Storytelling (expanded view) Trial Lawyers

This is Brian Panish from the Legal Podcasts Get in the Game. Hope you like what you're hearing and remember, sharing is caring. Subscribe if you like it, share with others, but don't forget Get in the Game. Interest storytelling is basically a way to induce empathy in a group of people who may not otherwise experience it. Some people are more prone to empathy in general and others more prone to empathy towards certain groups. Often groups that are similar to them, which is called like me bias. Storytelling along with facts is a way to mitigate biases. For example, confirmation bias means that people take what you say and make it fit their own story. However, a good storyteller can fight through that by explaining well and creating a motion which can allow a different viewpoint but someone may not have otherwise accepted. We can measure things like bias, empathy as a trait, as well as various trigger words that may increase or decrease the believability and the trust in the attorney's story. Our attorney panel for this session includes Jeffrey Bright, who has an extraordinary track record with hundreds of trials and some record-breaking verdicts, including the BP Deep Water Horizon still. Jeffrey is a proud member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, as well as an active member of the American Associates for Justice and the Junior Poverty Law Center's Advisory Council. Jeffrey has been an adjunct professor of law at William & Mary, Columbia and Harvard Law Schools. Daniel Rodriguez is a California attorney with extensive experience in the field. He has broken records with two back-to-back verdicts of over the $70 million each, and he also taught his methods at Jerry Stens' trial lawyer college. Daniel has been honored at the top ranked attorney in California. Antonio Romanucci is considered to be one of the most influential and one of the largest civil rights lawyers of our time, with a long list of accomplishments and verdicts under his belt. From his humble beginnings as a public defender in Chicago, to now cases like George Floyd and several large mass torts, Tony's ambition has been driving him to try cases across many practice areas and in a stupe class. I was just talking about storytelling and yeah, Dan, do you want to kick us off? I'm also, well, I'm also whether you have had a very big verdict recently. Congratulations on that. You've got to work. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Go for it. The last Friday to be exact. Very good. So let's start. Yeah, you can start with kind of like your approach to storytelling, I guess, in the courtroom is a good place for us to kind of kick off the conversation. Okay, storytelling. What we do know is that bullet points don't work. Facts that haven't been sequenced in the right order doesn't work. You can take the same facts. Let's say we had a bunch of dominoes here and each dominoe represented a fact from our case. You can put them in any order and when you put them in a different order, they tell it an entirely different story. So we want to tell our cases by way of story. Without getting into the microbiology, the bottom line is that the mind, the brain, it actually releases dopamine into good story. And so it allows us, and I don't, I'm not a scientist, I'm an biologist, I'm not a neurologist, I'm not a neuropsychologist, but that much I know that telling a good story is going to help us connect. And at the end of the day, that's what we want to do is connect. And there's different ways to tell a story. Everybody's, all of us have jumped on the bandwagon of visuals. And 70% of the brain is involved in one way or another. I read somewhere where the brain, the body has 13 million sensory receptors. Of the 13 million neural receptors, 11 million of them are dedicated in one way or another to visual, to processing visual information. So that tells us visual. The problem, at least for me, is then once I learned those kind of statistics, I was tempted to go big time PowerPoint. And the fact of the matter is that that's not necessary. I'm not saying not to use it, in fact, I use it. But we can tell a story and have the same effect as visual by doing what? One way to do it is to tell a story in the first person and present tense. When you do that, you draw the audience, the jurors into the scene. So how do you do that? You set the scene. How do you set the scene? You go to the present tense, you have your witness on the stand. And do you do that for every scene? No, you only do it for the select scenes, opening statement, the same thing. So you switch off to instead of you have your witness say, okay, we're going to go back two weeks before Thanksgiving, two years ago. We're at your house. We're at the front door of your house. We're standing there. When you look down, what do you see? Well, I see a carpet. When you look to your left and right, what do you see? I see this. When you look down at yourself, what are you wearing? I was wearing, no, no, not I was. I am wearing. I am wearing this. And the most powerful sensory receptor is smell. So you ask them, what are you smelling? And they tell you, now you set the scene, now you can set it into action. So anyway, that's how I think of storytelling in the courtroom is doing, setting the scene and getting the witness there. Or when you get the witness there, you get the jurors. And all of this allows us to do what? To build rapport, to a connection to the jurors. It resonates. The story hopefully will resonate with them at a below-conscious level. And at the end of the day, it's not, you know, people don't remember what me. I'm sure all of us have heard this. At the end of the day, people don't remember what we told them. People remember what how we make them feel. And the best way to make people feel is by way of story. So anyway, that's my little synopsis and how I think about storytelling in the courtroom. Sure. Thank you for that. Something you mentioned made me think of, what you were talking about, like really imagining yourself from the first person, very present tense. This reminds me of something that I