Winning Every Time : How to Use the Skills of a Lawyer in the Trials of Life

Rating:
Summary: This Book Changed My Life
Review: Every once in awhile, a self-help book comes along that makes you completely rethink and improve the way you do things at home, in your job, with your friends and loved ones. Lis Wiehl's WINNING EVERY TIME is as strong and important a book as THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED by M. Scott Peck or THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Steven Covey. After you read WINNING EVERY TIME, you'll handle any tough situation in life, or any conflict you're in, with much more grace, thoughtfulness, and effectiveness. This book is a must-read for any person who wants to become more powerful, persuasive and successful. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: A smart AND heart-felt guide to getting what you want.
Review: I loved this book, and congratulate Lis Wiehl on taking what she learned through her distinguished career as a lawyer and summing it up into a 288-page guide to using the techniques of a lawyer to get whatever it is you want. Whether negotiating an apartment lease or a raise, this book's "8 Steps to the Skills of a Lawyer" will help you make the strongest possible case for it:

Step 1: Know What You Want
Step 2: Choose and Cultivate Your Audience (Voir Dire)
Step 3: Marshal Your Evidence (Discovery)
Step 4: Advocate with Confidence (Making the Cae)
Step 5: Counter the Claims (Cross-Examination)
Step 6: Stay True to Your Case
Step 7: Advocate with Heart
Step 8: Sum it Up (The Closing Argument)

As a Harvard Business School graduate, I appreciate Lis Wiehl making available some of the highlights of what she learned at Harvard Law School -- saving me three years of additional schooling and a six-figure tuition bill, for the mere price of this book!

-- Karen Page, Chair, Harvard Business School alumnae network

Rating:
Summary: 8 EASY STEPS TO A RATIONAL APPROACH
Review: I met the author at a book signing in San Francisco and at first was hesitant--no one likes lawyers. But I listened. She's not just a lawyer, she's a nice person and the techniques in this book are easy, but at the same time, really smart. I'm now approaching my life's challenges much more rationally, setting emotion aside for real communication.

The first step in the book is knowing what you want (what lawyer's call "theory of the case." Basically, Ms. Wiehl says if you think your point all the way through, what you want might be different than what you originally thought you wanted. For example, I don't want my wife to stop nagging, I want us to have the fun we had when we were first married. When I approached my wife (what Ms. Wiehl calls a "juror") and asked her what we could do to have some more fun in our marriage, she was thrilled. And I'm taking the time to write this review because we've just had the greatest couple of days we've had in our marriage in a long time. (Saw Shrek 2, ate popcorn, laughed, went for a walk, planted an herb garden...)

I know it sounds easy and simplistic, that's because it is. I also used these techniques with my boss yesterday at work and we had probably the best conversation we've ever had.

This is a book that will change your life. Not because it's a heady, intellectual tome, but because it's direct, to the point, easy to read, and the concepts are easy to grasp and use.

If we'd all take the time to read this book, we might find ourselves a less hostile, more communicative society.

Thanks for a great book, Ms. Wiehl.

Rating:
Summary: A great guide to being your own advocate.
Review: Lis Wiehl manages to simplify the often difficult task of communicating your needs and asking for what you want as the essential first step in getting it. And WINNING EVERY TIME is brilliant in its simplicity.

It becomes clear through the book's examples how often emotion gets in the way of a clear argument by clouding it with subjectivity -- when making an objective case would be far more effective.

As a chef, I hear this all too often in restaurants, when diners raise their voices to waiters when something isn't to their liking. Using the techniques advocated in this book, diners can learn to simply state the facts of what happened and what they'd like done about it, e.g. "My steak is well-done when I specifically ordered it medium-rare. Would you please replace it with a medium-rare steak as quickly as possible?" I can promise you that the waiters and chefs that I know will all respond more kindly to this approach than a raised voice!

The ideas in this book will help you whenever you need to be heard, get something you want, or resolve a difference -- i.e. every day of your life!

--Andrew Dornenburg, James Beard Award-winning author of Becoming a Chef, Culinary Artistry, Dining Out, Chef's Night Out, and The New American Chef

Rating:
Summary: Lawyers should save their advice for their clients.
Review: The saddest part of this sorry book is the fact that it pretends to be written by an experienced trial lawyer. Ms. Wiehl has less experience at trying cases than most first year district attorneys. Wiehl has an amazing ability to sell herself. The problem is that there is very little to be gotten from such shallow waters. Worse still is the utter irrelevancy of so-called "lawyer lessons" given that lawyers suffer inordinately high divorce rates, alcoholism, depression and other stress-related illnesses. The best advice may well be that lawyers should tend to their garden and leave the rest of us to learn our own lessons. Now that is a winning strategy!