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
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick.
Thank you so much for joining us. We are working through a series about trial through the month of February and we had an interview last episode with my good friend Jason and we [00:01:00] talked about direct exam of a client. You may wonder to yourself, Elizabeth, are you going to go in a specific order for your trial episodes?
I’m not. Just so you know, I’m not, but today we are going to talk about opening statements. Just to give you a preview of some of the other episodes that are coming up. We are going to be talking about a template for preparation of a before and after witness. We’re going to talk about cross exam. We’re going to look at trial continuance fatigue.
And I know a lot of folks have been facing that. We’ve got a lot of the people that I work with have cases that are five, four, sometimes even six years old and just having multiple continuances. It’s very frustrating. So I’ve got a good friend, Bijan Darvish, who’s going to come and talk to us about a trial that he had many continuances and just came right up to the edge.
Of starting trial and so how do you keep that energy going? In here, we have a couple of these things coming [00:02:00] up. We’re also going to have a closing and probably just an overall episode about maybe trial management as well. I’ve talked about that in the past. But there are so many detailed things that we could talk about when it comes to trial management, the day to day things.
So we’ll probably do that as well. I think a lot of folks are gearing up, a lot of folks that I know here in my community are gearing up to go. Judges in this community are gearing up and ready to go. Good example of that is we are sitting here right now, it’s February, we had a little bit of an ice storm here in Austin and yesterday the duty judge said, you know what, we’re still going to have that docket call to get ready for those trials that are going on Monday.
So people are ready, judges are ready. That’s why we’re going to kind of talk about trial. So, let’s get to today’s episode about opening statement. I think opening statement is one of the coolest things that we have and mainly because it’s a plaintiff we [00:03:00] go first procedurally. And so I want to talk about how can we take advantage of being first.
I’m not going to talk specifically about a template. I’m going to assume you have a template that you like. If you don’t, there are lots of great templates out there and I’m happy to do an episode reviewing some of those. But today is really just about how do I sit down and take advantage of being first, meaning being the first person to get up and talk, jurors hear from about the facts and circumstances of the case.
And there are lots of ways we can lose our advantage. And what I mean by is we have a tendency as trial lawyers to have long opening statements. And that means you’ve got lots of details that we are giving to those jurors. We’re trying to cover everything in that opening statement. Which can lead to losing their attention, confusing them, frustrating them.
And one of the main parts about an [00:04:00] opening statement is that we don’t want it to be boring. That’s another way to lose our advantage. And I don’t mean boring in the sense of delivery. I mean, boring in the sense of. We are not providing visuals or not providing a change in the way that they’re learning the information.
I mean, it’s really hard to learn information completely verbally. We lose it. So if we have someone who’s standing in front of us, we are trying to learn not only what they’re saying, but trying to gather from them who are from the white language as well. So we don’t want to bore them, right? We’re going to keep their attention.
Another way to lose your advantage. It’s to miss out on addressing what the defense will say. This is one of the critical points. I feel like sometimes we get kind of wrapped up in what our case is and we forget to put some of that information in there. And then that gives a beautiful place for the defense to stand up and say, let me tell you the rest of the [00:05:00] story.
Oh, that plea of hiding things from you and not telling you everything. You knew that they were pulling one over on you. It’s one of the easiest things we can prevent. So let’s talk a little bit about how to prepare your opening statement. And this is a little bit time intensive, but there’s a good reason, a couple of good reasons why I suggest doing it this way.
So there’s a couple of steps, really three steps that I suggest you can go to four or five. But really our first step is just taking out a piece of paper and hand writing it out. And I know you’re thinking that is crazy and it’s going to take me a really long time, a time I don’t have. I understand, but here’s why handwriting is best when it comes to this.
You’re going to use a different part of your brain. You’re going to trigger into more critical thinking. When you have to handwrite, your brain slows down. So you’re much more selective about what you’re [00:06:00] writing down. And you also, you’re going to retain the information salvage better. A lot of this three step, and like I said, you could make it four or five steps, is as we are going back through this information again and again and again, we’re committing it to memory.
So by the time you get to. The jury, you don’t feel completely glued to your paper or the podium because you pertain the information so well, just repetition through these couple of steps. So that’s always the goal is to be able to feel really comfortable with the information. And then you’re going to have a little more freedom when you get out in front of the jury.
Because you’ve committed it so well to memories. First step is to handwrite it out. And again, literally just take that yellow legal pad and just start writing it out. Once you finish that step, and again, you may be thinking like, I haven’t handwritten anything in a long time. That’s okay. You can do that in a couple of [00:07:00] different steps, but I think that first one sometimes helps, even if you’re just going to scope out.
An outline, handwritten, you’ll put little notes in there and other little things. And I think the handwriting, it really does help start getting the ideas flowing, get your brain going, get things out on a piece of paper, then take it and move to the keyboard. Just naturally as we type on the keyboard, we just put more information in there because it’s a repetition.
Right versus handwriting is different, right? It’s different part of the brain gotta make our hand and make the movements but with typing, right? It’s repetitive We’re naturally we’re gonna start just adding more information and as we are typing that’s not it’s really a good thing But we want to get everything out Get it all out of our brain, right?
And then we’ll be able to go back in and edit. As we’re typing through and reading through this pass through again, more information is going to come. Things may leave, but you’re moving it to an actual document on your laptop. And then finally, you want to print it. [00:08:00] And you want to read through and end it with a red pen, or even a straight red pen, but you want to make sure that you have that.
Editing on the computer is not the same, because again, you’re probably going to be more verbose. I also really love having the printed pages in front of me. Laying them out all in order and just seeing the organization from a 30, 000 foot view, which you can’t really do well on a computer, not even if you have a giant monitor.
So that’s one of the reasons why you really want to keep bringing back. Okay. Cause this whole time we’re doing through this whole process, it’s really looking at organization, prioritizing what needs to go. Where in your opening, what the jury needs to hear, what can be trimmed out? What can be simplified with that printed out version, right?
And handwriting in your edits and cross something about, then you go back, make those edits and print it again. And I really [00:09:00] encourage you to take time between the steps. Even if you take a week or two weeks in between, your brain’s going to keep working on it. And when you come back to it with fresh eyes, you’re going to see more.
Oh gosh, why did I write it that way? So I always encourage three main steps are one, first hand, write it out. Two, move the keyboard, type it out. And number three is to print and edit it, hand write. And again, you can take time between the subs, I encourage that. And the next thing within is you’re editing it, right?
So the hope is that you don’t have to constantly create content. The hope is that you get all the content there. And it’s just a matter of organizing, Trimming it down, get rid of the stuff, and simplify it. And that way, once you get in and you’ve got your content, then you can really start fine tuning with what needs to go first?
What’s my strongest point? What is it the jury’s most going to want to know at this point in my opening statement? And then you get to do fun [00:10:00] stuff. Once you get that down, then you can start looking at it and say, Hey, where can I add a visual aid? Is there a chart I can add here? Is there a checklist?
Thanks. Is there a timeline, are there photos that would be helpful to show instead of me trying to describe something? We want to make sure we’re not going too long. We want to make sure that we’re visualizing it to keep people’s attention, but also knowing like a visual aid will help people learn fast and retain the information.
We don’t want it to be too long because they’re not going to retain it. We don’t want it to be boring, lost their attention, confused. We want to make sure that it’s very straight and it’s visually you can use it can. And then like we talked about, am I including the defenses, right? What the defense is going to say.
I can’t wait to call it like my counterpunches. I’ve heard it, right? They’re not going to create something new on the eve of trial that I haven’t heard. I know what the evidence is. So am I addressing that? Am I making sure there’s not going to be [00:11:00] any, Magical wall that they get to get up and have and say, Well, you didn’t hear this.
And so I’m putting that in there and am I knocking it out? I know sometimes we put this in here, but I always want to make sure I put it in and I knock it out. Let me give you an example. We’re hearing an opening statement for a suicide case. Well, the defense assumes That’s their defense, that it’s suicide.
Our theory, our liability is that it’s not. It was a total accident. And so to rule out, so to say, this is what the defense is going to say, suicide. And then you gotta counterpunch it, right? You gotta knock that stunt down. You gotta say, here’s why. Here’s what mom’s gonna say. Here’s what we know about this person.
Here’s all the information about who this person was. Right. And in a really succinct way, knock that out, right? Knock that out of the park. And then sometimes we’ll put it in there, but then we forget to basically [00:12:00] show, like, how it’s just not going to hold anymore. And it can be really simple. Even if it’s just, Hey, we’ve got an expert and this is what they did.
And so, and so we know it doesn’t apply here. And just know, like, again, this episode is really talking about content. We’re going to spend another episode talking about delivery, because I think An audience will forgive your delivery if your content is good. Okay. But they can’t forgive you if your content sucks and then your delivery stinks.
So today’s about content, but making sure you can come up with a way to really plan out that content really well and make sure you’re not missing anything. So many times when we get up to practice this, and that was going to say next is how I encourage people to test this. Is to run a focus group where it’s an opening statement, a plaintiff opening statement versus a defense opening statement.
One of my favorite focus groups because it plays on our [00:13:00] natural desire to advocate. We have lawyers trying to get us to become neutral and deliver information neutrally and not with a group of individuals or focus groups. It’s very difficult. It’s hard. We’ve been ingrained to be neutral. Advocates, so opening is great, plays on our natural ability.
Also, it helps you test contents. You can also test delivery during this. I encourage you to do both, but again, we’re kind of talking about content here today, but it really forces you to prepare. And what I have found when we put these together, somebody’s preparing for trial is so many times the opening statement.
It’s not very put together and it’s not written out. And so I’m always like, Hey, step one, if you write the thing out, I guarantee you it’s going to be much better because you’re going to have taken the time to write it out and then to [00:14:00] organize it. Right. So let, let me talk about why I think the opening versus opening focus groups are so important.
It’s the only thing you do. So first example, had a somewhat complicated fiduciary duty case and it spanned 20 years. So a very long time to cover. So we could get really buried in the weeds here with lots of detail and it’s finances can get kind of boring and it was also the counter, doing the counter punches, right?
So what happened was this was the only focus groups that were done. Opening versus opening statements, and they spanned over nine months, right? So, and this was, that, that wasn’t a sleep by design, but it kept getting continuance, so I said, okay, let’s run it again, let’s keep fine tuning it. And what happened over those three focus groups, where they were able to keep refining that content, they were able [00:15:00] to refine their visual aid.
And by the time they got to that last one, and tested it, it was like, this is it, we don’t need to tweak it, in our opening statement, this is it. And so we’re able to, again, the other part of that is the defense opening statement, right? And putting in what the defense is going to say and seeing, Hey, is it going to hold water?
And always learning new things. And more importantly, what takes the wind out of your sail? What does the defense say that’s the strongest thing? Like I said, that first example, they learned how to simplify it, how to create a visual aid that took a lot of effort to create, but in doing that simple visual aid, it conveyed a huge timeline that they didn’t have to do detail by detail in that opening statement.
So it definitely took a lot of heavy lifting all the way down. The other example that I have, by the way, first example. They went to trial, got a [00:16:00] verdict, 40 million bucks. And they said, one of the things that was off our shoulders was the opening statement. We hadn’t done. So we really could focus on doing other things because we know that opening statement was rock solid because we tested three times and that’s all they did.
Remember, we just did opening statements. We didn’t do mock trials. We didn’t do these other stuff, just those ones. And. That’s pretty much what a lot of people, I encourage them to do because it’s such a helpful focus script content, and then you can work on delivery, but that content piece is so important.
Another example is one I just did recently, and one of the things I really love doing is writing the defense opening or tweaking it to put in all those little things that we hear that generally jurors hang their head on. And so. That’s what we did. And I had a really fun time doing it because I was able to take [00:17:00] all of their points, a lot of points, depends on a lot of points.
So I took all those points. And then I created a timeline and there wasn’t a timeline on the other side, but that allowed the demonstration to see in listening to the focus group where their minds went with the story. And they weren’t really concerned about what happened before the timeline, the defensive bridge.
And that’s the information that really was needed. So it was helpful just to kind of compare all those things. But I put a lot of time and effort into that defense opening because I really wanted to make sure. We were not only testing brain is, but also what those defenses were with ammo. So get a lot of really good mileage out of those opening versus opening focus groups, and I encourage you to do it enough about that.
Let’s recap. We’re talking about opening statement, talking about content, best ways that you can get what’s in your brain out to those jurors. Step one, write it out. Step two, take what you wrote [00:18:00] out, type it out. Step three, print it and edit. At some point, you’re going to start delivering this thing, right?
Talking it out loud. And I can tell you from having written many opening statements, defense opening statements, when I give it to somebody else to read it or deliver it, they always stumble. Because when I write opening statement, I write a little slang I would be speaking in, but it’s in my voice and in my tone.
