Using Rappaport’s Rules to Enhance Listening as Practice Skill and Civic Virtue

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Session Type: Lightning Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Franciscan A

Floor: Ballroom Level

Listening well is both a practical skill and a civic virtue. In both respects it is essential not only for obtaining information, but also for helping the other person know that they are truly heard. This is helpful in the attorney-client relationship, witness interviewing, collaboration among attorneys, negotiation, and advocacy. Listening well is helpful also in the wider civic sphere in the engagement among people who have very different political views.
Among the ways to enhance the listening skill is the approach developed by Anatol Rapoport, a social psychologist and game theorist. As summarized by Daniel C. Dennett in Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking, there are four rules for this approach:
1. You should attempt to re-express [the other person’s] position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that [the other person] says, “Thanks, I wish I had thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from [the other person].
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Practice with these rules is particularly helpful in building the students’ ability to put themselves in the shoes of another, so important to successful legal practice and civic engagement.
The classroom component of a clinic can be a good setting for working with this practice. The issues addressed could be ones that arise around opinion differences relating to case strategy and tactics or about the larger issues that provide the context for our work as clinicians.
This session will include an opportunity for participants to pair up to practice using the technique.