Pursuits of Happiness

• Publication year: 2019
• Pages: 8
• Citation: Vol. 45 No. 2 Pg. 8

PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS Vol. 45 No. 2 Pg. 8 Vermont Bar Journal Summer, 2019

Improv-able Duo

Jennifer Emens-Butler: I am here in Burlington, and I have the pleasure of interviewing two people at the same time about a certain passion that both Rick Hecht and Neil Groberg have. As our readers know Pursuits of Happiness is our column where I interview lawyers who have interests and talents outside the law, which are sometimes tangential to their practices and sometimes are just something entirely different altogether. How long have you two known each other?

Rick Hecht: So, I think we first met at a Chittenden County mediation group, that Neil and some other folks were trying to start up as a mediator support group. I then found myself going to a meeting that Emily Gould had called for the DR Section and somehow as a result of that meeting I became assistant chair of that Section.

JEB: Ah, so this is all Emily Gould’s fault! She set up her co-chair before she left. Well done Emily!

Neil Groberg: I remember us meeting before that.

RH: Before my “power?” [laughs]

NG: I remember the mediation folks trying to help plan mediation week at Citizen’s Cider and I think that was the first time I met Rick, and we were brainstorming at the time.

JEB: Wait, you were planning the mediation week at Citizen’s Cider, or the mediation week was going to be at Citizen’s Cider?!

NG: Ha, well it should have been! But no, we were brainstorming what to do for mediation week over cider, and I think Rick came up with the suggestion of doing something with what was then under construction, the Vermont Comedy Club.

RH: Yes, the Comedy Club at that time was just starting up with Nathan Harwick and Natalie Miller. It was in infancy, but I had taken a stand up class from Nathan and I knew that they also did improve.

JEB: You were already interested in improve?

RH: Right. I came to improve when I was a first-year law student. When I was In Boston they had this sort of continuing education thing that had all sorts of classes -- anything from knitting to astrology -- and one of the classes was improve comedy and I thought, that’s what I need!

JEB: Needed?

RH: Yeah. It really was, like this is the opposite of drilling stuff into my head at law school and being more free flowing.

JEB: Ok.

RH: And so it sort of happened, and then fast forward however many years, I found that improve is good, I’ve seen it help me with the law, and I think there is even more tie-in with mediation (where things come at you from out of left field) so Neil and I and a couple of other folks, put together a workshop that was co-sponsored by the VBA and Champlain College’s mediation program. The workshop had a bunch of the trainers from what was to be the Comedy Club and it was a really good time.

JEB: So the mediation section went to this workshop?

RH: Yes, it was probably 25-30 people who all participated.

NG: It was a lot of fun and it was educational, and it was where I learned the underlying theory of improve, which is actually incredibly helpful in mediation: instead of saying ‘yes BUT,’ when someone says something, you say ‘yes AND,’ where you expand the thought as opposed to contract the thought.

RH: So the way it plays out in improve is, let’s say someone will walk into the scene and come up with an idea that you think is completely stupid, and fat, but you are morally obliged not to say “no, we are not doing that” but you have to say “Okay” and make it work.

JEB: Oh, so now I am an alien, or whatever.

RH: Exactly. It is one of the crucial things in negotiation and mediation, where you expand the threshold of what you are talking about so...