Interesting Lawyers Podcast: Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Is A Superpower For Lawyers

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to the Interesting Lawyers podcast. My name is Russell Adler from LawyerBetter .com, and I am your host. Today we have a very special guest who is in fact not a lawyer, but someone who not only helped me become a much better lawyer, but also has helped many others in whatever they do.Thank you. Today’s guest is Mary Ligon, who is an NLP master practitioner, trainer, coach, and and hypnotherapist. Mary, thank you so much for coming on today. Well, thanks for asking me to come on.
My pleasure. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Yes. We have a lot of history. We do. Haven’t seen you in 20 years. But 20 years ago, I heard about neuro -linguistic programming, NLP,
from a psychiatrist who I was actually representing in a disability case. And he explained to me that NLP is a very powerful technology. using language and behavior that makes people better communicators and makes their realities come true or to achieve their goals.
And I thought to myself, that sounds amazing for me as a young trial lawyer. I’m going to go out and take the course. And so I flew out to Los Angeles. You did? I was in about 2 ,000 -ish,
and I spent a week out there in Irvine. and Mary was one of my instructors, so you literally taught me NLP 20 years ago, and I went on to apply that to my practice and to trying over 200 jury trials,
and Mary, as I told you when I called to invite you, not only did NLP make me a much better trial lawyer, it made me much better. better communicator, and a much better person,
and I was able to achieve so many wonderful things in my life, and to communicate so much better with people. Did that come as any surprise to you to hear that from me?
Not at all, because that’s what NLP was designed to do. So what is your definition? In 30 years, by the way, you’ve been this master practitioner of NLP, and not only have you taught– taught people how to teach it,
you’ve obviously taught students to learn it, but you use it as a coach. I do. I do daily. Okay. So first of all, what is your definition of NLP? What is it?
NLP is a very advanced language model to assist people and not only with language with others, but with how we language ourselves in order to create more empowering states.
states. Also more empowering states than others and how to influence others. How long has NLP been around for? Gee, I think it came together in the 70s when Richard Bandler was studying the top therapists in the 70s that were just emerging,
really. And they were getting these great results with people that Freud never got. Because, you know, when you went to Freud, you were with Freud for 20 years. Right. in the 70s that were just emerging, really. And I think it came together in the 70s when Richard Bandler was studying the top therapists in the 70s that were just emerging, really. And I think it came together in the 70s when Richard Bandler was studying
the top therapists in the 70s that were just emerging, really. And I think it came together in the 70s that were just emerging, really. didn’t get a chance to meet him. But you know, I know you’re also a hypnotherapist and I know as one of your former students that hypnosis and hypnosis training is actually a big part of NLP,
right? It is. It is. So what percentage of NLP is hypnosis and what percentage is the rest of it and what’s that? Well, let me put it this way. Part of the language patterns that we use in NLP.
were studied from the best hypnotherapist that we love him, he’s the god of NLP to us. Put a name on it. Milton Erickson. Okay. Milton Erickson was a psychiatrist who was using only hypnosis in his practice,
which was really unheard of at the time. All the other psychiatrists were mad at him about it. They didn’t like him. He was getting amazing results using hypnosis but using it in a different way.
He would use it in metaphors. He would put people into trance in different ways, not the traditional type of ways, not authoritarian. And that got added to NLP because it had to do with how he language.
Right. And when I heard, when I found out that as part of my NLP training, I would learn hypnosis, I was really intrigued. My thinking was, hey, maybe I can hypnotize juries to get them to do what they want.
I want, hypnotize opposing counsel, hypnotize judges. But of course, I was unaware of the number one myth about hypnosis. So before we go any further about hypnosis,
Mary, tell our listeners what is the number one myth about hypnosis. That you’ll be under total control of the hypnotist, that you will have to do everything that the hypnotist says that it’s and you don’t.

\Okay, so to clarify, the most common myth about hypnosis, which is not true, is that someone who is in a trance can be made to do something that they don’t want to do.
