Public Speaking Anxiety in the Legal Profession.
This article first appeared in Barrister Magazine Easter Term Issue 2025 (29 April to 23 May 2025)
Confidentiality is paramount but to establish my expertise here's a general overview of my legal clients. I've treated top barristers and lawyers from prestigious chambers, Magic Circle, Big Law and founders of successful boutique law firms and hedge funds.
Sectors including M&A, Aviation, Fintech and Real Estate.
The majority of my legal clients to date have been male. Many clients report imposter feelings as a secondary condition. Highly qualified and experienced professionals but the anxiety drives the insecurity.
Top barristers are not immune from performance glitches.
They have competed for years to attain their position.
Reputation is everything - they need to appear bulletproof.
The typical image of a barrister is someone supremely confident, steely tenacious, detailed, rational, and bullish.
But severe performance anxiety can threaten their position. It can strike at any time and this unpredictability causes major stress.
If you want to optimise your performance and eliminate unhelpful anxiety, this is for you.
Have you seen the movie 8 Mile with Eminem?
It's the hero's big moment, his first rap battle.
But he freezes and fails in front of his peers.
The Oscar-winning hit Lose Yourself describes how the nerves hijack his mind and body:
"His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready
to drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
what he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth but the words won't come out
He's chokin’, how? Everybody's jokin’ now"
He feels humiliated but perseveres.
Performance glitches affect many top professionals in high-pressure situations. It's how you deal with them that counts. Do you face them head-on or avoid them?
This guide outlines the causes of severe performance nerves and how to overcome them.
Many outwardly successful lawyers secretly suffer from public speaking anxiety, stage fright and professional confidence issues.
Speaking anxiety can strike at the most inopportune moments:
In court, in small meetings, on client calls, in boardrooms, keynotes, panels, podcasts, interviews, networking and media appearances.
Chances to demonstrate your value and expertise. Or fail to impress.
Symptoms of severe performance anxiety are physical as much as psychological.
You give yourself a simple command:"Deliver these words." But suddenly your brain and body don’t comply.
You may look and sound nervous or incoherent.
You may even go blank and nothing comes out.
The mental doom loop.
This is common in top performers with severe speaking anxiety.
They feel shame, panic and isolation. And the mental doom loop makes it worse: "If I can't get a grip, this could ruin my career." "My reputation will tank." "What's wrong with me?"
Even catastrophic thoughts like: "I won't be able to pay school fees", and "I could end up sleeping in a cardboard box."
If this sounds like you, you're not alone.
Martin Amis called this very human fear: "Tramp Dread."
This anxiety can hit top performers hard and feels like a survival issue.
Because it is.
These symptoms are best explained and treated by looking at your user history and wiring.
I get how embarrassing, frustrating and scary it is for someone in a senior position with huge responsibilities.
You may feel like everyone else in the profession has bulletproof confidence. They don't.
This guide is based on my clinical experience treating public speaking anxiety in lawyers and senior leaders.
Confidentiality is paramount but to establish my expertise here's a general overview of my legal clients. I've treated top barristers and lawyers from prestigious chambers, Magic Circle, Big Law and founders of successful boutique law firms and hedge funds.
The majority of my legal clients to date have been male. Many clients report imposter feelings as a secondary condition. Highly qualified and experienced professionals but the anxiety drives the insecurity.
Performance Equals Potential minus Interference* (Tim Galwey, the Inner Game of Golf).
Let's examine this interference to optimal performance.
My first car was a Saab 900. Solid and reliable on paper, but mine had a performance glitch.
I'd press the accelerator and sometimes it would hesitate.
I couldn't count on having the power there when overtaking or pulling out of a junction.
Not what you expect from an expensive Swedish car. Supposedly solid, safe and reliable. Disappointing and frustrating as hell.
After many fruitless visits to the Saab dealership, they sent an engineer from Sweden. He diagnosed the problem.
The intermittent fault was caused by a loose contact in the engine management system.
The problem was fixed, and it was a brilliant and reliable car for many years. RIP Saab.
Performance anxiety in top lawyers is often intermittent too and without understanding the inner workings of humans it can be hard to fix.
If you're malfunctioning, it helps to know how you're wired.