learned back in grad school. I have a PhD in psychology in fact. And something called the cognitive interview in fact. Generally, it's a technique used for eyewitness testimony. In fact, you, a traditional interview like police gun interview is, what did you see go in chronological order from start to finish? That's about it. The eyewitness technique, or the cognitive interview, is much more detailed where you're asking about things such as what about it? If you tell me about the story from a bird's eye view, walk me through it in a kind of back to front, that way you actually create a lot more detail and get a lot more information from a memory, which and getting those details out is really kind of the crux of that of the storytelling, which it sounds like your thing, especially the relevant key, very, very, very important, very, very detailed information. You said something that's very, I want to make sure that we're all aware of this fact. Of the eight most powerful words in the English language, by the way, English was not my first language. I didn't start learning, I didn't speak English until I was about eight when I started school. I didn't go to kindergarten, I missed most of my first year and so forth. So I'm more in tune to words than the average person. I'm a little weird in other words. Okay. So I study things like what are the most, what are the eight most powerful words in the English language? One of them is imagine not to be confused with pretend. Don't ask the wind, and that pretend you're here, because pretend means what for most of us. Fake. It's fake. It's fake, right? Pretend you're doing this. No, you know, imagine, imagine. And I teach trial tactics and trial techniques, and whenever I have one of my students say pretend, I jump in and say no, please, please don't use that word pretend. Use the word imagine. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we were all on that same page, because it's always a red flag for me when somebody says pretend unless it's a defense lawyer. If he's asking it that way, that's fine with me. Okay. Well, thank you very much for sharing that. Jeffrey, do you want to maybe continue the conversation? Like, do you follow Daniel's path pretty closely? DBAs and much? DBAs and certain points? Well, I think every case is different, and I think the way I handle the cases is different. I try to imagine for purposes of the storytelling a large party, but a whole lot of people not really listening to each other. They're all over the house, but they'll be a group in the living room where someone has pulled up a chair and we'll start to tell a story. And people will move in, people will lean in, people will clear their ears to hear a good story and trials are a battle to me of impressions and you're managing emotions and so imagine if you will sitting in a very comfortable chair in a living room leaning forward and telling a bunch of strangers a good story that they want to be interested in and they want to be a part of the story if you can make them a part of the story. Jurors want to do something important and they want to think that their job is important and so to bring them into a story and connect to them and that's exactly what Daniel said you have to connect and it's that authenticity that trust worthiness where they look at you the lawyer who is marshaling this case and they're asking do I want to help this lawyer do I want to help this plaintiff this family and if so is the story going to move them to want to do it and so I like to set them up where I will oftentimes lower my voice so the jurors have to strain a little bit to get into what is my story they have to lean forward I too like Daniel have been teaching trial advocacy for 17 years and the voice is the most important tool that we have lowering your voice raising your voice using pregnant pauses jurors during directing cross examination a normal case if there is a dead spot where there's nothing being said there's no sound the next sound they hear is very very important and so if you have a witness who's talking and doing things and then you stop let the jury absorb that story for a second and then you focus your next question that next question is going to draw them in and how you do that and how you bring a jury into a story is again like Daniel said I think a beginning a middle and an end jurors like to think logically lawyers try to be too cute oh let me start here and now let me go back five years now let me jump forward three years jurors don't know the case as well as you do they need to follow just like he said little dominant it's got to have a first one you got to have a second one you have a third one and each witness has to be a part of the story but the jury wants to know why am I listening to this person where do they fit into this story and so laying the groundwork early in a direct examination of a witness what where were you why are we listening to you oh I was sitting 50 feet away and saw something without any distractions or without anything in my way oh okay I want to listen to this person they have a very good view and how you set them up to be a part of the story we are as lawyers nothing more than glorified play directors how are we going to set up this plane what characters are going to walk on to the stage first what kind of visual effects are we going to use to make the story more effective whether it slides whether it's power points whether it's posters or easels I use all of them simultaneously I don't want to be wedded to a computer to tell my story but I do like boards I do like 11 by 14 hard poster board I like big poster boards I like photographs of all types of sizes one of the great stories of all time to me for purposes of storytelling is a great melvin bellie story and he had a client who had an amputation and as the trial started melvin bellie had a large looked like a leg wrapped in meat wrapping paper and he kept it on his table throughout the trial just wrapped in meat paper and the jury could see it they imagined what was that it's an amputation case did he really bring the leg into the courtroom and it was always there was always