How to Write and Publish a Book with the ABA (and Why It Matters)

Speaker A: People write the way they talk. And if you've ever known an author, talk to them for an hour and then go read any five pages of a book of theirs. It reads just like they speak because it's the same person that's doing it. It's just coming out their hands instead of their mouth, but it's the same kind of thing. And some people write really well because they're trained writers and that's how it comes out from them. And some people have really good ideas that they say badly, but the ideas are so good that it's worth reading.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Law Practice Today podcast where you will hear updates on hot topics, tips and ideas that can help

Speaker C: you run a more successful law practice.

Speaker B: Now, this show is brought to you by the Law Practice Division of the American Bar Association. So that means the views and the opinions shared on this podcast and do not represent the ABA or the Law Practice Division, but they are the views of each individual participant and any products or services discussed do not represent any kind of endorsement from the ABA or the Law Practice Division. Now let's get back to the show.

Speaker C: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Law Practice Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the process of writing a book with the aba. Because there are a lot of people who would love to write a book with the aba. There is tremendous benefit that could come with doing it. But what we do need to do is we need to have an honest perspective about what that process looks like or even how that journey can even begin. So if you've ever thought about writing a book, this is the episode you want to listen to. And we have the chair of the Law Practice Division Pub Board on Carol Greenwald. Welcome to the show, Carol. How are you?

Speaker A: I'm great. How are you, Terrell?

Speaker C: I am great. So for the people that haven't met you or haven't read your profile on the different articles, the books that you've written, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Speaker A: So I'm A defrocked, uh, PhD, a political scientist who transferred out of academia when I got tired of 18 year olds and teaching them at 8 o' clock in the morning. And I ended up in law firm consulting, which I have done for many years in the marketing department. I transferred out of that in 2000, went into my own consulting business working with individuals and small firms to help them learn to communicate better with their clients, their colleagues, and basically themselves as well, and enjoy doing it ever since. So one thing I should say as Chairs is that one of the things that makes the ABA different than other bar associations is our commitment to creating the knowledge that lawyers need. And one of the main ways of doing that are our books. And we produce more books than any other bar association on more topics and more things. And so this is very important because that is our place in uh, world of ABA organizations.

Speaker C: Nice. Now how was that transition of going from being a PhD that was teaching 18 year olds to uh, then going into consulting? What was that like?

Speaker A: That was easy. It was the in between working for large companies that was hard. Where you had a thousand bosses who had a thousand bosses. In academia you have no boss really in terms of content, you. And as a consultant you have no boss except how much money you want to make, how many clients you want to have and you want to do so. They were very similar.

Speaker C: Gotcha. Now, I guess some of the subject matters that you focused on when you were in academia compared to some of the questions and the uh, let's say the scenarios that you were helping clients work through when you went into consulting, was there a big difference between the subject matters intent?

Speaker A: Uh, yes, but teaching is about communication. Teaching other people to communicate is about communication. As I always say, there's only three things I know how to do which is talk, write and read.

Speaker C: I do think that that is amazing skill because even for myself, like my background is accounting and finance. And one of these skills that accountants tend to struggle with the most is communication. We tend to be very bad headed. Now when it comes down to law firms, a lot of people would assume that when it comes to a lawyer, lawyers, they do a lot of reading. They think about the litigators when they think about lawyers. So they often assume that all lawyers are trained to be good communicators. What was your experience when you started working with lawyers?

Speaker A: No, all lawyers are trained to be good lawyers to talk about law. They're not necessarily trained to be good communicators in terms of working with their team or working with their clients and speaking English. So they often don't speak English. Because I have a PhD in Comparative Law, I understand law. When I used to go whenever a, uh, client would be explaining something to me and start talking about legal words because clients don't understand what a TRO is. Clients don't understand what a tort is. They think it's a cake. The clients don't understand a lot of the words that lawyers just throw around all the time. Oh, we're going to do a deposition. They don't Know what a deposition is, scares the heck out of them. And the same with working with their team. They don't give them precise directions. They expect them to read their minds. And it can be very difficult in terms of getting a coordinated product out. So basically, I work with, um, them on understanding that in any conversation, the person that matters is the listener, the recipient, not the speaker. Because most of what goes on in a conversation is the part of what the speaker says that the recipient processes.