Now, before our podcast today, I was telling you that in 1980, when I was at the University of Florida as an undergrad, I went to a show by Kreskin, the amazing Kreskin,
the great mentalist. mentalist. Do you remember him? – I do remember Kreskin. – And he was a hypnotist who did these stage shows, correct? – Correct. – So, Mary, by the way, you mentioned to me that you’ve done stage shows yourself.

\I have, I have done them. – But as a hypnosis instructor, it doesn’t really surprise me. But anyway, the point is, there were some students who had volunteered, who were up on stage, glassy eyed, basically drooling,
who were on all fours walking around, barking like a dog. – Okay. okay? So how does that square marry with this myth about hypnosis? They wanted to do it. They wanted to play. And here’s the trick that a lot of people don’t understand.
First of all, every hypnotist knows that in any group of people, 25 % of them or so are subnavulous, which means they’re going to go into deep trance very quickly. Part of the audience won’t go into trance at all.
The hypnotist knows how to pick them out of the audience pretty quickly. So because you want to… stack the cards so everybody on stage goes into deep trance. Secondly, if they don’t want to play,
they won’t. So most of them will unconsciously sit close to the stage if they want to play. Interesting. And again, you’re stacking the cards to get the right people up on the stage that are going to play.
Okay. So I told you how Kreskin’s stage show went. How did yours go? What did you have people up on that stage doing? What did you have people doing? – Oh, silly things, just silly things. Like, you’ve lost your rear end and you can’t sit on the chair and they try to sit on the chair,
they can’t. Or they get stuck to the chair. Or they forget their name. Because under deep hypnosis, you can suggest that they have amnesia and they will go along with it and have amnesia.
But they are going along with it. – Yeah, and I know that hypnosis is also used in a critical setting by psychologists. psychiatrists as a tool to bring about change for people for anxiety,
depression, quitting smoking, things like that. And that’s really how I started. I didn’t start in NLP, I started as a clinical hypnotherapist trained by a licensed therapist.
So you know this brings me back to when I went out to LA when I first met you, right? Here I am thinking this is this could make me such a great great, effective lawyer, right? Meanwhile, I get there, there’s like 40 people in the class,
I’m the only lawyer. – You were. – And that’s when I knew I was onto something. And I stuck with my instincts and I learned it and it turned out I was right. I think the world of it’s so much so that I’ve asked you to be on my podcast and thanks for coming.
And I’ve also asked you if we could develop together a course called NLP for Lawyers. to teach NLP to lawyers, right? But with that said,
my experience has been that NLP has helped every facet of my life. Now, you told us that you’re a coach. How many people are you coaching at any given time these days? Usually 20.
People are companies. Both. And use NLP in coaching them? Yes. Are any of these people currently lawyers? No. So – So what sorts of things generally do you coach people about using NLP?
Just to complete the backdrop of our conversation today. – Mostly when they come to me, they’re go -getters and they want to be at the top of their game and they want to stay at the top of their game. Some of them have kind of hit maybe a slump and they know that,
hey, there’s more to them, they just need that edge. And so we use NLP to give them that edge. Okay. In sales? In sales, we teach them techniques in sales.
What other contexts? I use it also for athletes. I’ve worked with a lot of athletes. I have actors for performance. Anybody has to perform at a high rate,
loves NLP coaching. Well trial lawyers sell cases to juries, that’s the way I always looked at it, but then again any lawyer, no matter what they do, they need to sell them to clients.
So is NLP something that you think that a lawyer who’s trained in it, who knows these concepts, can be more effective? Absolutely. Now, when I took this course, Mary,
I heard a lot of things along the way and said, “Oh, I’m doing that. I’m already saying that. I’m using that.” But in bits, only in bits and pieces. First of all, is it unusual that I had that experience where I said,
“No, you know, that’s was my experience when I took my first course. I went, “Oh, I’m already intuitively doing some of these things.” But then it was brought more into my conscious awareness,
what I was doing, and then added new skills, which, practiced enough, went back into my unconscious way of doing things. Yeah, and we talk about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.
you know, fast forward. These concepts, the NLP concepts are the very foundation of a lot of the training materials that lawyers are already exposed to.
