's driven you to do that?

Jennifer Gardner: The big factor is massive curiosity. Seriously, just unstoppable intellectual curiosity and looking around me, being very aware that some people are super magnetic communicators and others are not, and what makes the difference. It really started with that. It started with an awareness of that.

I think that has a lot to do with being raised in Hollywood, in California, and getting to see public personas and then the contrast between that and what's really happening behind the scenes, having that dose of reality. Then being surrounded by people who were naturally great storytellers, very persuasive, and just electric, people that you wanted to be around. I was fascinated with what made them like that from a very early age.

Then I went to law school and saw lawyers that were just incredibly talented, and then most of them were not. I was fascinated with what was the divide. "Why are some people in a courtroom so incredibly dull and boring and uninspiring, and others are just electrifying even if they're just setting a case for trial? What makes the difference?"

Yeah, so that's basically it, curiosity. Curiosity also led me to pursue studying different modalities. The more modalities I studied, the more I realized they're all basically teaching the same thing. Then the recent developments in neuroscience have confirmed what these modalities have known for decades, that there's a scientific reason behind what's happening in our brains that explains why some of us are more persuasive, how we connect deeply with others, etc.

Elise Holtzman: Would you consider yourself to be somebody who is a naturally good storyteller, naturally magnetic and influential, or do you feel like you needed to learn that?

Jennifer Gardner: I felt like I needed to learn that, but I was told from a very early age that I was a great storyteller. My stories got me into a lot of trouble at a very early age. When I look back and try to connect the dots, I always had something really super, I laugh, I must have been a very challenging kid. If I had a kid like me, I would be like, "Oh my God, we have to channel this and send her to law school."

So I think I was able to tell really good stories. As far as being magnetic, I never saw myself that way because from different angles and sources, I had a lot of negative messaging about what I was saying. I had messaging that I wasn’t smart enough to be a lawyer, that I was a female, so I’d never be a good or competent lawyer. That led me to keep wanting to prove myself over and over again.

Then also, growing up, there were challenges in the family dynamics, what you're saying and how you see things are wrong. That was drilled into me a lot. But I had this internal sense of, "No, I know what’s right," and a conviction. When I would stand up for myself, which I had to do because nobody was standing up for me, I was able to really connect and lock in on that sense of, "If I don’t fight for what I see as the truth, no one’s going to do it. So I better get my point across."

I was also very articulate. I guess I was naturally gifted with the ability to articulate my ideas and state them really clearly. For example, I’d babysit as a young person, and the parents would compliment me on "Wow, you are the most articulate young person we’ve ever met." So it’s all of these things. Then, of course, you have that raw resource that you have to shape and mold and craft into something that works with predictability and consistency. And that’s when it gets really fun.

Elise Holtzman: Right. So what I hear you saying is that even if you do have it in you naturally, it still makes sense for you to hone it, to learn about it, to know how to channel it appropriately and for the purposes that you have in mind.

Jennifer Gardner: Completely true. Yes. Otherwise, you're just an amateur. The more I study and the more I learn, the more deliberate I can be in my communications, and the more I’m able to really direct an outcome, direct the course of a dispute, and get an intended result.

Elise Holtzman: One of the things you mention on your website, in your professional biography, is that your specialty is weaving a compelling, persuasive narrative out of the very complex stuff around a dispute or a legal problem. You mentioned this idea of lawyers getting into court and being really good on the facts and the law, but maybe being a little bit dry. Why do you think the messaging, storytelling, and packaging are so important? And maybe if you have an example of how that plays out, that would be fantastic.

Jennifer Gardner: Our brains connect with storytellers. The neuroscience research has proven that when a storyteller is feeling a certain emotion while telling a story, the same parts that are firing in his or her brain when they’re speaking are firing in the same parts of the brains of the listeners. It’s been documented through functional MRI and EEG. The technology is really incredible because it is letting us really map what’s happening in our brains.

It used to be that we would say, "Hey, man, no bad vibes." Vibes are real. Vibes are real. Actors do it all the time. Actors tap into an emotion that they have, and then they project that. They speak from that place when they’re emoting and delivering lines, and doing their jobs. Politicians do it. I believe lawyers should do it as well.

I really believe that it’s not just the story, it’s not just the narrative, but it’s your connection with that on a personal level that really makes the difference. If you’re in your head and focused only on the technical legal problem, it’s important, definitely, it’s important, but it’s not the whole package that you need in order to really carry the day. You need to be able to tap into the emotional side as well.

Elise Holtzman: I agree with you. I think it's so important, and it's something that I've learned over the years when it comes to working with lawyers on things like leadership and business development. It really is all about these human connections that we create.