The Saab engineer had an accurate map of the engine management system.
If you experience physical symptoms of performance anxiety then purely psychological approaches won't cure the problem.
Severe speaking anxiety is a neurophysiological condition.
Is public speaking anxiety holding you back? Cramping your career style?
Chances are:
You feel you shouldn't have this problem.
You can't seem to 'get a grip' on the anxiety.
You worry that you're fundamentally faulty.
Over-preparation and avoidance are common coping strategies.
So why do some situations trigger this anxiety how can you make it stop?
The danger zone.
Your body has a relatively primitive danger-detection system.
It scans your environment for potential threats.
It also scans your body: "How safe do I feel?"
It tries to find patterns: “This seems like that other time. When a bad thing happened.”
It will scan a room for danger, anything or anyone that reminds it of a physical or psychological threat or a 'cringe' moment.
Your nervous system remembers everything.
You can stay on high alert even years after a bad experience.
Like the famous book says: The Body Keeps the Score.
If you experience physical anxiety symptoms, shaking, stammering, sweating, heart palpitations, nausea or running to the loo, it's a sign that your nervous system does not feel safe. A professional speaker colleague talks about "The Immodium years".
Your body activates flight, fight or freeze mode when it detects a threat.
These innate survival responses kick in automatically. It's not a conscious decision. Your nervous system can become overly reactive and jumpy. It can activate alarm mode even without 'Clear and Present Danger" in the form of a credible threat to your life and limb. Like a car alarm going off when a cat walks by. It needs to be recalibrated.
How bad is it?
Is the fear:
Forcing you to spend way more time on speech prep than it should?
Causing you days and nights of worry?
Costing you sleep?
Costing you career opportunities?
How to get a handle on the anxiety and eliminate the problem.
Barristers are excellent at putting on a front. But it takes precious mental and emotional energy to hide the anxiety and appear functional.
Your legal brain lives in a body wired for physical survival in a simpler world.
It's doing its best but occasionally it gets overwhelmed and freaks out.
Once you understand this you can treat and prevent performance glitches.
The main misconception about severe speaking anxiety is that we humans always obey "top-down' commands: "The brain tells the body what to do." If only it were that simple.
Generic platitudes don't help:
"If you have performance anxiety, just change your mindset, then your body will obey and everything will fixed."
"The audience wants you to succeed". Not always, Pollyanna.
In a courtroom or a boardroom, visible signs of nerves or insecurity can and will be used against you.
"Tell yourself it's excitement, not anxiety."
Once your body's been hijacked by fear your rational mind has very little input. Your prefrontal cortex can go wholly or partially offline as a lot of the blood is diverted into your body to run or fight.
Severe public speaking anxiety is physical as well as mental.
These are very real symptoms in the body.
Remember, your legal brain is housed in a relatively primitive meat suit.
We humans have evolved with safety hardwired. We have three priorities:
1) physical survival
2) physical safety
3) everything else, career, loftier aims.
When severe performance anxiety strikes, it's because your nervous system has perceived a threat. NB this danger may be real or imagined. It can be a physical threat or a psychological threat.
Either way, it activates your body's innate fight, flight or even freeze survival response.
There's a phenomenon in law and medicine where academically bright and confident students get put in their place. Confidence is taken away and then handed back to them in small doses.
Lecturers, pupil masters, and partners often show you that you're not "All That." "Don't get too big for your boots."
Eliminate medical issues:
See a doctor to rule out any underlying medical issues like depression, anxiety disorders, thyroid or hormonal issues. Menopause or perimenopause can seriously affect your memory and your mojo.
Tiredness
Optimise sleep: Being over-tired increases your chances of going blank and looking and feeling panicked.
Conclusion
If mindset doesn't help, it's because the anxiety starts in the nervous system.
Not because you're fundamentally flawed.
If you suffer from performance anxiety it's not a question of willpower.
When negative self-talk spirals, it feeds the feelings of anxiety, shame and isolation.
You are not alone and you don't have to do it all alone. You are in excellent company.
High-stakes speaking is about certainty.
When you master your nervous system, you can perform optimally.
I hope you've found this helpful.
Get in touch to enquire about my bespoke coaching.
.