Comparison: A Powerful and Simple Persuasion Tool for the Courtroom [Ep 154]
In this week’s episode, we’re looking at a powerful and often overlooked tool for persuasion: side-by-side comparisons.
Discover how this method can simplify complex information and sway jury decisions in your favor. I shares practical insights from my virtual focus groups, which offer strategic ways to leverage this tool throughout your case.
Our brains respond intrinsically to visual comparisons, and I’ll show you how to implement this tactic in opening statements, mediation packets, and beyond.
Learn how side-by-side comparisons can become your secret weapon for a better case outcome. And book a free consultation for virtual focus groups using the link below.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How our brains always look for patterns, and how comparison is a powerful persuasion tool.
- How our brains also crave easy decisions, and comparisons helps clarify positions.
- How focus groups reveal jury preferences.
- How to use comparison in your opening statements.
- Why visual aids are crucial for understanding.
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick (00:00.448)
If you want to know what persuasion tools will work best with your jurors in your case, that’s exactly what I do in virtual focus groups. I test your themes, your facts, your arguments, your visuals, and then give you strategic insights you can use throughout your case. This is your secret weapon. And don’t worry, I’ll be there to help you and add any other persuasion tools I can so that you can get the best outcome possible.
If you’re ready to do virtual focus groups, up a call with the link in the show notes below. Hello and welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep, the podcast dedicated to trial lawyers preparing better cases and better outcomes for their clients. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larek, and today we have a fun episode about a tool you can use pretty much anywhere in your case to win your point. Now,
Fundamentally, jury trials are challenging because cognitively we have a lot of information to bombard our jury brains with and we have to do it in an organized fashion. We have to think about word choice. We have to think about how much information we’re giving at each point and when we need to stop and summarize. Lots of different things to keep in mind so we avoid confusion.
We want always to make decision making easy for our audience. May it be the jury, maybe it’s a mediator, maybe it’s a judge, maybe even it’s our clients. And so today’s episode is dedicated to comparison, a powerful, overlooked persuasion tool. We use it just a little and I want to use this episode to talk about how we can expand using it.
Now, let’s just take it at face value and think about it in your mind, a side-by-side chart. Your side is on one part, the other side is the defense. All right, and so what happens when we do a side-by-side, just taking it as in your mind? What we can see are extreme positions that are being taken. We can also see the things that have to be ignored in order to accept the defense’s position.
Elizabeth Larrick (02:24.684)
And ultimately, we make it extremely easy for that brain to make a decision quickly and in your favor. So let’s talk a little bit why does this side-by-side comparison work so well. We’ve seen it work extremely well in our before and after witnesses that we use for our injury cases.
We use it really well with our plaintiffs getting ready for their depositions. We walk them through that in preparation. Okay, let’s talk about the things that have changed. Maybe you do that for your demand letters. Really good, helpful thing so you can write about it. But why can’t we use it somewhere else? And so this came up here recently as I was helping a group get ready for a jury trial. And we began to do focus groups and saw a very clear
theme that ran through almost all of the focus groups. The participants hated, even despised the defense’s number. And the number was a calculation. So this is not a traditional personal injury case, okay? It’s a different kind of case. I help on those too. So we saw this as a big strength, but how, how could we use this as a strength, right, to bolster
their position and also show how absurd it is and boom, it’s the side by side. And so they began to develop this side by side chart with at the top, right, the numbers to show again, number one, the absurdity and then what they had to rely on to come to that number. And again, this is a case that has complicated calculations and lots of expert testimony and
in the focus groups, it was kind of getting lost and they would only pick up on certain points. And so that’s where the comparison side by side became, okay, this has got to be something that gets down almost perfectly in the sense that we need to have simple, clear language, simple points, but also just a few so that they’re the most powerful points. And so the visuals created, the focus groups are…
Elizabeth Larrick (04:41.024)
lined up to test it and I will let you know in later episodes how it fares out in the jury trial. So let’s talk a little bit about why, why does this work with our brains? And number one is our brains always look for patterns. When things are unfamiliar, we try to find a pattern and comparison is an easy pattern. is quickly, it’s something we use often. And again, brains love things that are familiar.