Facts and law are nice, but we're dealing with human beings. We're social animals. That human connection is so critical, and why not learn how to leverage your strengths and do it in a way that really has impact? When I think about influencers, I think about people who are leaders. You're leading the judge or the jury to a conclusion. You're leading people in a conference room to a deal or some kind of agreement.

What have you learned about the concept of leadership that you think is important for lawyers to understand? Because let's be clear, we all know they didn’t teach us this stuff in law school. So when you think about lawyers as leaders, what comes up for you, and what do you want lawyers to know?

Jennifer Gardner: I want lawyers to know that they need to appreciate and nurture their intellect, but they need to give more weight and more attention to their emotional side because it’s the emotions and the emotional content of a message that are really going to make an impact, and that's where you want to be.

We’re smart, yes. We can understand law, we can understand complex situations, but it’s the emotions that are going to trump logic every single time.

Elise Holtzman: Is that why you created your course called The Art of Influence? Are those the sorts of things you’re talking about in that course?

Jennifer Gardner: Yes, we're talking about that. We're talking about it in the context of emotional intelligence and self-regulation. Self-regulation, as you know, because you're a leadership expert, is a really, really important part of being a leader.

Let me back up first and say that lawyers don’t see themselves as leaders. We don’t get leadership training, and we should. I actually think law school needs to be four years for everybody because there’s so much more than just learning how to think like a lawyer, advocate, and analyze, that we need to learn. One of them is these things: We have so much access to power. We are so powerful. When you zoom out and see the role that we’re playing in our democracy, it’s really important that we recognize that and realize that on a micro level, we are leading every day. We’re leading every day in courtrooms. From the moment a client calls us with a dispute, whether they want to wring their neighbor’s neck, or their rights have been taken away, or their children have been taken away, or their business and property are at stake, or their liberty is being taken away, all of these things are situations that are rife and infused with emotion.

I really feel that the best way to get the best result is to go into the emotion. Then the rest of the pieces fall into place. I start with the emotion, actually. "What are the human dynamics that are driving the dispute?" whenever anybody calls me.

Elise Holtzman: You also have a program called The Power Lab that I know you're starting up again. What kind of power are you talking about, and why do we need it?

Jennifer Gardner: We need power because, first of all, we have to recognize that we have power. We are powerful. So I hate to say, "I’m empowering people." I like to say that in my programs and educational courses, I’m opening up their eyes and getting them to look inside to see what's already there that they can leverage and that they can get some real expertise about how to use in a productive way.

Power is the ability to influence, and we need it. We use it all day long every day. Power is necessary to get a result. Power requires that you step into a role of a leader and understand, very intentionally, what it takes to be an effective leader.

Like I just said, one of the biggest criteria for being a great leader is emotional intelligence and self-regulation. That requires you to regulate your own emotions and then regulate—or be able to control or manipulate—I hate that word, but it’s true—the emotional response of others to what you're saying. It’s super, super important.

In my opinion, it’s the skill that has made the biggest difference for me as a professional in being able to craft a compelling story and narrative but, most of all, how to manage a conflict and a dispute. Because not every client that comes to my office wants to go to war. There’s so much that we can do, even after a case is filed, to make sure we get the optimized outcome we want.

That involves being able to use the emotion of yourself and intuit the emotions of the people you're dealing with so that you can direct them, using your words and your presence, toward the outcome you want and influence the decision-making process.

Elise Holtzman: I know you talk about cultural programming and how we are programmed or socialized has an impact on how we view power, how we use power. I'm kind of projecting here, but maybe how we're willing to use our emotions as well.

I think a lot of lawyers would say that, no, we've got to take the emotion out of it so people don't get totally aggravated, focus on the issue at hand and get it done. So I'm curious what you think about all of the societal programming that we've had and how that might get in our way of having that sort of power to influence others.

Jennifer Gardner: I think that the idea that emotion is how people are swayed is really coming to light, given the political situation in the United States. People are really understanding or starting to understand that you need to be able to tap into something emotional that's relevant and pertinent and really happening for the people that you're trying to win—whose votes you're trying to win—in order to succeed.

What is that? And it's very complex. I was just writing about this the other night. I had a mentor, his name is Roy Williams. He teaches legacy media advertisers how to write great advertising campaigns, among other things, and he's really well known for that. He taught me that emotions override logic every single time.

I just believe that that is very true. So lawyers, culturally, it's drilled into their heads—our heads—that we have to be analytical and that we have to think analytically, and that we have to make these arguments analogizing and distinguishing case law from our position, for example, if you're a litigator.