The best lawyers who are instructors, who pass their knowledge to other lawyers, many of the techniques that they recommend for juries are based on NLP.
Whether it’s reframing, whether it’s using anchors, whether it’s modeling, whether it’s hypnotic language patterns. So this is not something that should bring an entirely new bell for lawyers who have heard that material.
Also, Tony Robbins is a huge proponent of NLP. – He uses it all the time in his training. – Yeah, and his website talks about it and says what it is and says how effective it is. – Right. And we all know how big Tony Robbins is.
So the point is that, yeah, it could be great for really anybody, but for lawyers, I mean, I can only share my experience about it, but as a coach for lawyers,
I use NLP constantly, constantly. So, you know, the other part of it is some lawyers might ask or try to be very salesy to sell a contract.
to whether it’s a judge, a client, a jury, to sell them some idea and try to persuade or talk them into doing something. Whereas with NLP,
it’s a little bit different because using hypnotic language patterns and statements, we can plant that seed in the recipient’s mind so that they want to do this.
They want to do what we’re asking them to do. They want to give us money that we’re asking for if they’re sitting on a jury. Is that a good illustration? It’s a great illustration,
and that kind of, if you think about NLP, one of the other things you’re learning is how to read other people, because we all have our own model of the world, and a lot of us think that, well, everybody thinks like I do.
Everybody processes like I do, but they don’t. But once you can learn how the other person processes and you put your languaging inside their processing, it’s a game changer because the unconscious mind likes others that are like us.
So if we can match and mirror them at the unconscious level, they don’t even pick it up. Right. So when we speak about hypnosis and hypnotic statements or language patterns,
we’re really talking about people who are listening or receiving our communications going into trance. Now, trance has been defined, and you can confirm this with me before we started today,
as any altered state. Right. Right? Something that happens naturally. Right. For me, sometimes I’m on a phone call. I’m in my car on the highway. I’m on a phone call. I’m deep in a conversation, and I blow right past my exit,
because at that time I wasn’t even thinking about that. I wasn’t paying attention. attention to it and that as I understand is trans that’s an altered state right yeah and or maybe I’m just thinking about something in particular and my wife gets angry at me because I’m not really listening to what she’s saying I’m hearing her but not listening and isn’t that a form of trans as well it is so nlp taught me through
hypnosis these language patterns that can be trans inducing language patterns correct correct >> Correct. >> All right. And, you know, that’s great because, you know, for people in the persuasion business,
it could be very effective. The other thing that really interested me is, can you tell us about some of the industries that, you know, that we all know about that have used NLP for various means and methods?

Well, politicians. Let’s talk about Obama. Obama’s done some beautiful speeches where he’s using Ericksonian language. patterns throughout the whole speech. When he said you’re here today and that means that you want change,
that means it’s time to vote for me. Is that a hypnotic language? It’s a language pattern. Now weren’t Obama’s speeches analyzed by an NLP specialist to graph that out and that’s where you’re getting that information from.
That’s why he was so– – He was eloquent and he got eight years. – He did. – He got eight years. – But he used NLP– – He uses that and he uses the patterns.
And he uses– – When you say the patterns, what do you mean by that? – He’s using language patterns that are vague. When you’re using vague like change, change is an abstract.
It’s a nominalization. – Right, what about– begs the question of changing how, specifically how you change. But if you just say change, or we all want hope.
Yeah, we want hope. Hope is a good thing. These are all kind of language patterns that really don’t get specific. And whenever you use unspecific language patterns, it puts people in trance.
So and the way it does that is the vague language patterns and our conscious analytical mind right our front might be saying, well, what is she talking about? What is she doing? It engages us.