Speaker C: I think I read it was a book or it was a training. And one of the things that was a big shocker to me was when it started talking about the percentage of information that you convey that the audience or the hearer actually perceives and kind of internalize is very little to where in that moment, I was just like, oh, my gosh. I think someone that I've heard people say anywhere from 10 to 15%, but I'm like, let's just say hypothetically, if it is 15%, 85% of what I'm saying just isn't connecting, that is staying.

Speaker A: Because we have too much information. And the brain only takes 10, 8 to 10 words or phrases at a time. Uh, it's all it can process. And it only takes them. They're given internally, not externally. So if you want someone to remember what you said, they have to process it. They have to say, think to themselves, I want to remember that. They have to remember it, and then they have to bring it up when they want the brain to deal with it. Complicated.

Speaker C: Wow. I will say that that seems like a very fascinating thing, and maybe this is probably just the geeky, nerdy side of myself is I would be very interested to read some of the research on, around communication around that, because to me, I think about that as a process. Like you said, they have to want to remember it. Have to remember it, and then they have to be able to recall it when the information is actually relevant or when the information is needed. So that seems like a very relevant

Speaker A: to them because it could be, uh, not when it's relevant to you. So that's what often happens when you're training someone and you want them to remember.

Speaker C: So something interesting that you mentioned, when it comes down to communication, is a reason why people give handouts or they give additional reading material. And one of the things that I've heard a lot, especially as I speak in different places, is that writing a book is a great tool to help your information live a little bit longer with the audience that you've spoken to. So when it um, do you have a different perspective or is that one of the benefits that you've seen when it comes down to people writing books on topics that they speak on or topics that they want to communicate?

Speaker A: I think people write books because in America we still think that if you write a book, you're smart and that you know the topic. And so they're doing it because it enhances their reputation in that area and in that field. I don't necessarily think that it has anything to do with whatever the subject matter of the speech or the talk is, but it's the support for them to say, I know this field. I'm, um, the ABA book on networking. So that makes me an expert in networking as opposed to other people who haven't written a book. And then the book's timeline depends on however green it is, how to start a business. We're doing the same three things we've been doing for 40 years, right? You put together a plan, you file the legal documents, you look for clients. It hasn't changed that much. So if that's what your book is about, that's easy. If you're writing a book on AI, it's out of date before you write it.

Speaker C: So I guess with that complexity of you're managing the aspect of the people who want to write books, for them, it's a prestige play and the audience who may or may not be interested in their specific topic that they want to write on. So as the chair of the Pub board, you sit in that middle of like, how do you manage what topics we're going to actually put our energy behind to get a book to the public?

Speaker A: That's easy. I don't choose that. The division does. So we specialize in four areas. Most of the bar is about specific areas of law. We're about the business of law, the finance of law, the management of a law firm, the marketing of your legal expertise, and the technology that will make your firm effective and modern and run better. So we know what our four areas are. Then the question is, what do we have books on recently and what do we want? For a while we were getting tons of touchy feely books about how to make your team and your employees feel better. Uh, and after we have three of those that have come through in the last year and a half, so I don't want any more of them because how many can people buy? And so we're looking for things that are different. Then you're the chair of the finance committee and I want books out of your people. Because we have no books on compensation, uh, new ways of looking at it. We have no books on value billing that are modern. The last book that was written on alternative fees is 20 some years old, 25 years old, at least. So we need new books on that. And so we need books that fill the pipeline for things that are happening and that are coming, that are going to be there. So we try and think about, what do people want to read, what do people want to know. So I wrote a book on build your business the logical way, focus on your clients for the ABA in 2012. I was 15 years ahead of my time. We have just signed an author to write on the exact same topic I wrote on. No, on purpose. Because she's going to write, um, an updated version of my book, basically.

Speaker C: Our guest. Are there any specific things that stood out to you that makes you say. Now, you were probably about 15 years ahead of your time when you wrote that book?

