The Texas trial lawyer Jefferson Fisher is at an inflection point. In early 2022, to raise the profile for the law firm he had just founded in Silsbee, Texas, Mr. Fisher began posting videos to social media in which he delivered succinct, down-to-earth communication advice as he sat in his parked pickup truck.
To his astonishment, one video in his “How to Argue Like a Lawyer” series went viral on TikTok, racking up more than a million views one day after he posted it, and Mr. Fisher reached 500,000 followers on Instagram by the year’s end. By the following summer, his popularity had soared into another stratosphere, and he quadrupled his Instagram following. Last July, he launched his self-titled podcast, a surprisingly practical and concise show. In the first season, episodes ran about 14 minutes.
Buoyed by his endearing accent and affable presence, the fifth-generation trial lawyer has built a reputation for teaching people how to take on tough conversations with confidence. He now has 5.8 million Instagram followers and his videos across social media platforms have been played more than half a billion times.
Mr. Fisher, 36, who lives in the small Texas town where he grew up, with his wife, also a lawyer, and two children, offered communication tips for couples, including how to discuss topics that can’t be easily reconciled. (One lesson he and his wife model for their children? “Yelling does not improve the logic of the position — you can be just as persuasive without shouting.”)
Speaking from his home studio, he also touched on his ascent and gave his theory for why his techniques are relevant to a modern audience. His first book, “The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More,” comes out on March 18.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tell me about the scaffolding that people should have around a hard conversation.
Most people don’t have a goal for what they want in the conversation, so the other person is just kind of guessing. They begin their conversation with something like, “Hey, remember how …? And the other person is like, “OK, where is your point?” And it builds anxiety, that fear of “I don’t know where this is going.”
There’s something called a frame that everyone could benefit from. Number one, you tell the person the issue you want to talk about. Two, you say how you want to feel after the conversation. That’s very important because you’re inserting the goal. Now I know what you want to talk about. I know the conversation is going to be done when this goal has been achieved. And three, you get their buy-in into the frame.
This is what it might sound like in a relationship setting: “I’d like to talk with you about our budget this week and I want to walk away feeling like you and I are on the same page. Can we do that?” Once they say yes, it’s this invisible contract. Now they know exactly what you’re going to talk about. You allow yourself to go very deep on one single issue, rather than just skimming the surface on a whole bunch of touch points.
How can you get your significant other to acknowledge and understand what you’re saying?
I could tell you something right here: If you never gave me any indication that you heard me, I feel like my message is lost. You and I won’t connect.
Or if I acknowledge you, but I didn’t really understand it — I just say, “ “Yeah, that’s crazy” — there’s still not that connection there. You need to prime the conversation with simple things like “I’d like to talk with you about something important to me. I just need to be heard.” In my own life with my wife, she’s wonderful at saying, “I need to say this out loud. I don’t need you to fix it — I just need to externally process this.” That keeps me from trying to be the doctor and come in and fix everything. But sometimes it’s just, “I’m going to say this so I feel heard, and I would love to hear you acknowledge that you heard it.”
I tried this with my husband. He was upset about something. Usually I would be like, “Not now. I don’t have the time.” And I said to him, “I acknowledge what you’re going through …”
Yes!
And, “Do we have to talk about this right now?” He’s very fiery, and he actually said to me, “No, we don’t have to talk about this right now. I just wanted you to acknowledge it.”
I’m telling you, that’s it! What I like to do is very similar. I’ll ask the question, “Is this something we have to agree on?” And if it is, usually the second question is “Is this something we have to agree on right now?” Or you just use that one first.
How do you have a productive conversation about a big issue on which you and your partner don’t necessarily see eye to eye?
The first mistake is thinking that the first conversation will be the last conversation. You need to treat the first conversation almost as if you’re priming for the second conversation and the third one and the fourth one. The bigger the issue, the more conversations that are needed.
You treat that first conversation as nothing but an information-gathering and positioning session, so that means starting the conversation with “You don’t need to agree with me.” You say: “I’m not asking you to agree with anything. I’m not asking for us to come to a decision. I want you to hear my point of view. And most importantly, I’d love to hear your point of view.” And then nobody’s arguing, because now there’s not a time constraint.
Why do you think your videos and podcasts have resonated with people so profoundly?
I believe they’ve resonated because there is a hunger and a demand for people to be able to talk again. My tips are very short and they’re about topics that everybody deals with. The way that I deliver them inspires them to feel like “I can do this.”
What do you think is behind the cultural obsession with having the “exact phrase” for a given situation?
There’s been such a long period of time where we’ve relied on transmission of texts and emails that there’s some sense of community that’s been lost. We used to get information around the courthouse square. Those don’t exist. We used to all go to malls and see people. Those are starting to fade away. We’ve gone to online shopping, and now I don’t even want to go to the grocery store. Our human interactions have narrowed significantly, which presents problems. We’re humans, we’re meant to connect and talk to other humans.
How did you adjust to fame?
I don’t know about that “f” word. But truth be told, it was actually very lonely — because nobody in my world could relate. Somewhere in L.A., everybody’s got bajillions of followers. My little town in East Texas? Ain’t nobody got that. I got introduced to anxiety, met that guy, this anxiety guy about a year ago, and that’s been different. Thankfully, I have a wife who is very patient, a family that’s very forgiving, and so, every day I’m trying to learn a little bit more at a time. It took me a little while, but I’ve made friends in this space and that’s been really comforting — to have people that know what’s going on and know what it’s like, because Lord knows I did not.
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