FAQ

Vox Vera® is a performance skills consultancy for lawyers, executives, public figures, and other professionals who need to speak, listen, and lead well when it matters.We train the physical craft of human communication: voice, breath, presence, spoken language, listening, and real-time responsiveness. Drawing from performance traditions, the applied humanities, and peer-level legal and business experience, the work helps accomplished professionals move beyond polish and communicate with clarity, authority, humanity, and connection in the rooms where trust is formed.Vox Vera was founded by Paul Marchegiani, a former BigLaw litigator, Fortune 50 executive, and the only U.S. lawyer certified to coach by Patsy Rodenburg, Emeritus Director of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He frequently develops and teaches public speaking, presence, and communication skills courses at top law schools, and has held Lecturer appointments at Stanford Law, Berkeley Law, and the University of Chicago Law School.

Performance skills training focuses on how communication happens in real time. Most accomplished professionals already know how to think, write, and organize their content. The bigger, untrained challenge is what happens in the live room: how the breath changes, how the voice carries, how language lands, how attention moves, how the listener responds, and how the speaker adapts. Vox Vera trains those skills directly. We work with voice, breath, presence, spoken language, listening, movement, and live feedback so professionals can communicate with greater clarity, steadiness, and persuasive force.

Yes. Presence is trainable because it is physical and relational. It involves breath, attention, posture, voice, listening, and the human ability to stay available and adaptable to the people in front of you. We do not teach presence as a pose or personality style. We train the habits that allow a speaker to stay clear, responsive, and fully engaged when the stakes rise.

Yes. Vox Vera's work draws on performance training, communication research, voice and speech physiology, behavioral science, and embodied learning. The premise is simple: communication is more than just semantic information. Listeners respond to language, voice, tone, physical presence, attention, emotion, and relational cues. We train these elements together because that's how communication is actually experienced in a courtroom, meeting room, negotiation, classroom, or public setting.

Embodied communication means speaking and interacting with your full physical presence, not just your intellect. It's a science-backed approach to integrating breath, voice, gesture, movement, and language to communicate clearly and authentically. Most professionals live in their heads; we teach you to stay present and ground your communication through your entire instrument.

Because speech is different than writing. It's dynamic, multi-dimensional, and fundamentally physical. A presentation can be accurate, organized, and well prepared, but it still won't land if the speaker's voice tightens, the words lack human connection, the rhythm goes flat, the listener is ignored, or the room changes and the speaker cannot adapt. Vox Vera trains the layer that sits between content and impact: the live craft of voice, presence, spoken language, listening, and responsiveness.

Performance Labs™ are our flagship deep-dive workshop format: half-day experiential sessions of 3.5 to 4 hours for cohorts of six to twelve, with additional coaching staff for larger groups. The work is structured as practice rather than presentation — participants speak, move, receive immediate expert feedback, and repeat under varied conditions applicable to their day-to-day work — training the layer most communication programs never reach: breath, voice, presence, spoken language, listening, and real-time responsiveness.Four Foundational Labs build the underlying craft — presence, voice and speech, spoken language, and adaptability — and our Applied Labs deploy that craft in the venues where lawyers and leaders actually work, including litigation, negotiation, executive leadership, and teaching. Every Lab is customized to the firm or organization, and many clients begin with a Voice Series™ keynote or CLE before extending into the Labs. Full details on our Performance Labs page.

Voice Series™ sessions are typically delivered as 60–90-minute keynotes, webinars, brief workshops, or masterclasses — ideal for individual departments, practice groups, retreats, continuing education/CLEs, and firmwide programs. Performance Labs™ are our flagship deep-dive workshop format: typically half-day experiential sessions of 3.5 to 4 hours for small cohorts of six to twelve participants, or larger group sessions with additional coaches leading breakout sessions. Many companies and law firms begin with a Voice Series session and extend the work through the Labs.

