Source of article ComCon - Communication Consulting.

Despite a common refrain in civil and criminal cases that “the facts speak for themselves”, research finds that attorneys are more persuasive if they speak for the facts using a narrative form that forwards one or more case themes. Chestek (2017) investigated the persuasiveness of negative and positive case themes on judges’ decisions. A total of 163 judges from different jurisdictions and in different types of courts read excerpts of a summary judgment brief that began with a preliminary statement of a hypothetical case and was followed by a stipulation of facts stated in a neutral tone that both sides would choose from in presenting their arguments and could have been written by either party to the dispute…The summary judgment brief given to the participating judges began with 1 of 9 different preliminary statements, each of which forwarded a different case theme, but used the same stipulation of case facts. Four of the preliminary statements contained positive themes, four contained negative themes, and one contained only a neutral recitation of the procedural posture of the case (i.e., no theme)….