This article was originally published in the November/December 2021 issue of San Diego Lawyer Magazine.
By Wilson Adam Schooley
No one believes me. They shake their heads incredulously and guffaw, as though I must be joking. This reaction is a measure of the miles that a chance encounter in my first year as a lawyer carried me, beginning in the truth of my youth.
The encounter was with an actress. The truth is that I was painfully shy. Not cutely bashful. Debilitatingly introverted — nearly held back in the second grade. And not just as a boy, but extending into law school, where I cut every class that required an oral presentation.
So when, after scarcely surviving the Socratic method to earn a JD from Duke Law School, I joined the storied San Diego firm Jennings, Engstrand & Henrikson, I thought my only path was as a transactional lawyer.
My first months at the firm were spent accordingly, toiling in the trenches of contracts and finance. I found the work stifling and wondered how I could bear to make a career of it.
Then, the firm hired an actress-director to teach presentation skills to our lawyers. All associates were “strongly encouraged” to attend (i.e., skip it at your professional peril). I was terrified and resentful (even of this firm I loved) for forcing me to face my greatest fear.
That class turned out to be the firm’s greatest gift to me (among many).
Because of it, I became a successful trial lawyer. I taught Advanced Trial Advocacy for years at the University of San Diego (USD) School of Law. I have a second career as an actor, with credits in theater, film, and television. I am a leader in local and national bar associations, with a reputation as a dynamic public speaker. How did all that happen to an inordinately inhibited kid?
All roads lead back to that actress: Glynn Bedington. At the time, her class was excruciating. She put us through a series of intensely intimate acting exercises; tough for anyone but horrifying to an anxious introvert. I found myself, for example, standing inches from the firm’s senior tax partner, whose steely eyes I was instructed to stare fixedly into for five minutes. At the time, death by strangulation seemed to be a preferable alternative.
One of Glynn’s gifts was to continually (albeit gently) challenge you and your presumptions in a way that made you feel encouraged and empowered. During the class, she asked us whose presence and presentations we admired, and what we could learn from them. I named Dr. King, “though of course, I could never speak like him.” Her response was, “Why not?”
I survived the class, grateful it was over. But at its end, Glynn pulled me aside. Again, the supportive challenge: “I think you have an inner gift, a presence,” she said. “I’m casting my next show and would like you to be in it.” I blinked in disbelief. The class was hard enough! Performing on stage? That was an unclimbable cliff.
She asked me to think it over. As I did, I realized, even in the grip of fear and naive youth, that this was a life fulcrum, a potential turning point that could alter my destiny.
I had no idea how dramatically.
I did the show — extra terrifying because it was comedy-improv: we had to create “bits” in real time onstage, in front of a live audience. It was like learning to drive in a manual transmission bus on the chaotic streets of Mexico with no traffic controls. (I know, because I did that too, and it was easier than performing in this show.)
But the show was also like catching lightning in a bottle. When our bits worked and the audience laughed, it was more intoxicating than a double bourbon neat.
So, the firm gave me two parallel gifts: the match — Glynn — to strike against my shy shell, and the fuel to burn through it — the adrenaline rush of performing.
Glynn cast me in more shows, other directors cast me in their productions. I was seen and signed by an agent and began doing TV and film work. Suddenly I had a second career as an actor, along with the many opportunities and experiences that afforded (including playing To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch in cities across the country — an actor/lawyer’s dream role).
I had been handed the keys to a life toolbox, the contents of which, when I chose to open it and learn to use them, altered my approach to virtually every life experience that followed.
I am still an introvert. But no one believes it, because I learned how to climb out of my shell when called upon and create a charismatic presence. As I taught my advocacy students, doing so is not pretense, it is the opposite: stripping away artifice to access and reveal inner power. Oral advocacy is an art. When used successfully, it brings authenticity, confidence, and commitment. Lawyers are left-brain trained in doctrinal communication and then, as trial lawyers, expected to persuade real right-brain-centered people. Most communication is not what you say, but how you say it. More than half of communication is body language, one-third is sound, and less than 10% is content. Or, as I told my students: It does not matter what you say to a jury; it matters what they hear.
Wilson Adam Schooley is a reformed big firm partner and current appellate specialist practicing primarily civil rights and indigent criminal defense law; a professional actor; published author and photographer; Past Chair of the ABA Civil Rights and Social Justice Section; member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors; Delegate to the ABA House of Delegates; Presidential Appointee to the Coalition for Racial and Ethnic Justice; and member of the SDCBA Board of Directors.