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

Magnus is hired for many reasons. To evaluate the liability issues in the case. To assess the damages potential. To determine at whom to point fingers. To get a plaintiff to understand the realities of their case. To get a defendant to understand the realities of their case. Is it a case to try? Is it a case to settle? For insurance adjusters, how can I get my supervisor and her/his supervisor, to authorize settlement? Or, should we fight it at trial? Only in this last example, learned years ago, did I ever get an inkling of an idea

Call it a deposit; call it a retainer. Magnus doesn’t start work without one (except in rare circumstances beyond the scope of this post). We need money, we want money; importantly, other people want money. We learned, the hard way, that clients need to “show us the money.” One of our first cases blew up on us and the client pulled the plug after we started spending our money on his behalf (and we had little to spend in year 1). He cost us what seemed like a fortune at the time and we never heard from him again.

Always learning – that’s the reality of life, and in operating a business. A lesson learned many years ago happened when we hired a young woman as a research associate. She fit all of our hiring criteria for education, background, etc. She was attractive and well dressed. Her appearance was important to her as evidenced by her manicure. She didn’t work at Magnus long; she resigned, in part, because of the physical aspect of lugging our equipment around and setting it up. But, worse, she broke a fingernail when doing so! It occurred to us then that we needed to

Prompted by my posts about “different direction” and “ghosting,” a related phenomenon is hiding behind email, especially as a way to deliver bad news. Maybe it is just me, but it seems a matter of professionalism and fairness that, if one asks someone else to do something like prepare a proposal for consulting services, the asker should be willing to talk with the proposal preparer after receiving it. Proposals are not free; there are real costs associated with them. Even if it’s only the paper on which the original is printed then scanned, there is a cost; sending a hard

A few months ago, Melissa and I were talking with one of our favorite clients, Buddy Schulz, when he commented that Melissa’s job during jury selection involved sorting out responses, and non responses, of potential jurors. He was noting that it is one thing to evaluate what someone says during jury selection (or perhaps with any interaction, including job interviews, interrogations, etc.). But, it is clearly another thing to “hear” what they don’t say, that is, what they are not telling you. As a trial lawyer, or trial consultant, during that short period when the jurors can talk, known

Twice this week, when talking with clients, or prospective clients, I’ve been told they are waiting on the judge to do something. The language they used was “I’m at the mercy of the court.” Their lamentations are painful reminders of the nature of our work. Often the idea of “mercy of the court” is mentioned, in life and in entertainment, in the context of “throwing oneself on the mercy of the court” when it comes to criminal sentencing. This post is NOT about that. It is about the Court’s (a.k.a. the judge’s) ability to impact the timetable of litigation. Setting

I had an interesting conversation today with a client who was preparing a PowerPoint presentation for an upcoming mock trial. As we discussed his plan, he mentioned that he was planning to use 20 slides for a 10 minute presentation. I tactfully suggested that 1 slide every 30 seconds is too many. This led to a discussion beyond his case during which I explained that PowerPoint should not be used as a script. Whether for a trial, a business meeting, or for any type of presentation, using PowerPoint (or any related electronic presentation tool) as a script is a bad

Another clean out story. In purging the old equipment to prepare for the Magnus’ move to new office, we came across VCRs, VHS tapes, cassette recorders, cassette tapes, DVD duplicators, and more. These are a history of the technology evolution in our lives. Yet, it was also a reminder of simpler times. When we first started Magnus, and for Melissa, at prior companies, VHS video cameras were state of the art. There were different “grades” of cameras, from “amateur” to “broadcast quality” but ours fell in the class of “prosumer.” We used external microphones and some good cameras to

I was prompted to write this, and the prior post, because of Magnus’ recent move. The move necessitated discarding many tools which have been useful during our careers in trial consulting. When we started Magnus in late 1993, Melissa began to receive invitations to speak to groups of lawyers, insurance adjusters, and law school students. This move made me reflect on the evolution of the technologies we have used for these presentations. We started with the text slides I wrote about previously. When Melissa made presentations to these groups, her outline was projected using a Kodak slide projector and