Speaker A: You know how many people wanted it, knew they needed it. But people know now that they need it because clients have become more assertive. Uh, clients have become almost impossible in terms of. I looked it up on the Internet and I know the answer. And so you just write that stuff and do it, and I'll pay you $500. Cause I know what it's worth. I went and asked Google what it was worth, and it's gotten really difficult. And the same with getting clients. I looked at 10 clients and I liked your website best. How do you deal with that? That's difficult. And. And then the rules that you can do. What can you do? What can you say about yourself? What can you say about how you work when you can't talk about specific client engagements? So when an accountant writes a website, if he wants to talk about a specific client engagement, he can. There's no rule against a client, quote, unquote, seeing himself in print without his name being mentioned. But in law, there is. You cannot do that. No client can go on a website, see a story, and say, that's my case. That would get you bounced.

Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah, I could definitely see that being a more complex thing now. Because even as you mentioned, like, with AI, like the number of people that I have heard, or the number of, let's say, social media posts that I've seen where someone, oh, I use AI to answer my legal questions. And when I see that, I'm just like, please don't.

Speaker A: They're not a good lawyer. They went to a very bad school. And we don't know whether they were the bottom of the class or not, but we think so.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm just kind of. If you're asking just a hypothetical, like, trivial question, maybe that could be an interesting read. But do not bet your life on what that AI gave you. Do not risk whatever it is that is legally at st take. Do not risk it on a AI legal opinion. I'm, um. Like, work with an actual lawyer to get an opinion on that specific matter.

Speaker A: And do not write a book using AI. It's not copyrightable. It's not.

Speaker B: I guess.

Speaker C: Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I've heard more people, like, even when I've been at a conference where I saw or someone was talking, they were talking about how it's changing things. And one person mentioned about, yeah, AI helped me write my book. And you mentioned, like I said, the AI is not copyrightable. So can you talk a little bit more about that for people who may be thinking like, oh, maybe AI can help me write the book.

Speaker A: You can use AI uh, according to ABA rules, you can use AI to help you flesh out your, uh, table of contents, put together your sequence, figure out the plan for your book, what you want, where you can do that. So you put one in. And just like you would for a client, you can do it for yourself, and that's okay. But to ask it to write the book for you. No. Okay, so it can help you. You can give it to an AH at the end to do the grammar. You can write a case study and ask AI to make it more interesting. But you can ask AI in effect, either to help you create the roadmap or to embroider, but not to write it. And we can tell.

Speaker C: Gotcha. That that is a really good perspective because even, uh, like, I, uh, wrote an article for a publication, and one of the things, like, they asked me to write an article on something that is like. Is not my. It was on personal finance. It's not my normal realm of expertise. It's like, I understand it and I know it. And so one of the things that I use AI for is give me. I was like, hey, I'm trying to write this article. Give me some. A list of common questions that people may ask about this topic.

Speaker A: That's perfect.

Speaker C: And. And it became a great way to help me start thinking in the direction of. All right, when people think about this subject matter, here are, uh, the points that I want to make sure that I hit as I write out my answers and stuff. And it became a great brainstorming tool. But yeah, I Definitely would not tell it. Hey, here, I want to talk about this topic. Write me an article on this and then try to go to print with that article.

Speaker A: But you could be giving an example of personal finance. That is a good way of looking at it in a bad way. And then you could say to AI, are there any other end results that I missed? And see what it says now. It may give you back garbage, but it also may give you back one idea that's good. Okay. It also depends who you use. Personally, I think that open AI, huge, gigantic systems are not going to be relevant for most people. Most people want the ones that are curated for their business and their issues. Like in law. We have them fighting over it already. Who do you use and what do you use it for? And what was it trained on? And most people don't ask. And, um, we don't know the answer to what was your AI trained on? Because what did they read? What do they know about it?

Speaker C: Yeah, most of them don't know much.

Speaker A: No. Ask AI sometimes just because it's funny. Show you the English constitution, because there isn't one. England doesn't have a constitution. They have a set of 10 various things that have come out, like the Magna Carta that have been published that together are considered the basis of their rule of law. But they do not have a constitution.

Speaker C: That's an interesting point, because I've even heard some people even ask the question of if AI can. If you can get access to just about any verbiage or language. It's just what becomes the value of actually writing a book? Or does the value of writing a book go down? Because you can just go to AI to ask it a question and it's going to give you an answer. When you hear someone say something like that, what's your. What goes through your mind?

