While there is no substitute for practical experience (or a great mentor), we believe it is possible to go to court forewarned and forearmed, even from the start. Here, then, are five key things you probably didn’t learn in law school you need to know to win.

Jurors don’t process and analyze information the way you do.
Knowing how they do it is crucial to winning your case.

Law schools train lawyers to do inductive reasoning. Thus, from the lawyer’s perspective, facts and evidence are cumulative: present a few good facts, find witnesses to corroborate them and they’ll “add up” to a winning verdict. (Think “mountain of evidence.”)    

Unfortunately, most jurors aren’t lawyers and were never trained to think this way.  Jurors don’t add up all the facts to reach a verdict. Instead, they listen to the facts you present in Opening Statement and discern a story therein. If you’re smart, the story they hear is the one you just told. If you didn’t tell a story, the jury will promptly take the facts you did present and string them into a story of their own.  During subsequent testimony, jurors then listen selectively, adopting the facts and evidence they feel support that story and ignoring the rest. Once in the jury room, jurors ultimately base their verdict on those filtered facts.

Jurors don’t always view the world the way you do. Fail to view the
world through their eyes and you increase the odds you’ll lose.

Every single person on the planet views the world through the prism of his or her own experience. That experience is a function of many things: age, gender, education, racial or cultural background, socio-economic status, religious beliefs, personality traits, psychological makeup and more. 

Jurors thus come to court imbued with all the personal attitudes, beliefs, prejudices and pre-conceived notions they’ve accumulated over a lifetime and that “worldview” dictates how they “hear” your case. It will determine what story they discern in your Opening Statement, how they’ll perceive the facts and evidence you present during Case-in-Chief, and which ones they’ll choose to factor into deliberations.

People forget what they hear...but remember what they see.
Present your case visually to increase the odds you’ll win.

We are a visually oriented society--not because we are bombarded with images everywhere we turn--but because making images is biologically wired in. Cave men were drawing pictures of the hunt on grotto walls in France at the dawn of time.  Making images was integral to the way Homo sapiens stored memories then and it is equally crucial to our ability to retain information now.

Madison Avenue learned long ago that “one picture is worth 1000 words.” Lawyers must take heed. Why? Because jury research shows that an audience that merely hears a presentation will remember only 10-15% of what it’s heard three days later. Thus, jurors who hear only oral testimony then wait days or weeks before deliberating can forget MOST of the facts and evidence long before deliberations begin! 

Lawyers are logical thinkers. Trained to “lay a foundation,” they typically structure their cases fact-by-fact, brick-by-brick and present them in chronological order. If only jurors processed and absorbed information that way!

Research shows that 95% of people prefer to organize information not chronologically, not brick-by-brick, but in story form. It’s how we manage information overload in a chaotic world. Thus to win, present your case to the jury in a concise, emotionally compelling story that jurors can easily wrap their hearts and minds around.  

Does that mean you should never use a chronology in trial? No. It means that your chronological presentation of the events must be placed in the larger context of a story that answers these key questions: Who did what to whom? When did they do it? How did they do it? And (most importantly), WHY did they do it? Human beings have a need to know why things go awry and even in civil cases, this rule applies. You’ll have a much easier time convincing jurors to believe your client’s interpretation of events if you present a plausible motivation behind the action or a plausible chain of causation that led to the event. 

Jurors never volunteer for jury duty. That fact alone impacts the way
you must present your case.

Put yourself in the jurors’ shoes. Jurors are called into service then forced to put their own lives on hold while they follow someone else’s agenda. They sit for 7-8 hours a day listening to other people talk, can’t eat when they get hungry, can’t go to the bathroom when they need to and can’t walk out if they’re weary or bored. Sounds like the job from Hell. Even prisoners in jail have more freedom: they have commodes in their cells.

Often resentful of the people and institutions that have forced them to serve, jurors frequently rationalize away their resentment by deciding to “do their civic duty” while in the jury box. After all, if they’re going to be stuck there for days or weeks, they might as well help someone in need. Jurors’ conscious altruism is unconsciously motivated by the universal (but self-serving) human need to maintain their self-esteem.

Juror self-interest is thus your best weapon in court. To paraphrase Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry McGuire, help (the jury) help you: construct a case story that allows jurors to feel good about themselves by helping your client and your battle will be won.

© The Strategic Image 2007