By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: In the vast majority of my experiences with the legal system, attorneys and parties are painstakingly civil, as a rule. However, in my two most recent trials, there have been notable exceptions to this rule. In one case, opposing counsel, after making discovery a miserable process for both counsel and witnesses, could not resist directly insulting our attorney and calling our clients “liars” at every opportunity. In the other case, counsel was well-behaved, but the parties at the other side’s table could not resist making faces, muttering to each other, and in a couple of

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When the parties in litigation come together to talk about settlement, that might be seen as the “posturing phase.” Each side is trying to convey the strength and unassailability of their case, while predicting an inevitable victory in trial. Some of that might be considered the rational “puffery” that puts the facts in the best light. If that image management, however, reaches the point of outright dishonesty about your case, then it might be less effective than you think. Recent research shows that a party’s dishonesty in the context of a financial negotiation leaves that

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: For many years, the reliable bet was that a deep distrust of corporations, and what we might call an anti-corporate bias in a litigation context, is a left-wing phenomenon. While conservatives might generally hew to the sentiment behind the adage that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America,” the left would be the ones thinking that big business is too big, too powerful, and too unregulated. For many years as a litigation consultant, I have collected and followed the data on anti-corporate bias, and this belief was more often true than not. But that

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: If your opposing counsel has a flair for the dramatic, then at some point in the deposition or cross-examination, you might get to a question like, “So, if my witness says that didn’t happen, then you’d say she is lying, right?” What the lawyer is hoping for in asking a question like that is that you’ll back-track, or hesitate, or in some other way try to evade the accusation. Playing on our instinct for civility in the formal setting of testimony, the lawyer is trying for a cheap way to soften or introduce doubt about

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The mantra when persuading juries, judges, and really anyone is often “Keep it simple.” That is for a good reason, and often the simplest way to tell a story is to begin at the beginning and end at the end, working your way straight through the events in sequence. At the same time, the popular dramas and storytelling that surrounds us in novels, movies, and television are replete with examples of alternate ways to tell a story to bring emphasis to a particular part. Shows like Lost or Breaking Bad as well as novels like Slaughterhouse 5 or It will play with the timeline as

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Within the last few years, at least a few courts in the U.S. have started to wake up to some of the realities of the cognitive biases that can be an obstacle to a fair criminal or civil trial. For generations, courts have acted as though potential jurors could easily know and effectively shut off those biases. In many courts, of course, that is still the practice, with judges in effect clearing jurors with the question, “So you’re not biased, or you can set it aside? Good. Next.” But in a few jurisdictions, courts are

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Every witness preparing for testimony is going to prepare a little bit differently. Those helping with that prep need to adapt to the unique challenges presented by opposing counsel, the case characteristics, the witness’s role within the case, and the witness’s personality and communication habits. But there are inevitably some common features and messages contained in that preparation session. One common feature is the need for witnesses to do some follow-up “homework” on their own. Not everything can be durably fixed during the constraints of a single meeting, or even a series of meetings. And

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There is a danger in what I call the “product” orientation toward persuasion. That orientation focuses on persuasion as an outcome, as a discrete “thing” that is transferred from a sender to a receiver. The advocate in effect thinks, “I have something — it is called a correct opinion — and my mission is to transfer that from me to you.” In some ways, this product orientation is embedded in our language: We talk about how well we can “sell” an idea, or check to see whether our target is “buying” it or not. Instead of

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it did not have to end up this way. At many points in time, and at many places along the course of this story, the individual sitting here with opposing counsel could have made a different choice. He could have taken a different path. He had multiple opportunities to have avoided this result.  Let’s look at some of these paths not taken… Envisioning alternatives is an important persuasive tool, because determinations of responsibility often come down to the choices a party made, and whether they were the right choices. From

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: If a manufacturer rushes an untested new product to market, did they do it to realize a gain (let’s say to increase profits by expanding into a new market) or to prevent or mitigate a loss (maybe to protect the company against an economic downturn)? The difference in this case is not the act itself, nor necessarily the effects caused by the act. The difference is the way it is framed. We know that how we explain or contextualize an action shapes the judgments we make about it. For that reason, in litigation, choosing and developing