part of the visual effects of the courtroom but in closing argument he slowly walked over unwrapped the paper and the jury not a pin drop could be heard and he pulled out a what was then an old style amputated leg fake wooden with the foot and he handed it up the jury for them to feel and he asked them to feel the pulse the warmth the blood coursing through the leg and of course it was a wooden leg and they couldn't feel or see anything but that had left such an impression for his story throughout the case oh my god he's gonna bring the leg out he's gonna bring the leg out and so how you use different little courtroom techniques whether it's photos whether it's slides whether it's objects uh Kevin Benioz and my partner loves to show slides that are not from the case but to make an impression on a juror so he we had a case a year ago where a woman could no longer put her child in a swing and push the child at the park had a bad arm injury couldn't lift up the child couldn't do it safely and he just had a random google photograph wouldn't even a photograph it was a colorization of a a painting of a woman pushing a child on a swing and he mentioned it to her and direct examination threw up the slide so the jury could see it it wasn't her it wasn't them it was just a child in a swing with a mother like this and in closing argument he just reminded the jury of the things that she couldn't do and the slide went up on the screen for about two seconds not a word needed to be said they looked at the slide oh yeah she couldn't use the swing with her child for nine months while the child was in those age where you use a swing and so every little different technique you can think of to bring jurors attention remember we're used to storytelling being done in 60 minutes sometimes 30 minutes that's our TV timeline a two and a half hour movie is not going to happen in a courtroom there are too many erupt interruptions there's too much going on so you have to keep them interested and so I like to grab this jurors by the throat very very quickly whether it be opening or direct examination and start your story that grabs them makes them go oh my goodness or grabs them oh my goodness stopping and then letting them imagine what's coming next give them something to look forward to I do it on direct I do it on frost they know it's coming they're interested bad lawyers or bad storytellers bad lawyers have a great habit of losing the jurors attention they turn their back on the jurors they fumble it they're deaths looking for a document or a photograph or an exhibit any break in the action allows a juror to think about their grocery list tonight at six o'clock they're there as our guests but if you give them an opportunity to daydream particularly at four o'clock in the afternoon a day of a jury drop can I pick up my child on time can I get my dinner picked up can you know my family waiting for me you can't give them a reason and so all of that play directing is important just like a play director at the end of intermission or the right after intermission right after a big lunch a big witness jurors are digesting their food they're tired they're getting droopy ending the day with a fascinating fact just like we do on TV shows you know if it's a carryover TV show it ends the first show with something oh my goodness I wonder what's gonna happen next and the juror has to come back the TV watcher has to come back for the next show because you've left this dangling exciting piece of the story that's my thoughts preliminary on storytell sure Daniel and Tony have more to say well the I guess the story of the leg being on the desk is very striking and I'm sure that's gonna stay in my memory for a long time now be sure right and that's the purpose right it sticks with you yeah probably both jurors do remember that as well um and I think that's again you you didn't probably not coincidentally use for imagine two or three times as Daniel talked about as well just the floor backs and yeah a big part of storytelling I think is uh what's called show don't tell let let's put the pieces there for the jurors to put together themselves but yeah don't tell me don't tell me you love me show me show me that you love me. - Exactly. - Conclusionary language. You know, just, and get rid of the adverbs. Adverbs is the lazy writers' way to write. He quickly moved out of the way. No, use an action verb. He jumped out of the way. Tragedically or whatever. Don't use adverbs. So the extent that you can leave them out is gonna be a much better story. - And that's exactly why you don't use facts because if you construct your story with all facts, what's gonna happen? The jury's gonna create their own story. They're not gonna listen to your story. And if you let them construct their own story, well, they're not gonna follow what the case is really about. And that's why when you do tell a story, and I agree with obviously everything that Daniel and Jeff said, that's why they're instructors. And I feel like I'm the student here. But telling the story is so important because if you do tell the story, that's the anchor that the jury's used then when the facts, when the documents, when the witness is testify during the actual case in chief. The your opening is your opportunity to tell the story. And quite frankly, when you tell the story, tell it in a way that maybe they wouldn't expect it to be heard. For example, usually when you're talking about your story and you wanna sequence, right? You wanna use your sequence very, very importantly. In the same way that you're sequencing your voire d'art, whether you start with conduct or causation or harms and losses, that's the same way that you wanna sequence your opening. You wanna be able to compartmentalize your jury. They're gonna follow your story that much better when you're sequencing your voire d'art with your opening and with your evidence. So if you give them that opportunity, the story's all gonna make sense. But what I meant by, because I don't wanna repeat everything that Jeff and Daniel said, when you're telling your story, give them an opportunity to think of the story in a different