Ex-judge helps students hone communication skills
If he were a real person, renowned (albeit fictional) detective and grumpy misogynist Nero Wolfe might consider allowing Susan Steingass into his celebrated orchid room. Steingass, like Wolfe, is a devoted orchid grower.
“Actually, my son is the real master gardener,” she says. “I’m just happy to have them bloom.”
And they do bloom their very hearts out, judging by the examples on temporary exhibition in Steingass’ office in the Law School.
Steingass says that the secret to growing orchids, whose medium is air and not the usual dirt, is knowing what it is that they require and giving it to them. In other words, the gardener must tailor the care of the plant to the plant.
“When you communicate, it’s not about you. You have to think carefully about with whom you’re communicating, and what you’re trying to convey.”
Steingass applies similar principles to her work as the new director of the Law School’s Communication and Advocacy Program.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen cases go wanting because of lawyers who weren’t flexible enough to adapt their communication to the audience,” she says.
Consequently, law students under her tutelage get a great deal of training and coaching in oral and written communication. According to Steingass, the best teaching method is direct experience. To that end, she favors giving writing-intensive exercises and posing hypothetical cases for students to argue.
“When you communicate, it’s not about you,” she says. “You have to think carefully about with whom you’re communicating, and what you’re trying to convey.”
Steingass’s experiences as a Dane County Circuit judge, a position she held from 1985 to 1993, further reinforced how critical effective communication is to the legal professional, especially to the client. Attorneys have to communication in many forums.
“In addition to oral arguments in court and conversations with clients, colleagues and judges, attorneys often teach classes and do public speaking,” Steingass says. “They also do a lot of writing: briefs, or arguments to the court; pleadings, to commence litigation; memorandums; letters to clients.
“It’s a challenge to teach all those forms of communication in law school, especially since our students come to us from all kinds of backgrounds and all levels of experience in communication,” she adds. “We have students who majored in everything from theater to psychology to engineering.”
However, Steingass is more than equal to her task. After graduating from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and Northwestern University in Evanston, she worked as an English teacher at Louisiana State University, California State College in Los Angeles and UW-Stevens Point. After graduating from the UW Law School in 1976, she embarked upon her legal career with the Madison firm of Stafford Rosenbaum Rieser and Hanson. She eventually moved to Habush Habush and Rottier, where she remains of counsel.
“Bill Clinton was able to get out of himself, and that’s a gift. A great deal of communication falters because the communicators aren’t able to get past their own agendas.”
Steingass herself learned about communication from many masters, she says. A particular hero was the late J. Willard Hurst.
“He was one of my professors in law school here, and he was one of the most articulate people I’ve ever known,” she says. “He knew his material cold, from a lifetime of experience. He taught through lectures that were so compelling you could hear a pin drop.”
Former President Bill Clinton also had the knack, Steingass says. “He understood what people wanted and needed to hear, and he said it persuasively and clearly. Despite all his troubles he always was able to maintain a high degree of popularity, and his ability as a communicator probably had a good deal to do with that.
“Bill Clinton was able to get out of himself, and that’s a gift. A great deal of communication falters because the communicators aren’t able to get past their own agendas,” as witnessed by the gubernatorial debates in California last month, Steingass says.
Nothing made Nero Wolfe angrier than clients who talked and talked, and never got to the point. However, if Susan Steingass had been in need of his “investigative services,” Wolfe would have pronounced her crisp communication skills ideal. So laudatory would he have found her as a client that after the consultation, it’s just possible he might have taken her to visit his orchids.