So when they get to speaking, they’re like, this doesn’t make any sense. And I’m like, well, I guess it does in my head. Same thing happens when I do plan as opening as well. Once you get the content down and you start to work on your delivery, you’re going to realize like, oh, let me switch these words around.
Let me make this a little easier to say. Let me make it flow across the show. Reading an outline is really helpful for working on content as well. I hope that this episode was helpful. If you liked it, please follow on your favorite podcast application, the plus sign on [00:19:00] Apple or the follow button. on Google or Spotify.
So thank you so much for listening and just know that next week we will be going to trial continuance fatigue. We’ve got before and after witness preparation template coming up, cross exam, closing and trial management. All right. Until next time. Thank you.
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.
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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this new episode. We are beginning a series this month for trial and our series begins with an interview with a good friend [00:01:00] of mine and employment lawyer out of California, Jason Ehrlich. And I’m excited because he and I just recently worked together on a trial trial.
And so we are going to get together in this episode and talk about direct exam of a client. So I hope you enjoy it. If you have questions for Jason, all of his contact information will be in the show notes. We will begin the interview now. We have a super treat today. A very good friend of mine from California is tuning in for this episode.
Jason is coming in. So Jason, hello. Thank you so much for joining the podcast.
Jason Ehrlich: Thank you, Elizabeth. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Elizabeth Larrick: Fantastic. Well, we have a very exciting topic, which sometimes people dread, and that is direct exam of a client. And we can add in like a before and after too, but we’re really trying to talk about direct exam, not of treating doctors or physicians or experts.
We were really talking about regular [00:02:00] folks and trying to craft some questions and how to do that. So let’s just. Nail it down. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Let’s get to the nitty gritty.
Jason Ehrlich: Thanks, Elizabeth. I actually really, really enjoyed directing. The reason I like it is because it allows me to kind of fall into the background and let my client take the center stage.
My, my father was a reporter for over 40 years. And so growing up as a son of a journalist, he really instilled this idea of the six W’s and who, what, when, how, where, and why that was six. And so the, uh, the idea of, Asking questions in a open ended way is something that I grew up with from an early age.
And so I like to the direct because it keeps, I keep an open mind and I’m just acting and asking questions the way I think a juror would want to know the answers to. So I keep it conversational. I’m curious. And I [00:03:00] try to keep it simple.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, you’re very fortunate because most of us have to go back and think about Larry King and like his interview style, but that is a very nice prompter.
So you’re sitting at breakfast and you’re getting the, what are you doing today? Why are you doing that? How are you going to do it? That was, that was like,
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, not quite that bad, but I would tag along. And so I would listen to him ask and do interviews. Some people were not exactly open to being asked questions, and other people were.
And then it was, here’s a microphone in your face because I have to record this, and let’s talk. And so he had to both make them at ease and comfortable, but also then ask enough questions to get the information he needed. And so, yeah, he had to keep it And then of course, lower the barriers so that they didn’t feel like the microphone would disappear and instead it was just a conversation.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, that is a wonderful primer. Cause that’s really, I feel like what a lot of us strive to do is have just a conversation and stay curious, even though we know all the answers and we’re trying to pull it out of this [00:04:00] extremely nervous person. Most of the time they’re very nervous or defensive, however you want to label it.
But, well, awesome. Let me then ask you, what would you consider a success? Successful client direct exam?
Jason Ehrlich: Well, I mean, I think there’s at least three things that I’d want to get out of a good direct exam. So I think, if not the most important, but certainly at the top of the list is honesty and and credibility of my client so that I, that the jury is con, is convinced that my client is believable and that they’re not trying to hide something.
They’re not. Lying about something important in the case and that they are kind of a human being. And so that’s the first one that I’m, I’m striving for. Second, of course, is the damages and talking about what I do, all employment law and discrimination, wrongful [00:05:00] termination, harassment, whistleblower cases.
And so what losing their job. It’s meant to them and why losing their job hurt and expressing that. So getting those damages kind of questions and answers out. And then the third successful part would be addressing any kind of lingering issues that I believe the jury is wants to know that only my client can tell.
Primarily by the time our clients are testifying, they’ve heard, the jury has heard from many other witnesses. And so the client doesn’t need to tell the whole story. And instead, it’s about filling in gaps of information that I think maybe the jury hasn’t heard because the plaintiff client is the only person who can testify about those issues.
And I think the other fourth goal would be neutralizing any lines of attack that I think the defense might come after the [00:06:00] client for. So getting out in front of it, like, I know this issue is going to come up in the cross exam of our clients. So let me get it out front and put it on the table before they get a chance to And by the time the defense comes up to do their cross there, it’s already, the jury’s already heard it.
So it’s just, it’s boring and, you know, rehashing old news.
Elizabeth Larrick: You try to have any kind of entertainment or ? Well, ’cause I mean, sometimes we gotta keep ’em awake. When I say we, I keep the jury awake. I do wish,
Jason Ehrlich: yes, I do wish I could bring a band in or some sort of side entertainment . But yeah, I mean, I think.
visual aids, demonstratives, has slightly different terms for it, but something to draw the juror’s attention. So it’s not entirely focused on a ping pong ball of question, answer, question, answer. So yeah, I think I definitely, if I can bring in a chart or [00:07:00] a timeline or some sort of even having bullet points up on a poster board so that the jurors can follow.
My client’s testimony and the follow my question. So we know, Hey, we’re on this topic and let’s talk about that for a while. And now we’re shifting to a different topic. And let’s talk about this for a little while.
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, some people may think that part of your honesty and making sure people appear genuine is that we need to elicit some kind of emotional response from our clients when they’re up on the stand.
What are your thoughts
Jason Ehrlich: on that? I think whatever emotional response from our client has to be genuine. I think if it’s not genuine, um, and it’s not authentic jurors, we’ll see that. So I think I, my, my goal is never to try to draw tears or get an emotional reaction from my client. I think [00:08:00] sometimes it just comes naturally.
I mean, they’re, they are reliving a part of their life that was very difficult. the emotional feelings behind that, that point in their life will come out naturally. So yeah, so I don’t think, and I’ve had direct exams where the clients have been stone faced and not emotional at all. And I think it can be just as good.
And it doesn’t mean that they’re any less authentic or that they’re any less truthful or believable.
Elizabeth Larrick: Gotcha. Well, let’s talk about what you do or how you prepare your direct exam questions. Let’s talk, let’s start there.
Jason Ehrlich: What I start with is usually, of course, the plaintiff has been deposed in
Elizabeth Larrick: all cases.
Or in your case, like three times. I’m sorry, say again,
Jason Ehrlich: two or three times.
Elizabeth Larrick: Or in your case, like three or four times. That’s
Jason Ehrlich: right. Yeah. And so there can be a lot of information in the deposition, but I don’t start with the deposition. What I [00:09:00] start though with is What are the issues in the case and that I expect the jury wants to know about.
So if I have had a good sense through preparing my client for their deposition, you’re a fan and so am I of using focus groups to try to gather information about our cases. And so if I have a good sense of what. Those issues are that are kind of burning issues in the case, I will use those, those issues first as a, the jury is going to be focusing on these questions, and they’re going to be wanting to know the answer so let’s get those out.
And let’s get down the story, how we can address those issues. So that’s usually the first step. thing I have. Um, then of course, we have a timeline with my for employment cases. The [00:10:00] events that led to their losing their job can take months or years. I mean, these things could be a lot of information going back a very long time.
And so having a very clear timeline that everyone can follow, it helps them remember, helps our clients remember what happened. And when things happened and in, of course, then the deposition is important because if there’s any chance that there might be some inconsistencies in their testimony or that they’ve said something that was, you know, it’s sort of in stone, it’s written there.
So we have to say, okay, is this, is there more to the story that you didn’t have a chance to talk about in your deposition? So those are the main ones. And of course, in preparing my clients, I think. We really have to address their emotional fears and their worries and how they going to court and being in court and testifying in court is foreign to them and they’re gonna be scared that that’s what [00:11:00] the walk I think the walk from the the gallery to the witness stand may be the longest walk they have to take and then they’re sitting there in this hot seat and having 12 strangers plus a judge and everyone staring at them.
Is something that they’re going to probably hopefully never experiencing it in their life. But if they’re there, we get to talk about it. So those are kind of the main things that I use to prepare for direct.
Elizabeth Larrick: Do you, as far as one of the things that I always encourage lawyers to do is even though it feels like.
And I use it with clients too, which is like, what are the questions that jury’s going to have to answer? And like you mentioned earlier, what are things that only my client can fill in the gaps on, especially when it comes to the questions. And I think that that’s just a helpful guideline. Cause it’s not that we forget, but there’s so many other things going on.
Like what are the cross exam points and what are the weaknesses overall of this person? And what do we know? Focus groups have told us just not, not shucking and [00:12:00] jiving that we kind of have to fix. So
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah.
Elizabeth Larrick: Always helpful to keep that in mind. And I think it’s also just talking about working with a client, helpful to get their mind around like what the jury is doing, because I think so many people, it’s like, they’re making my life decision, this huge decision.
And it’s like, okay, well let’s simplify it. Let me just show you really what these questions are to help feel like, okay, this is not as big and broad and scary. Like it’s just. Yeah.
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, it’s a challenge because I think many people who bring a case and that I represent think they have to carry the whole weight of the case on their shoulders.
And even way before we get to trial, even getting to the deposition, they feel like the whole case rests on their shoulders and helping them understand that it doesn’t. And that by the time we get to jury trial, they are just one piece. of a puzzle. If we took a chart of a hundred percent of how the jury is deciding them, they’re just this one little [00:13:00] sliver of the pie, or one little sliver of the pizza that they have to address.
And sometimes it’s an important part. It’s not just, you’re just reduplicating or re testifying of what everyone else heard. But it’s an important part of the case that I suspect or believe the jury wants to know. So we got to get that addressed and preferably early. I mean, if I think it’s a very important part of the case that the jury is going to want to know the answer to, that might be one of my first questions.
You know, just right out the gate or a series of questions right out of the gate because I know it’s likely to be still burning or lingering in the air from for the jury and they want to know the answer to it.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, and that’s kind of one of the things to like getting your subjects or your topics ready but then how do you prioritize them so you mentioned, like, if there’s something that is.
Maybe lingering from opening statement or other witnesses that that seems to make top priority. Is there anything else that you put at the top of [00:14:00] your list of questions for direct exam?
Jason Ehrlich: Well, I think I like to lead. And I’ve had some success, I think, with the things that the jury might be holding on to, to blame the plaintiffs.
That the plaintiff should have done something different, or if I was in that situation, I would have done something different. Or if it was me, I would have called HR sooner, or if it was me, I would have told my boss to go stuff it, instead of doing what the plaintiff did. So if I think that is a lingering issue and it hasn’t really been addressed through testimony or evidence, then I think I’d just come out swinging with it with the plaintiff and like, why didn’t you go to HR sooner?
Why didn’t you tell that boss to go put it where the sun don’t shine or whatever it is? That I think some jurors may be thinking the plaintiff should have done. So I think that’s sort of my priority, [00:15:00] but if that’s not there, then I think I’d like to go into the humanization, the honesty, credibility part of my client so that I often feel like the plaintiff is just a name if they’re in the courtroom.
They’ve been sitting there silently for days, if not weeks, and the jury is staring at them, maybe putting images or putting thoughts about who this person is. Everyone else is talking about the plaintiff. Everyone’s talking about the plaintiff’s name is. Mentioned every single time the judge calls the case to order.
And so it’s like, who is this person? And so when we’re finally getting them up to the stand, let’s bring it back. You’re just like everyone else. You have a family, you are married, you have kids, whatever the things that would bring them back down to like, this is my neighbor, this is somebody I can relate to.
This is somebody I know is right up there close to the top of the list.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And I want to take you back to something you said, because I think [00:16:00] employment cases are Obviously, I think they’re really difficult, but one of the reasons why is what you pointed out because every person on that jury is putting themselves in that point of view of your client.
They’re not in the point of view of the boss of the company. They are automatically going to be. Much more defensive to pick it on your client. And I always think the jury is going to look harder on the plaintiff because that would be their position. Right. And now occasionally, you know, like in car wreck cases, it’s like, Oh, well, yeah, I could have done exactly what the defendant car driver did and just accidentally roll into somebody.
And then that makes the point of view, like really, really difficult, but they’re really critical because they so easily see themselves in your client’s shoes. And. I think so many people, and because we all have to work, like have had a situation where we did have something that bad happened to us at work and [00:17:00] we just went on with it, you know?