way. The conduct, for example, if it's a trucking case, it's a truck versus auto case, when did the conduct, the bad conduct really start? Well, it didn't start on the date of the event. Ladies and gentlemen, you would think that this story begins on July 4th, 2022, when this accident occurred or when this crash occurred. But indeed, this story begins years and years before that, when this trucking company continuously failed to monitor and screen their employees and do background checks. So that's one way to tell this story. You bring it back in time and you tell this story in a way that captures them just like when they read stories to their children way back in time and you bring it to the beginning. And that's the way just so for them to understand and anchor so much better, because that's the goal of the story. The goal of the story is to anchor them with visuals, not documents. I have a great expert out in North Dakota biomechanical and he has a little bit of an accent. And when he-- - You have a big accent, Tony. He has an accent. - You know what I'm talking about, right? - I'm talking about, yeah. - Yeah, starts with an M. - Yeah. - And when he testifies, he talks about his visuals as cartoons, but he does it in a way that doesn't shock anybody that's not disingenuous or offensive. Because what he's trying to explain to you is that I created this cartoon for you to understand the story. And it just works beautifully. Introduce it, you introduce the animation and opening, not the big, not all the factual documents, and then you bring it into the evidentiary story. It works beautifully. - Well, thank you very much for sharing that, too, Tony. Something that I guess all three of you have brought up to a greater or lesser extent is kind of how the jury wants to be kind of emotionally involved and gets emotionally invested. I do see some notes that's reassuring. Now, something that's, especially Daniel mentioned was that-- - Can I jump in here and I apologize. - Yeah, of course. - The segue is too good to pass up. Tony talked about this expert from North Dakota who has a-- If I remember correctly, he's Polish, if I remember correctly, and he has an accent, and you have an accent. So how do we-- How do we-- First of all, we got to recognize that there's an accent, and then we got to recognize how is the viewer or the listener going to react to that accent? And there's a hierarchy in American culture of accents. It's no accident that, for example, in Game of Thrones, this prequel, I forget the name of it now. All the royals have what accents? - British. - British, there's a reason for that, okay? If you want to sound intelligent, you have what kind of accent? What kind of accent? - A regal one. - Yeah. And, for example, a German accent, people with German accents, we perceive them as being brighter, being smarter, being more intelligent. I remember when I started out as a brand new lawyer, as a baby lawyer, it was an explosion case, and there was an expert that we had hired. And he happened to be German. And the defense lawyers asking him questions, he said, "Now, when did you first design explosions?" And he says, "Before or after Zivore?" He was very, very conscious of, he didn't want to say he designed any bombs before, but that's beside the point, what I thought was his accent, okay? So we have to pay attention to that. And I'll make decisions, I have this trucking case, and I have a really good biomechanical expert, who's really good. But I say, "But," but he's got a middle Eastern background. My client is middle Eastern. The county that I live in is where McCarthy and Trump won here by, I don't know, 20, 40 points. McCarthy happens to be our congressman. This is a red county. I mean, California is a blue state, but I live in a red county, a very red county. Okay. So a middle Eastern background, that is part of the story, because my client was middle Eastern, and a trial is a contest of credibility, which means we do everything we can to increase our credibility. And we do everything we can to decrease the credibility of the opposing side. And one of those ways, probably the most important way, is the story that we tell. And part of that story are our characters, and in the way our characters express themselves, how they speak. So I very much pay attention to accents. So I couldn't pass up on that one. Antonio mentioned the expert from North Dakota, and then you started speaking at the, okay, come on, we gotta call this out. It's useful to be conscious and aware of this kind of stuff. - Of course, yes. My accent isn't entirely English, but I'm also not going to offend that country, because the country that we're remaining part of my accent is from is not associated with regality and this sort. - To the untrained American ear, you sound British. - My accent is probably 75 to 80% of British ear. But something you kind of touched upon quite heavily there as well, in terms of like attitude, attitude-changing persuasion, which obviously the goal of storytelling, is the source of the message. If the source is considered to be much more credible, the message is much more likely to be taken on board, and unfortunately in a very red county, some experts that are people of color might just, unfortunately, might not be considered to be as credible, which, yeah, fortunate to sign up at times. But it does really highlight the importance of the source, being the source of a message, the story of the, or part of the story, and the effects that's gonna have, definitely. Now, the question I was just about to ask was emotion and kind of like, yeah, but all of the kind of like the emotion of the jurors, you all kind of, kind of, harks back to that a bit, made mention of it, Daniel in particular, you talked about dopamine and oxyxy, and posting when we get that kind of positive. - And I probably use the wrong word, oxy, is not oxycodone, that's the reason. - It's one of those that good, good feel hormones to get released in the brain. - Let's go with definitely dopamine, and maybe others as well, how about that? Do you guys consider perhaps that positive emotions are, like, elistening positive