Author: elarrickbrand

In today’s episode, we talk about focus groups to do for trial, whether that’s 30 days or 60 days before your trial date. You may also choose to do this earlier. But most of the time, there are pending motions that need to be rolled on, such as mediations that people need to get through to get to the point and for them to really speak their minds. 

Listen in to know more about the different focus groups that are geared towards trial and what each focus group entails. The whole purpose of this focus group is because you’re going to trial. Therefore, you have to put in the commitment and the legwork needed for you to get the information you need.

In this episode, you will hear:

• What a mock trial looks like and its purpose
• A modified approach to a mock trial or an adversarial group
• Opening statements of the two parties and discussions based on them
• Examples of ways to prepare for trial
• The value of demonstrative evidence

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Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

Having before and after witnesses is very useful to help tell your client’s story. These witnesses can talk about damages in a way that your client just can’t. Jurors can heavily criticize a client’s testimony and label them a “whiner” or “complainer.” A well-prepared witness is able to talk about the changes in your client’s life in an authentic way.

As trial lawyers, it’s important that we’re able to build a level of trust and comfort with our clients and witnesses. But building that relationship just doesn’t happen overnight. 

In today’s conversation, Courtney Wilson takes a deep dive into the three-step process for building trust with your before and after witnesses. Courtney currently practices personal injury law and medical malpractice law in Mississippi.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Finding two to three people talking about the client’s experience
• How to build trust with your before and after witnesses
• The importance of explaining why testimony is needed for the case
• Assignments for your witnesses to get more information
• Why stories are more compelling than an expert talking about the injury
• Managing the fears and concerns of before and after witnesses

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

Courtney Wilson

courtney@tyneslawfirm.com 

Tynes Law Firm

Courtney Parker Wilson

 

 

 

 

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

There are a ton of reasons that a trial could be delayed and reset, whether that’s continuances due to scheduling conflicts, the witnesses being on vacation, or whatever. At a certain point, after the second continuance, you start to get a little fatigued, almost burnt out on the case, and you begin to lose motivation. Burnout is real, and so is trial continuance fatigue. And so, how do we prevent this from happening as trial lawyers and keep the momentum of the case?

In this episode, we’re going to tackle trial continuance fatigue with our guest, Bijan Darvish, who practices employment law in Orange County, California. Prior to lawyering, Bijan was previously a police officer who was unfortunately wrongfully accused and had to go through the process that an employee would have to go through to clear his name. He went through the criminal process where he got fully acquitted, then he had to go through suing his employer, for which he also was successful in doing. All that experience and process that opened his eyes led him to go into law school.

In this episode, you will hear:

• What is continuance fatigue?
• The benefits of creating a schedule
• Switching things up for the focus groups
• The benefits of focus groups 
• How to shorten the opening statement
• The value of having a transcript

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions or would like to speak with Bijan Darvish, you can reach him:

Email: bijan@darvishlaw.net

Or if you’d like to learn more about his employment law practice visit: www.darvishlaw.net

If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Continuing this trial series today, we talk about trial management and organization, specifically, about organizing your team, organizing documents, and how to manage that day-to-day changes with your team. As you replicate trial organization over and over, it helps the trial team handle uncertainties and changes as well as focus more on the key things they need to prioritize.

Trials have different levels of management due to a number of variables – the number of witnesses, the duration of each trial, and even the types of trials (wrongful death, medical malpractice, or premises liability). But no matter what, applying the exact same strategy for organizing people and documents is one of the keys to achieving success.

When you start this organization at a smaller level, it’s just going to make it easier to apply it when it gets to a bigger level with more information, more people, and more documents to manage.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Forming the team and identifying each one’s designation
• Using the binder system for organizing people and documents
• The importance of team meetings after the trial
• The deposition designations and motions
• Managing the day-to-day life of a trial

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions, email Elizabeth directly: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Opening statements are one of the best opportunities because we (plaintiff lawyers) go first. The question is how can you take advantage of being first? 

In today’s episode, we discuss the ways that lawyers can lose the advantage of being first. Many trial lawyers have this tendency to have long, overly-detailed opening statements that can bore the jurors. Therefore, you don’t want to lose their attention, confuse them, or frustrate them. 