It puts us in this trance. Right. Well, the word change put it this way, change is going to mean different things to different people. Right. So when he said that, people go inside themselves and go, oh,
yeah, I want change and these are the changes I want. Right. Yeah. Say they personalize it and go inside. Right. But but he never said what kind of change. he just said change. But before we even get to hypnotic language patterns,
let’s not put the cart before the horse. Doesn’t the, you know, for an effective NLP situation, doesn’t there have to be rapport between the person doing it and the other person, right?
So just briefly just tell her, listen, what do you mean when you talk about rapport and what are some of the ways to build rapport with people who you might not be in rapport with? You can get in rapport with somebody without even talking to them,
because most of it’s physiological. All you have to do is match their physiology, match their breathing. You can even cross -map it by tapping your finger the same as their blinking.
Their unconscious mind will pick it up, they won’t pick it up, and that will put you in sync with them. Sit the way they’re sitting, breathe the way they’re breathing. If you can match them,
the cadence of their speech even better right and these are things that you teach when you teach NLP right obviously right and there’s exercises there’s exercises and there’s more to it right like there’s language patterns and there’s watching matching their blink rate and their tonality and all those things and that kind of calls the question don’t people realize when you’re doing that no they don’t and why is that
because it’s all unconscious. I mean, if you do like a kid, like you’re mocking them and every time they move you do exactly the same thing, they’ll pick it up. But if you do it subtly,
like you just changed your leg and if I just do it subtly, you’re not gonna pick it up. – But something deep inside, if I didn’t know you previously, might say, you know, I like this person, right?
Because we all have, sometimes we’ll meet someone who just right off the bat, we just don’t like this person. We just have a bad feeling about them. But that feeling we get from deep inside, isn’t that the feeling of where rapport actually comes from?
Right. It’s just that feeling. Well, our unconscious minds like people that are like us because we can trust them. We tend to trust people that are like us. So the more that we can be like them,
the more that they will drop down the guard and be in rapport with us. It sounds like great training for us. sales. – It’s wonderful for you. – The sales, a context that’s ripe for NLP training that you train people in.

I’ve trained it and I’ve done sales with it. – You know, something else that came up was this thing about the pickup artist community. – Yeah, for those of us old enough to remember whether it be a comic book,
a magazine, you know, you go to the classified ads in the back and you see, you know, some ugly little guys. saying, “How was it that I was able to date the supermodel?” Right. Right?
The pickup artist community. Tell us about them and how that’s relevant to our NLP conversation. Well, it was NLP. They just took NLP. I guess they’re still doing it. I haven’t checked into that community for a while.
But the big one that I was familiar with was Ross Jeffries. He had a lot of books and stuff about it. And he was using NLP. He was taking these guys out and teaching them how to match. and mirror women at bars,
how to listen to their values, elicit their values, how to anchor certain feelings into them. – I see my producer is taking notes about this. – Yeah, he is, he is. – Going Christian, yeah.

And getting these women to go wow, I really like this. I don’t know why I like this guy, but I really like this guy. He’s not that good looking, he doesn’t have this or that.
Yeah, I don’t know why, but I just really like this guy. guy and So I remember when this came up in the training I thought I was intrigued by it and my takeaway From it was really summed up in this one statement There’s a fine line between persuasion and manipulation.
There is okay, so Can NLP be used for, I don’t want to say illicit or improper, but can it be used for manipulation?
It can. It’s a very powerful communication skill when you’ve learned it. So like any other powerful thing, it can be used for good or it can be used for manipulation.
It all comes down to the intention of the person using it. It does. Like for me as a trial lawyer, my my intention was always to get the highest verdict I could by articulating the evidence and communicating it to the jury in a way that made them want to give my client money,
certainly a legitimate use of it. But you’ve heard of other context words used for either ill -gotten gains or for manipulation.
Sure. Sure. And that is there. It’s. When I teach it, I do a whole ethics section on using it responsibly. I really do. Wow. Because it is that powerful.
What do you tell people? Give us a nutshell. What do you tell people? Well, I tell them. I said this is a very powerful skill when you get good at it. When you walk into any room, anywhere, you’re going to have the advantage over people if they haven’t been trained in it.