emotions through the story is a better tactic, say, do you want to feel, sorry, a pity for your plaintiff or is feeling anger towards the defense, Perhaps a. or maybe can be in some cases a more effective tactic in storytelling. Let me jump in real quick. It is. On the range of emotions, love is not one of the most powerful ones. The two most powerful emotions are anger and fear, which means every good story needs what that we tell. Every good story needs a good villain. And if not a story of mistake, the only people who make mistakes in my stories are my clients or my witnesses. Everybody else betray us. Because what do we do? The typical American. What do we do when somebody makes a mistake? An error. A lack of judgment. A poor judgment. We forgive them. What do we do with people who betray us? We don't forgive them. Okay. So the story can never be one of negligence. It has to be a story of betrayal. So we need a good villain in every one of our stories. The villain can be the defendant. It can be the defense lawyer. It can be one of the defense experts or one of the defense witnesses. But every good story needs a good villain. And the best villain in our story is the person who knew the most and cared the least. I'll say that again. The person who knew the most and cared the least. So if you can sequence and frame your story, long, I'll spend 80% of my opening statement, which by the way, guys, the opening statement I gave in this trial that was six weeks long that I just finished last Friday. It was two hours long. The longest opening statement I've ever given. Okay. I'd like to think maybe I'm fully myself. The jury was there with me every step of the way. But I had a good villain. I had a great villain. So every good story needs a good villain because we got to get to anger and we got to get to fear. Well, I couldn't agree more because when you do tell the story based upon conduct, I don't think that you go and you try and get the jury to like or love or feel empathy for your client out of the gate or else what you're doing is you're putting the emphasis on the client and not on the bad conduct. And usually what happens, Dan hit the nail on the head. Usually, conduct is associated with knowledge. Who had the most knowledge with regard to the conduct? It's not our client. It's not the victim because that's why they're there because they are innocent. And for example, in a toxic torque case that we're working on right now, the way we're framing the story is the conduct, the decades and decades of knowledge that the villain had about this deadly chemical and the choices that they made with respect to this chemical and the choices that they left our client with, which were not our client didn't have a choice. But to breathe the error around her home 12 to 20 times per minute 24 hours a day for all the years of exposure, not knowing that every time she took a breath, there was a nail being driven into her coffin. That's the kind of story that you want to tell because it does create the villain. It's the choices that they made with their conduct given the choices that the innocent victim had, which were not. Okay, I guess very strong feelings towards anger and fear being very good drivers of get a majority on your side. I guess that's a follow-up question. Are you guys familiar with and/or do you subscribe to Reptile Theory at all? All I know is I get motions eliminate entitled Reptile Theory. And I always say to the judge, I have no problem with that. The golden rule, I'm not going to violate it. So I don't pay attention to it. The essence from what I understand I read the book years ago, the essence is you're really trying to create empathy. You're trying to put your listener, your viewer into the shoes of your client. They don't say it that way, at least I don't remember the authors saying it that way, but that was the essence of what they were trying to say. So you're trying to create empathy. So you asked me, do I subscribe to the Reptile Theory? Yeah, exactly. Like this, I don't know. Sometimes it happens by accident, right? It's like, yeah. The general principles behind it seem reasonable amount, even if you wouldn't say you're reading from the gospel of Reptile Theory. Okay, that's a fair response. Yeah, I guess turning to a very slightly different type. Have any of you guys had any challenges on recent cases with your storytelling? Like did something turn out unexpectedly much better or worse than you may have otherwise predicted? Let me try to speak, speak up since I haven't had a bit. I agree with Daniel and Tony when it comes to having a bad guy be the focus, if you come too early with empathy for your client, the jury thinks you're trying to get sympathy, get them angry at the conduct of the defendant or the defendant themselves before you approach your own case. But I also like to think we try to come up with some kind of branding. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of our last president, but he was a brilliant brand of images, lying tag, crooked Hillary, low energy, Jeb. The things that stuck with these people no matter what they did, that's what you heard. That's what you saw when you saw them. And so coming up with something to stick the defendant with, this bad guy image is something that is an emotional attraction that the jurors will get stuck with and angry with. And now they're ready and willing to listen to what you've got to tell them about your client because they're already ready to be upset. I find that lawyers that try to shove the damage aspect of the case early looking for that emotional grasp. The jury's not ready for it. The jury needs to be ready which is after they're pissed off at the defendant. You're managing those kinds of emotions and you're letting them go, okay, now I'm ready to be helpful to this family because these people deserve to get punished. What can we do for this family? And if they feel like they can help a family, it's not just some random case. That's why the jurors get interested in being involved in this case. Oh, I have the ability now to help out this family. And I want to help out this family because these