Are You Aware of the Anti-Theme When Giving Your Presentation?

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:

We’ve written frequently on themes: those little nuggets of language and meaning that distill a case to its persuasive essence. As consultants, we create themes even more frequently, trying to find the right message to leverage a case’s greatest strengths while minimizing or reframing its most important weaknesses. By definition, a theme is a simple message that helps an audience see your case in its most favorable terms. But based on some recent research, there is also a mirror image of that: an ‘anti-theme’ in the form of the condensed message that would turn off your audience and turn them away from your case. Considering these anti-themes when working on the contours of your message can help you know what to avoid and what to preempt in your trial strategy.

The study (Gromet, Kunreuther & Larrick, 2013) focuses on consumer choices in lightbulbs and found that buying behavior could be substantially reduced in some audiences just by adding a single, apparently positive message to the packaging. While the question of “What sells an audience?” naturally garners much academic and practical attention, the parallel question of “What kills the sale?” should merit equal attention. And this focus fits well with a goal I’ve written about before: the need to use those forces that attract an audience toward your message (alpha strategies), as well as the need to address the forces that potentially repel an audience from your message (omega strategies). This post applies this approach-avoidance perspective to the question of themes. In addition to looking at the research on the words that can wound your cause, I’ll also share some of my own thoughts on common anti-themes that could play a role in a jury’s or judge’s response to your case.

The Research: When Can Your Message Harm Your Case?  Proving that you can learn about social science

Read more here:

http://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2013/05/beware-the-anti-theme.html

13 Reasons Law Firm Litigation Graphics Departments Have Bad Luck

by Ken Lopez
Founder/CEO
A2L Consulting

I have seen some great law firm litigation graphics departments over the past 20 years. The best was at Howrey, which is where A2L’s second team member and others came from in the mid-1990s. Back then, Howrey’s litigation graphics department was led by an Academy Award-winning artist and producer.

These credentials commanded respect. Litigation graphics were largely a mystery to most lawyers at that time, and I believe that the litigators at Howrey were quite proud of the in-house graphics department. Smartly, it and other divisions of Howrey were separate profit centers. The idea was visionary, but it failed. And it failed long before the firm did.

Having been in the industry for 18 years, I have seen many firms, vendors, and law firm graphics departments fail. I see a pattern in those failures and have come to believe that a law firm graphics department can, at best, only achieve short-term success.

Here are 13 reasons why I believe that in-house law firm litigation graphics/trial graphics/animation departments are mostly doomed for failure:

1. Law firms rarely go to trial. By far the biggest thing working against an in-house trial/litigation graphics department is how rarely it is used.  Even the largest law firms only make it all the way to trial maybe a dozen times per year, and that is across 15 or more offices. Even if you imagine that every one of those trials was handled by an in-house team, it’s just not that much work. Contrast that with our firm, which goes all the way to trial 25 to 75 times per year in addition to a lot of related work. More trials equals more meaningful experience.

Continue reading here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/65615/13-reasons-law-firm-litigation-graphics-departments-have-bad-luck?source=Blog_Email_%5B13%20Reasons%20Law%20Firm%20%5D

Are You in the Hot Seat at Trial? Read This Quickly

By Ted Brooks

In “How Not to Crash,” John Cleaves offers survival tips for litigation support staff who find themselves sudden occupants of the courtroom’s “hot seat.”

Next, Ted Brooks offers five important rules to follow when you are in charge of trial technology in “Survival Secrets.”

Mr. Cleaves approaches the topic from the perspective of a paralegal or litigation support staffer, while I share a few tips, based on my years of experience. John (Cleaves) also has a great deal of experience in the Hot Seat, but for purposes of this piece, chooses to offer some relatively “low-tech” ideas for getting the job done when you don’t have enough time or resources to purchase and learn a bunch of new software and equipment.

I’m not going to rewrite my article here, but I can tell you that anyone who happens to find themselves assuming the role of a Trial Tech will quickly understand why it’s called the Hot Seat. If not for the pure stress of the job itself, add the expectation from everyone that nothing will go wrong – ever. Add to that the fact that once a jury gets accustomed to seeing an exhibit displayed within a couple seconds of its mention, what might have been an acceptable delay using hard copy exhibits will seem like a very uncomfortable eternity.

With that, one of favorite sayings with respect to trial technology is that “It’s not a matter of if something will go wrong, but rather when, how badly it will fail, and whether anyone else will even realize there was a problem.”

Read more here:

http://trial-technology.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-hot-seat-trial.html

 

7 Questions You Must Ask Your Mock Jury About Litigation Graphics

by Ryan H. Flax, Esq.
Managing Director, Litigation Consulting
A2L Consulting

So, you’ve made the time, effort, and budget commitment to conduct a mock jury exercise to test your case before trial. In my opinion and in the opinion of almost every litigator I’ve worked with, all this time and effort is generally well spent. But if you fail to get the right feedback from your mock jurors, you’ve wasted your time and resources.

What is that “right” feedback and how do you get it?  Your jury consultant should lead the way in this regard (ours has a Ph.D. in psychology and over 30 years’ experience), but the feedback you’re looking for relates primarily to whether the jurors felt they understood your case, accepted your “story,” and trusted your theme – and WHY. If they did and the evidence made sense to them in relation to each of these aspects of your presentation, you’ve likely got a winner, all things being equal.