The Performance Ladder™ is Vox Vera's proprietary framework for developing high-level communication capacity. It focuses on four dimensions: Self-Knowledge, Content, Connection, and Flow. Together, they help speakers understand what they bring into the room, shape language that can be spoken clearly, connect with the people in front of them, and perform with greater freedom and adaptability when it counts.

The Presence Ladder™ is Vox Vera's proprietary framework for training authentic presence. It moves through Availability, Alignment, Attunement, and Intention: how you show up, how breath, body, and voice organize, how you read and respond to others in real time, and how you direct your attention toward meaningful impact. It is designed to make presence practical, observable, and trainable.

Vox Vera® is the only communications coaching firm that brings three disciplines together: BigLaw litigation and more than a decade of Fortune 50 client-side dealmaking and executive leadership; teaching at Stanford Law School, Berkeley Law, and the University of Chicago Law School; and conservatory-level performance craft.Our founder has sat where your lawyers sit, worked where their clients work, and trained where the world's best performers train. That experience gives Vox Vera peer-level credibility with partners and a firsthand understanding of what sophisticated clients expect.Our entire coaching faculty shares a rigorous foundation in embodied performance training. We develop the physical craft of speaking — breath, voice, movement, rhetoric, language, listening, and responsiveness — so lawyers can communicate with greater clarity, ease, and naturalness, adapt in real time, and meet the moment.

Most communication training focuses on what an effective speaker looks and sounds like: presentation etiquette, “projected confidence,” slide design, vocal variety, gestures. Speakers trained that way learn to manage behaviors. You can spot the coaching a mile away.But effective speech is much more than a mechanism for delivering prepared information. Writing is often better for that. Speech is important because it is a live, human exchange: reading the dynamics of a shifting room, making meaning with your audience in real time, and moving them forward with your voice and presence.Vox Vera® trains the physical and relational craft beneath that work — breath, voice, presence, spoken language, listening, and responsiveness — drawing on performance traditions and the applied humanities. Our clients are more compelling, not less, because the work isn’t just done on the surface. They develop the freedom to meet the moment without constantly monitoring themselves.

Executive coaching often focuses on leadership strategy, career development, management behavior, and interpersonal dynamics. Vox Vera focuses on the physical act of communication itself: how you speak, listen, respond, use your voice, inhabit language, and connect with people in high-stakes settings. We are not a general executive coaching firm. We are performance skills specialists.

Acting coaches and voice teachers can be excellent. The question is whether they understand the professional room you are preparing for. Vox Vera brings performance craft into legal, executive, academic, political, and business settings at the highest levels. We understand courtroom dynamics, client relationships, boardroom pressure, negotiation stakes, and the credibility demands placed on accomplished professionals. The work is not about turning you into a performer. It is about helping you communicate as yourself, with more skill and freedom.

Toastmasters offers practice time and a supportive community for people getting comfortable speaking in front of a group. But it operates within a standardized practice model: structured content, repetition, and presentation technique. It builds familiarity. It does not provide expert, individualized coaching on the physical instrument — breath, voice, presence, grounding — or develop the full human capacity the high-stakes rooms demand. Vox Vera works at a deeper level. We train the human instrument itself — so you can meet unpredictable moments, think alongside your audience, and lead them forward under pressure.

NITA® and trial advocacy programs teach essential litigation skills: case theory, argument structure, effective examination procedure, and trial strategy. Vox Vera deepens and complements that work by training the physical craft of advocacy from an experienced lawyer's perspective: how breath supports voice under pressure, how language lands with a judge or jury, how the body holds attention, how an advocate can show up authentically and avoid leaking credibility, and how an effective trial lawyer reads and responds to the room. For many trial lawyers, the combination is powerful: trial strategy plus rigorous performance craft.

