“Thinking Like A Lawyer” | Abhixit Singh | TEDxManSagarLake

law school taught me a lot of fancy latin phrases but it's the legal profession which really taught me method thinking which is also called thinking like a lawyer now the ability to use legal reasoning in everyday life is not a skill set which is confined only to the legal profession like learning a new language it's a technique that can be developed with patience practice and time but whoever you are no matter which profession you are whether you're a technocrat or a bureaucrat or a sports man or a rock star thinking like a lawyer really helps you to advance in your profession now the thinking and reasoning construct or method of a lawyer is really different from the thinking and reasoning method of a non-lawyer a lawyer may look at the entire factual scenario isolate or identify the issue at hand find rules that could relate to that issue apply them and come to the most logical conclusion or find the most viable solution now this conclusion or solution may be fundamentally different from the conclusion or solution of your non-lawyer friend who may have applied the same set of rule on the same set of facts now this could be because lawyers usually do not accept facts given to them as is they may question the whole part of it they may not apply every rule from the rulebook as is but deconstruct or interpret a part of it when faced with conflicting rules they may harmoniously interpret them and now what is harmonious interpretation again it's a technique where two separate conflicting rules are interpreted and applied in such a manner that both rules are given effect too and none of them become redundant i'll give you an example from real life when i was growing up on my early childhood days i had this intense desire to succeed i mean i did not have any planned success parameters or defined success parameters but i had this strong urge to excel in life so i went about looking for my success mantra the first rule that i found the first rule was the karma rule now the karma rule essentially said that whatever was happening in my life or whatever good or bad which will happen to me in my life will be pleased by the law of karma as you saw so shall you reap so therefore good thoughts good deeds good actions i do that and i become a successful man so i start considering this rule of karma i started doing the becoming the good boy when i also came across the second rule now the second rule or the predestination rule interestingly it said that every man has his own destiny and the only imperative is to acknowledge that to accept that and to follow that no matter where it leads you whether it leads you to success or failure one has to follow that now i thought it was karma which was driving my success of failure so therefore this second rule of destiny didn't really fit in and most importantly if my success and failure was already destined then what was the point of me being doing the good boy routine might as well leave that so i therefore i had to necessarily look for another rule and indeed i got a third one now there's a third rule the third rule says that a man makes his own destiny which means that you are the master of your fate captain of your destiny nobody else but you control your life fair enough now i am left with three rules each of them they look conflicting or incompatible so i'll have to now harmoniously interpret them to come to a conclusion which will be more suited for my life goals which was to excel and succeed in life and i have to do it in a manner that all three these three rules are given effect too and none of them become redundant and at the same time i need to believe in my reasoning because ultimately i have to act on it and this is how i reason karma is something which is already done it is accounted for so if you're born a hunchback or a leper that's because of a bad karma in your past life and whatever good or bad karma points that of you that you are generating in this life will be accounted for later pre-destiny or destiny is something that happens to you but you really can't control it like life death i mean where you are born to whom you are born whether you're born or a girl or a boy these things they happen to you but you really can't control it so things that are driven by a different set of permutation and combinations in which you cannot control but which happened to you those are predestined all the rest everything else is covered by the third rule so the acts you do the decisions you make the risks you take the opportunities that you grab ultimately makes the man or woman that you are or you become so applying these three rules on the issue which was to succeed in excel we conclude that success of failure is not predestined as a result when we fail we get up we don't give up by thinking that it's my destiny to fail when i fail i get up i take that shot again when i fail i rise and try again now this is or this was an example of method thinking and in this example we'll find that there are two or three things or three key things or aspects that goes into method thinking the first is to approach a problem from all angles so if we have to find the issue or all issues in a given set of facts we have to approach it from all perspectives we have to see it from all perspectives for example if we see a a driver in a train engine and the train is going through a city with the passengers and and goods we really don't have to only see it from the perspective of the train driver or the perspective of the standpoint of the of the passengers we'll also have to look at it from the standpoint of say the employer of the driver or the owner of the of the goods or potentially even from point of view of the people from the of the city from which the train is travelling it's only when we put ourselves in the other shoes that we get an insight of what the other is thinking the second key aspect is to make sure that we don't get emotionally entangled i mean irrational thought or thoughts that are not rational will necessarily stop us from looking at things or facts which are important to solve a problem so as much as we can we have to be dispassionate in while considering facts or applying rules and the third is to argue both sides now this is an ability that many people they have this they find this as a moral failing in lawyers that like a hired gun we fight for any side or we can fight for any side but that's not correct arguing both sides are looking at or being able to argue in opposite direction makes us understand that there are two aspects to every story each of which can potentially have merit so applying these aspects one can develop the technique of thinking like a lawyer or method thinking and once we do that we realize that 2 plus 2 is not always 4 2 plus 2 can be what we want it to be

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 16,391

Keywords: Career, Education, English, Law, Leadership, Learning, Self improvement, TEDxTalks

Id: p-2IscWNUkU

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 25 2022