And so it’s that whole, well, I didn’t get anything. I didn’t get to file a lawsuit. Like nobody gave me any extra money for having to do all the extra work or taking the terrible comments or that kind of stuff. I mean, you mentioned like putting that like breath. Top. Is there anything else that you and humanizing them, like bringing them back down?
Is there anything else that comes to mind to kind of, I guess, bring everybody around? I mean, like loosen up that hole that they may have to that point of view.
Jason Ehrlich: Well, I mean, I think what happens or can happen for some people is because they may be judging my client, that If I can get the testimony out that That makes sense that now I see why the plaintiff waited because they’re scared of retaliation.
So they didn’t go to [00:18:00] HR the first time something bad happened, which in many of my employment cases, that’s a defense. We’ve got this great HR department and why didn’t you come Running to HR as soon as we’ve got this 800 number and we’ve got the anonymous complaint and the website and you just waited and we had no idea that this was going on.
And I think by the jurors who do work, they are all employees and they know the reality of the workplace that if you run to HR, you kind of put a target right on your back. And if you’re doing something. It’s going to be at the last straw before you go to HR. So once we get that idea out there through either plaintiff testimony or perhaps sooner, then it becomes less like, Oh, I’m blaming the plaintiff, whereas, Oh yeah, if I was in that person’s shoes, I would have done the exact same thing.
So. Sometimes it can happen before we get the plaintiff to testify and before my clients are testifying, but yeah, the [00:19:00] idea of course, just kind of shifting it from that makes sense. Yes. If they were thinking initially I would have done something differently, but once they hear the story, it’s like, okay, yeah, that’s probably what I would have done too.
I would have waited. I would have waited two, three, four months or however long I would have waited. I wouldn’t have run to HR the very first time. Simply that.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And that makes me think of an example. So all trials are challenging. I would say this one had an extra layer of stress because You guys, when I say you guys, you and your cohort co counsel, who I will have on podcast soon, no pressure, Bijan going to come on.
It had just been continued and continued and continued and continued like so many times. So when you guys finally came down to rumble in the jungle, it was just like, Oh my gosh, like, thank goodness. Like a little bit of relief, but just like so much pressure. But you had a client who there was a worry.
Because the humanizing was going to be difficult. [00:20:00] There was a waiting period for her, plus there was a correction. So walk us through like thinking through that, the question, correct the question and prioritizing that and how you prioritize her questions.
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, I think, yeah, it was challenging. I mean, she was very shy initially.
And so she had a guardedness about her, which interestingly came out through other testimonies. So that I think through testimony of her friends and her coworkers, That she was shy and that she was a little guarded. She wasn’t shy. That’s kind of not quite the right word. She was guarded. And so she waited to see before she spoke, she took in things.
So it was a bit challenging to get her to talk openly and honestly, but it also then sort of reflected how she reacted to the bad situation because she was not. Oh, I’m going to go straight to HR as soon as the bad thing happened for her. [00:21:00] It’s like she was put my head down and I’m going to do a good job and everyone will see that I’m doing a good job.
I’m not the complainer. I’m not the person that just goes and reports to HR immediately. I do a good job and I work hard. People, managers, supervisors, bosses will see that. And so. It’s helped understand why and how she reacted to the bad stuff that happened. So when I was, you
Elizabeth Larrick: guys put that, like you put that the hardworking, you put that first and foremost doubles to the jury, right?
I mean, you prioritize that like hardworking, great reviews. That’s
Jason Ehrlich: right. And that’s right. Now we did, we sort of led with that. I think because we knew there was some attacks that they were likely to, the defense was likely to make or some lingering questions from the jury, but. Yes, we led with that because it was so important what we had learned through focus groups and through other means that it was important that she, they knew that she had this great performance [00:22:00] history.
I mean, she had 10 or 11 years of outstanding performance reviews, and it was in contrast to the bad supervisor who criticized her for things that Were not reflected in her 10 or 11 great performance reviews. So that kind of compare and contrast really drove it home to the juror. Like this bad supervisor was way off the mark.
I mean, you’ve got eight or 10 or 12 other supervisors saying she does a fantastic job. And this guy, he did this horrible harassing thing. It like, it just made it clear that this was not. A bad employee. This was a hardworking employee. So yeah, we led the testimony with her, with that, just to get it right out there for them to see and highlight, like, again, the things that the company and the employer was criticizing her for all the other reviews praised her for it.
She’s good with interviews and she’s good with working with our clients. And then that was so clear again, just like that drumbeat again. And [00:23:00] again, every review, I would just brought it up. Highlighted it and asked her about it. And so it was just that kind of steady drumbeat throughout the first part of her testimony.
Elizabeth Larrick: And I think that also contrasted, and this is kind of another part of, we haven’t really talked about, which is like making those last minute changes to your order or in your questions based on opening statement and witness testimony. And one of the things that was predicted, maybe this is going to be what the defense goes with, but then it was very clear, this idea that she was like, Just going to drop it all and go do a completely different job.
So how did you guys handle that defense point?
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, so it is, it’s hard. Yes. When I was crafting the direct bullet points and my subject matters and topics that I want to talk about. And then, yeah, it’s like, okay, cut it, cut it, cut it. And it’s hard. It’s like, well, I want to talk about this. The jury doesn’t need to hear it.
Again, and then we did know that there was going to be an attack that [00:24:00] our client quit her job, and the law recognizes that if a company makes it so bad that you are forced to quit, that is essentially a termination by the company. And we suspected that the defense would really harp on that and that they would try to say things weren’t that bad and she really was interested in, you know, going around the world or choosing a completely different career.
Transcribed And so by the time we got there, I mean, we had to get some questions answered about her, why she left and also that she didn’t leave because it was a career change or she really wanted to go in a different direction now. This is anecdotally afterwards. I spoke with one of the jurors after the trial and he said, my God, I don’t want to hear any more about this other job that your client took you was, it was like you guys and everyone in that courtroom was like, so what, which we suspected was true, [00:25:00] but there was enough.
feedback from before that we weren’t sure. Like we didn’t know, but I think yes, it did feel like whipping a horse too many times. So yeah, but that’s one anecdotal juror comment afterwards, but he clearly was tired about hearing about this other job that she took.
Elizabeth Larrick: And you guys had a successful outcome.
Jason Ehrlich: We did.
Yes.
Elizabeth Larrick: And can we add been appeal or?
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, it’s public record. So I can, of course, yeah, it’s not yet appealed. It is pending with motions, the motions for a new trial and judgment not withstanding the verdict. They filed that and we filed our opposition. So we’ll be having a hearing probably by the time this, you errors.
We’ll have an order, knock on wood, suspect that the judge will not reverse his the verdict. And then, yeah, I, many times they are appealed. So I would expect the same in this case.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. Yeah. Congrats on success because that, I know that one was a long one. And, you know, for other [00:26:00] folks who are listening and maybe don’t know the trial practice in California, you guys had to try the case over a series of weeks, half days, not full weeks.
I would feel so like, oh my gosh, are they remembering what we said? You know, yes. We could go, oh, are they remembering having those. Continued fears and like, okay, let’s just cover that base. Like just to be careful. I always say, Hey, if it takes one question, two questions, five minutes, just do it and clear conscience and you can move on.
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, it’s true. Yes, it was challenging. We were three days a week, which horrible Monday, Thursday, Friday schedule. And so, yeah, we ended up with a case that we probably all in including jury selection was nine. Court days, which from soup to nuts, we could have done in less than two weeks, but it dragged out for nearly a month because three days a week.
Anything. And that was actually through deliberations too. So if it had been an every day, we would not have taken nearly as long.
Elizabeth Larrick: Right. Yeah.
Jason Ehrlich: But I think the jurors, I think they were proud. I think they felt [00:27:00] empowered. They felt that it was a unanimous verdict, which was always a nice feeling that everyone agreed.
So yeah, I think we weren’t sure, but they work together and they liked each other. And. And again, from feedback, they weren’t throwing papers or pens at each other. And so it was. Yeah, it was a good group of people.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, that’s a good feeling. Well, I want to ask you about one more thing before we wrap up our time, and that is visual aids, demonstratives.
So you mentioned a timeline or maybe a topic list, and you just mentioned that one example of going through the reviews and highlighting, obviously using some technology to highlight, ask questions, making that an easy, fun way to go through something quickly. Do you have any other examples of other visual aids or demonstratives that you’ve used in other trials?
Jason Ehrlich: We’ve definitely used, as I said before, timelines. I have [00:28:00] become a fan of low tech, writing the poster board or the flip chart, different things, and writing it as it goes along. And sometimes we, for example, if I’m talking about emotional distress with my client, and I know there’s a few hot button issues.
That I, I both want to emphasize that the emotional distress of losing the job was so devastating or so hurtful to the, to my client. I want to bring that up, but then I know likely that the defense is going to argue, no, no, no. There was an alternate stressor. You had a divorce. You had a child custody issue.
You had some other stress in your life and that’s going on at the same time. And that’s what you’re emotionally distressed about. So then I will, old fashioned, I’ll just, we’ll write it up. I’ll just write it up on a poster board. So sometimes I’ve done before and after, before the termination, [00:29:00] how did, was this level of stress for you after, what is it?
Or quantifying zero to 10. You had cancer, you had a divorce, you had, where does that rank? Okay. Cancer was a five. Why is it a five? Oh, it’s because I dealt with it. I recovered or I had the treatment and it’s over and it’s in the past and I know it’s in remission. Okay, got it. The divorce. Well, that’s a three.
Well, come on. Let’s be honest. It was a little higher before, wasn’t it? Oh, yeah, yeah. What was it? It was eight or nine. Get that kind of authenticity, that honesty from them about the issue so that they’re not minimizing it, really telling us how it was. But now, the divorce doesn’t matter to me. That was three years ago, two years ago, whatever it might be.
Oh, let’s talk now about losing your job. Where does that stand? Okay. How was it the day or the weeks after losing your job? It was a nine or a 10. Okay. Where is it today? It’s an eight. Help explain to the jury, tell the jury why [00:30:00] this is still there. And so using, it’s a very simple chart, but at least I can use it back in closing if needed.
Remember when the plaintiff testified her emotional distress to this day is still an eight. And that’s why the damages that I’m going to request are appropriate or valid.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah,
Jason Ehrlich: definitely. So yeah, so very low tech visual aids. I think it breaks up the testimony, it gives the jury to focus something to focus on, and it feels teaching.
You’re educating, you’re helping them understand the information that’s coming out.
Elizabeth Larrick: Do you get worried that the defense is going to write on your exhibit?
Jason Ehrlich: No. Have
Elizabeth Larrick: you ever had that happen? I just said, Oh, you haven’t. Oh, I know I have. I totally have.
Jason Ehrlich: How’d it go?
Elizabeth Larrick: Well, there’s not much you can do. There’s not much you can do. It’s one of those moments in trial where you realize like, they’re looking at you, like [00:31:00] waiting for you to react like objection or whatever.
And so it’s like, I feel like one of those moments where you’re just like, cool as a cucumber, cool as a cucumber, like, Oh, Oh, that. Okay. Well, he didn’t enhance it, but I just. You just kind of got to go with the flow and
Jason Ehrlich: yeah, no, I guess I haven’t had that experience. I feel like the only thing the defense wants is it’s down as fast as they can get it down.
That seems to be the go to move. Get that out of the jury space. Don’t keep reminding them what was just testified to.
Elizabeth Larrick: I’ve even had them get like a sticky pad out and write what they want on the sticky pad and then ask the question, like, start putting it on the exhibit. Again, there’s, there’s very little you can do.
And it’s almost like that. And like making that decision to get back up and ask more questions. Like, do you do it? Do you go back and do you like tear it off? Or do you just like, you know what? Like it’s. If I do that, like, I’m going to draw so much more attention to that point they made and really it’s small.
So,
Jason Ehrlich: and I, I keep going back [00:32:00] to, and the, one of the powers of, is it important to the jury? Because sometimes there’s so many things flying around the courtroom and it’s so challenging because you want to talk about it all and you want to address every single thing. And it takes all the power that I have to say, let it go.
It’s not important. It hasn’t been important to them and it won’t be important to them now. And so, yeah, it’s a tough call. And yeah, there’s a, the lawyer instincts as you have to address every single thing that is said. So yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, I think, and that’s even on the redirect is about, does it help or is it, did the defense get any score, any points?
And if they didn’t. Let it go. Even if they’re talking about something again and again and again, if they’re not scoring points, you don’t need to go try to go up there and do anything
Elizabeth Larrick: in response. Yeah, and I think that’s the other part that’s difficult about direct exam is [00:33:00] knowing that line and And I, again, I just feel like you and John and other people that I know that do focus groups, that will give you a little bit of confidence to know, like, I’m going to let that lie.