Patsy Rodenburg is one of the world's most respected voice, text, and presence teachers, having trained actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, and the Guildhall School for over 40 years. She's worked with international political and business leaders, Olympic athletes, and some of the world's greatest stage and screen performers. Her method focuses on breath, voice, text, and presence, and her well-known Second Circle™ presence work has helped thousands of top performers inhabit a state of balanced, authentic connection. Paul Marchegiani is the only U.S. attorney certified as a Patsy Rodenburg Associate (PRA), and brings that lineage into legal, executive, academic, and public-facing communication work through Vox Vera.

We work with lawyers, law firm teams, executives, founders, public figures, professors, non-profit leaders, politicians, expert witnesses, and performers. Many of our clients are already highly accomplished. They come to Vox Vera because the next level of their work depends not only on expertise, but on how clearly, credibly, and humanly they communicate in high-stakes rooms.

Yes. Vox Vera works with major law firms, including some of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the world, on public speaking, oral advocacy, client communication, business development pitches, negotiation performance, leadership presence, trial consulting, and partner retreat programming.Programs may include Performance Labs™, CLE workshops, associate or partner development sessions, private coaching, and targeted preparation for trials, pitches, hearings, negotiations, and client-facing moments. We understand law firm culture because our work is built by lawyers, for lawyers, and have the infrastructure to scale our work for large cohorts.

Yes. Public speaking is central to legal practice — opening statements, oral arguments, client pitches, depositions, panels, CLEs, and partner presentations all depend on it. We've developed and taught public speaking courses at Stanford Law School, Berkeley Law, and the University of Chicago Law School, and train lawyers to speak with clarity, presence, and authentic authority across these settings, whether through private coaching, Performance Labs™, or firm-wide workshops.

Yes. Oral advocacy is one of the most physical disciplines in law, and one of the most undertrained.We work with litigators on courtroom voice and presence, argument as spoken language, jury and judge connection, witness examination, real-time adaptation, and the embodied skills that make advocacy land. This work is delivered through private coaching, our Litigation Performance Lab, and firm trial consulting engagements.

Yes. Negotiation is a communication environment, not just a strategy exercise. Our Negotiation Performance Lab trains the live skills that shape outcomes: framing positions clearly, listening under pressure, reading the room, navigating tension, responding to resistance, and protecting relationships while advancing the client's interests.

We help trial lawyers make advocacy land. That may include opening and closing statements, witness preparation, oral argument, voir dire preparation, mock trial feedback, courtroom voice and presence, jury connection, and real-time adaptation. The work combines state and federal litigation experience with performance craft so lawyers can speak with clarity, credibility, and force without becoming artificial or over-rehearsed.

Negotiation is a multi-dimensional communication environment, not just a strategy exercise. We help transactional lawyers, litigators, executives, and dealmakers frame positions clearly, listen under pressure, read the room, navigate tension, respond to resistance, and protect relationships while advancing the client's interests. Our Negotiation Performance Lab trains these skills directly.

Yes. We help executives and business leaders communicate with greater clarity, steadiness, presence, and human connection. The work is especially useful for leadership transitions, board presentations, investor conversations, crisis moments, team communication, public speaking, and high-stakes internal or external meetings. We train the speaker's capacity to be clear, present, and responsive when people are looking for judgment they can trust.

Yes. Public figures need more than message discipline. They need to stay physically present, vocally clear, emotionally available, and authentic under scrutiny. Vox Vera helps candidates, elected officials, advocates, and public-facing leaders communicate important ideas without sounding over-managed, evasive, or canned.

Yes. Expert witnesses often need to translate complex knowledge without sounding defensive, condescending, evasive, or over-rehearsed. We help experts speak with clarity, composure, and credibility so judges, juries, arbitrators, and lawyers can understand the substance and trust the witness.

Yes. We help professors, researchers, and public intellectuals communicate complex ideas with clarity, depth, and presence, in classrooms, conferences, media appearances, and beyond. This includes academic job talks, lectures, conference presentations, media appearances, book talks, and public scholarship. The goal is not to simplify the work into something thinner. It is to help the idea travel without losing rigor.

