By Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D. Jury Consultant A trial lawyer can have all the facts, but unless he or she can weave them into a story that makes sense and doesn’t leave unanswered questions in the closing argument, the facts aren’t likely to add up to the result the lawyer seeks at trial. For example, in the recent Jodi Arias murder trial, in which Arias was convicted in an Arizona court of murdering her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, prosecutor Juan Martinez left several critical holes and... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

Where is Your War Room: The Disadvantages of Using Other Existing Office Space You have guest status. Setting up space in someone else’s office (particularly in space usually occupied by your client or local counsel) makes you an interloper. And, as Benjamin Franklin noted, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Don't overstay [...]

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. Most of us think pictures are more persuasive than words. Recently I ran across a sentence in an article saying “it’s commonly believed that we remember 20% of what we hear and 80% of what we see”. Or something to that effect. I don’t know about you but I don’t remember 80% of anything I hear or see and I have a pretty good memory. So I went to our trial consultant email list and asked who could tell me if the statement was supported by research for which they could identify a citation. Immediately, I began to get information from visual con...

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  The witness sits in the box. As counsel continues to fashion a question, what is running through that witness's mind? "Where is the attorney going with this? I still haven't had a chance yet to talk about all of the things I did well. Has juror four fallen asleep? And what was it I was supposed to do with my hands? Okay, so here is what I think I'm going to say when she finally stops her question..." As the question ends, the witness begins to answer, but the answer isn't quite responsive, and the response isn't quite strategic. The reason for that has to do...

Our firm recently worked on a patent case between two Internet software companies that required illustration of the various inner workings of the Internet. While most people use the Internet on a regular (if not constant) basis, far fewer actually know what goes on “behind the scenes,” so to speak. What actually happens when you open your browser and type in a web address? These animations provided the attorneys with visual aids to explain the step-by-step process—an example of how to visually explain complex, technical ideas to jurors in a way they can comprehend. Here are a fe...

Shuki. Soukias. Raheem. Samir. Jamal. Lakisha. Atholl. Tyronne. Magestic. Did you know that something as simple as a first name makes the difference between whether you even get the interview? Last weekend we were doing a focus group and one of the mock jurors had a very unique first name. One of a kind. She was African-American. It reminded us of this research and we wanted to post about it since the findings never exactly went viral (as they perhaps should have). We are only going to cover one research article but there are several out there if you are interested in learning more. This one i...

If you plan to use a satellite office of your firm or have arranged to work out of local counsel’s office, all of the concerns listed in our blog post about securing hotel accommodations are relevant. But you'll also have other considerations. Specifically, make sure you take the time to: Establish a main contact at [...]

The outward confidence many attorneys display as they stand to begin their opening statement reminds me of the day I tried to pull off “Hammer” pants at my high school: I thought it would be cool, but underneath, I was scared to death because you either pull off “Hammer” pants, or you fail miserably.  There’s no in between.  Few succeed; the rest of us “pray just to make it today.” Research consistently shows that many jurors reach conclusions about a case during opening statement. That percentage is around 70%. It’s difficult to discern whether these numbers are th...

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  Think of the situations where self-diagnosis wouldn't work very well: A police officer asking, "Do you think you were speeding?" or a doctor inquiring, "Do you believe your cancer is in remission?" Yet we still rely on self-diagnosis when trying to discover and eliminate bias in civil and criminal cases by essentially asking prospective jurors, "Are you biased?" A new study (Robertson, Yokum & Palmer, 2013) takes a look at whether we can rely on jurors to identify their own attitudes and know the sources of their own judgments we...

When we point out the advantages  and disadvantages of setting up war rooms in your own office, some clients think that we don't approve of creating a war room in their regular office. This isn't the case. If circumstances permit – for example, it's a local trial and you have the in-house facilities to manage [...]

by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I believe that jury consulting has been done the wrong way for 40 years -- at least the way most people do it. I want to share some new ideas, best practices, beliefs and around-the-corner thinking about trial consulting (a/k/a jury research, jury consulting, litigation consulting).  If you can see how trial consulting is changing and will change, you will see how it has become more valuable than it was even five years ago and how bright its future... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

A while ago we did a focus group on a shockingly unethical healthcare provider targeting lower income zip codes for insurance fraud and the phrase “those Mexicans” came up in the deliberations. “That’s a good business model”, an older Caucasian woman said, “because those Mexicans will do whatever you tell them to do”. She seemed oblivious to the very bright, young Hispanic male sitting next to her and the Asian American woman sitting next to him and the middle-aged Hispanic female next to her. All of their eyes opened very wide and they made extended eye contact with a young Afr...