An important aspect of your case and how it was presented to the mock jurors is your demonstrative evidence and litigation graphics. These will likewise play a key role in your actual trial and its success.  It’s important to test the graphics you intend to use or are considering using at trial with your mock jurors. These graphics will have been carefully, professionally designed to track your mock “clopening” (a contraction of opening and closing) argument and should highlight the important themes, storylines, evidence, and expected testimony of your case.  Here are seven essential questions you must ask your mock jurors about your litigation graphics:

1.  Why Did The Jury Reach The Outcome It Reached?

Full Article here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/65558/7-questions-you-must-ask-your-mock-jury-about-litigation-graphics?source=Blog_Email_%5B7%20Questions%20You%20Must%5D

A Few More Apps That Make My Life Easier

By Morgan Smith

I’m getting ready to head to Vegas for the annual American Society of Trial Consultants conference. I appreciate networking with this group because their members are full of ideas and new information on trial research, strategy and technology. Check out ASTC’s publication The Jury Expert and their blog aggregator, The Red Well, to tap into two great resources on trial advocacy. At the conference, I’ll join litigation consultant Alison Bennett for a presentation on “iPad Technology for Trial Consultants,” during which we’ll highlight many apps that increase productivity at work, home and, of course, in the courtroom. I’ve blogged before about my favorite presentation apps for litigation (see, for example, this earlier post on Keynote for Attorneys, which is a great alternative to PowerPoint; or this post on SlideShark and Idea Flight). Now, I’d like to mention a few others apps that I’ve come to rely on and truly enjoy.

Read the entire article here:

http://cogentlegal.com/blog/2013/05/apps-that-make-my-life-easier/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CogentLegalBlog+%28Cogent+Legal+Blog%29

10 Things Every Mock Jury Ever Has Said

by Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D.
Jury Consultant

For decades and in every part of the nation, mock jurors who are presented with various fact patterns and legal issues tend to have the same reactions. Some are helpful and others are harmful, depending on where you stand in the case.  Knowing that these issues recur over and over can help to prevent those which are unfavorable to you:

 

1)     Why did the plaintiff wait so long to sue?

While there may be good reason to delay filing suit, mock and actual jurors often use the delay between the alleged problem and the filing of a claim as a yardstick of its merit.  The longer the gap, the less credible the claim.  If counsel fails to address this issue, it tends to work against the plaintiff. It is especially damaging, for example, when someone claims an issue in the workplace, but waits until they are no longer employed. To many jurors, this signals  that it was the termination, separation, or voluntary departure that was the issue, not the conduct, such as discrimination, that is the subject of the complaint.

 

2)    That doesn’t make sense.

Lawyers don’t always put their case through the basic “smell test” or test of common sense from the…

Read more here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/65267/10-Things-Every-Mock-Jury-Ever-Has-Said?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+a2lc+%28The+Litigation+Consulting+Report+from+A2L+Consulting%29

Five Tips to Keep Trial Tech on Course: Rules to follow when you’re in charge of courtroom presentation.

My favorite quote from this article is “If you want to see the worst of someone’s personality, go to trial with them — especially those who are only in trial once a year or less.

A little OCD can go a long way. Making sure everything is in order before you go to sleep at night will help you rest. Waiting to finish something in the morning can lead to other problems if something goes slowly, or additional work comes in. One point should be very clear — this is not a 9 to 5 job.”

By Ted Brooks

The option of using the tools of technology for trial presentation is no longer an issue for debate. Once thought of as running the risk of appearing “too slick,” juries and judges now expect to have the ability to view the evidence — even in bench trials.

With this acceptance comes an increased level of expectation. Where it was once not uncommon for an attorney to spend a few minutes digging through a stack of exhibits or boxes to locate a desired exhibit (and sometimes not finding it), it is now only a matter of seconds from the time an exhibit is mentioned until it is on the screen for all to view.

This bridge between attorney and evidence is often referred to as the “Hot Seat.” Like the attorney who could not find the important exhibit, the Hot Seat operator shares in the burden and risk of disturbing the flow of the trial. Although it looks like a well-rehearsed performance when done properly, technology glitches can cause a delay — or even a mistrial.

Here are a few things to include in your “insurance policy” that can help prevent a courtroom meltdown.

Read more: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202609809869&slreturn=20130611095933#ixzz2YqQ4ZPd8

 

Opinions may vary depending on how you ask that question

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

posted by Douglas Keene

We spend a lot of time asking potential jurors questions and attempting to sort out just what their responses could mean about attitudes and values and beliefs as they relate to our specific case. So it was wonderful to see the new Pew Research Center article on how asking the same question results in different answers depending on how you have worded the question. As it happened, four different major organizations looked at the polarizing issue of the Department of Justice’s subpoenas of reporters’ phone records. CNN/ORC, Washington Post/ABC News, Pew Research, and FOX News all polled the public on the DOJ subpoenas. But, as you might expect, each organization asked the questions a bit differently and, as you might predict, each got a slightly different result. After the differing responses to the differently worded questions on the same issue were published, Pew Research wrote about the reasons ‘why’ each of the four major organizations had gotten the results they had.

10 Ways to Spot Your Jury Foreman

by Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D.
Jury Consultant

While someone ends up sitting in the first seat on a jury and is presumed or named foreperson by the Court, they may very well be one in name only.  In fact, someone else may function as the foreperson.

Guess Who?

Who do you think is the most likely foreperson?  Do you think someone old enough to be her parent will defer to a 20-something pixie in seat 1?  Will an accountant in seat 6 rely on the homemaker foreperson for damages decisions?  Is it the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick-maker?  Unlikely.

Read all 10 tips here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/65718/10-ways-to-spot-your-jury-foreman?source=Blog_Email_%5B10%20Ways%20to%20Spot%20Your%5D