Like I’ve done focus groups. I, the attitudes are that this is not a big point. Like I’m not going to keep wasting. I’m not going to waste time on that. So
Jason Ehrlich: yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth Larrick: Awesome. Well, okay. One last question. Cause I know that some people, yeah. Do this or don’t do this. And I’d like to get your take on it. Some people like to work with their clients ahead of time with the exact questions they’re going to ask.
Some people don’t do that. They’d rather have more of a free flow, just kind of tell the client what topics they’re going to talk about. Which way do you lean?
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, I lean towards the free flow, hitting the topics partly because. I think it, there’s so much information and there might be a natural inclination to, okay, if this is the question, this is how I’m supposed to answer.
And then it feels [00:34:00] scripted. It feels like you’ve practiced it and just a play or a, it’s not real, it’s not authentic. So I tend to take with the high level, which is the topics, this is what we’re gonna talk about also because I made. mess up myself. I may forget the question or the order of the question or the way that the person, my client answers, I have to pivot and talk about what came out of their mouth.
I can’t just rigidly stick to a script and this, this, this. So I have to be ready to pivot and then and then bring it back to perhaps the main thread of our topic that we’re covering. But there are a few times that I do ask them specific questions and because it’s important, I’m going to ask this question and you’re going to have to answer it because it’s an important point that we’re trying to to get home in the case.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And I think sometimes agree with the free flow. And I guess one of the places where when you talk about specific questions is I always try to at least practice with them with hearing how I have [00:35:00] to ask a question. Now you probably don’t have to do that because you naturally are the who, what, when, where, but sometimes I have to be like, okay, when we talk in conversation, We just take things for granted and this, that, and with the judge there and the defense lawyer, they may jump up and down and like, not like my question.
So I, you’re going to sound funny. Just hang with me. What were you doing? What is this? And it’s just kind of like, that’s not what did you observe? That’s right. Yeah. What was your experience? And that’s one of the things I, especially before and after witnesses and fact witnesses, I’m like, this is going to sound like super, like I’m a robot.
What did you experience? So what did you take away, you know, like, it’s like, Oh, that’s not how we would normally talk to each other. But you, because I got a little somebody behind me, who’s ready to jump up and down and just know that if they do jump it up and down, it’s totally okay. We’ll reset. I’ll come back at it a different way.
And there are definitely times where I will write out. [00:36:00] my plan A, plan B, plan C, knowing like they’re, they’re going to jump up and down, whatever it may be. So
Jason Ehrlich: absolutely. Yeah. I think, yeah. Keeping yourself flexible, expecting and anticipating that that’s important and critical. Yes. The defense will likely try to gum up the works.
And so, yeah, I think that’s right. A, B and C plans are important. And sometimes it’s also in our minds, or at least in my mind, I need to hear the words come out of my client’s mouth, but I can forget because that it’s about the emotion that’s coming out of the client’s mouth. And it’s about their feeling and their presence and the words.
I mean, I’m not an expert on nonverbal persuasion, but how we talk and how we communicate is important. is as important as the words that are coming out of the client’s mouth. So I will read the transcript later and say, my God, the client didn’t say anything that I wanted them to say, [00:37:00] but the emotion was there and the feeling was there.
And that was what was needed.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. I think sometimes we Because we know body language and tone are so important. Sometimes we worry about the fidgeting or the, and I just say like, we really have to focus our energy. That may be just something we got to let go. We’ve got to focus energy on really helping them feel organized in what they’re going to say and also be ready to be vulnerable.
So awesome. Well, any other high points or any other tips or suggestions that you have for the audience?
Jason Ehrlich: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s no doubt that you have to prepare. Anybody who thinks they can just go in with their client the day of is of the trial or five minutes before they’re about to get on the stand and all right, this is what I’m going to ask you or anything like that.
No, it’s never going to work. And so, yeah, preparing, preparing, preparing. I can’t stress enough that that is so critical for me. in getting ready for my [00:38:00] own sense of nerves or my own sense of, but also that the client then, because if I’m nervous or I’m worried, it’s going to reflect to how the client feels.
And so preparing and getting ready and working with the client is so critical to a good direct exam.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, absolutely. Mindset is so important. I always tell all the folks that I work with, all of my clients, like, listen, you got to go with the mindset that jury is there to help you. And just know that those folks in that box, they want to do their job and they want to do it right.
Right now. It’s like the ultimate fear, like they’re, that they’re going to make the wrong, but just know, like, they really want to do their job and they want. Do it right. And having that mindset going in, I feel like some say, okay, they’re not the enemy. They’re
Jason Ehrlich: absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. And they take it seriously and they really do.
And they want to get it right. And they will. Yeah. And if you accept that they are smart people and you [00:39:00] can’t pull the wool over their eyes and that they don’t like BS and, and that you can trust them. And yeah, it is a challenge. When all the evidence is coming in, let’s say these are smart people. They know how to, they can, they’re average people.
They can smell the good and the bad. I have to just lay my head down at night and trust that they’re, they know how to, and they’ll get to the right place.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, that true for, yes, mindset true for us as well as the one standing up under fire sometimes. So, well, thank you so much for jumping on this podcast.
I know folks appreciate it. I will put your contact information, your website, all the show notes. So if y’all have questions for Jason or you think, and gosh, I just love employment law and I want to learn more about it. Reach out to Jason. Cause I don’t know. Well,
Jason Ehrlich: thank you, Elizabeth. It was a real pleasure.
I really enjoyed this.
Elizabeth Larrick: Oh, good, good. Thank you so much. so much.
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
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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.
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep. Today we are going to be talking about what.
turns a client off in a preparation session, or even just a conversation with their lawyer. And really these work for most people. But before [00:01:00] we jump into the episode, I want to give a little bit of a preview for February episodes coming up. We are going to have three to four episodes directly on trial.
So we are going to look at Direct exam and how to craft one of those. We’re going to look at trial management. We’re going to talk about a template for preparing fact witnesses or before and after witnesses. And I’m also hoping that we can get our guest to come and talk to us about cross exam. So that may bleed over into March, maybe not, but either way, just want to get a little preview.
We are going to be focusing on trial. I have many people in my circle, many folks that I work with that are going to trial very soon, March, May, April, June. and need to get back into that practice, look at some stuff, get some new ideas, get the creativity flowing. But today [00:02:00] we are talking about things that we can do consciously and subconsciously that can shut people down.
And three main things that we’re going to talk about. It’s going to be a pretty brief episode before we jump into those three things. Let’s remind ourselves about our goals for preparation for any case event. These are kind of my three points that I always try to talk with or have a conversation with a client before we have any kind of case event.
Thinking deposition, talking about hearing a trial, going to mediation, any event where they’re going to be there and it’s foreign to them. Um, and. I still go through the prep, even when I have somebody who has been deposed before, or maybe they’ve been to a hearing before. I just want to make sure that we provide them a little bit of a roadmap.
And so the goals that I always have when I sit down to have a conversation is I want to make sure that I am going to teach them [00:03:00] about what the whole event is, how it fits into the case. I want to talk to them about what they can expect. I want to correct any Bad expectations they may have and I say bad, but it just could be incorrect information that they may have and then ultimately I want to gear them up, prepare them, gear them up for what their role is, whatever they may be serving and maybe they’re just going to sit in court and listen.
It may be that they’re going to trial and they’re going to have to get up on the witness stand and give testimony. Maybe at mediation, where there may be good questions. So either way, those are the three pieces that I always look at. That’s not the order. The order would be, of course, let’s handle our expectations and our mindset first.
Then let’s move into teaching. And then ultimately, let’s gear them up. And in that conversation, depending on the event, sometimes these are hours and hours, depending on what we’re doing, generally, the bigger the client role, the more we’re going to spend with them. The [00:04:00] smaller. the role, the less I’m going to spend with them.
But either way, it’s a give and take, it’s a conversation. And always we need to get that give and that take, that back and that forth. And we don’t want to shut things down because then people will hold on to misinformation or a misconception and then that causes, you know, Confusion, sometimes anger, when it doesn’t go the way they think it’s supposed to.
These are easy ways that we sometimes fall into interrupting people. Oh, sorry, the first one is interrupting people. And we do it in a lot of different ways. So again, this is a good reminder for me to talk about this because in my work life, I am very, very focused. I’m listening, but occasionally in my personal life, when I’m outside my work mind, I do this and I interrupt.
I have an assumption that I know what someone’s going to say. So I kind of jump in there and generally doesn’t turn out well for me. So when you’re having personal conversations or in your personal life, you know, these people, right? They’re [00:05:00] probably going to tell you like, don’t interrupt me. But with clients, they might not say that and instead they just shut down.
Whatever they were thinking, they just shut it down and it must not be important. I’m not going to talk about it. So with interrupting, obviously we can do it consciously. Hey, literally just interrupt somebody while they’re mid sentence. And this all comes from a place of wanting to help, right? They have a wrong thought or a misconception, right?
We want to reach out and we want to fix it right away. The better idea is to just listen. Hear it all the way through, understand where it may be coming from if you need to do a follow up question, but taking that all in and then you can always talk right after that. Most of the time when people are in a thought and they’re still going and we interrupt it, they can’t even get it back.
That’s the other hard part about interrupting. This is something that we can use or we do use in depositions. [00:06:00] Think about it. You’re sitting in a deposition and you’re listening, right? You’re not taking the deposition. You, maybe you’re listening to somebody else or it’s your client. If you listen to the pattern, if someone is giving a very thoughtful answer and there’s a pause, right?
And it breaks up that train of thought and trying to get it back, sometimes it’s difficult. It’s definitely used on the offensive, right, to purposely interrupt somebody and kick that thought out of their brain or shut them down. But we shouldn’t be doing that when we’re sitting down to prepare somebody because we want to make sure we know what’s in there.
And But we can also do this subtly and unconsciously with our body language or even with sounds. And specifically my example is, think about having listened to a podcast, an interview, and as the host asks the question, [00:07:00] then they sit to listen. Some hosts just listen. But because it’s audio, I know I’ve listened to episodes where the host is uh huh, uh huh, um, uh huh, uh huh.
And it’s very, you can hear it because again, it’s podcast is mostly audio. You can’t see the person nodding their head. And it can. Get to a point where if you are at the right tone that diverts our attention and stops us talking and Specifically, I know that because that’s what I experience when people are having conversation with me I’ve had a business coach who that’s the way She was active listening.
She’d go uh huh and I stopped because I think she’s gonna say something so Most people do the same thing, especially in that client lawyer relationship. And again, it stops the train of thought. Now they’re going back to giving all their attention to you versus what they’re saying. And occasionally we can do this with body language as [00:08:00] well.
When people are very nervous, or they’re going to talk about something very sensitive, or they don’t really want to be vulnerable, they’ll use any excuse. To stop talking and that includes your body language. Maybe you shift in the chair, you pick up your pen, or you uhhuh or you hold up your hand or something.
That could be super subtle. You’re not trying to get their attention, but it does, generally interrupting is just gonna just kinda interrupt that flow of thought and. Stop the conversation, right? We want this back and forth. You want the flow. So keep that in mind when thinking about work stuff, but also business stuff in a work life situation, especially with our clients, they’re not going to likely say, stop interrupting me.
So Another way that we can shut folks down, and again, most of these things we’re doing because we want to help, right? We’re not doing these things because we want to make people stop talking. I think we know how to make people stop talking. We interrupt them. [00:09:00] But we do this kind of subconsciously, and that would be if someone is struggling with answering a question.
Maybe it’s about you’re asking for examples or getting someone to think back in time a year, two years, what was going on. And we And you use comparisons with other clients. And oh, well I had a client who, they also went through this same experience and this is what happened to them. Is that what’s happening to you?
Again, we’re just trying to help people get the flow of thoughts going. And most of the time though, clients just put that in a box now. Oh that is, that’s the right answer. That’s what you’re looking for. But I don’t have that. So it just must not be there. It shuts them down because you’re basically pigeonholing what it is.
You’ve asked the question and it’s very specific versus being very broad just to see what the experience is or if it’s the same. We have all kinds of examples in our heads [00:10:00] of our past clients, but that doesn’t mean we need to start asking and comparing because that’s what the client does in their head.
They start comparing, well that wasn’t my experience, but should have been my experience. Or is that better than what my experience was? Like is there something that I didn’t do then? So it’s all this comparison, which is just not good for our brains and our personalities. We kind of go up on a tangent and again, we can also shut down if we just don’t think that’s the right answer.
And so many times when we’re dealing with clients, that’s what they think we want, the quote unquote right answer, not necessarily what the true experience was. And that’s not even for people who are trying to swindle or lie or half truths. People really just want to please and they know that we are the keeper of the keys, the knowledge.