Katherine:   “Need the two of you to do a scene from Tone Clusters for May 4th. What do you want to do? Needs to be 5-7 minutes. Ellen.” It seemed like a simple enough email to figure out. The play is basically a two-hander (two character play). Alan and I are the two hands performing it – Joyce Carol Oates’ amazing play Tone Clusters – this season at Theatricum Botanicum. May 4th was to be a fabulous celebration of the 40th year that the theatre had been in operation officially as a theatre. Each of the plays of the season – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming...

On Wednesday, we wrote about the advantages of using your own office for a war room, which included reduced expenses, familiarity, and established procedures and protocols. In all fairness, we also have to list out the disadvantages. First up: We're not sure if familiarity breeds contempt. But we do know that if your war room [...]

As you have probably noticed, we read a lot of research here at The Jury Room. We are looking for nuggets of knowledge or pearls of wisdom we can apply to our day-to-day practice of litigation advocacy. If you’ve read our work on generations you likely already know there is a relationship between age and ethnic prejudice, with the multiculturally-immersed Millennials being the most open-minded among us. But here’s an interesting study that looks at the relationship between ethnic prejudice, age and right-wing authoritarianism. Right wing authoritarianism had a research heyday some decades ...

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  It happens sometimes in an argument: You know the claim you're hearing is false, but you also know that it sounds like it could be true, and it'll be a lot harder to refute the argument than it was to make it in the first place. Measured in time and effort, your adversary's initial argument is quite cheap while your response to it is very expensive. That difficulty is common in litigation, where truth is often on the side of the involved and analytical explanation rather than on the side of the compelling yet simplistic claim. Responding to that situation takes ...

by Laurie Kuslansky, Ph.D. Although pop culture cases that capture the nation’s attention are hardly typical of trials today, many viewers believe they are and they tend to set unrealistic expectations for those who may be called for jury duty or to serve on a jury. They may expect more experts, more drama, and more interest than the reality at most trials. This underscores the need for clear presentations, litigation graphics, and experts who are aware of the added burden publicized trials... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

Dorothy Gale was right, “There's no place like home.” Assuming your courtroom is local, staying right where you are during trial can be enormously convenient. Consider using an empty office, a conference room, even a spare table in one part of your office or firm library. Advantages of using your own office space: It's nearby. [...]

We have likely all heard the saying “Don’t shoot the messenger”. According to new research, we are more likely to shoot that unlucky messenger when they are an outgroup rather than ingroup member. While that makes sense (sort of) it’s an intriguing article. And  likely a depressing article for those who would like to promote positive change in groups to which they do not belong. “Their message is likely to be rejected regardless of whether it is objectively ‘right’, well-considered, well-justified, or well-argued.” Bummer. If you don’t fit in with your audience, you may as w...

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 tu...

by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We at A2L Consulting have just published a new, completely free, e-book that anyone who’s interested in trials and litigation should have. No more comprehensive volume on litigation graphics exists, at any price. In 74 articles and 219 pages, we show that there was a good reason A2L was voted the number one litigation graphics firm in the United States in a survey of 5,000 legal industry experts in the National Law Journal this year. The book... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

PowerPoint is often maligned but new research shows a courtroom PowerPoint effect that is nothing to dismiss! When Plaintiff attorneys used PowerPoint slides, mock jurors thought the Defendant was more liable for the alleged behavior. When the Defense used PowerPoint slides, the Defendant was less liable in the eyes of the mock jurors. Seriously? Because of PowerPoint slides? Let’s look at what they did. Researchers wanted to examine whether “PowerPoint slides may influence mock juror decision making in a civil case”. They predicted that “when either party used PowerPoint, liability ju...

When we ask, "Where is your war room?" we really are prodding you to consider four important questions: Are you going to use existing office space or are you going to create an office in a location generally used for other purposes, such as a hotel suite? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each [...]

Both. While this answer might seem obvious, new research explains why having both men and women in groups increases the collective intelligence of that group.  Anita Wolley and Thomas Malone studied group intelligence and found, “Little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.” The professors theorize that part of what makes the difference are women’s social skills. Women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men. Let me make clear that social s...

Yes. And if you haven’t seen it by now, as a public service, you can find the video here courtesy of boingboing. State Representative (OK-Republican) Dennis Johnson probably never thought his speech to a seemingly lightly populated House of Representatives floor would make such a splash. But racial slurs in our ‘caught-on-tape’ society are likely to go viral when the speaker is a public figure. Representative Johnson made what appeared to many to be an insincere apology, or bizarre, or worse (“I apologize to the Jews. They’re good small businessmen as well”) on the fl...