Well, that's great, and that's really important. But I've been practicing law for 37 years, and I've only had to actually argue a specific case and its applicability to my situation a handful of times. I mean, judges aren't really focused on that when they're ruling on routine matters that come before them.

I think they're more focused on the equities and what's happening in a certain case. So while it's great to know how to do that, it certainly hasn't occupied the majority of my efforts as a lawyer. And having a successful practice and running my own business for—I think it's 32, 33 years now—it's really kind of scary. The numbers are getting high. I'm getting old.

But in any event, it's based on that actual experience that I feel 100% confident. And then when you get to juries, you influence juries by tapping into the emotional content of the case. Yes, it's important to think analytically. Yes, it's important to make great, articulate, data-based arguments.

But to be able to understand the emotional human dynamics is more important than that. It's a more important skill to develop if you really want to be a compelling advocate.

Elise Holtzman: If we have in front of us a lawyer who says, "You know what? I'm pretty darn good at what I do. I understand the law in my area. You know, I do care about my clients. I want to get a good result for them."

But they have this sort of typical law school education, learning their craft at the knee of more senior lawyers, and they want to know how they can practically start to make themselves someone who has that kind of power, someone who can influence their clients and adversaries and judges and whoever it is that they need to talk to, what are some of the things that you would recommend to them to start doing, whether it's just starting to learn something or specific steps that they can start to take?

Jennifer Gardner: For me, when I'm going on vacation, it's fun to go learn something new. So I have spent so much of my free time studying different modalities that basically bring me back to the same skill set.

I've studied interspecies communication. I've studied equine-assisted therapy so that I could learn how horses think and how to communicate with them. If you can communicate with an animal that's not your species, but that's feeling some of the same emotions that you're feeling some of the time, pain, hunger, fear, happiness, friendship, kinship, horses are herd animals, for example, you can take a lot of that knowledge and apply it to humans, and it's incredibly useful to know that.

Neuroscience, for example. The neuroscience of communication and decision-making. How do our brains work? What is it that we need to know in order to make the best use of how the human brain is naturally structured and functioning?

I studied a lot of marketing because, quite frankly, when I was interested in learning how to do my own marketing and advertising campaigns, I fell down this rabbit hole of persuasion and influence. And it's my opinion that the marketers are better persuaders and influencers than the lawyers are.

A thousand percent. I see you're shaking your head because you get it and you understand. It's completely true. So I read so much material and have participated in masterminds where this information is exchanged, and different learning opportunities where I'm understanding, “Well, what are they doing? How are they influencing the decision to buy?”

Because basically, what we're doing as lawyers is we're trying to influence the decision to agree with us, to get a result, to move someone closer to our position—whether it's a juror, whether it's an adversary in a negotiation, in litigation—it doesn't matter. It's the same thing.

I've studied advanced negotiation techniques, which always focus on the emotional context and the psyches of the people who you're trying to persuade. How do you de-escalate a situation? What buttons can you push in order to move someone closer to the result and the outcome and the agreement that you're trying to achieve?

These dynamics are studied and taught at the highest level of our educational institutions. Lawyers go to law school. They think they're done. They don't need to learn anything more. No. If you want an advantage, and especially if you want a competitive advantage, you are not done. You are never done. You are never, ever done.

Elise Holtzman: It's not just about CLE. I see this all the time as well. We have this roadmap, you go to high school, you do well, you get to a great university, you do well, you go to law school, you do well, you get the job, you do well, and then there's no more roadmap. So you just keep learning and working and grinding out the work.

There is this sense of, "Well, my jurisdiction requires me to take CLE, so of course, I'll do that." Then you might get to the end of your reporting period, and you suddenly have to take 24 credits in the middle of the night on whatever video call you can find because you've got to get it done by the time the deadline comes. But I really am a big believer in strategic CLE, and not just CLE, but lifelong learning. So you're right in there with me. I couldn't agree more.

Also, digging into one's own natural curiosity. We started off this conversation with you telling me that the reason you pursued all of this is just because you're insatiably curious. So I love this idea. I'm constantly encouraging my clients to read and to listen to podcasts and to go to programs.

It's funny too because there are certain things that CLE boards will not accept for CLE credit. I think that there’s a big mistake there because I think that there is such a wide variety of things that we could choose from that'll help us be better people and better lawyers and better leaders. So I love this idea of encouraging people to go out there and continue to be educated.

Jennifer Gardner: Yeah.

Elise Holtzman: What are some examples, if you have any, of people that either you've worked with in some of these leadership programs or just people that you've seen grow in their ability to be persuasive?

