One of the most interesting components of facilitating a mock trial is seeing how jurors actually reason during deliberations. Most jurors have no training in formal logic or argumentation or in the fields in which the trial evidence is being presented (law, medicine, intellectual property, workplace safety, etc.), so they are unfamiliar with the criteria that would be used by experts in these fields. The specific jury instructions have yet to be provided, and even if they had, jurors often have a hard time following the rules as given. This is not a totally unique situation for most people, as

So often we write about the social science and theory behind sound jury selection. But there is one element – not sufficient alone, yet necessary to a successful jury selection – that goes unnoted. It is jury selection logistics, the coordination of processes, people, information collection, and facilitation of appropriate decision-making. To oversimplify, jury selection is a critical process whereby a trial advocate and her team are identifying jurors’ experiences and attitudes in order to determine if they have a, or a series of, pre-dispositions that increase the chances that they will be resistant to the case story, themes, evidence, or witnesses. In the

Under the best of conditions, preparing a non-expert witness to testify at trial is a critical component of an attorney’s preparation efforts. It is a challenging situation for someone with little or no experience in the legal system to take the stand in a courtroom and answer questions from an attorney who is far more experienced in this situation. There are a number of strategies that can be used to get a typical witness ready for trial. But witnesses who are from another country and do not speak English as their first language present a unique set of challenges when

As a Trial Consultant working with lawyers and people in the litigation field across the country, I’ve noticed over the years that one of the “elephants in the room” is that when it comes to speech making, we could stand to practice more. Speaking, like writing, is a skill improved by performance and feedback. So why do so many experienced trial lawyers, time after time, show up to deliver an opening statement that sounds like it was put together the night before? Sure, some of them, maybe many of them, were actually put together the night before but, why? We

  Taylor Swift did not mince words when she testified in August against DJ David Mueller for allegedly groping her during a photo shoot. During her testimony, she took every opportunity to say Mr. Mueller “grabbed my ass,” artfully incorporating this phrase regardless of the question from opposing counsel. This was her “safe harbor,” the place she could go when the questions were difficult. When opposing counsel attempted to challenge her testimony and her memory of the events from that night, she unequivocally stated her truth. This is what jurors surely remembered – she was unwavering on the stand, and

This is peril. Not the kind of “mortal peril” the young Weasley children faced from time to time, but the kind of client relations peril that comes with wading, even ever so slightly, into one of the most polarizing issues, at one of the most polarizing political periods in our society. So, I plan to be delicate, avoiding opinion about the process or outcome of the investigations of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. What I want to do is focus on the nature of “evidence” and “proof,” pointing out the use and misuse of the concepts

“I pissed off one of my team members,” our client said (we’ll call her Claire). She and I were working on a case that was sizeable and required a substantial team. She pulled me aside for advice and to blow off some steam. “They just don’t understand the big picture here,” Claire yelled in a whisper. I asked quietly, “What happened?” Claire replied, “Anna thought I was moving forward with her idea—I’m not. She thinks I don’t value her ideas now. This isn’t true—I think she’s very bright. I just went a different direction.” I told her, “Give me five

I remember when I made the transition from student to teacher how excited I was to have the opportunity to instruct students the way I thought they really wanted to be taught – by presenting interesting lectures from which they could learn. How did I know that students wanted to learn that way? Because that is how I liked to learn, and I figured everyone else was the same. After my first quarter, I mentioned to my wife-to-be the struggles I was having connecting with students. I told her my theory about how (I thought) students wanted to learn. Since

Among the requests for demonstrative exhibits, timelines rank among the most frequent. This makes sense given that most of the stories attorneys tell are chronological. Timelines are a great tool for laying out the facts of a case in a linear fashion. But I see many missed opportunities when timelines are laid out in the typical fashion – a text event connected to a time bar with a line (called a “flag”). Often there are so many timeline entries that the landscape becomes overloaded with “flags” and the story gets lost. When creating a timeline, think about a design strategy

Even though I spend a significant amount of time in a courtroom for my job as a trial consultant, it is rare that I have the opportunity to be on the other side of the equation and serve as a juror. I recently received a summons to appear for jury duty and I thought it would be interesting to share my perceptions from a seat in the jury pool. My first day started with a near disaster as I left my wallet at home and I had to run back to get it. Luckily, I still made it to the