Trial Lawyer Prep

Are you using objections as a band-aid for a lack of preparation?  You may be sitting in a deposition where you're taking the deposition of the defendant. Then as you're asking tough questions or questions that get to the heart of the case, the defense lawyer would suddenly pop up and say, "Objection Form." Defense lawyers use this as a tactic to send a message to the witness. The defendant would...

People say that a picture says a thousand words, and this holds true when you have illustrations during the trial. That's the power of visuals – they tell a story, simplify complex concepts, and educate the audience in the easiest and best way possible. In today's episode, Annie Gough, independent Certified Medical Illustrator, talks about how medical illustrators work and what it means to you in...

If you haven't ever tried running an adversarial focus group, or any focus group for that matter, then you better start considering doing it to get the most out of deposition or trial. We've pretty much covered a lot of topics on focus groups in our previous episodes. Today, we specifically delve into Adversarial Focus Groups. They are similar to mock trials. The difference is that an adversarial...

The client deposition has a significant amount of weight when it comes to deciding case value. However, one of the most common problems trial lawyers have is dealing with clients who resist preparing for deposition.  These are clients who actively avoid giving time for preparation. Whether it's because of their work schedule, family commitments, or they're just too busy to dedicate more than 30 mi...

There are a lot of emotional landmines when it comes to premise liability cases. For instance, summary judgment is an issue in just about every premise liability case. A lot of lawyers have this mental shortcut that if they beat the summary judgment, then the case is going to settle.  But in premise liability cases, damages are not enough. You're going to need to navigate through that, especially...

Losing a point with the jury is the last thing you want. At the end of the day, the jury will scrutinize your client more than anybody else in the room. So you want to bulletproof your client before they even get up on the stand.  Compassion fatigue is not unusual in a world where we are constantly bombarded by horrific news. You should not repeat the things coming to the jury because they don't w...

In the frame set of focus groups, are you holding your case back? Sometimes, we live with our cases for years, before we can find any kind of resolution either through settlement or trial. Now, this creates a tunnel vision where we can put these blinders on. There are blind spots everywhere that we just can't see. And it gets worse when we block out any other theory or possibility. When we do this...

As trial lawyers, we live in our trial lawyer space for several hours each day. It even follows us sometimes at night and wakes us up because our brains have been rewired in law school and even further into practice. Along the way, we've picked up legalese and legal jargon that we use when we get together with other lawyers or we talk to the court. That's all fine when we're in the lawyer world. ...

Once you've worked through mindset and organized things, the last piece of the puzzle in preparing for client deposition and trial preparation is role-playing.   As trial lawyers, we can do a better job at getting better results for the client. Most people haven't experienced being in a deposition or trial before. And so, role-playing will give them a realistic experience before they step into the...

We're joined by Ryan Squires, a partner at Scott, Douglass & McConnico. He has been doing a ton of trials, but in this episode, he talks about one specific trial he did in Austin.   It was a record-setting verdict in that the jury awarded them worth $40 million in damages and money, something they haven't seen in the last 20 years in terms of a private plaintiff in Austin. It also answered certain...

One of the common challenges lawyers have when it comes to running focus groups is where to find the participants. And if they do find them, how do they get them to respond to what they're putting out there.  Therefore, part of the success of focus groups lies in the recruiting process. You want to have an ample amount of people to choose from. You want participants that mirror the jurors, and not...

In this episode, I am sharing my point of view on a hotly debated topic in client preparation – when should a client share their damages, stories, examples, and feelings? Should they be in a deposition? Or should those be held until trial? The old-school way of thinking would be to save it for trial. Many lawyers encourage clients to say as little as possible or to not offer any other information...

The jury is like a giant fishbowl. Things appear larger and out of place. Clients are highly scrutinized by these 12 strangers in a box, and quite frankly, how they make their decisions is sometimes pretty foreign to us, as trial lawyers.  Sometimes, they make it very clear by telling us after they reach their verdict when, for instance, we see them in the hallway; and sometimes, they don't. Eithe...

Focus groups are a wonderful way to connect people with jurors and to help them get comfortable with talking to strangers. Sometimes, as trial lawyers, we fumble around with moderating, whether a person just won't keep talking or you're having a hard time hitting all questions within managed time. Focus group moderating is probably one of the most challenging places for most people because we know...

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to selecting a jury. Through the jury selection AKA "voir dire" process, lawyers are able to choose a fair and impartial jury.   In this episode, Deborah Hensley Loewe, an amazing mentor and friend, talks about why jury selection is one of her favorite parts of the trial. She also shares some tips in jury selection as well as how using focus groups is...

If you've conducted any kind of focus group or have been in a courtroom, you've probably noticed how some people are really easily swayed. And it can be frustrating to be in a focus group where it's time to have a discussion. They've seen all this information, you want to get their feedback. Then everyone just tries to parrot what the person before them was talking about when you really want to ge...

Have you ever experienced getting disconnected from your client, where after several attempts to email and call them, poof! – they're just gone? They can't be reached or maybe they're there, but they just completely ghosted you out. Failure to communicate is the number one bar complaint against lawyers. Hence, we need to do a better job of meeting people where they are, especially since things are...

In our previous episodes, we've been sharing some how-to's when it comes to doing focus groups. But it's also important to take a pause and think about why we are doing focus groups, to begin with. There are various reasons we might be holding ourselves back from doing focus groups. Maybe, there's some confusion around why we have to do it. At times, too, we could already be too deep in case prepa...

Have you ever instructed your client to say "I don't know" when it came to facts or anything that may have been detrimental to your case? Or maybe you've been on the other side of that where you were taking a deposition of someone and they just kept on saying they don't know, just like a broken record. In this episode, let's focus on connecting with your client as well as some of those little shor...

Have you ever experienced having a client who emotionally fell apart in a deposition or trial? You've already had a preparation plan, walked them through it, and organized everything, then all of a sudden, the plan goes out of the window. And when they're testifying to things that you've never heard before, it's certainly not a good feeling.  At times, there are clients that are challenging to pre...

In this episode, I'm going to play a recorded live video of my recent presentation on how to create a focus group presentation, and the best presentation possible to gather more engagement from our participants as well as more feedback. There are some things that always go into planning our presentations such as what evidence, objective documents, and videos you have to use. You want to look into...

In this episode, John Griffith who has a personal injury practice joins us from Tennessee. John talks to us about the five trials he has had since the pandemic started. Find out why he thinks trial lawyers have now become better than they were pre-pandemic and some of the notable differences he had seen in trials.  John specifically touches on some of the work he did during the shutdown in March o...

There is no doubt how important jury research and focus groups are in helping trial lawyers present to a jury. Not only does running practice groups hone your presenting skills for opening statement, but it also helps you with your materials. Jury reseach gives trial lawyers valuable feedback from those who are completely uninvolved with your case. However, a lot of trial lawyers are still hesitan...

Jury trials can be really messy. Changes happen often and frequently every day and it can be different things, whether it be the judge, the jury, or the opposing counsel. Preparation is long. It takes many hours working on witnesses, experts, order of proof, not to mention openings, closings, and jury selection. And that doesn't even go to tackling the paperwork that you have to do as well – the m...

Today is the other half of our two-part series on virtual focus groups, where we specifically tackle the logistics or the backend of virtual focus groups.  First off, there's a lot of different software and technology that goes into doing virtual focus groups. Although there are ways to use these resources for free, the cost of buying them is relatively low compared to hiring a professional videog...