Bring Your Client to Voir Dire
By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm: There are many phases to a trial. Some of those phases are just for lawyers, but some of them really should include the clients as well. The voir dire process, where the ultimate jury is selected, is one of those latter phases. The clients for all parties should be there. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my own cases — in the last three picks, in three different states, the Plaintiffs themselves attended none of the jury selections. In those cases, I was working for the Defense, and we had a client representative present and
Take Note: “I’m Sorry” Doesn’t Necessarily Mean “I’m Liable”
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There is a common perception that when you apologize, it means you’ve done something wrong. The Latin “mea culpa,” after all, means “through my fault.” In a litigation context, that perception on the part of lawyers and insurance companies can lead to the belief that you should avoid apologizing if you don’t want to accept liability. But we know from the research that an “I’m sorry” can do a lot of good: Psychologically, it can be satisfying for a victim, and persuasively, it can help boost the credibility of a source. And for some cases,
Constant Reinvention
Much of what we do as trial consultants remains constant over time. Social science research is well established in terms of methodologies such that the changes are in the margins. Technological changes are not a major factor in our world, yet, we constantly look at processes and technologies to improve our work. Among those have been things like moving from analog (VHS tapes) to digital (DVDs and now .mp4 video files shared by computer). We’ve been at this long enough to remember lugging giant laptops (when they became available) to research projects. Laptops, then iPads, have largely replaced the
The Lesson of Trump’s (First) Indictment: Look at Both the Legality and the Importance of the Claim
By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm: The news cycle has been drowning in it. For the first time in history, a former U.S. President faces criminal charges. Donald Trump was arraigned this past Tuesday on April 4th, after being indicted on 34 charges involving the falsification of business records in furtherance of another crime, all surrounding payments of hush money to several individuals in the weeks preceding the 2016 election with the goal of concealing alleged extramarital affairs by the candidate. Public opinion on the charges is predictably quite split, with one group seeing it as a long-delayed comeuppance and another group seeing it
Emails…The Cockroaches of Litigation
An attorney once described emails as “the cockroaches of litigation” – they are pervasive, lurking in the dark to show their faces when you least expect it. And they refuse to die. They come out at the most inopportune times and leave a terrible impression on your jury. So, what do you do if you find yourself facing a few bad emails (and hopefully not much more)? There are a number of steps you can take to mitigate the impact of bad emails, and here are three. First, if one of your witnesses is associated with a troubling email, first
Bard vs. ChatGPT: What are the top 5 areas in legal work that cannot be replaced by AI?
Bard:Here are the top 5 areas in legal work that cannot be replaced by AI:Legal research. AI can help lawyers with legal research by providing them with access to vast amounts of data and by helping them to identify relevant cases and statutes. However, AI cannot replace the human judgment that is necessary to evaluate the legal significance of this information. Lawyers must be able to understand the context of a case and to apply the law to the facts in order to provide sound legal advice.Legal analysis. AI can help lawyers to analyze legal documents and to identify potential