When time is short, the ultimate decision makers (usually the lead trial lawyer and/or her second chair) can't afford to remain distant or make team members guess what's wanted. Instead, they need to get involved in the process and be very explicit as to what they need. But neither they nor the sergeant major  should [...]

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  An Iowa jury just handed down a $240 million verdict on behalf of 32 mentally disabled men who lived and worked for decades at a turkey processing plant and were paid just $65 a month. That verdict, the largest ever in an EEOC case, captures the jurors' feelings about such blatant exploitation, but in addition to anger, the judgment also signals one other critical ingredient: a feeling of power. As one juror noted, she wanted to send a message: "We wanted to let people out there know that, in the future, this cannot happen." That sense of power can...

by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I frequently help lawyers craft presentations – whether it’s the opening statement of a litigator, a pitch presentation for a law firm, or a seminar presentation for a corporate lawyer. And I too am often called upon to speak at events or even off the cuff to a group. After a good bit of trial and error, I have found two nearly foolproof ways of organizing any of these talks that I use almost invariably, whatever the context may be. The great thing... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

by Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D. While you know your expert is tops in their field, a jury only sees them briefly, when your expert witness may come across “witless.”  Avoid pitfalls so your witness truly comes across as an expert witness.   Why do deer freeze in the headlights? Because they are built to see in low light at dawn and dusk, not bright lights. What are your expert’s blind spots? Competence versus Performance Lawyers often overlook the difference between competence... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

We know about the problems with inaccuracy in eyewitness testimony. But here’s a study showing bias in how listeners assess the eyewitnesses themselves. Yes, you read that correctly. It isn’t about the content of the eyewitness’ testimony. Oh no. It is instead about how the eyewitness talks and how the listener assesses their social standing. Everyone knows confident and successful people tell the truth about what they saw while unconfident and unsuccessful people just lie like rugs. Right? Well, according to a recent study, yes. We think we know that. It’s a scary thing for a litigant...

Allergies in the war room are no laughing matter. While pollen and animal allergies tend to be of little concern (mostly because you don’t have a lot of free time to go wandering around outside the war room and not many people bring their pets inside the war room), food allergies can be very serious, [...]

When the iPad first came out and attorneys began using it as a tool to help present their cases visually, I thought how great it would be if a presentation could be seen by all participants on their own tablet as opposed to projected on a screen. This personal contact with the tablet in their hands would resolve a major limitation on presentations given on a screen, which is a lack of resolution. When you project a presentation, you lose 60 to 70 percent of the resolution you get from your computer screen, and the viewer has to look across a room, which is why you need to make fonts quite big...

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  Over the weekend I gave a presentation at a law firm retreat in Palm Springs. The presentation drew from a recent mock trial in an insurance dispute and the deliberation video clips I was playing could've been seen as a parade of mistakes: jurors ignoring instructions, flagrantly applying their own experience and knowledge, and framing the dispute within their own terms instead of the frame provided by the presenting attorneys. After about an hour of this, one attorney in the audience spoke out: "Do you still," he asked, "have faith in a jury to deliver a good ver...

As trial consultants we are always alert to the possibility of new persuasion strategies. Often we find new perspectives in disciplines other than our own. Intriguing and powerful conclusions can stem from different sorts of thinking processes, based on different bodies of research. Recently, we ran across the work of Arthur (Skip) Lupia whose presentations contain a treasure trove of findings applicable to courtroom persuasion. Lupia entreats presenters to make their message urgent and relevant to the specific audience and then “seize the opportunity to leave a cognitive legacy”. One as...

Here's a short but sweet tip that could change your war room life: Test your equipment before sending it. Why? Because the last thing you want is to set up your war room, roll up your sleeves, and sit down to start working and discover that your equipment does not work. So you actually should [...]

Roger Ebert was a standout when it comes to facial disfigurement. We knew him before it happened. We applauded his bravery and courage in re-emerging publicly after disfiguring cancer surgery. Yet we also stared in disbelief when we saw him. His disfigurement was such that it gave the sense he was always smiling. That probably helped us to accept his new look. It is not, however, the case when we meet people who have facial disfigurements for the first time. We stare. We look away, knowing it is not polite to stare, and then we look again. It’s hard to not look. Staring is so common there ...

What else is your jury consultant seeing in mock trial deliberations? As we have been discussing, there is a wealth of meaningful, interpretable data hidden in the gaps in a mock trial deliberation. In addition to measuring articulated verbal content (written and oral), it is important for consultants to read meaningful behavioral indicators of how mock Read More…

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  With the writing of the 300th post, we are glad to have stuck with a two-posts per week schedule since January of 2011. As we hit this third milestone, I took a look at the roundup of posts that Google Analytics declares the most frequently read posts in the most recent set, and the list appears to offer a little of everything. If there is a theme that ties them together, I think it is this: The readers gravitate toward the unconventional. The posts drawing the most eyes have focused on the following:  Applying ancient rhetoric to today's legal persuasion (t...