Jennifer Gardner: I think confidence and being able to project confidence is a huge factor. You have to be confident and see yourself as confident and competent, and then you become that. It's a mindset thing.

I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Herminia Ibarra, but she's written books about this, specifically on the topic of leadership. She has a brilliant quote about it. I can't remember—I don't want to botch it—but that's essentially the idea. You have to make a mindset shift that this is how you're going to be. Then you step into that role.

One of the things that I teach my students—clients, whatever you want to call them—one of the things that I teach them is about the importance of alter ego.

I'm going to choose an example from popular culture. Chappell Roan is such a brilliant example because she talks about how she was performing and doing well. She had a record deal, and she was doing well. Then, at some performance backstage, she was getting dressed, and a drag queen approached her and said to her, "Basically, what you're doing is you're doing drag."

The moment that she realized that she was putting on a costume, adopting an alter ego, and able to step into that in order to perform powerfully, everything shifted for her. That's exactly what she's doing. So she then doubled down on the makeup and on the props and on the costuming and her entire presentation.

It's this concept of alter ego, where we step into a role. Beyoncé does it with Sasha Fierce. Mick Jagger does it with his onstage persona. Mick Jagger has a degree in economics—I believe it's from London University—and he's a very, very wealthy man because he's an incredible business person.

Gene Simmons from Kiss. I love to go into popular culture and pull out these icons who are genius business people. In Kiss, the band is putting on makeup and costumes. You can't even tell how old they are, ever, because they go on stage. I'm not a Kiss fan, okay? But I respect what they're doing, and I understand what they're doing.

Beyoncé, same thing. She says, "I step into the role of Sasha Fierce. That is a persona, and that is a persona that I use when I'm performing." It's the same thing that leaders do, I really do believe this. When they get on stage, when they're presenting, they step into a persona. I think that's a really helpful device that we can all use.

Elise Holtzman: It's so helpful. Jennifer, it reminds me of an experience I had many years ago.

So there's a guy by the name of Chris Desantis, who is a speaker. He speaks frequently for all sorts of organizations, including law firms, and he and I were on the faculty of something called the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity.

I was very inexperienced back then as a speaker, and Chris, of course, was extremely experienced. When Chris was on stage, everyone just loved him so much. The energy in the room was unbelievable. He's just amazing at connecting with the audience, and he's almost manic on the platform.

I said to him, "How do you do that? Like, I know my stuff, and I'm confident up there, but that's insane."

Everybody thinks he's this enormous extrovert and energetic. It turns out he's this very introverted, quiet, respectful kind of guy. But he said to me, "Elise, that's not Chris Desantis, the regular guy up there. That's Chris Desantis, the speaker. That's Chris Desantis, the educator." He said, "You have to find your role and your persona. When you get up there, you step into that role."

And it's not that you're deluding anybody. You're not deluding yourself. You're not misleading anybody. You're just simply being who the audience needs you to be in order to be able to interact with what it is you're trying to tell them or teach them.

That was so helpful to me, because even if I didn't completely change who I was on stage—which, of course, I didn't—it did give me this sense that I get to channel that. That's not necessarily how I am when I'm hanging out on the couch watching reruns or something like that.

But I think that if we can all adopt that, so, for example, if you're a trial lawyer, you are not behaving the same way in front of a jury as you are when you go see your mom or you're at a funeral, right? We all behave differently in different circumstances. Sometimes people say, "Well, but I want to be authentic." It is authentic. It's just a different authentic part of you.

Jennifer Gardner: True.

Elise Holtzman: So I love those stories about the people who are in the music business because they understand that they're entertaining people. And Beyoncé may be a fantastic human being, but it's not just plain old Beyoncé who's going to the supermarket that we want to see and when she's on stage, she's not going to be able to have influence over us if that's who she is.

Jennifer Gardner: That's right. These are personas and alter egos that are completely crafted very strategically, very intentionally. People in the entertainment business understand this. It's the brand, and it's the persona. I think all of us can develop that. Some of us have it naturally more than others, but you can get really intentional in crafting a persona.

That's one of the things that I teach in The Art of Influence, like, what makes an alter ego persona super compelling? And that's part of what I teach when I teach storytelling as well. What is it that draws us to some of these colorful characters where we just can't look away?

Elise Holtzman: I know another thing you talk about that I'm kind of curious about is that you teach that slowing down to listen to yourself is necessary for success. One of the reasons I wanted to ask you about that is that we know that most lawyers are running a million miles an hour. We're essentially running around with our hair on fire, trying to help our clients deal with the matters we've got to deal with.