We also talk about how to craft a great opening statement. An audience will forgive your delivery if your content is good. But they can’t forgive you if both your content and delivery suck. So you want to make sure you’re able to plan out your content really well to make sure you don’t miss anything, 

In this episode, you will hear:

• Ways you can lose the advantage of being first
• The importance of writing your opening statement on paper
• The benefits of typing what you’ve handwritten
• Things to add to your content
• The benefits of running a focus group for your opening statement
• Examples of cases that highlight the power of a great opening statement

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

Have a topic for a podcast episode? Question for Elizabeth? Email her directly: Elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com 

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

Preparing and working with the client is so critical to a good direct exam. Success starts with our clients going in with a mindset that the jury consists of smart people who can smell good versus bad. Therefore, they just have to set their fears aside and trust the process. We also have to ask enough questions to get the information we need while making them feel at ease and comfortable. The challenge is to keep the direct exam conversational and simple. 

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Jason Erlich, an employment attorney who exclusively represents workers who have been treated wrongfully. Jason handles cases related to workplace disputes, such as wrongful termination, wage and hour violations, sexual harassment, and class action lawsuits.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The three things that make a successful direct client exam
• Preparing direct exam questions
• Things to prioritize for the direct exam
• Making last-minute changes to your questions based on the opening statement and witness testimony
• Visual aids he used in the courtroom
• Free-flow questioning vs. sticking to a script

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you would like to learn more about Jason and his practice please visit his website: https://erlich.lawyer/attorneys/jason-erlich/

If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

As trial lawyers, it’s important to remind ourselves about our goals for preparation for any case event. Even when that person has been deposed before or they’ve been to a hearing before, it’s still best that we provide them with a roadmap. 

First, make sure to teach them about what the whole event is and how it fits into the case. Then talk about what they can expect and correct any bad expectations if they have any. Ultimately, you want to gear them up for their role.

Either way, it’s a give-and-take conversation. Otherwise, people will hold on to misinformation or misconception that causes confusion, and sometimes anger when it doesn’t go the way they think it’s supposed to. The last thing you want to do with any client is to shut them down. 

In this episode, I’m going to discuss the things that we could be doing, whether consciously or subconsciously, that can shut people down – and some ways we could do better as trial lawyers.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How to avoid interrupting people
• Why client comparison shuts down a client
• Things to consider when using yourself as an example

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

We spend a lot of time working up our cases. We spend a lot of hours on discovery and go into deposition testimony to form that strategy, that we can test with focus groups. But if we get unreliable feedback, then it’s just a waste of our energy, time, and resources. 

In this episode, we’re going to talk about the four factors that can cause unreliable feedback from focus groups, and what you should do to avoid them. The ultimate goal is to always have quality feedback so we can rely on it, use it, put it into our cases, format it, and make our cases better.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why you need to avoid repeat participants 
• Revealing your back office
• Planting things that hold the presentation down
• Delivering information in a way that allows them to process it
• Using visual aids in your presentation to keep the people engaged
• Being careful with slanted questions

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

It’s a new year and it’s time to look at new opportunities and new ideas for you to plug in and use. Today, let’s start with the best time to run focus groups. Sure, you can run a focus group at any time. But if you want to get the most out of it, there are actually six spots to run a focus group in your case. 

These are great places to help you prepare the case better. You may not get through to the trial and just get through mediation. But these are all opportunities for you to grow the case better and to help you look at things with a new set of eyes. You can always do more –  or less, but at least do one or two to have that outside perspective that will help keep you moving along. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• Running a focus group during case planning (before the lawsuit)
• What to focus on after key deposition testimony
• Why do short focus groups 30 days before mediation
• The purpose of a focus group 90 days before the end of discovery
• Things to consider 60 days before trial
• What to do 30 days before trial

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you have questions or suggestions, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

In today’s episode, I’m sharing 22 lessons from 2022 – things that I have picked up on this year, things I have studied, and things where I just had some aha moments. These are valuable lessons that have helped me and my practice big time – from keeping up to date with technology and using visuals in focus groups and even during prep – all the way to letting go of toxic clients, investing in a coach to help you level up, and investing for retirement. 

It’s so easy to get lost and forget all the things we’ve learned from previous years. Therefore, it’s important to take the time to reflect on these and potentially use them as our basis for creating next year’s strategies and game plans as we move on to the future.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Double-checking your technology for uploading documents
• How virtual assistants can help you
• How to solve spam coming in from focus groups
• The power of using visual aids and videos
• Mindset is key for lawyers – and clients
• Using visuals for preparation 
• Letting go of toxic clients
• Investing in a coach to help get you to the next level
• Looking for ways to save for retirement
• Why you need to have a visual aid for timelines
• Making a conscious effort to take a vacation

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

Influence is Your Superpower by Zoe Chance https://amzn.to/3IIlfTV

Retire before Mom & Dad by Rob Berger https://amzn.to/3GByVxn

www.slack.com

https://otter.ai/

 

Episode Credits:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com