We know in our experience, they know what is the quote unquote right answer. That last thing that we can do to shut down or to turn clients off would be to talk about ourselves with [00:11:00] examples. Right now, I’m not talking about you come in, you have the icebreaker, you’re having good bonding here, you’re asking about life and how it’s going, you’re sharing, that’s different.
What I’m talking about is when you are using yourself or your experience as an example to the client and it just, again, puts things back into a box. But also most of our clients don’t have the same experience as us. And when we get into giving examples with factual details. And boy, how do we love our details, right?
Love our details. When really what we’re trying to convey is empathy or an emotional feeling. And so if you want to share, which I generally don’t share at all, if we’re getting into the prep session and we’re working through the prep session, I don’t use myself as example. But if you’re going to share at all, just aim for the feeling, right?
Don’t leave out the details. [00:12:00] Right. Don’t need to get into any kind of nitty gritty details, factual details, because that’s where you’re really trying to connect with them is on an emotional level and being empathetic with them for them. And again, that’s what drives so many of us to do what we do. And I think that it’s amazing and wonderful, but sometimes we can get lost in the details.
And then it becomes so much more about what has happening to us or happened to us, right? Those details, the story. And then we’re moving off what we need the client to do. And also sometimes our experiences are so far different that then it’s hard then for the client to share or to open up. And again, they also, from an emotional standpoint, if they don’t want to talk about it, they’re going to get you to keep talking about yourself.
Because that’s what we do. We don’t want to talk about something, let’s talk about you. Shove it off on, on, on something else or someone else so they don’t talk about themselves. [00:13:00] Okay. So very short episode here, but just three kind of small things that little things that we can have a smaller awareness about by not turning our clients off.
Sometimes it’s just the smallest little things that we do, but these are pretty big examples. So I didn’t want to nitpick on the small things. Let’s look at our big things. Interrupting, That’s a huge one. Client comparison makes it very difficult for people. And then talking and using yourself as example.
And again, getting into that story that the factual details versus staying at that emotional level. So, I hope this was helpful. I hope that as you go into your next prep session, whether it’s a smaller case event or a deposition, that you kind of keep those things in mind. And how do we avoid doing those things?
Let’s ask broad, open ended questions. Let people finish their thought before you jump in. And if you would like to be empathetic, keep it at that emotional feeling level and try to avoid story. So I hope this was helpful and until [00:14:00] next time. Thank you.
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.
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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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Welcome, welcome to the trial lawyer podcast. I’m excited to have you here. I am your host, Elizabeth, and this is a podcast dedicated to folks who are preparing cases, trial lawyers, personal injury, employment, folks running focus groups for that crowd.
Bye. Bye. You Today we’re going to talk [00:01:00] about focus groups and talk about four very sneaky things, four factors that can cause your focus groups to flop. What a flop means to me is when you don’t get reliable feedback. We spend a lot of time working up our cases. We do a lot of discovery, a lot of hours and effort go into deposition testimony to form That strategy and then you can test it with focus groups, but if you walk into a few of these traps, many of these are easy to fall into.
This is not something that it may sound obvious. And some of these kind of have a sneaky hook to them as well. So we’ll talk about each of those. But if we have unreliable feedback, we’ve really wasted our energy, our time, which is most precious, and also resources, and we don’t really want to do that. So these are four things I just wanted to put out there.
You probably have heard these before. Or if you have, just. [00:02:00] Take this as a gentle reminder that to you and your team, folks who are helping you put in together focus groups to try to avoid these things. Our goal is to always have quality feedback so that we can rely on it, use it, put it into our cases, format it, and make our cases better, make us better.
A lot of what we do with focus groups is going to be building our confidence as well. We’ll talk a little bit about that this year and a few other things that I just want to help prepare y’all better. So let’s jump into this episode. All right. So the way I’ve divided these up is there’s four of them.
The top two are really going to be things like, Like thinking set up wise and the bottom two that we’re going to talk about are more about moderating and presenting our first one. And I totally fall into this is repeat participants. We have got to avoid having repeat participants. And also in this bucket comes in our focus group for lifers who basically all they do is.[00:03:00]
Focus groups and that that particular aspect is kind of hard to screen for, but it is pretty easy to screen for repeats and to keep them out. I know that this is a difficult task and a high bar to set because. As most of you probably run into if you’re running focus groups, or if you’re thinking about running about focus groups, just what I’m hearing along with grapevine is it’s harder to get people, people are going back to work or people find new ways to work.
And so fitting in a focus group, wanting to join that it’s not as appealing as it was, especially virtually. And definitely in person. I’ve run a few of those in persons this year and found that we are not going to have our 2019 participant pay. We really are going to have to up the ante again to get quality folks, folks that would show up to jury service and not repeats.
So again, [00:04:00] why would repeats be bad? Well, one, they know a little bit about you. And if they’ve been through one of your focus groups before, they probably know what to expect in the sense of you’re going to be talking all about employment cases or all about business cases or all about personal injury cases.
So their mindset’s kind of already there. They’re not going to be really surprised. I’ve had, again, I’ve fallen for this where it’s just like, Hey, it’s last minute. I’ve got to fill a seat. And I’ve had repeat participants either do a 180. Like they come in one folks group and they have this set of beliefs and this attitude about everything.
And then they come back and they flip and it’s completely opposite. And that’s when obviously you get the eye opening, I won’t, I can’t rely on that person because I feel like they’re flip flopping just to either, because maybe they didn’t like something or something else triggered them. And so it just really causes problems when you got repeats, try to avoid [00:05:00] as best as you can.
And how do we do that? That’d be just screening. You got to just kick those people down the road. Say, thanks so much. We can’t have any repeats. Here’s some other places to do focus groups and then keep screening. One of the things that I’ve done is just add an extra day for recruiting just to give one more day for those advertisements, those emails to get people to come back.
Now, I do believe that you can ask people back after a year, two years, three years, four years, basically a lot of the in person focus group people four years have gone by. I think that’s probably a safe bet, but you’re still going to run into the same problems of, again, these people have seen, they’ve heard, they’ve probably already got their mindset already made it before they come in because they’ve had an experience with you.
They’re just going to either repeat that or like, cause it may be flip flop it altogether. I did have, just as far as an example, I had a fairly reliable retired gentleman who would fill in and [00:06:00] again. Would try not to have them, obviously they can’t come back to the same case, can’t come back to listen to the same set of problems, the same lawyers.
And so I brought him back into a different focus group. His last minute he was available and they’re probably six months in between and it was not good. He was not reliable. He had, like I said, completely switched his attitude on several things and was very combative with everybody else, which I don’t know if I could have predicted that before.
He’s not really an issue that way, but. Either way, if the lawyers ask, or if you’re thinking to yourself, like, wow, I could avoid this, you know, something I repeat in here. So avoid repeat participants and try to avoid those focus group jobbers as I call them, because they’re going to come in there and they’re going to rule the roost.
When you have people who do focus groups often and frequently, they don’t follow the rules, meaning they’re not going to listen to you. They’re going to ask questions. They’re going to interrupt. [00:07:00] A lot of times I find when people have done focus groups a lot, they basically will reveal the magic to everybody else.
Like, Oh, I know what you’re doing now. Oh, I see. You want us to do blah, blah. And they’ll make a lot of assumptions out loud. Well, now we’re tainting everybody else. If we were trying to withhold or keep that feedback in a box until we were ready to let it out there. So they just cause disruption problems I’ve found, and it just doesn’t help.
And repeat people do the same thing too. So. Because they’ll say, Oh, this is what we did last time. Or, Oh, you want mess to do blah, blah. Oh, well, you’re saying that so that they can reveal the magic and the mystery. And sometimes you don’t want those mysteries ever revealed because then it reveals your bias.
So let’s move on to tip number two, which would be revealing your bias. And this again can be one of those It happens subconsciously sometimes. We just, we are really trying hard not to reveal where our position is and [00:08:00] it just naturally comes out. In this next presentation you’re going to see my case.
You just let the cat out of the bag. But I’ve also had people who just come right out of into a presentation say, well, I just want, you know, this is my case. This is my, so you’re automatically revealing your bias. When you do that as people who are listening to you, you basically kind of have a choice.
You’re going to try to please this person and go along with everything that they say, whether you agree or not, or you may be very opposing to it. But either way, you know, that you were like, It’s now slanted at a tilt with your bias revealed, they may not be as honest with you. They don’t want to hurt your feelings.
And so that’s why we always try to frame everything with this is not, we are not involved. We are here to present, to ask questions and to gather your feedback. We don’t have a dog in the fight. Because we don’t want them because again, they’ll either withhold information or they’ll try to be nice [00:09:00] about it.
Or you want to get that quality feedback. That’s what all these factors are about getting that quality feedback. And that’s one where you’re standing right in front of them. You’re asking for their feedback and they’re, it’s like jury selection, right? They know you’re involved somehow and they could obviously hold back.
And that’s not what we want to focus group. We really want their feedback. It’s really hard. Sometimes, like I said, it subconsciously flips out. So, how can we correct this? And that would be just looking really closely at our presentation and how we word it. And then try to avoid putting ourselves in that position where we’re thinking, Well, my client, oh, shoot, I just said it.
Or, she’s told me, like, oh, now we’ve. So that’s why we work really hard with our presentations and write them out going off the cuff. Inevitably, we’ll have this information just flop out of your mouth because subconsciously it is, it’s hard to, it’s hard to keep that back. So we work really hard to make sure we stay neutral in our [00:10:00] presentations, how we say things, how we write things, our questions, and we’ll talk about that in a second.
Oh, just really wanting that quality feedback. And again, if they. Know that you’re slanted. You’re going to get slanted on. You’re going to get slanted information on the way back out. So those are two kind of set up factors that can really cause the apple cart to topple over and not get good feedback.
The next two are really about the moderating or presenting. And that first one is having a presentation that doesn’t include any visual aid, even if you’re just sharing screen, or you’ve got a PowerPoint that’s got like a word or two words or whatever. Okay. One picture or just the Google street view of what the intersection look like people’s attention spans are just so tiny, you know, used to say is goldfish right?
Well, we’re worse than goldfish now with all of our technology and how we take in information. [00:11:00] So. If the brain is bored, not stimulated, like we’re going somewhere else and our brains and we’re looking at our phones or doing looking around that other stuff, if you’re virtual and even in person, this totally happens.
You can see people completely check out. I mean, it’s not difficult to see. And I do this all the time. Someone’s given a presentation and it just goes like purely, here’s just information, A, B, C, and that’s all I’m getting from them. I just kind of glaze over, I can check out. This happens all the time with any kind of presentation, but especially with those focus group people, we need to make sure that we are keeping them engaged and also delivering the information in a way that allows them to process it.
If you’re sitting and you don’t know what you’re about to hear, other than you’re going to listen to some stuff and, and sort of give some feedback and you’re having then to take in verbal information and organize it and it’s, [00:12:00] maybe it’s a chronology, it’s a story, it’s all these things, they’re just going to kind of get a little lost and throw their hands up.
And that’s what you, that’s, That’s the experience you’ll have is you’ll either have, I just need more information. Well, I need to have this thing. And it’s, you’ve already given them so much information. They really need more or they get a lot of confusion going on. Like they need you to repeat a lot of things or go back to that.
Or did you hear that? So a lot of recombing back through the presentation because they couldn’t keep up with all of the information just given to them verbally. Okay. And one of the things we’re going to talk about a lot in the podcast coming up, and one of the reasons I’ll probably put some of our podcast episodes on YouTube, is to be able to show you the visual aid that we are talking about creating or using.
So you can take it and use it as well and get the information out there quicker. They’re going to learn it faster and they’re going to be able to see it. Simulate it quicker so then you can turn around and get that feedback [00:13:00] quickly. And that’s always super helpful. So we want to always have some kind of visual aid in our presentation and in our PowerPoint.
Even if you’re virtual or in person, same thing. We believe, uh, we believe we’re very engaging in person. That’s true to an extent, but you know, with focus groups, we’re giving them a ton of information and hoping that we get feedback and if it’s just all verbal, a lot of it’s just going to go by the wayside.
So we want to avoid that again. Getting that quality, reliable feedback. And my last one for this episode will be slanted questions. And again, this is such a sneaky thing that happens to us. We really, I think it’s a subconscious. We’re not trying to be sneaky. We’re not trying to slant things, but it’s just a.
It’s a language communication thing. And it’s also knowing that the people on the other side are completely suspicious of us. So every word, if it doesn’t pass the, you know, the gut check, they’re like trying to figure out, well, where’s [00:14:00] this going? Or who is this person? What is this about? And what I mean by slanting questions is a lot of times we want to ask questions.