Yes. The academic job talk is a high-stakes performance: technical content delivered live to a discerning audience with limited time and significant career consequences. We coach scholars on how to shape the talk as spoken language, hold the room, handle Q&A with composure, and let their expertise come through with rigor, humanity, and presence.

Yes. Vox Vera works with a select roster of actors, singers, musicians, athletes, and other performers on presence, text, voice, breath, audience connection, and performance consistency. This work is especially useful for performers working with heightened language, Shakespeare, Sondheim, auditions, teaching, public speaking, demanding physical presence situations, or leadership roles outside the traditional stage.

Vox Vera offers Performance Labs™, private coaching, group workshops, keynotes, law firm retreats, trial consulting, and project-specific preparation. Our work may focus on public speaking, oral advocacy, courtroom performance, negotiation performance, spoken language, voice, presence, client communication, leadership communication, or high-stakes presentation. Engagements are customized to the audience, setting, and stakes.

Performance Labs™ are Vox Vera's practice-based training sessions for teams and organizations.They are not lectures about communication. Participants speak, listen, move, practice, receive feedback, and try again. Foundational Labs train the core craft: Presence, Voice & Speech, Spoken Language, and Adaptability. Applied Labs apply that craft to specific high-stakes contexts: Litigation Performance, Negotiation Performance, Executive Performance, and Classroom Engagement.The format is designed for professionals who need communication skills that hold up in real rooms, not just on paper.

Foundational Labs: Presence Lab, Voice & Speech Lab, Spoken Language Lab, Adaptability Lab.Applied Labs: Litigation Performance Lab, Negotiation Performance Lab, Executive Performance Lab, Classroom Engagement Lab.Each half-day Lab can stand alone or combine into a larger program for law firms, companies, universities, leadership teams, or professional groups. Standard cohort is six to twelve participants, scalable up to twenty-two.

Private coaching is customized to the person, setting, and goal. Some clients work on a specific event: a trial, pitch, keynote, media appearance, interview, board presentation, or difficult conversation. Others use coaching to build long-term capacity in voice, presence, public speaking, oral advocacy, negotiation performance, or leadership communication. We typically work in focused packages so clients have time to practice, receive feedback, and integrate the work into real professional settings.

A Vox Vera workshop is active, practical, and highly participatory. Participants don't sit passively through communication theory. They practice breath, voice, presence, language, listening, and real-time response. Depending on the group, we may work with introductions, arguments, client conversations, negotiation moments, courtroom language, leadership remarks, or prepared text, either as a large group or masterclass-style with chosen participants in front of the full group. The room is rigorous, supportive, and alive. People leave with skills they can actually use.

Often, yes. Vox Vera works with law firms and legal organizations to support CLE eligibility where appropriate. Programs can be designed around oral advocacy, communication skills, professionalism, negotiation performance, leadership communication, courtroom performance, and related topics, depending on the jurisdiction and sponsor requirements.

Vox Vera provides trial consulting focused on how advocacy and testimony land in the room. Services may include opening and closing statement coaching, witness preparation support, expert witness communication, oral argument preparation, voir dire preparation, mock trial feedback, courtroom voice and presence coaching, and performance support for litigation teams. We also provide casting support for unavailable witnesses or mock trial witnesses. We complement traditional jury consulting by focusing — often surgically — on the live performance of advocacy: voice, language, presence, credibility, and connection.

Vox Vera engagements are premium professional services customized to scope, audience, and stakes. Pricing depends on the format: Performance Labs™, private coaching, group workshops, keynotes, retreats, trial consulting, or project-specific preparation. We provide clear fee proposals after understanding the audience, goals, timing, and level of customization required.

For workshops, Performance Labs™, retreats, and trial preparation, four to six weeks is ideal. For major firm programs, partner retreats, conferences, or multi-session coaching packages, more lead time is better. Limited rush availability may be possible for urgent trials, pitches, presentations, media appearances, or job talks.

