As a new attorney, asking questions is essential to moving your cases forward. But are you asking focused, necessary questions or causing unnecessary interruptions? 

In this episode of  Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, I share tips for converting your questions into a laser-focused format that respects everyone's valuable time. Learn how to get the answers you need efficiently so you can get back to billing hours and delivering high-quality work for your clients. Tune in now to uplevel your question-asking skills!

We are a podcast that's interested in the practice of law and making sure that you, as law students, make that transition easily from being a student to a legal professional working as an attorney in the legal field. And we're also interested in making the practice of law fun, which we believe it is fun.

So today's question that we're going to look at and try and answer, is asking questions an unnecessary interference to your work as an attorney? is asking questions, Maybe about cases or really anything else. Is that an unnecessary interference? So we're going to get into that, see if we can answer this question.

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So we want to look at asking questions. Because especially as a new attorney, what's going to happen is, you're going to show up, you're going to be given a list of cases. You're not going to know any of these cases so naturally like, anybody in your shoes. You're going to have a lot of questions. Now, there's a difference between unnecessary questions and necessary questions. And the reason that you want to be sensitive to those differences is because, pretty much when you're going to go ask a question, it's going to be to another attorney. So that means that stopping your work, getting up from your chair, leaving your office, going into the office of another attorney and asking you're sitting down in their guest chair and asking, asking your question, it's going to interrupt your billable time.

And you might, they might answer your question, but there's going to be a lot of roundabout conversation. It's really a waste of everybody's time. So you want to make sure that you're converting the case. unnecessary interruption questions into necessary interruption questions. And so the question becomes, how exactly do you do that? How do you convert one type of question into another type of question? Well, It's very easy and for this, it's suggested that you always have a journal with you. This is your opportunity to write down all of your questions that you're having about a particular case.

That's what you want your questions to look like. When you go in and ask them, you want to sit down, you want to reference the case, you want to ask the question and you want the attorney that you're sitting in front of to answer that question for you in a very succinct, specific way. So that you're not going back and forth and again, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks, so that you might come up with an answer, a partial answer or a direction to go.

So you don't want to compromise that time. You want to be quick and efficient. You want to get in, you want to ask your question, get your answer and then get out and get moving. And you want to continue to bill your client for the legal services, the high quality legal services that you are rendering and delivering for the clients who have retained you.

It's kind of a double whammy that way. You want to avoid that as much as possible, even though necessary questions need to be asked. It's expected of you and especially as a new attorney in a firm, you're just going to naturally have questions that are going to need to be answered on cases that you're unfamiliar with. But just make sure that they're all focused and don't go in and ask one question at a time.