Posted on Nov 02, 2007 - 01:11 PM

Oliveira Makes Laughter the Elixir to Your Success

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t often associate “lawyer” with “comedy” – unless it’s a judge suing a dry cleaner $54 million for losing his pants .

But that's precisely the type of target audience Manny Oliveira seeks with his standup and improvisational comedy workshops. As he explains on his Web site, “improvisation is a fast-paced opportunity to understand how quickly your mind can react to various situations and to think on your feet. You … learn to trust your instincts and manifest them with confidence.”

Myrtle Beach attorney David Swanner, over at the South Carolina Trial Law Blog, explains how his training with Oliveira in 2005 helped him and others. “A lot of lawyers said they wish they could do that, so we put a 2-day class together,” Swanner says. “The skills in stand-up comedy are exactly the same as in trial work (public speaking, presentation, going with the flow), but used in a different environment.”

Oliveira has previously conducted his workshop at the Comedy Cabana in Myrtle Beach, where he’ll be performing his standup routine Nov. 14-17.

I did a media training several years ago with longtime NBC News correspondent Richard Valeriani. The whole process at first scared the bejeebers out of me, but in the end I was very glad I did it. No offense to Richard, but if given the choice back then, I might have opted to go the comedian route to accomplish the same thing.

Who knows? Maybe Oliveira would have helped me laugh my old boss into a bigger holiday bonus than a popcorn tin …