Working at A2L, I have the distinct pleasure of watching many of the world's best trial lawyers prepare for trial. Most start months or years in advance. Those lawyers engage A2L early to do theme testing with a focus group or to organize and run a mock trial. Each of these events requires the creation of litigation graphics and usually assistance in developing an opening statement. Having watched so many great trial lawyers prepare for 25 years, I have been able to observe patterns in how they prepare. Below I share ten chronologically ordered tips (plus accompanying resources) based on these observations.

I'm very fortunate to have a lot of friends, and I often end up telling the same story more than once in order to catch people up on what’s going on in my business and personal lives. Sometimes it’s just out of friendship. Sometimes I want to hear my friend’s opinion. Sometimes I want to persuade. Since I’m also in the business of professional storytelling -- or at least in the business of helping others tell their stories in the most professional and persuasive way possible -- I pay attention to how I tell a story. I especially notice how

In most years at A2L, we are in one or more courtroom-based trials every single day of the year. Increasingly, however, I’m seeing arbitration take the place of more and more trials. One recent article published by Law360 noted that the number of federal trials has dropped by nearly half and pointed to the increased use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as one of the reasons for that. While the lawyers who lead an ADR team are often the same lawyers who run trial teams, I have noticed that there is far less sophistication in the use of litigation graphics

At A2L Consulting, we have been providing trial technicians (also known as hot-seat operators) to help our clients display materials at trial since the 1990s. The role of a trial technician is a unique one. These men and women routinely work late nights during a trial to ensure that they are totally prepared for whatever can arise. As we have said elsewhere on this blog, the ideal hot-seat operator must have a very close working relationship with the lead trial attorney and with the other team members, must have a calm demeanor in case he or she is called upon

At A2L, we publish so many articles about litigation and trial preparation that I like to share the best of the best periodically. Below are the top three articles (based on readership) published in the first quarter of 2019 plus the top 3 articles from the last eight years (our blog's lifespan). I hope this information is helpful to you! Top 3 A2L Litigation Articles Published in Q1 2019 3. 10 Ways to Maximize Persuasive Courtroom Storytelling (1 of 4)2. The Border Wall Funding Dispute Could Be Won with Pictures1. One Demonstrative Exhibit, One Concept  Top 3 A2L Litigation Articles of All Time 3. 10 Ways to Spot Your Jury Foreman2. The Top 14

I was in New Orleans recently to speak at the DRI Toxic Torts and Environmental Law Seminar, and while I was in the city, I took some time to visit the National WW II Museum in the downtown area. At the museum, I was struck by a graphic exhibit that showed that in 1941, the United States had only 336,000 soldiers in uniform, compared with 850,000 for Japan and 3.1 million for Nazi Germany. There is a quick and easy lesson here for trial lawyers. This exhibit told me, as it was intended to do, that the outcome of the

This article is the last in a series of four articles about courtroom storytelling. My goal in this series is to reveal some of the tricks of the persuasive storytelling trade in one place for the busy trial lawyer. I hope that these recommendations can serve as a pretrial checklist for anyone who wants to draft an opening statement. A2L’s litigation consultants have published dozens of articles about storytelling, and we’ve released books and webinars on the subject. These ten tips represent the essence of what we have learned and of what we have taught. If you apply these ten suggestions when

This article is the third in a series of four articles about courtroom storytelling (links to part 1 and part 2). My goal in this series is to reveal some of the tricks of the persuasive storytelling trade in one place for the busy trial lawyer. I hope that these recommendations can serve as a pretrial checklist for anyone who wants to draft an opening statement. A2L’s litigation consultants have published dozens of articles about storytelling, and we’ve released books and webinars on the subject. These ten tips represent the essence of what we have learned and of what we have taught.

This article is the second in a series of four articles about courtroom storytelling (here is a link to part 1). My goal in this series is to reveal some of the tricks of the persuasive storytelling trade in one place for the busy trial lawyer. I hope that these recommendations can serve as a pretrial checklist for anyone who wants to draft an opening statement. A2L’s litigation consultants have published dozens of articles about storytelling, and we’ve released books and webinars on the subject. These ten tips represent the essence of what we have learned and of what we have taught.

Please join me in wishing all the authors of A2L's Litigation Consulting Report blog a Happy 8 Year Blogging Anniversary! To celebrate, I'm sharing the top 80 articles out of more than 600 litigation & persuasion focused articles written in the past eight years. Whether you want to become an even better trial lawyer, learn the latest jury consulting techniques, or anticipate your opponent's litigation graphics trickery, you will find valuable information here that you won't find anywhere else. After more than one million visits to our award-winning blog, these are the top read articles. All have been visited thousands of times, and the most read articles (at the bottom of the list) have been