And you need to use that skill. with kindness. Not in a selfish way. A win -win -win -win way. For those selfish listeners, why not?
Well, because it’s manipulative and you could do some damage to people. And that’s not really what I’m about. Nor am I.
Another thing that I remember being told about the use of NLP. NLP, especially by a lawyer, is first of all, the most misunderstood myth about hypnosis,
because you never wanted a defense attorney saying, “Judge, he’s hypnotizing the jury,” and implying that something improper is going on when really it isn’t. But the other part of it is saying that a known strategy is a blown strategy.
If people If people know that you’re doing it, not that there’s really any reason to say, “By the way, this is a technique I’m going to use to try and speak to you and get you to return the biggest verdict.” No lawyer would ever really say that or no lawyer would ever just say that to a client that they’re trying to sign up.
But the other thing that I found is that it’s really become integrated in my personality. It’s not something I ever really think about doing consciously, I will just just use hypnotic language patterns that I’ve learned and used so often over the years.
So is that all part of the NLP training that you give? It is and it’s because eventually when you’ve used it enough and you’ve studied it enough, it will become a part of you,
the way that you communicate to yourself and to others because even your self -talk will change. Didn’t you notice your self -talk changed when you took NLP? You were more conscious of what you’re saying to yourself?

\Absolutely, and it also changed when we started this podcast, but it’s very contextual, what can I say? But another big use of NLP that’s always been very successful for me,
and especially in coaching people, but in communicating with people, is the ability to visualize, to create visualizations, to paint pictures with words in people’s minds,
in people’s minds. and then to reframe pictures. Like the young lawyer said to me, oh, you know, I screwed this up, and my response was, sounds like that was a great learning opportunity. So you can learn from that and act differently in the future.
Reframing is something that’s very, very effective. Is that another part of NLP and the visualization part? – It is part of NLP and also just in the language parts and in metaphors. metaphors. Metaphors are a big part of NLP too.
As you learned when you took NLP, a good metaphor will bypass the critical factor of a person’s mind and it’ll go in the back door so to say. Yeah and the example that I remember to this day is the guy who’s so good at NLP that he’ll go have a root canal done without any anesthesia right right and it all comes back to the whole metaphor.
that he uses to put himself in that level of trance which is basically you’re walking through a cold snowy field with beautiful flowers and plants and then you see this icy water and when you stick your toe in the water you feel that freezing cold numbness and that’s something that is invoked when the needle gets put into the gums or the drill gets put to the teeth right I do the same thing when I have any work
done on my mouth I put myself in trance trance. I go swim with dolphins in Hawaii while they’re doing it. So are you telling us that you don’t get any anesthesia when you go to the dentist? Sometimes not. Depends. Wow.
You know what? Say what you will, but that is super hardcore. And I would love to get to that point myself, especially since I need a lot of work done. Another important thing is modeling.
Tell us about how modeling, you know, how would you teach people about modeling? modeling and how that can make them more effective using NLP. Exactly because NLP was really started by modeling therapists,
the top therapists of the time, of finding out exactly what they were doing. With modeling, it gets very specific and it can be so pinpointed that what we’re doing when we’re modeling excellence is you find somebody who does something excellent.
Maybe they’re a great sharpshooter. Actually, the military had some NLP. trainers go out and do this. They had a guy that was just naturally a great sharpshooter, and they wanted to be able to teach everybody else what he knew.
So an NLP trainer went out there and did a modeling process, which is a very intricate process where we’re asking that person, “Okay, I want you to tell me what are you thinking right now before you do it?
What are you — what pictures are you running through your head? What are you saying to yourself?” Or is there a certain movement that you do ahead of time before you do it? How do you know when it’s time to put your finger here?
How do you know when it’s time? It’s very, very specific. What we’re looking for is the strategy that they’re using, their unconscious strategy to do this excellent behavior.