By: Merrie Jo Pitera, Ph.D. – CEO Over the years, we have received questions about how to select a corporate representative to sit at counsel table during trial.  All eyes are on the corporate representative.  He or she represents the company – everything they do and say reflects back on the culture, philosophy, values and mission of the company.  In post-verdict interviews, trial jurors have told us their different reactions to corporate representatives and how those attributions have impacted their views of the company and the case.  In this issue of Insights, we summarize the ...

Don't skimp on the basics of survival, even if you're putting together a war room on a shoestring budget and in record time. Here's what we recommend: Gimme Shelter   If your trial is local, consider using workspace at your own firm rather than at a hotel or other location. This may inconvenience others in your [...]

Having less time does not necessarily mean that your war room will be less expensive. In fact, short order war rooms often cost more than ones with a longer time frame. Why? If you're pressed for time, you may not be able to comparison shop for the best price for equipment or services. Additionally, just [...]

Oh, the things men say. Well, in truth, no real man said this. It’s featured in a parody of the viral Dove video where a forensic artist draws pictures of women as they describe themselves and then as they are described by a stranger. In the real ad, the women describe themselves as less attractive than the stranger describes them. In the parodies, the men describe themselves with swagger and perhaps even with total and ridiculous inaccuracy. It is very funny. It is also an anecdotally well-documented difference between men and women. But not just anecdotal. It’s supported by actual data ...

One of the things that makes George R. R. Martin’s series of books, A Song of Ice and Fire (which the HBO show is based on) such a success is that each chapter is written from a single character’s point of view (POV). The television series has not captured this effect, and being a different medium, such an attempt is impractical. But this is a big part of what makes the books so fascinating, so masterful and complex, and, believe it or not, so instructive for trial lawyers. Different characters see the same events and hear the same information, but each one applies their own personal bias ...

by Ryan H. Flax, Esq. Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting As a litigation consultant, one of my primary responsibilities is to help litigation teams develop and effectively use demonstrative evidence to support their trial presentation. The primary means of doing this is to create litigation graphics, which are most commonly used as PowerPoint slides that accompany oral argument and witness testimony. A lot of what goes into creating effective litigation graphics relies... Read more at http://www.A2LC.com/blog

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:  Think about stage fright. Now, multiply it by two, or perhaps ten in some cases. Being in the witness chair in trial compounds what we traditionally think of as speech apprehension, because it adds not only greater degrees of formality, but also the knowledge that there is someone on the other side who is being paid quite well in order to pick us apart. For a party in the case, an expert witness, or any witness, the advice to "just be calm" doesn't often help. Testimony, whether in trial or deposition, is inherently a high stress event and the advice to get...

How often have you read that “the eyes are the window to the soul”? What that means, say proponents, is that all you have to do to know how someone feels is to look into their eyes and you know all. New research would say that only holds true (at least if you are a man) when gazing into the eyes of another man. If you are gazing into the eyes of a woman? Not so much. Some women would say they have known this their entire life. Men simply do not understand. Now science has proved the women right. But, it isn’t the fault of the men. It’s simply evolutionary.  Let’s see… that means t...

If you're scanning the The Trial War Room Handbook blog with nine days to get ready for trial instead of ninety, don't despair. Sure, it would be great if you could start earlier next time – but we know you know that. We also know that sometimes these situations are unavoidable. So here's what you [...]

Have you heard about the latest proposal from California lawmakers? The California Assembly passed a bill the other day that would allow non-citizens (who are in the country legally) to serve as jurors. According to this bill, California jurors would no longer be required to be citizens of the United States. Talk about a touchy topic. Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski believes his bill will help California “widen the pool of prospective jurors” and “help integrate immigrants into the community.”  Other lawmakers supporting the bill believe there is no correlation between bei...

Getting everything to one place in one piece begins with one of the most tedious parts of the process – packing. Your personal suitcase is your own business – i.e., you may be like Chris Ritter, who figures if it isn't in the bag when he arrives, he can get it there (which has led to [...]

A recent study in Clinical Psychological Science on handling stressful situations reminded me of one of the most difficult challenges I faced as a communications professor – preparing students with stage fright to give a speech in front of the class. Giving a speech consistently ranks as the greatest fear confronting Americans; more than spiders, terrorism, or nuclear war.  I saw this firsthand as a teacher, and it’s one I am sure many attorneys have also experienced, either in themselves or when preparing a witness to take the stand.  So how should you deal with stage fright? There ...