Well, if I just told you X, would it change your mind? Well, they’re gonna assume one that you have X. Then we’ve got all kinds of suspicion problems. The easier way to answer the question is just make it much more broad, and then you can list off different factors. But we always want to make sure the best way to cure slanted questions is to go with open ended questions.
Steering them in a way or offering multiple available options. And I don’t mean by saying, well if you had X, Y, Z, would that change your mind? See, we’re assuming it would change their mind. So a lot of our questions kind of have assumptions. What questions do you have? I just assumed you had questions, right?
They may not have any at all. So one quick trick that I learned during my time with the Keenan law firm was. Always adding, if any, do you have any concerns? If any, [00:15:00] uh, do you have any questions? If any, we’re just opening it right back up instead of making that assumption that they do have a concern or assumption that they do have a question.
Just opening it back up to, if any, right back to that big open ended question. With those slanted questions, we’re revealing that bias and we’re also again creating a little more suspicion. Oh, wait, you do have more information, like, hold on. And then they kind of feel like, oh, you don’t feel bamboozled. I went ahead and made, I staked my claim.
I put my flag out there. I made a position. Like, my position would completely change. Oh, man, you have that information, don’t you? Like, oh, and then they feel like you’re withholding. And then you can’t get them to stake into a position. Well, if you said this, then I feel this way, but if there’s this, then I feel that way.
And then now it’s like there are feedbacks all over the board. And if it feels unreliable and it is unreliable because they’ve given you so many different factors, [00:16:00] it’s because they just kind of lost trust in the process that this was, you know, firm, like these are the facts, then I will make a decision and I will give you feedback versus now it’s loosey goosey and I need more information.
And whenever you start to do a lot of focus groups, and if you’ve done a lot, then you understand. And if you’ve done a lot of jury trials, you also understand when you get that, Well, I just, if I had more information, well, I would just have so many questions and it’s like, Ooh, like that person probably will never be satisfied like they just, there’s always going to be more information that they want.
So therefore, they’re always going to be indecisive. And at some point, you got to make a decision of your own jury. And at some point folks group, we’re going to ask you to make a decision, plant your flag. All right. We ran through four quick questions. Factors sneaky, sometimes factors that can come in subconsciously and cause unreliable, or when a focus group or a flop as also you can call it [00:17:00] one would be again, having repeat participants can really cause a problem.
Having revealed your bias coming right out of the gate, saying who you are and who you represent, or subconsciously planting things like my case or my client in there, but just got to call that presentation down. Which leads me to my third one, which would be got to have some kind of visual aid. We got to keep people’s attention with these presentations, help them organize the facts or put it in a visual way again, just to provide the ability to look at something quickly and then be able to make a decision on it without making them juggle all the information.
And then finally slanted questions. And again, these are sneaky things. These are not things we are intending to slant, but when we do, it can really cause a little bit of disruption, people making decisions and giving us feedback. So I hope that this episode was helpful. And again, these are all mistakes that I have made, which then made me cringe.
And then did I [00:18:00] just waste all this time and effort to get this focus group together? So I want you to avoid the pain that I have. So if you have any questions or I’ve said something that may be. Causes you, huh, or a concern, please let me know. My email will be in the show notes and until next time, thank you.
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.
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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of trial lawyer prep. Thank you so much for joining us in 2023.
You may be listening to this a little bit later and that is certainly okay. But to those who are right on track, welcome. I wanted to start out today with a [00:01:00] reader shout out. This was review for the podcast, amazing podcast. Elizabeth does a fantastic job, and every bit of content helps make you a better trial lawyer.
Also, her voice and demeanor are wonderful to listen to. Well, thank you so much. That was Monty Tines out of Mississippi. So thank you so much, Monty, for that review. I always appreciate a review that helps other people find this podcast. So please rate review on your favorite podcast app. All right. So let’s start this episode and I really want to focus this particular year.
So 2023, let’s see. Think about the next few weeks, months of how this podcast can better help you. And we’re focused on preparation for trial lawyers. And I really want to look at how can we look at things differently or maybe look at new opportunities, new ideas for you to plug in and use. There are [00:02:00] so many wonderful things that folks are doing.
And sometimes just spreading the word on, Hey, I did this. It worked better. I did that. It did not work well. And as you listened in my year end review for 2022, I like to look at technology. So we’re going to talk a little bit about technology along the way this year to find things that can help you do your job better.
Maybe market better, maybe have easier flow and systems within your office to get things done. And so today we’re going to talk about focus groups and tackle one of the questions that I get a lot, but I think is also really important, which is when is the right time to run a focus group? And we’re talking about focus groups.
We’re not talking about mock juries. So let me just set that out right away. And Each one of these little focus groups that we’re gonna talk about, I’m gonna try and confine it for you and put some parameters on it so you can know like, [00:03:00] okay, so you could technically run one anytime. But that doesn’t help anyone.
So it’s helpful to have kind of a focus and a framework. And so we’re going to look at six spots when you can run a focus group in the case. But the first hurdle, you’d always want to make sure that you’re tackling, is this the right case? And got to be thinking about the value. Is this the case you want to spend the time on, right?
Is this the case you want to have this expense on? Is there going to be a tradeoff when you’re expending your time, your expenses, your resources, and getting that value back out? So this podcast, I’m assuming you’ve done that kind of calculating like, okay, this is the case. This is a large case. And again, sometimes this is a case where it’s like, is this going to be as difficult as we think?
Or is it going to be easier? Are people going to get it? And that’s why with our six different places you can run focus group, we’re starting off right [00:04:00] off the bat with before you even file a lawsuit. And I talked a lot about using this in case planning in an episode a couple weeks prior, and episode has much more detailed about that.
What it is to run a focus group before a lawsuit, but basically the rundown would be that you are looking at maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour max. You’re just tossing out some facts and getting some feedback and it’s helping you plan what people want to know more about. What’s important to them. Test some things that you think are important.
Does a jury give it back to you? But a short and sweet one, just to kind of give you again, some framework for the case and then also help you down the road. The next spot that I would suggest to run a focus group is after key deposition testimony. And by key depositions, I’m talking about the defendant, the corporate rep, maybe there’s a supervisor, key eyewitness statements at the plaintiff, Having those as well and then [00:05:00] basically putting that together Where again, we’re looking at maybe an hour, but you’re looking at maybe getting five to seven minutes of each video Deposition testimony and just getting people’s blink reaction.
Are these people credible? Does this story make sense who might be the weak link right in these stories, but that’s really gonna help You know where to hone in Are things fitting into your theory the way that you hope they are, but it’s a really easy focus group to do. It is a little bit labor intensive because you have to find those pieces of testimony.
You’ve got to create those clips. If you’ve got great video editor, use them, right? Save your resources and have them do it for you. If you have somebody in house that does it, There are lots of programs that will do it. There is a learning curve to them. So I’m not sure whether it’s worth your time to learn it, unless it’s something you’re going to be doing often and frequent.
I do it often and frequent. I have been doing that with focus groups. I learned [00:06:00] it through, through fire, on one of the very first trials that I worked with Mr. Keenan, the Keenan Law Firm, but Movavi is what I use. But again, I’m not going to encourage you to go learn any kind of video editing. If that’s just not your thing, don’t worry about it.
Hire it out. Have somebody else do it. That’s also what you’re going to hear a lot is, Hey, if you can delegate this task to someone else, let’s do it. Let’s save you that time, right? You’re still going to get the same value, but you’re going to save your time. All right. Third place to run a focus group would be in the.
30 days before mediation. And I also have 21 days on here. So kind of a window because sometimes what happens is mediations. Oh, we’re going to do one. Oh, there it is. The court set one. It’s 20 days away. What do we do? Well, I encourage you because right before mediation, the hope is that you’ve got everything together.
There aren’t any major missing pieces. You know what people are going to say, you know the defenses, you know the theories. [00:07:00] And you can put that all together into a mediation presentation and then test that presentation. Again, these are short focus groups we’re talking about. You’re probably going to need to take an hour on this.
Because again, these are your larger cases. You’ve got a lot of facts, a lot of evidence, right? You’ve got to condense that down into that fancy mediation presentation and show that to the focus group. I think it also helps you to kind of put everything together. One of the reasons I love doing focus groups when we get closer towards mediation, closer to trial, closer to end of discovery is it really is focusing us to skinny down, to start formulating that opening statement, start looking at things because discovery starts.
It’s like you’ve got the whole world, you’ve got all this discovery, you’ve got, you don’t really know which way it’s going to go. But that, doing it, mediation really makes you focus in, formulate everything. That’s why I love doing those focus groups, because then it pushes you to do it even earlier. And then you’ll have time to regroup, re [00:08:00] edit, go back forward again.
Also having the confidence from that focus group feedback. All right. Our fourth spot that I suggest to run a focus group would be 90 days before the end of discovery. Okay. Now, you could do 60 days as well, but the purpose of this focus group is to make sure you have everything you need. So this may be a little bit bigger focus group.
This may be a two hour or even a three hour focus group. Because you’re really trying to make sure you’ve got all the puzzle pieces in place, right? All the evidence is fitting together. You’re not making any leaps, right? You’re not saying things you can’t prove. And if there is a hole, if there is something that’s missing or a big red flag for the focus group, you can go get it.
You can go get that deposition. You can go find that missing eyewitness. Get that police officer’s deposition nailed down if that’s what’s missing. And again, it just helps like, okay, we’ve got everything or we don’t. [00:09:00] And you have time to go get it. So many, many heartbreaks happen when you were in the focus group and discovery’s done and they’re saying, hey, well, I need to hear from what the police officer has to say.
Well, oh no, I need to hear. There was an eyewitness that was on the police report. Why don’t we have that? I need to see that. Oh, you’re hiding something because it’s not there. Right? Then all these assumptions happen. So save yourself that heartbreak. Do the focus group before the end of the discovery period.
Our fifth place would be again, as we’re, if you’ve not notice, we’re kind of progressing through the litigation phases. So this would be 60 days before trial. Again, we’re forcing you to get your opening together. We’re doing an opening versus opening here. Maybe we’re doing opening plus some evidence, but we’re really focusing in on trial opening statement and making the lawyer put things together.
Get it down on paper. Get it ready to present. Get that PowerPoint ready. We’re getting ready for trial at this point. We really want to make sure that we are [00:10:00] keying in on what the jury wants to hear and wants to see. And our last place would be 30 days out from trial. I personally love doing focus groups like the weekend before.
But, that’s very stressful. Don’t stress yourself out, just keep it, even if it’s 30 days out, you’re still going to get a lot of good information. You still may not have all of the motions in limine heard and the evidence, what’s coming in, what’s coming out. You can probably make pretty good guesses though, if you’re 30 days out from trial, what the judge is going to do.
Hopefully, you already have all those rulings and you can have a focus group that really is focused in on the evidence that is coming in, but if not, you’re going to have a good shot at it. So all of these are great opportunities, great places to help you prepare the case better. You may not get through to the trial, you may just get through mediation, but they’re all opportunities to take action.
in that place to help you grow the case better, to help you look at things [00:11:00] with a new set of eyes. Anytime you can get that outside perspective, move past, right? Get out of the weeds. Get that 30, 000 foot view. You’re going to be able to prepare that case so much better. And that’s really a lot about what focus groups are and that’s why beginning of the episode I said these are about focus groups, not mock trials, not mock juries.
This is helping you get perspective. Getting that perspective over and over and over again to make sure okay, am I hitting what they want to hear? Do I have everything in order? Can they see this presentation? Where am I making leaps in my evidence? And, hey! If nothing else, if it just builds your confidence, then that’s great too, right?
You may have everything done, Elizabeth, I know how to do this. I’m going to run these focus groups. They’re all going to agree with me. Hey, that’s great too. Confidence is good. We need that because there’s a lot of uncertainty in what we do. And having confidence helps. So I hope that this podcast [00:12:00] episode was helpful for you.
All these different opportunities to run a focus group, six different places before the lawsuit, after key depositions, 30 days before mediation. 90 days before the end of discovery, 60 days before trial and 30 days before trial. You could always do more. You could do less, but I always encourage you to at least do one or two.
That way you can, again, keep with that outside perspective to help you keep moving along. And they’re fun. It’s inspirational, right? Places to be creative. So I hope this episode was helpful. I look forward to more episodes with different opportunities and ideas for you to prepare your case better. All right.
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
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Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick. We are going to do 22 lessons from 2022 today as we round out this year. You may not be catching this episode at the end of 2022 and that’s okay. Most of these [00:01:00] are important no matter what year it is. But these are just things that I have picked up on this year, things I have studied or things that just I had an aha moment and I thought, you know what, that should go on the list.
