Outside of my traditional jury consulting work, I periodically work as an expert for change of venue motions, conducting original research and offering opinions based on the findings. As part of this work, I am sometimes deposed or asked to testify at court hearings. These experiences are incredibly helpful for when I work with witnesses to prepare them for their deposition. Of all the standard tips that consultants offer witnesses, most are easier said than done. It is one thing to sit across the table from a witness and tell him or her how to handle different scenarios, but it

One of my favorite non-fiction books of all time is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. The book tackles every major branch of science in its effort to explain our existence on Earth, and it is absolutely riveting. In fact, if you want to add thirty minutes of childlike awe to your day, spend a couple weeks reading this book. Early on in the introduction, Bryson explains why he wanted to tackle science with this book: “There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too

There are generally two types of valuable information: 1) new information; and 2) old information conveyed in a new way to help you see it in a different light. This blog is intended to be the latter. I have talked ad nauseam about the importance of the performance of a key witness on the stand. There is little debate to be had on this issue, which is why I don’t put forth as much effort to make this point as I used to, but this creates a trained incapacity. It is so obvious to me that I take it for

Last week, I finished a three-week road trip with my family in which we drove over 3,000 miles, camped every night, and saw some of America’s most amazing offerings such as Rushmore, the Badlands, Devil’s Tower, and Yellowstone. Sadly, I had never before taken so much time off in my professional life, but doing so allowed me to step back and see the big picture of the work that we do. With all that time on the road, I started to see some important parallels between my trip and what we need to do in the courtroom. Here are five

Kathy was dead set on sticking it to our client, the defendant. She knew in her bones that things had happened just the way the plaintiff had described, and it made her angry. It was only a few years earlier that Kathy had experienced a similar situation in her workplace where she was passed over for a promotion. It marked the beginning of a year-long unraveling of her life and Kathy blamed it all on her employer. As she listened to the plaintiff’s story, Kathy could see it perfectly in her head, as if she was personally experiencing it all

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

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

Why do some cases go nuclear while other cases with similar fact patterns or injuries do not? Every jury is different of course, but that does not tell us much about the variations in jurors’ psychological reactions to cases. There have been numerous attempts to outline the magic formula for nuclear verdicts from the plaintiff’s perspective. Two of the more prominent theories out there that are routinely embraced by plaintiff attorneys are Reptile and Rules of the Road. Reptileproposes a fear-based approach to the case presentation while Rules of the Road suggests a more principle-based approach. So, which one is

Surprisingly, the task that is often the most difficult to accomplish with witnesses is getting them to a place where they actually hear the question for what it is and answer only that question. Instead, so many witnesses deliver monologues after questions, going well beyond the scope of the question. These monologues can include an appearance of answering the question, but then go far beyond that by explaining why that answer is correct, playing defense on whatever they think (rightly or wrongly) the examining attorney is trying to accomplish, helping the attorney figure out what they really should be asking,

In January 2012, Facebook conducted a controversial one-week experiment with approximately 700,000 users in order to determine how the Facebook news feed influenced the emotional state of the users who were unknowingly used as Facebook’s lab rats. An article in The Atlantic described the manipulation this way: “Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average.” The study found that the manipulated news feed content influenced the users’ subsequent posts. More specifically, the study found that an increase in negative news items led to negative posts