Speaker A: The value of a book is the intellect behind it, actually. And sometimes there are artists and it's the moon series of books for children or poetry, and sometimes they're scholars. And it's the analysis of something that's going to be important for what you do or what you need to understand. You wouldn't read a book about Lud just to read that. There are these 50 cases on it. You would want somebody to explain to you. Of the 50 cases, which are the most relevant? Why are they the most relevant? What are they the most relevant for? Things that's human.

Speaker C: That makes a lot of sense. So another point that I'm very curious about is you hear about people writing books and there are Some books that I've read that are, I'm like, man, it's a really good book. It flowed well. And then there are other books that I've read that I would say I probably would never tell anybody else to pick this book up. Being a person who is more of an expert than most when it comes down to communication, are there any tips or ideas or patterns that you've seen that help people write books that actually have a better flow?

Speaker A: Not, people write the way they talk. And if you ever know an author, talk to them for an hour and then go read any five pages of a book of theirs. It reads just like they speak because it's the same person that's doing it. It's just coming out their hands instead of their mouth. But it's the same kind of thing. And some people write really well because they're trained writers, and that's how it comes out from them. And some people have really good ideas that they say badly, but the ideas are so good that it's worth reading. So, uh, you don't really know.

Speaker C: Gotcha. That makes sense. So I guess to your point, and when you mention about, like, how most people, and pretty much just about every author they write, how they talk. So let me ask in a more personal, more hypothetical way. I do a lot of talking, from podcasts to videos. And if I were to write a book, what would be the appeal for an audience to read the book if they're kind of like, hey, I can kind of get some of the same stuff from the video content that he puts out there. Will readers see a difference between the written versus the audio? If there's a lot of audio out there about a person?

Speaker A: First of all, there's three kinds of learners, right? There's kinetic, auditory, and visual. So you could do a thousand podcasts, and I would get nothing from them because I'm not an auditory learner. I'll hear it, I'll be interested why you say it, and I'll remember none of it. But if I read, I can remember whole pages because I'm a visual person. So it depends a lot what kind of a person it is that's going to read it. But also, you write exactly like you talk, which is mostly topic sentences, which makes for a great podcast. Great interviewing difficulty when you're reading a book, because I don't know what came before or what comes after. So for a book, uh, the writer has to think, what do you need to know to understand what I'm going to talk about now? And how am I going to talk about now going to affect the next chapter? It's like a mystery, right? Even though it's what we do for the ABA is mostly nonfiction, but it's the same kind of thing. If you ever read a bad mystery book, it's tedious, horrible, and you know you're on page 50 and you know the answer already. And I really need to finish this book. I have a friend who's a mystery writer, and he taught himself the first book was horrendous. By the third book, he'd figured it out. But same is true for anything you write. You have to give them the whole thing. You have to guide them all the way along. In a podcast, you don't. You can assume that they're going to fill in the spaces themselves.

Speaker C: That's a really good point because it's something that I don't know. Where I heard it before is I heard someone kind of explain the analogy of when people are following what you're saying, you're trying to communicate a message. Just imagine if they're following your voice to go on this journey, and if you leave out significant details, they're going to hit a lot of crossroads, and they may not end up at the same destination that you've been trying to guide them because you missed some very significant details. And they end up way over here while you are trying to get them over here. And I'm just like, even as I think for myself, like, trying to write a book, when I see the gaps in my writing, I'm just like, oh, man, I went back and reread this. I'm like, there's a lot of gaps here. People are going to get lost.

Speaker A: Yes. Because it's in your mind and you're not that. It's like, suppose you decided that you're going to go ahead. Right. Where would you be? You can't do that. Right. Because you can't skip 10, two chapters in it and have any idea where he's going to come out. You don't know. The same with a lot of. With most good literature, you need to read it. You don't know where it's going to come out. And nonfiction, in a way, is similar. You tell them where you're going, but they need to be able to follow how you got there. If you don't put down the breadcrumbs, you're never getting home.

Speaker C: That makes sense. So I guess as your. Your role as the chair of the pub board, what's your goal of the number of books that the pub board wants to publish each year.