people have been labeled whatever they are, cutting corners, being cheap, disregarding facts that are obvious, making excuses. Now you're mad, now you're angry, and now you're ready to say, okay, what is it about this family? One of the great things that I try to get lawyers to do, particularly in wrongful death cases, is to go visit a family house because when you walk in and you see a home where someone has lost a loved one, there will be cubes, a photograph, a trophy, a sweater, things that the clients don't tell you about. They don't think that it's important this photograph from Thanksgiving five years ago that they've left on the counter or a note. Those are the things that I save for a trial. I don't try to pre-preprep my clients, but I ask them in front of the jury. Now do you have anything in your living room that is a reminder of your lost husband? I already know that it's the photo. I already know it's the little train set they made for the grandchild. Those are the things that will grab at the hard strings of a witness who's not ready. You know, didn't know you knew that, and that's when they opened themselves up to connect to their own jury, because the juries all have those little things at their own houses, and when they hear a client talk about it who was not overly prepared, not prepped too much. It's like you catch them, and it leaves them in a position where they want to tell a really good story about that object, and that story now connects this jury. to them. One of the things that we did this past week in class, which I think that is becoming much more important for lawyers in storytellies, is that we're becoming a very, very diverse country. And there are people sitting on juries from every country, every ethnic background, cultural background. And they all don't think like, you know, the white American world that we grew up in. Everything comes from their own tribal understanding. And having us as lawyers, learn what it is about that ethnic background, learning what may approach or connect with them. It's critically important. And I'll give a short example if I can. I had a case where a young boy was burned in a substation, his two best friends both testified against him and both said that the boy had dared them that he would go into the substation. And there were all three young black children at a not very nice neighborhood. And we focused group because I was worried that the two best friends were going to testify against the plaintiff. And we had 50 jurors in our focus group, 25 whites and 25 blacks. The 25 black focus group jurors all said 25 out of 25 that the two boys were lying and they were covering their ass because they weren't supposed to be near the substation. The 25 whites all said that the boy was contributory nepotron and should not have been in the substation. I've never had it contrasted so starkly. 25 out of 25 said one thing and 25 out of 25 said the other. And that's cultural. And it's quite frankly, I don't understand it. But that cultural understanding of a boy covering his ass. And that's sure that's what you study. You know, the different types of things is a psychologist learning how people look at things. And now our jurors are filled with people from all over the world who've moved to the United States. They sit on our juries and they think differently than that we do. Quite frankly, they do. And we have to learn it because storytelling to them is a different storytelling than someone else. And when you have a mixture in your panel, you got to be able to do it multiple different ways to connect. Don't know if I answered that question, but I had to say that. Well, Jeff, that is so, so poignant and so important. Sorry, I have a cat who wants to join the video. If you see my arms moving, it's because I keep trying to hold, I'm trying to hold them at bay. But, but you know, I along with Ben Crump represented the estate of George Floyd. And before, you know, we negotiated that settlement with the state of, with the city of Minneapolis, we engaged in focus groups and mock trials all over the country to get different attitudes and feelings that people would have. And it was amazing how that cultural issue came into play here. Because when there was a black juror, either on our mock trial or our focus group, they were able to dissect and know exactly what was happening. Whereas the white or the non-black juror would take a much different approach and believe it or not, the whites were friendlier to our case than black jurors work with regard to what the outcome was. And that cultural difference is really hard for us. And we're raised in a certain culture. I am. And you are. And I'm sure they're different. You may be in Chicago. I may be Virginia Beach, but it's our religious upbringing, the people that we hang out with, and people look at things totally differently. By the way, what you did in the George Floyd case has changed America. Really, not just what happened to George Floyd, but the resolution that you all were able to bring to his family has changed all cases, not just those kinds of police misconduct cases, but all cases. And it was a cataclysmic shifting of ideas and thoughts about the police. And every one of us have known that blacks have been mistreated by law enforcement for years, particularly the South. And now we could put a label on it. And George Floyd's life, unfortunately, has made that a part of our culture now. And having to learn how to do that, you know, whether it's Daniel's Middle Eastern accent, you know, it's a double edged sword. Middle Eastern accent to some people means one thing and to someone else, it means something else. And how we as lawyers package that so that the jurors can accept it and understand it without bad connotation or feel it very warmly as, oh, look what their life is like. That's why in these death cases, different family members have different roles in different cultures. And so a loss of a father, a loss of a mother, a loss of a daughter, they all mean something differently. And too many lawyers think, oh, everybody's the same, they're just jurors, but they're not. They're all jurors who