Vox Vera is based in Los Angeles, with Coaches based in Los Angeles and New York City, and works with clients nationally and internationally.We regularly serve clients in major legal, business, political, and academic markets, including New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and beyond. Programs may be delivered in person or remotely depending on the goals and format.

The best first step is to contact Vox Vera and share the setting, audience, timing, and communication challenge you are facing. We will determine whether private coaching, a Performance Lab™, a workshop, a keynote, or project-specific consulting is the right fit. From there, we can recommend a focused path.

Vox Vera is for people who want to be fully present in the rooms that matter. Your words might shape a verdict, a deal, a discovery, a policy, a movement, or an institution — or the way a human exchange is remembered. The work is built for those moments, where the substance is already there, and what's needed is the physical and relational craft of meeting another person, and being changed by what happens between you, through breath, voice, language, listening, and presence.

Clients often notice changes in voice, presence, language facility, clarity, composure, audience connection, and real-time adaptability. The work can create noticeable shifts quickly, especially when a specific habit is getting in the way. Deeper change comes through practice: learning to carry the new skill into meetings, courtrooms, negotiations, interviews, classrooms, and public settings.

Studies show significant impact in business and legal outcomes, but many clients see strongest returns where communication affects trust, judgment, credibility, leadership, advocacy, or business development. For law firms, that may mean stronger oral advocacy, better client conversations, more effective pitches, more persuasive partner communication, and more confident associates. For executives, it may mean clearer leadership, better meetings, stronger presentations, and more credible public-facing communication. For academics and politicians, it may mean more engaged audiences, and more human connection to complex ideas. The value is practical: better communication changes how people experience your judgment.

Yes. Vox Vera works with accomplished professionals in law, business, politics, academia, and the arts, including some of the largest and most prestigious firms and organizations in the world. Clients come to us when the stakes are high and generic communication advice is not enough. Many are already successful. The work helps them communicate with greater clarity, presence, and human force at the next level of responsibility.

Progress shows up in both observable behavior and real-world response. You may hear more vocal steadiness, clearer articulation, stronger connection to the message, greater ease in the body, better listening, and more effective use of silence. You may also notice different responses from listeners: more attention, fewer misunderstandings, better questions, stronger trust, and more productive conversations.

For most of our work, yes. Breath, voice, presence, attention, and connection matter on screen, often more than people realize, and our coaches are trained to identify and correct issues across any medium. Virtual communication requires specific skills: where to look, how to use the frame, how to keep vocal energy alive, how to listen without physical proximity, and how to stay connected when feedback cues are reduced.

No. The goal is not to add a slick veneer or robotic delivery on top of who you are. Our work helps remove habits that interfere with clear communication: excess tension, rushed pacing, collapsed breath, guarded presence, over-control, or disconnection from the listener. Done well, performance training makes you sound more like yourself, not less.

A trembling voice often comes from breath disruption and excess tension.When the stakes rise, the breath can become shallow, the throat, neck, and shoulders can tighten, and the body may brace. We work with breath, grounding, release, vocal support, and presence, so the voice has more steadiness and carrying power, even when adrenaline is present.

Monotone delivery is not fixed by forcing vocal variety. It often comes from restricted breath, flattened intention, over-control, or disconnection from the meaning of the language or the audience. We train speakers to use breath, emphasis, phrasing, silence, and thought progression so the voice becomes more alive because the speaker is more connected to the point.

Don't make calmness the goal. In high-stakes speaking, adrenaline is normal. The better move is to organize the energy: breathe, ground, warm up the voice, connect to the purpose of the message, and let the body know where it is in space. Many speakers also benefit from reframing nerves as readiness or excitement rather than treating them as a problem to suppress.

Gravitas doesn't come from an artificially deep voice, forced inflection, or a melodramatic delivery. It comes from being physically present and grounded, fully inhabiting language as you speak it, and letting your words and intention really land with the audience in a given space. We train the physical skills needed to deliver with gravitas so that messages land with authentic impact.