Speaker A: The pub board is supposed to produce five books a year. Not more than five because other people use the publication facilities, and not less than 5 because we have a contribution to make and a large one, usually to the LP budget. So it's very important that we do that. So one thing I do want to say about authors, particularly nonfiction authors, all nonfiction authors have a day job, and that day job is what they get paid for. And then they want to write a book, and that's their hobby. And the hardest thing for the pub board is to remind the authors that they signed a contract, a legal contract, and that it's due within a certain amount of time because for them it's a hobby. And you know that yourself. Because trying to write a book on finance for law firms is a lot different than being their financial person.

Speaker C: Yes, I will say it is very different. I think we've been through a couple drafts. I am a bit delayed, and that's not all of my work.

Speaker A: People always are delayed. And we write into the contract six months delay. But we've had people that were four years delayed.

Speaker C: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: My unenviable job as chair of the pub is to thank them very much for wanting to publish with us. But, uh, telling them that the contract's canceled because their book is no longer relevant.

Speaker C: Gotcha.

Speaker A: Because time flies. It goes by.

Speaker C: And uh, it's moreover, now, as a person yourself who's written a couple of books, do you find that the process gets a little easier after you've done one or two books?

Speaker A: The process of thinking about what the book should be or the process of completing a book.

Speaker C: The process of completing a book

Speaker A: never. Because it's always. You're not getting paid for it. You don't get. We're not John le Carre, where we get a million dollar advance against a book, or Jane Austen, I'm sure she got advances, or somebody famous. We're not that person. We're not working against a salary commitment of any kind. We're fitting it in and you have to get into it. So because of the way the brain works, you never can start where you stopped. Right. You always have to go back a little bit to see the context of where you were and then you move forward. So because you're doing it in spurts, it's not the same. And then you have other things that come up. I always, when I was writing books, I would rent rooms in other people's houses because then there was nothing in that house except my book. And when I hit a hard part, I couldn't say, I think I'll just go make dessert. Because it wasn't my house and it wasn't my dessert. I had to keep thinking to get it through. And so I would say my brain knew that when we went to that room we were only doing one thing, just writing that book. And it did help. It has always helped physically because otherwise my life's too tempting. There's too many things in here I can do in addition to that or tell myself that I'm looking at research that's relevant to that kind of thing. And those are all ways of avoiding actually writing the book.

Speaker C: That makes a lot of sense because I think about there was before I, uh, did a six part kind of finance series, like a video series. And I just could not do it when I was at home. And then I checked into a hotel and within a day and a half I was able to get through it. And I think just being in a different environment, I had all the content in my head. It was just trying to actually just get it done. I just couldn't do it in my normal setting.

Speaker A: There's too many excuses and you want them. Writing a book is hard. You're asking somebody who doesn't know anything about how you think to follow how you think and want to follow it and want to learn about it. So it, to me it's very rewarding. It's really rewarding to see that you can write something and then when you go to read it, you say yes, that's how I thought about it and that's what I want them to know.

Speaker C: Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. I can definitely see that being there. Even as you mentioned, just going through that hard process of just clearly communicating your thoughts, just getting that done, I think is reporting that that makes a lot of sense. Now I know we could probably go on and on about this topic and I want to be respectful of your time. If people want to see the latest, hey, I got a book idea. It's something I want to write and I'd love to pitch my idea to the pub board. What is the kind of best way for them to be able to get their ideas over to the pub board?

Speaker A: The best way is to send an email to me or to someone on the pub board or someone they know in ABA and ask them, and then we ask our executive editor who works with our board to send them a questionnaire that they have to fill out that talks about what is the main idea of the book, who are the competitors, who will read it? Why would someone want to read it? How will you market it? Those kinds of questions, what's your expertise that says that you're, you can write this book, that kind of thing. And so, for instance, this year we have a book coming out that's going to be very interesting.

Speaker C: Awesome, Carol, it has been a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much. And we'll make sure we put a link there so people can get to the pub board and they can also see some of the many books that the pub board has already published. And again, thank you for coming on and thank you for what you do as a chair of the pub board and helping us get out high quality content and book form for our audience. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to the Law

Speaker C: Practice Today podcast where we bring you conversations and tips on how to run a more effective law port practice. Now, if you want to hear more, be sure to stop by the American Bar association website to see more updates on new episodes as they come out and other, uh, awesome resources that are offered by the American Bar Association. Thanks for tuning in.