come into the courtroom with their own suitcase of baggage and their own views of the world. And sometimes they just don't listen to it. I mean, there's nothing worse for me to talk to a lawyer who had a hung jury that was 11 to 1 because one juror couldn't get it out of their head. That's not how we do it. That's not how it happens on my side of the tracks. And learning how to tell a story to different people is really important, using analogies that are important or relevant to their culture. Unfortunately, this was the second year that my lost students didn't know anything about Perry Mason. Why? We grew up with Perry Mason. I have a painting in my office of Perry Mason's office. None of my students knew the hell who he was. And I told them all that they were all get an F at the end of the semester unless they can come to class and tell me about one episode of Perry Mason. Because they just didn't know. And imagine that. These are lost students whose age is such that they just don't know. This week in class, I was talking about the process examinations in the OJ Simpson case by Eiffelie Bailey on Furman, the lying police officer who had never used the N word. None of my lost students had been born when the OJ trial happened. And I went, wow, how could that be? And so, you know, the analogies that we use for our stories, sometimes I was glad to hear Daniel use Game of Thrones. But some people don't watch Game of Thrones. And to think that some of these jurors didn't know about or some of my students didn't know about OJ was shocking. Shocking. And so we have to step up our game to learn culture and learn about other people's cultures. Sorry, I talked too long. Pop culture. Pop culture. Pop culture. Yes. Jeff, can I offer something for your consideration? Yes. Words matter, right? And I told you, I'm a word smith. Not necessarily by choice, but the way I grew up. I told you that English was not my first language. So I listened to words all the time. And in wrongful death cases, when I hear people say they lost the loved one, they didn't lose that person. That person didn't fall out of their pocket and they lost that person. That person was killed, was taken away from the family. They didn't, my friends didn't lose their dad. They didn't lose their brother. Okay, he didn't fall out of their pocket. He was taken from them. He was killed by the defendant's choices, the defendant's bad choices. So it's always, we're always painting a picture, whether it be with our gestures, whether our choice of words, the inflection in our voice, all of those things, we get a chance to frame the case. When I hear we lose somebody, that's a mistake. I don't want mistakes in my case by the defendant. It's a betrayal story from the get go. Their choices led to the killing of this person. Right. So anyway, I, I, again, I'm too literal. I'm too anal about these kinds of things, but I listened to words all the time. When I was a kid growing up, I didn't understand why people would say, "Rush hour." When all the cars were stopped and nobody was moving, people would say, "Hard rock." And in my mind, I saw a stone that was in the ground is opposed to music. So it was two-stage learning. I had to understand that. And I probably over-analyze them, but I can't help myself. I'm a product of my upbringing. Well, coming from Chicago, now I'm going to look at traffic always as slow-hour. Stop-hour. I'm never going to look at it as rush hour again. Or I was growing up and I wanted to fit in. My dad never went to school. My dad was illiterate. My mom had a third grade education. So I lived in labor caps. I lived, for example, grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck. That labor cap, I lived in that labor cap growing up. So I learned the idioms in English. Do you say you ride in a plane or on a plane? You get in a car or on a car. See, those kind of language things. That's not grammatical rules for that. It's the way Americans, we Americans think in containers. So anyway, I wanted to fit in, right? So I would see the name Santa Monica, San Crescento, San Corsé, San Francisco. And I would pronounce it that way, right? And all of my classmates would look at me like, so I had to teach myself to say Santa Monica, Santa Jose. Otherwise, I wouldn't fit in, which meant I'm not a member of the tribe. And that's what we're trying to do when we do jury trials. What we're trying to do is we're trying to build a tribe. The tribe is the jury. By the end of the trial, we want to be accepted as a member of the tribe. And more than that, we want to be perceived and accepted as the de facto leader of that tribe. So when I ask him for $73.7 million, they give it to me. Okay? So the villains in our case, for example, in a 1983 case, a police misconduct case, the cops are members of the tribe. So how do we, and we don't kill people in our tribe, we don't talk crap about our tribe. I can talk crap about my family members, but nobody outside the family can do that. It's a sociometry, basic sociometry. So we're always trying to build a tribe. So what we do is the cop starts out in a 1983 case as a member of the tribe, because none of those folks on the jury, none of them have really had a bad experience with the cop otherwise they wouldn't be seated there. None of them are convicted felons. So how do we win a 1983 case? We drive the cop out of the tribe. How do we do that? We show he's a rogue cop. He's a lying person. That's how we do it. Then we can kill him. We only kill people outside our tribe. We don't kill people in our tribe. So anyway, I wanted to offer that to you that that's ultimately what we do. We're forming a tribe and we want to be members. We want to be accepted as members of that tribe. The defendant or the defense lawyer or the defense expert or the defense witness cannot be a member of that tribe. Otherwise, we can't kill him. And at the end of our story, we want to kill him. When I say we, us, the jurors, including myself want to do that. Obviously, it's oversimplified, but that's the way my simple mind thinks. Sure, yeah, that comes back to like what all of you guys talked about in terms of like creating