Is your consultant a criminal?

July 22nd, 2021|

This is a strange topic: Is your consultant a criminal? In this context, it is related to your trial consultant. When one hires a new employee, most often, a variety of background checks are conducted. A lawyer’s criminal history is policed by Bar associations; similarly, other licensed professions are vetted. But, what about professions not requiring a license, like trial consulting? The only trial consulting organization, the American Society of Trial Consultants does not vet members in any way, including for criminal history. So, does your consultant have a criminal record? How do you know? Does it matter? I

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Output = Effort x Ability

July 20th, 2021|

Social psychologists, as well as other types of psychologists, have studied achievement motivation for many decades. In goal directed situations, there are several ways in which someone can achieve the desired outcome: ability, effort, and luck. Success and failure also depend, of course, on the difficulty of the task being undertaken. When considered together, these 4 elements of achievement behavior provide a foundation for understanding how people succeed or fail in a variety of situations, from the world or work to learning how to play a musical instrument or how to pitch a fastball. In the years David and

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Cameras in the Courtroom

July 20th, 2021|

Now that the courts are beginning to get back to business, will we continue to have remote witnesses and juries? That's a great question, and we'd have a completely different answer had it not been for COVID-19. What we've just experienced is one of the fastest implementations of technology by the legal professions ever.Technology, when used properly, can make you more effective and efficient in trial. It used to be a major strategic consideration whether to use TrialDirector and risk appearing as though you were spending too much money, or had very deep pockets as a defendant. Now, there is

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Exude Competence

July 15th, 2021|

Many years ago, when I was working for another trial consultant, one of the clients spoke to my boss and told her that I “exuded competence.” The boss was happy to hear this and to tell me. I took it as a high compliment because it reinforced my goal of doing what I say I’m going to do. I was glad someone noticed. This has always been my objective – to get the job done, to ensure clients, whether it was back in my days as a photographer, or today as a trial consultant, know the service I or

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How Do I Avoid Offending Jurors in the Shifting Gender Landscape?

July 15th, 2021|

It’s a different world than when most of us graduated from law school or entered the legal profession. In 2016, TIME reported on a study by UCLA’s Williams Institute, which estimated .6% of the country’s population identified as transgender – a number that translated to 1.4 million Americans at the time, and a figure that was double estimates from five years prior. In the five years since that study, the numbers have likely increased, as gender fluidity has become more widely recognized in private and public sectors. Indeed, you may have seen “all gender” restrooms at airports across the country,

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Don’t Let Your Case Strategy Languish Amidst a Changing Jury Pool

July 13th, 2021|

Back in May, the New York Times published an outstanding piece about the “blah” feeling that many are experiencing as we transition from the pandemic and lockdowns back into whatever is “normal” moving forward. As the author wrote, “Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.” Recently, I’ve spoken to many attorneys who have experienced this feeling of languishing in their cases. Some have commented that they are working hard but feel like they

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The Importance of Narrowing Your Arguments at Trial

July 1st, 2021|

One of the most important components of jury strategy development is also the one that is talked about the least and that is momentum in deliberations. When you dig in and really start to understand and appreciate the critically important role of momentum in deliberations, it can have tremendous implications for your strategy at trial. I have written many times before that too many trial attorneys fail to appreciate that the great debate at trial is not the one that takes place in the courtroom between the opposing attorneys, but the one that takes place in the deliberation room between

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Something Old, Something New

June 28th, 2021|

Trials. Exhibits. In Person. Remote. Hybrid.We have many options, now that we're slowly climbing our way out of a global pandemic. Pre-COVID, we had only a few common options. During the first part of COVID, we literally had none. Rather quickly, the lights began to turn on again, even if most of those were monitors glowing, as opposed to courtroom lights. Now most of us have become proficient in online trials, arbitrations and depos. It took a pandemic to implement technology that has already been available for years. While there are both benefits and drawbacks to remote technology, it is here

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How accurately do jurors self-diagnose their ability to be fair? Online Jury Research Update

June 28th, 2021|

The judicial system weights a juror's self-diagnoses of bias and fairness during voir dire very heavily, assuming that, as a factual matter, jurors can undertake accurately this self-assessment.In the context of a medical malpractice case, Yokum, Robertson and Palmer (2019) tested whether mock jurors exposed to negative pre-trial publicity are able to identify the influence the material had on their decision-making....

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