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Confident in-person presenting for lawyers: audience analysis, structure, key messages, rehearsal, managing nerves, effective delivery, body language and tone

Published by a LexisNexis Practice Management expert

Practice notes

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This Practice Note offers guidance on presenting with assurance when you are in the same room as your audience. Communicating ideas clearly and effectively is essential to put your message across and influence others. For advice on presenting virtually, see Practice Note: Presenting with confidence—virtually.

Planning

Evaluate your audience’s needs

Presenting is about forging a connection. Before you draft anything, plan with the audience front of mind and:

consider who the audience is, eg:
- is there a mixed level of knowledge?
- is it a multinational group?
establish your objectives and future actions
anticipate reactions, questions and objections
assess what information you need

Invest time in how you will communicate your message so it lands and keeps attention; this is central to an interesting and effective presentation.

Create a logical structure with three distinct elements

A straightforward way to structure a talk is:

introduction—outline what you are going to cover (hypothesis)
body—deliver the content (methods/results and limitations)
summary—recap what you have covered (conclusions)

Reiterating your message three times helps it to be remembered. Studies show...

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Beth Pipe , FCIPD

OnLive Learning

Beth is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD) and has spent over 25 years specialising in Learning and Development. During that time she has worked across a broad variety of different industries and has, for the past 15 years, worked closely with a number of well known law firms; this has involved putting in to place systems and structures to encourage, enable and track the effectiveness of learning activities. Adept at face to face course delivery, and always enjoying excellent feedback, Beth is also accomplished at online delivery and created OnLive Learning in response to the challenges presented by the 2020 Covid-19 restrictions.Beth has written extensively for LexisNexis on subjects such as Performance Management, Managing Change and Stress Management. Away from her training delivery she is a published author writing about local history, hiking, wildlife and the outdoors and is...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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