that villain, getting the anger towards them. But villain is possibly outgrew, not one of us. Yeah, exactly. I have one final question. What about foreshadowing the positive outcome? Is this something that you, is this something you introduced early, late, at all, etc? Are there different, we don't change across different cases as well? Yeah, different cases call for different story structure, right? Most cases we introduce the plaintiff or at least I do at the end because I don't want them to be the focus of the case because if they're the focus of the case, our jurors are second-guessing them. We don't want them second-guess. So we don't want the narrative spotlight on the choices made by the plaintiffs. It's on the defense, right? So most of the time, not all the time, we introduce the defendant's first or the villain first. And again, we don't, we do it with their choices, like Tony said, their conduct, what they did wrong, what they did. We backchain it, we don't necessarily start the story at the time of the incident. We might want a nice emotional hook. We started then, but as Tony said, then we say, but our story doesn't start there. And then when you're telling the story in the courtroom, you have to keep in mind the theater part of it. We read from left to right. So because we're facing our audience, we say, we use our left and we say, here's where the story started. It started here and it went there. But the jurors are looking at us. It's the mirror image of it, right? So we have to train ourselves that our timeline starts over there to our right, not to hurry and go that way. So just all this is part of storytelling. It's not just the words, it's not just the inflection. It's our positioning in the courtroom. So then we say, we call it backchain. We go back. Our story starts and then we don't necessarily use a date. Us lawyers tend to use the date of the wreck. It was July 10th, 2010. And we will say it a hundred times during the trial. When you say July 10th, 2017, there's no image in your head of that. And our brain thinks and images. What does what I would offer to you is this, is you talk about landmarks. It was a week after Fourth of July, 'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a mouse stirred. So two weeks before Thanksgiving, it was two days before St. Patrick's Day. Now the brain is easier for us to follow and we can transport our listener to the scene. Not using the date or calling a character, Mr. Smith. When I say Mr. Smith to you, most of us are not going to have an image of Mr. Smith. But if I say the baker, the teacher, the garbage truck driver, the farm worker, you're going to have an image in your head. So I rarely call them by their names. Going back to I think it was Jeff's point about branding. Not necessarily negative branding like Trump did. But you give them a label. That way they remember who it is. They're not going to have an image of Mr. Jones. They're going to have an image of the truck driver. Names are ridiculous. I hate it when people use names. I hate it when they use street names. jurors don't remember any of that. They want to know it's the baker, the guy by the bush. That's how they remember who these people are. Sometimes I will give them a photograph of the baker in opening statement. And then when I get back up and closing, I just show them the photograph. This was the baker or whatever we've labeled them. And they go, oh yeah, I remember him. That's why I like to take pictures of witnesses and depositions. So I have 11 by 14 picture of the witness that I can say. Remember when this guy spoke, he was the baker and they go, oh yeah, yeah. I remember him. The guy in the green jacket, whatever it is, those labels are a lot better than names. jurors won't remember names for any amount of time. Period. Don't know if that answered our questions though. Yeah, I don't know why you were questioning. Yeah, question you asked I had to do with something else that's both Daniel. I avoided. What about postshadowing the positive outcome? What's the question? Well, positive outcome in a case, we want the jury to find that we want to help this family. And so how do you help this family? So I use numbers in my opening. I have found after 220 jury trials, if you leave to a jury a number without giving them a suggestion, they're going to do the wrong thing. But if you give them a number, which is the positive outcome, you can help this family how by doing this. Money is a poor substitute for this family's what's gone and are happened to them or what's happened to the plaintiff. But it's all of the law allows us to do. And if you do that, this is going to be a verdict that lasts a lifetime. We can't always say we can't come back here five years, 10 years, 20 years from now and say that wasn't enough. I still have this problem. This is their only day in court. This is what you're supposed to do to help this family. And this is how you do it. That's a positive outcome and what we do. My name is Dr. Christopher Bridges. I'm a behavioral scientist at jury analyst with experience in market research, data analytics and survey design. I help hold a PhD in psychology from the University of Western Australia, and I'm an internationally recognized expert in the field of behavioral statistics and research design. I have over 10 years experience in academia and working as a statistician internationally, and I've published 39 peer-reviewed papers to date, and I'm happily based in California. In the courtroom, we rely on compelling evidence often rooted in the detail work of scientists. That's why I'm introducing science of justice. This podcast by jury analyst isn't just legal chatter. It's a deep dive into law and science using real science, real data, and real time. The team at Science of Justice stands for integrity. They break down complex scientific principles to serve those wronged or injured, making it accessible for lawyers and other justice seekers. So now let's really up your game and embrace some real evidence. Say goodbye to following the herd and start practicing law based on facts. You got to check out now the Science of Justice podcast.