And once we have that, we can install it in other people and they can learn it faster. It’s been proven over and over that it works. Yeah. – Yeah, ’cause I was gonna ask, look, you’ve been doing this for 30 years. Coaching people,
training people, individuals, companies, groups, right? – Right. – I mean, who better than you? So, you know, looking back in retrospect, how effective is NLP and how effective has it been in the lives of those who you’ve worked with?

Wonderful for everybody. And I love the athletes ’cause it’s instant. When I go out and work with an athlete, right away, as soon as we’re done with the session, session, they’re starting to do much better.
Think of an athlete like this, Russ. When an athlete gets into a slump, all they’re doing is they’re running in their mind the last time they screwed up. If they’re going to go do a basket,
say it’s a basketball player, he screwed up a few times in a row. Now, every time he goes for the basket, his fine modal movements make him screw up because in his mind,
he thinks he’s going to do it again. again. Like a performance anxiety. Yeah exactly so you get them to rehearse over and over and over again mentally doing it perfectly doing it perfectly doing it perfectly doing it perfectly over and over and over and over again it’ll change that slump because it changes the program in their mind.
Can you help me become a better pickleball player? Absolutely. We’ll have to talk about that after we go off. the air. That’s my current obsession. I know, I know. You know,
so anyway, just to come full circle, lawyers have all of these different contexts of interactions with people. It could be with a prospective client or a client or the lawyer on the other side of a transaction or litigation,
or a judge, or a lawyer. a jury, or all of the above. Can you just right off the bat, can you imagine all of the different contexts where this can be effective?
Or NLP can be effective? It will be effective within each and every one of those. Now you’ll use it differently with each and every one of those. But the same techniques will apply. With a jury,
of course, you’re talking to 12 people instead of one person. Who are 6 and a 6? civil case. Or six or whatever. So that’s a little different. But you can still read an audience. It’s an audience.
And you can read how they’re responding to you, and you can start to pick up when you’re hitting the mark with them, and when you’re not, and when you need to shift, right? Yeah. Well, it’s like once I learned NLP,
it gave structure and definition to a lot of these things that I may have already known about or been doing, but was fragmented. But by pulling it out of the way, I mean, it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t it all together and really giving that structure and definition,
I was able to articulate and build on it and come up with other things, like doing anchoring, doing pattern interrupts, which I’m huge with. And I’m huge within my coaching when I suggest to my lawyers that,
you know, when you’re just examining a witness, do X, Y, Z, which is completely unexpected and will throw you them off kilter. Exactly. Isn’t that a pattern to interrupt? It is a big pattern to interrupt, and I did witness this in a trial that I was sitting through where the attorney came out and the person,
the situation was she was trying to say that this person injured her dramatically, but she didn’t miss a day at work, actually. And he walked out,
and she wasn’t expecting it, and he said… “Are you planning to sue my client?” And she wasn’t ready for it. She looked to the DA,
and he goes, “Why are you looking at the DA? I’m asking you the question.” Totally threw her off. She was not prepared for it. Yep. Well, not all lawyers try cases,
but obviously, in a trial, there’s a lot of that. performative element That I work with lawyers about and some of them are much better than others a lot of it comes down to their your Personality and and all of that but the point is that whether it’s a jury Or a judge or the other side does NLP help people get what they want.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah Exactly. Yeah, that’s that’s been my experience, you know you a 20 -year or 17 -year retrospective about how I used it and how I use that to coach people.
It’s very effective. So with that said, Mary, I do look forward to working with you and building a great course, NLP for lawyers. I’m excited about it. It’s going to be great. And hopefully our listeners will hear about it one way or another and we can help other lawyers.
make their lives better as well. Thank you so much for coming down today. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and I have a feeling I’m going to have you on again. Great. Great. And that concludes the lawyer,
I’m sorry, the Interesting Lawyers podcast. And hopefully with Mary’s help, we’ll be able to make the lawyers who are listening to this podcast better lawyers.
So, they can can lawyer better. For more information, go to lawyerbetter .com and reach out. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.