Some of these are big. Some of these are little. I tried to originally put these in categories and that kind of went by the wayside. So these are a mishmash of all kinds of things. And the first one. I will say I have a few that are technology related and I always try to figure out a way to do things easier with my work and with people that I work with and two of these things right off the bat is Double checking your technology and the ability and one of them is uploading documents so we always have to exchange a lot of documents as lawyers a lot of times with clients and That has become so much easier and more accessible on more platforms you At the end of 2021, I was trying to figure out how to solve this problem.
I was trying to get a lot of documents from people to prepare for [00:02:00] clients, a lot of documents for focus groups and sharing folders with Dropbox or with Box. It just wasn’t very conducive. And luckily, thank goodness, So many platforms have now provided this service. So my service is through Dropbox because they finally changed it to allow with an upload link.
But of course, I think a lot of people have been using Sharefile for some time. But as a solo, that doesn’t always make economic sense. To have that with just one service doing one thing versus having something like Dropbox, which has a lot of different available things you can do. Which also leads me to my second thing for 2022, which is download links.
And again, this is a service that’s been offered on other platforms, but if you are a solo or a small law firm, having a bunch of single subscriptions for services that do one thing really can start to add up. And I always try to find a way to, hey, is there somewhere we can combine all [00:03:00] this? And again, Dropbox has done that, which has made sharing focus group videos so much easier where I just am able to create a link and send it to folks and they can download that video for up to 30 days.
You can give them another link and it’s so much easier. So those are right off the bat, two technology things. If you are somebody who has to get a lot of data. Documents from clients, or you need them to download things from you. Look at your platform. See what you’re using. What kind of cloud storage do you have?
Some of those services, again, are adding new stuff. Dropbox is one of those. But a lot of platforms are doing it. So just check what you got. Make it easier for yourself and for your staff. Another thing that I found here recently was an app called Readwise. I know that as lawyers, we like to read. And I love to read.
But a friend of mine Ernie Svensson told me about this Readwise app. And basically what it does is you can do it on your phone. Mine sends me notifications on my phone [00:04:00] and in my email. And basically it connects with your Kindle. I think it connects with a couple other places where you can read books, and wherever you highlight, it will pull those highlights and send it to you kind of in a, a reel where there’ll be six highlights in one day, and so it is so helpful to basically refresh your memory on things you may have learned from them.
Books you’ve read. So My Read Wise will tell me stuff from books I read this year. Psychology of Selling, writing emails that don’t suck. Those are some of the books that I read this year. Plus books I have also in previous times as well. But it’s just a really nice refresher. And a couple levels of subscription, but they also have a level where you can take that highlight and put it on your social media, which is not something that I do right now.
But if you are a big reader. And you also want to just keep learning that like sinking in again, I like to read books twice. This [00:05:00] kind of helps give you those like nuggets along the way each day. So Readwise, all one word is really good app I would suggest if you want to keep learning from books that you’ve read.
Another big technology thing for me this year was moving to a virtual assistant. I used some folks to help find a virtual assistant who could do some things for me. And again, they’re a little more tech savvy, not necessarily focused on just doing documentation, and it’s been great. If you don’t have a virtual assistant or have some kind of virtual workforce, I really suggest that you look into it.
A lot of these folks are ready. They know how to work virtually. You’re not having to teach them how to work virtually, but it’s much more about Then taking on tasks and move them off your plate. It’s been great for me. I highly suggest it. There are lots of companies that are geared towards virtual assistants for lawyers.
They are out there. But if you just need help with other smaller things or social media, which again, I’m not even going to go into that. [00:06:00] That’s another lesson from 2022. We’ll talk about in a second. There’s all kinds of folks out there that all kinds of training that can help. I just encourage you, if you can, offload something.
What I love about my virtual assistant is that she helps me a lot with focus groups and she has actually helped get me to write all of my systems down. And that’s one of those really important things that’s probably not a lesson, but it’s something that’s ongoing for me is just writing everything down that is a system that goes into what happens here at Larrick Law Firm.
So very helpful. Moving into focus group lessons. So one of the things that I have seen in comparing notes with lots of other lawyers is so much more spam coming in from focus groups. And that would be people who are applying from other countries to get into your focus group. And a lot of people, how do we solve this problem?
What do we do? Well, can we create a different form or can we require a certain documentation? I would just say [00:07:00] the one really small time hack that I have noticed that seems to be Pretty well working for me, which is super simple. It’s just, we have a Google form and that basically creates kind of an Excel sheet, Google sheet, and has all the information all line by line, very similar.
What you’re able to do is just look at the name, look at the email address and look at the profession and your brain’s going to say, Oh, that doesn’t, that does not compute, right? So you may have John Smith. JohnSmith01 at gmail, who is a lawyer. Okay. Well, hmm. And again, I always ask for city and state, right?
So you can Google that and figure out like, of course, that’s not a real lawyer’s name. So again, there’s your red flag. So that small comparison, right? Name, email address, profession. And then, you know, Run it through your brain. Does that make sense? And a lot of times what you’re gonna see is these are made up names with made up email addresses that they just pick whatever profession.
And sometimes they’re really good. And again, you can go [00:08:00] Google it, look on LinkedIn. Anyone that claims to be a teacher, professor, engineer, doctor, lawyer, right? All those things have registrations. You’re gonna be able to find those online. So that’s just a really small time hack. I know people can get really in the weeds with this.
You can check their iMessage. IP address, if it comes from a foreign country, you can do phone calls, which is another easy way to find out if they are, if it’s a real number or just a Google number. But again, just avoid the phone calls. Just do the small hack to see if you can at least try to avoid those people.
If you need to go to that second level, make phone calls. Other big lesson from focus groups. Number six, if you will, no complainers. If we get any emails about complaining about the rate of pay or what we’re going to serve or what we’re on for food, I just, nope, we, we take them off the list. We put them on a different focus group.
I used to put up with this where people would complain, well, you know, and try to have, make sense with it and email back and forth or offer alternatives. [00:09:00] And it just. It’s not worth it. You know what I mean? Just let it go. So if you’re having that kind of resistance with your focus group, people or participants, just say, no, just let them go.
They’re not going to give good feedback. Okay. Just let them go. So one of my big lessons for focus groups. And again, my lesson number seven, which helps no matter what we’re doing, but focus groups is where this one really came from. And that is if we’re creating a visual aid, be it focus group, be it mediation, be it for the judge for hearing one photo per slide, one fact per slide, one idea per slide.
Everybody wants to jam as much as possible on one particular slide and everything then gets lost. Of course, I think we have all heard the lesson about not putting too many words on the PowerPoint slides, but this is a solid rule of thumb. Generally, when I’m helping people prepare for anything, be it you’re going to trial, [00:10:00] you’ve got a trial demonstrative, you’ve got a focus group.
That’s the main thing I always do is just remove everything, put one idea, Or one photo, one thought, on one slide. That way, one, you got to make sure it’s big enough so people can read it. If it’s a picture, you want to make sure that’s for sure as big as you can get it. Because if they can’t see it or if there’s too much, they just give up.
Your brain just gives up. Ah, it’s too much. I can’t get it. And that’s so important. We’ve got visual aids are here to help us learn faster, assimilate the information, and that way you can move on quickly. Can’t do that if there’s all that information on there. I also want to tell you, they’re not going to get it all.
So, then you become frustrated. You need to say this again. I’m like, well, you got a lot of information in there. You’re asking them to process a lot of information. And so, it was going to keep our visual aids large and in charge. Okay, so make sure everybody can see it. My number eight lesson for 2022 is for witness [00:11:00] preparation, particularly for trial.
And again, I think this also helps for deposition because I’ve done it both ways, which is basically using your jury instructions, your jury questions. Like, get out that, see the pattern jury charge and get that question out and say, hey, this is the question that you are answering, right? So we need to look at this and focus on these particular things that we need and try to avoid things that don’t.
And I actually did a podcast on this because it’s, hey, this is an easy time hack. We come and sit down for trial preparation. We Sometimes learn so much more information that we didn’t know and the client didn’t know to tell us so they want to bring in All this extra stuff and hey, that’s a good way to just cut and slice and dice And this is the question that we have to answer.
So only this information is what we’re going to talk about So super helpful. If you’ve got to rein people in, keep people on task, it’s a good way to do it and it’s easy, right? [00:12:00] If you’re not coming up with it, it’s just that, hey, these are the rules. These are the questions that juries are going to be asked.
So it makes it helpful to do as well. So two things for marketing for 2022. And the first one would be. My lesson would be, I deleted my Facebook business account and my Twitter business account. It was causing a lot of disharmony, right? I spent a lot of time trying to find people to do some social media creation and at the end of the day I just realized, wow, is this really going to be helping me?
Do I really need to be prioritizing this? No, I should prioritize the podcast or possibly working on more stuff for the website. One of the things that my coach, business coach told me is where is your audience? It’s always want to be asking where’s your audience? Are they tuning in to Facebook? Are they tuning into Twitter?
No, of course not. Is it wasting your time? Yes, of course. Get rid of it, right? If it’s not helping you, if it’s getting in the way. [00:13:00] Let it go. And that’s what I did with my Facebook business page and my Twitter business page. I did keep LinkedIn and that’s my lesson number 10, which would be my live videos.
So I did a live video series once a month and 2022 was focused on focus groups. Talked about all kinds of stuff, how to do them, virtual, using the chat, when to pick to do a focus group, all kinds of good stuff. And they were great. I enjoyed doing them. Did they get a lot of traction? Not sure. But I am going to keep doing them, but they’re all going to be on LinkedIn.
And I think it’s going to be kind of a variety of things. I also will probably plan to do some of the podcasts live on YouTube. So again, just to generate some more videos, but also maybe a little bit more engagement of what’s going on. So helpful, not helpful, not really sure that’s still in the testing phase, but I am going to try it out.
That is one of the things if you are. head of the marketing in your law firm [00:14:00] or that’s your department for your solo video, video, video. That’s what they’ve been telling us for a couple of years now. People want videos. I get it. I understand. So I’m still out there still testing it out. If you’ve got questions or you’ve got a good way to do it, please let me know.
I’ve gone the professional route. I’ve hired people to do professional videos for me, but then I realized. I can just set up my own iPhone and do the same thing. So that’s one of my lessons for 2022. One of my favorite books. I’ve got a couple books on this list, and one of the ones that I’ve read just recently is called Influence Your Superpower by Zoe Chance.
I love this book. It was really about, right, if you understand the concept of reptile brain, which I don’t Many many moons ago. That’s really how I got kind of supercharged on witness preparation was following reptile plaintiff’s revolution And Don Keenan going and doing a fellowship there, but if you [00:15:00] understand that concept, even just a little, you’re really going to want to pick this book up because it takes that concept to a much deeper level, but she explains it so well with examples and research, she talks about it with your gator brain versus your judge, and really how often We are operating with our gator brain and very rarely with our judge.
And so how thinking about in terms of what we do, how can we understand that when jurors are going to make decisions? And. Also, there, there’s lots of other really great things about framing. It’s just a really great reminder for influence and how our brains work. One of the big, other big concepts that I took from that book is how to make things easier for people to work with you.
In the book, she gives the example of how just having a text reminder Like increase people [00:16:00] showing up for court, but like 30 percent and that works, you know, most of the things to just one reminder. I get text reminder can increase and because it’s easy. And how do we make, how do we make things easier for people to work with us?
And that’s something that I’m trying to look at. Always, but now really, oh, okay, let’s make it, let’s make it easy. So it’s a great book. I’ll put a link in the show notes for you. One of the other really big takeaways for me for 2022 was mindset is key for lawyers and clients. Now, what is mindset? Mindset is what your mind believes before you begin a task, right?
So let’s say you got a mindset that you. Hate olives and you gotta go to Greece. Well, you’re already gonna put in your mind. You’re not gonna have good times. Awful olives everywhere. That’s a very large example, but when it comes to what we do, we have as lawyers mindsets that develop over time based on our [00:17:00] experience and where we work and who we have learned from and so many times I think a large majority, we have this mindset that a deposition is just, it’s a sit and suffer.
Right? Clients just got to sit and get through it. Or it’s that time to sell yourself. Sell that insurance company that you’re worthy of, of getting some money. Because it feels, it’s a necessary step. We don’t spend a lot of time on it because it’s not really something we can control because we don’t ask questions.
And with clients, right, their mindset is just generally put their head in the sand. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this. Or it’s just going to be horrible. So they go in thinking it’s horrible and it turns out that it becomes horrible. And one of the things I always try to reiterate is depositions are really, they’re so key.
Cases don’t go to trial. Two percent of cases are tried. Most settle, right? So transcripts are where it’s at. Transcripts are that evidence. And I recently had a [00:18:00] confrontation with a lawyer and he voiced his opinion that this approach to preparing clients is antiquated. Right? Lawyers can’t spend this much time with a person, right?