So comparison is something that we use all the time in making decisions in our lives. Think about the last time you booked a trip and you used any of the numerous travel websites that show you all the airlines side by side and the costs and the bags and all the things so you can make an easy decision. A couple years back, there were insurance websites where they would run a quote for you and put the competitor side by side.
We do it all the time. go to the grocery store. We just go shopping for clothing, right? We put things side by side to make the decision easy for us. Our brains crave easy decisions. So that is why comparison works. It’s a familiar pattern that we use often in our lives and it makes that decision making easy when we can see it all visually, right? Which is the other strong thing.
about the brain science here is 60 % of our brain or more is dedicated to analyzing, detecting, finding, seeing visuals. And so having this as a visual is so powerful to make it easy for our brains. And again, this is an easy visual for you to create thinking again, it’s just a simple T chart, a side by side so they can see the things. The harder part is coming up with the things that go on that chart because they have to be evidence.
testimony, things that you know for sure will come into trial. And we’ll talk about that a little bit, how we can use them in other places. The other thing about comparison, and again, this draws from the recent experience we had was how obvious it was once we put things side by side, the absurdity of the position. Now, just talking verbally to someone and trying to explain comparison is a challenge.
Elizabeth Larrick (07:02.048)
Our brains can only hold three to five things in short-term memory. So when we try to verbally explain our position and then compare it to the defense position, things are just naturally gonna get lost. And that’s where this visual becomes very helpful in showing the absurdity of the defense positions. So let’s think about this in comparison of experts on the topic of causation.
experts on the declaration that there is no injury, right? Or even life care plans, right? Having that side-by-side comparison of just the simple facts, the simple differences, the simply put opinions, right? Will help them be able to understand the positions, but also again, see who is ignoring facts, understand the defense’s position, right? Making it clear to them. This is one of those things where as…
defense lawyers making it confusing, making a variety of things available for possible causes, possibly this, possibly not right. That just makes everything muddy. And with this side by side, you make it very clear. It’s very difficult to argue against when you do that hard work of boiling things down and writing it down till they can make their decision quickly.
So let’s talk now a little bit more about where we can use this. Now, the main example that we have again is our before and after witnesses, before and after testimony. But like we just talked about comparing our expert opinions is so helpful, especially when we have an expert that’s ignoring a fact, right? So again, think about our experts who give opinions about
it’s a sprain or a strain, there’s no real injury here. And so what does that mean? What do they have to ignore to get to that position, right? Having that side by side with what your expert has done. And so maybe it’s as simple as they never examine the person. There was, know, examination six separate times, right? This testing, no testing, right? And we have done a lot of this already in many of the cross-exam.
Elizabeth Larrick (09:18.638)
CLEs that have been out there for a while have talked about how to do this in cross exam. But what I am encouraging you to do is to use that comparison in your opening statements. Use comparison in your mediation packets. Boil it down, make it simple for the mediators to understand where is the hitch in the giddy up? Why can’t we seem to get this thing done? Where are the positions are and what are the facts that are being relied on?
And again, also helpful in hearings for our judges. Same thing, they can only handle three to five things at a time. It’s just their brain, it’s my brain, it’s your brain. So how do we get around that, right? Make that comparison, your position, their position. What are the facts they’re relying on? Putting case law on a comparison chart does not necessarily help them, okay? I’m talking about making the simple points side by side so they can see what’s happening. All right, so.
I hope that you found this episode helpful. I hope you have in your mind right now as we sit here, the next place that you are gonna sit down and make a comparison chart. Now, you may not be 100 % comfortable with writing, but you could put this on a PowerPoint slide. You could even make one of the big blow ups for demonstratives for your hearing, even for jury trial. But it’s a helpful persuasive tool because our brains wanna make decisions.
and you wanna make it easy for someone to decide in your favor. So if you’re wondering what persuasive tools you can be using in your cases, then the best way to find out is virtual focus groups. In my virtual focus groups, we test not only your case, your facts, but we also find the best ways to persuade the jury. If you’re interested in doing a virtual focus group, please use the link in the show notes to book a free time to talk.
Right now, are still spots available for January and a few for February as well. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode and until next time, thank you.