If you're running a law firm or you're in leadership, you've got all kinds of people to manage. There is so much going on. Oh yeah, by the way, you have a personal life. I don't think most lawyers want to slow down. I think most lawyers say, "I wish I could go even faster."

What is it about slowing down that can be so helpful to someone's success?

Jennifer Gardner: If you are stressed, if you're exhausted, if you're not exercising, taking breaks, getting sunlight, going out in nature, breathing, tuning into yourself, you're not going to have the ability to innovate.

Innovation is what we all need in order to solve complex problems. Believe me, our problems are really complex right now.

The life of the lawyer that you just described is, one moment you're wearing the hat of team leader and law firm manager, and the next moment you're dealing with client intake and client management. Then the next moment, you're dealing with the court, you're in trial. I mean, there are multiple skills that require that we be able to be innovative.

The neuroscience studies and research have shown that you can't innovate if you're going a million miles an hour to the point where you're burning yourself out. Burning ourselves out doesn't just burn ourselves from the standpoint of we’re depressed, anxious, or we don’t have the energy to do the work anymore, but we’re going to make ourselves sick. Slowing down is also necessary so that we can tune into ourselves. What are we feeling? Who are we?

Like I put on my website, business and real estate disputes and human conflict, because every legal situation is an adversarial situation involving some degree of conflict or started with a conflict. Every negotiation is an adversarial situation. There's implied conflict.

Even if you've got willing people who want to do a deal, they're all trying to get leverage and an advantage over the other. If you can't tune into yourself—and I say this, I feel like an evangelist—if you can't tune into yourself, you can't understand the other side. You can't empathize. You can't self-regulate and use emotions strategically to your advantage. It's fundamental. But the legal culture is so counter to that, as you were pointing out in your question.

Elise Holtzman: I think that among a certain subset of lawyers, there's a lot of resistance to this sort of idea. You know, “I've been doing this a long time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is how you solve these problems.”

That's understandable because we were trained a certain way. We were trained to look at things dispassionately, be able to look at both sides of the matter, be able to be objective.

Yet, what I'm hearing from you is that it's really important to connect to our humanity and our emotions. And that doing that doesn't make us weak, it actually makes us stronger, more innovative, and more able to persuade others.

Jennifer Gardner: Yes, and it's never been more necessary. Especially in a technologically sophisticated world where you have large language models that are going to be replacing a lot of the work that lawyers have traditionally done, the only way for us to really distinguish ourselves and to become non-obsolete is to double down on what makes us really human.

I also want to say that technology is changing the structure of our brains, changing the way that we need to communicate in order to be heard because people are addicted to the dopamine hits they get when they're on their phone.

They have very limited attention spans. The phone is basically reinforcing the biases that they already have by serving them up more information that confirms what they already know. It's a confirmation bias phenomenon.

These circumstances create a situation where the only way to break through that is to understand your humanity, and how to trigger, impact, and connect with the humanity of others.

So as technology gets bigger, our need to be able to connect with that also gets bigger to keep pace. It's never been more important to understand and be able to tap into emotion. You can't do that if you're running in circles all day long, every day.

Elise Holtzman: Jennifer, as we wrap up our time here together today, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show.

There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others.

As a litigator with 37 years of experience, as a student of influence, leadership, and persuasion, when it comes to connecting more deeply with your human side so that you can have the power to influence others for all the right reasons, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for people to hear?

Jennifer Gardner: One of the keys to being an effective communicator, a leader, a performer—which is what we're doing when we're stepping into courtrooms, or even when we're in a mediation or a negotiation—is being able to give voice to the emotions that people are thinking but not saying out loud.

When you can really understand the truth of yourself, because we’re all alike, and when you can really understand the truth, the emotional truth, and the true thoughts of the people that you're speaking to, and you can speak into that by enunciating it, that is the key to the kingdom.

You will win a Nobel Prize. I mean, literally, that’s what the Nobel Prize for Literature has been given to Jon Fosse—I think he won in 2024—was awarded the Nobel Prize. And that was why, according to the commentators and people who analyzed, all great literature, all great art is basically expressing universal truths. And the ones that we don't want to acknowledge that we would prefer to deny and avoid, these are the ones that are the most powerful, the most sticky.

Elise Holtzman: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for being here today.

I think we got a little deep and also a little bit practical, but I love the combination of these super objective thoughts that we have, and then connecting with our humanity, getting up close and personal with the emotions so that we can be the most persuasive and the most successful, both for our clients and for ourselves.

So thank you very much for being here. I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.