We don’t have time for this. Nobody does this anymore. And so where, what does that come from? Well, I think that comes from a mindset that clients, there is no value exchange in this, right? You spending time with the client for deposition prep does not translate into value into the case. Because their time is more valuable somewhere else.
And I think that’s a pretty short sighted mindset. I know we have cases, have large caseloads, I know that we are overworked as a profession and so sometimes it’s a matter of, hey, just looking at where are we spending our time. But let’s just take it back because if we think that depo prep must translate into case value, right?
That’s just one level, right? Just think of it as one level. But if we think about it more [00:19:00] about spending time with the client, right? So if we spend time with the client for deposition prep. Right? We’re spending one on one time with them, right? So that builds a better relationship. You’re going to get to know them better, right?
They’re probably going to do better in deposition. Just naturally, most deposition mistakes are preventable. Really. I mean, they are. So then the deposition itself is going to have more values. That’s value to the case, but the client walks away with experience of being valued to you. Right. So that relationship building also is going to take you to getting a positive review, which you should always ask for, referrals, right?
That client’s going to send your way. So there’s so much more to value to just this individual case. There’s value to your overall business. This is a long game. It’s a long game thought. If we think of it always as short sighted, just this case, just this thing, we’re not going to [00:20:00] be very successful business people.
We need to be thinking in long game, getting referrals, talk about marketing again, people got to have good, got to have good reviews, got to ask people for reviews. That’s what people want to see. It’s true. Think about when last time you looked for a restaurant. Look at the Google reviews or try to find anything, right?
Look at those Google reviews. So keep in mind, right, all these things. You want the long game here. Also, you will feel better, right? We sometimes doing our jobs just sucks and it’s difficult and it’s hard. Why not do something that is going to Make you feel better, right? This is sometimes what we came into this whole profession for, is helping people.
And this is just one of those really small places you can do that. And, you know, what I have encouraged people is, if you are not sure, and you just said, you know what Elizabeth, I still don’t believe you. I challenge you. To take an hour, [00:21:00] split it into 30 minutes, do two 30 minute meetings with your client and just see, just test it out.
All right, is this going to make it better? Right now, you have to go in with your scientific mind and you have to be awake during the deposition to see. Did they get tripped up? Did they get those, make those mistakes that are easily preventable from knowing the rules of a deposition? Mindset. We have to understand what is our client’s mindset?
What’s my mindset? Mindset. Before I approach to, to start something, is it, am I dooming it before we begin? So that’s one thing that I’m going to keep in mind for 2023 and looking out for that, which is important and talking to people about that to make sure, hey, how are you looking at this, right? Is this a sit and suffer?
Are you going to do good? Always checking in to make sure we get that straight because if we don’t straighten our mindsets before we begin, it doesn’t really matter what other work we’re going to do because our mindset, Our [00:22:00] subconscious mind is going to take over. It will, right? It’s like gator versus judge here, right?
Our gator’s going to sit and take over when it comes to instinct time. So, all right. Lesson number 13, which is to stop resisting technology. I generally do not like to add more technology to my plate. I’m busy. I have to learn it. And I know it’ll take time to learn it, read the instructions, whatever it may be, but I did have three wonderful pieces of technology that I was super resistant to try.
And I just said, okay, I’m going to try it. If I don’t like it, I can like ditch it. And that’d be Slack. My virtual assistant and I use Slack to communicate. My business coach and I use Slack to communicate. It’s so helpful to not clutter your email up. It’s just makes it way easier versus all the clutter that we get and all the spam and the, and the noise that’s in the email inbox.
So if you haven’t tried it, I really suggest that you do it. If there’s somebody that you need to communicate with, but keeping that email [00:23:00] down, In your inbox, Loom, which is a great way to make short videos. Again, this kind of goes back to my virtual assistant. I made a lot of videos for her, how to videos on how to do processes for focus groups and for witness prep.
Super easy, you can get a free account. And then Otter. Which is a transcription AI technology. You can add it to your Zoom and it’ll transcribe during the Zoom or it’ll create one afterwards. It’s so much, it’s so much easier sometimes to go back through and read the transcript to understand more about exactly what was said.
It also helps, if you want to take it to the next level, to have the video playing and reading the transcript at the same time. Anyhow, great pieces of technology to help you do your job easier, or with Loom, it’s making videos, just doing it once instead of having to continually repeat it or have it written down, which is also a big part of getting your systems into place.[00:24:00]
Having a video recorded is so much easier. And then you can have that transcribed, so you don’t have to type it all out. Number 14, lesson from 2022, which would see, had a In focus groups, I’ve had a big kind of swing in the rates of paying participants. And I’ve tried to equate that to, well, it’s the economy and it’s the inflation, but I really also think it’s tied to the pandemic and people, you know, the great, everybody retiring, not retiring, but everybody leaving their jobs to go somewhere else.
and demanding more. I mean, I get a lot of complaints on my Facebook page about, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you only pay 25 an hour. Everybody else pays 150. I’m like, well, no, not everybody else does that. But also, bye, you don’t have to apply for it. But I have seen and a lot of other lawyers, again, comparing like what we were able to pay people to show up versus what we’re having to do now.
I mean, in person has to go up even more because people know, well, if you do [00:25:00] virtual, well, I want to do virtual. I don’t want to get dressed and get in the car and drive somewhere, fight traffic, find parking. Yeah, okay, great, you’re gonna give me a sandwich, that’s not enough anymore, so. I think this is a trend that’s not going away, it’s not going to go down, and I’m just preparing people out there, if you’re running your own focus groups, or if you are going to do focus groups with somebody else, then just know that there’s a lot of shift with participants and getting people to come and show up, and again, I think it’s just a conglomerate of what’s going on with the economy, conglomerate of what’s happened post pandemic, and people just looking at how they value their time differently, so just keep that in mind when you’re doing focus groups.
so much. One of the fun things about focus groups, which would be my number 15, is so many of our things that we worked hard to do with virtual focus groups, right? Electronic signature for confidentiality, electronic Google Forms, contactless payment with PayPal. Some of those things are going to translate over to in [00:26:00] person, which again, Oh, gonna make it so much easier.
And again, one of those main things would be contactless payment. I always wanted to, always did pay people cash when we were in person. I could have paid in PayPal at that time, but I just didn’t even think about it. So we’re definitely gonna keep up with the PayPal. It still gives you a receipt, but people get that cash instantly.
So I would encourage you if you were doing in person, you never did virtual, Figure out some way to get a contactless payment system going. Venmo, which is It’s owned by PayPal, PayPal, Cash, Zelle. There’s all kinds. Most of the time your bank account comes with one of those apps already. Zelle has lined up with Chase and I think a few other ones.
So just look and see if you’ve got it and make it easy on you. Make it easy on your staff. And it’s again, a good way to recruit people with getting instant cash. So keep that up. All right. Number 16 for 2022. [00:27:00] Switching back to witness preparation, either deposition or trial, and that would be visuals. We got to work on using visuals for preparation.
It’s gonna significantly speed up your time preparing folks, and they’re gonna get it so much faster. Understand what you’re saying faster by using a visual aid. It could be as simple as writing words on a page, right? Drawing a diagram, writing out a timeline, which timelines are on here. Here pretty soon is one of my big lessons.
But for 2023, visuals are. on my list. I’m really want to figure out how to translate creating visuals, using visuals in, in all that we do to prepare for focus group for trial, because it just is, it’s such a great way to get information through. quickly. And I love the idea of us practicing with [00:28:00] our clients, right?
It doesn’t have to be perfect with them. They’re trying, you’re trying, but it really does help speed up that process of learning when it comes to preparing for testimony. 17, lesson from 2022, which would be toxic clients have got to go. I had several. Toxic clients come through the door in 2022, and I’m obviously hardheaded as they are, but psychology and brain science tells us that folks become more entrenched in their own beliefs when faced with resistance.
So try as you may, They ain’t changing their minds and they’re gonna be right. So you just got to let them go and have a system for spotting this kind of resistance early on so that it’s not as painful to disengage. And I know we as, again, as a lawyer having clients, I know the exact, oh, we got to get it in, got to do it.[00:29:00]
Just let it go because that resistance is going to creep into every single part of the case. There’s no part that’s going to be easy. And so many of our clients have to follow our advice. That’s why they come to us. And the longer it goes, the more resistance builds, the worse off you are. So, you got a toxic client, you just got to let them go.
All right, number 18 lesson from 2022, which is coaching. Having a person watch, critique, analyze you while you’re doing what you do is so helpful. We have so many blind spots, and I’ll speak for myself. I have so many blind spots, so many things that I wasn’t even aware of that I was doing that were hindering.
My ability to do my job and having a coach is just so helpful. And I talked a little bit about this before about with witness prep, some people call it witness coaching. And I was always resistant to that. But [00:30:00] that’s what it is. I mean, really, we have all the information. We are trained, right? Lawyers. We know what’s going to happen.
They aren’t. And so we need to coach them because they’re gonna have to go out there on their own, right? And do their own thing. And we can help them get there. By watching and then offering again, helpful ways to do it better. If you want to do anything at the next level, got to get a coach, right? And it can’t be a friend.
It can’t be a family member. It’s got to be somebody who was trained in doing this, right? Think about sports. Anybody who’s a professional athlete has some kind of professional coach that helps them. Some things is like running, right? They give a running coach that helps them or a quarterback coach, or Steve Jobs, right, had his own coach.
Getting to that next level is going to require an extra set of eyes outside yourself to see all those blind spots. I highly encourage you to do that. There could be something specific that you need help with, or maybe you just want to learn [00:31:00] to play piano. Either way, you’re going to get way further down the road if you’ve got a coach.
Number 19. One of my personal goals for 2022 was to learn. And pay much more attention to finance and the economy, and specifically savings and retirement. Small law firms, solo law firms, sometimes we can forget to do this. It is a tax write off, yay! But sometimes setting up that system can be complicated.
I’ve read several books, but one of my favorite books that I read this year was called Retire Before Mom and Dad. I found Rob just wandering around the internet and found him on YouTube, and the way he talked about it was helpful and simple. He’s a former lawyer, so maybe that’s why I was like, Oh, he knows what he’s talking about.
I’m not sure if that made a difference for him, but he found Rob. finance, his personal hot topic. And he was a lawyer for a really long time and then started Doughroller Podcast, and [00:32:00] now he writes financial articles for Forbes, but he’s got this YouTube channel and this book. And it’s been so helpful to listen to him and his commentary as we’ve gone through the inflation changes and the economy changes and really understanding Retirement and he does this great newsletter that links to all these other folks that have good thoughts and takeaways.
But if you are curious, if you haven’t started retiring or you want to make a change or switch up something, I would strongly encourage looking him up to see if you like him. I check out a couple YouTube videos. He does a live YouTube every Wednesday where he answers questions from the audience, but lots of things that are out there right now.
But don’t be overwhelmed. That’s what I would say is I was overwhelmed, but once I started to really see things repeat themselves, you think, Oh, I just read one book. I don’t need to read more. Well, I’ve read [00:33:00] several at this point and seeing a lot of repeat information is comforting and knowing, okay, there’s not this vast amount of information.
I just don’t know. There’s really not when it comes to retirement. And ways to save for retirement, but you know, there’s some questions that you should look at and think about and ways, creative ways to save for retirement and as Solo, a small law firm, I think there’s, that’s something we should be looking at, at all times.
But really, like I said, I’ll put a link in the show notes to his book, but if you’re just curious, I would just check out a YouTube video and see if you like what he says. So back to work related stuff, timelines, uh, think medical treatment timelines, case event timelines, job history timelines. I spent a lot of time in 2022 creating timelines for clients, whether it be focus group, whether it be trial, whether it be witness prep.
And this just an easy [00:34:00] way to organize things in their brains. We want things, chronology, we want a chronology, and if you put things out of order, we don’t go back and rearrange it the best way, and my best example is we did a focus group recently where somebody read a narrative to the focus group, and it was about a situation that occurred at a bar, and he told the story unfolding chronology, like chronologically, and then after he finished that, he went and added a detail about something that happened earlier in the evening.
Now, They, it was, they were red, right, so it was just an auditory, right, so they had to take information, they had one picture of the bar. And they didn’t put it back in order. They assumed something negative because it was placed in the narrative a little bit. It was out of order, but they didn’t go back in and say, well, that fact actually goes and fits up here in the chain of events.
They don’t do that. And so that’s why, like, having that visual aid of a timeline is [00:35:00] so helpful. And again, super, you get a whole lot faster, but I always think people lose track of time. Things come at us so much more quickly than they used to. Email, text message, news, things change so fast. And our brains can really only take in so much, so some of it’s got to go somewhere.
Especially when we’re getting ready for, you’re trying to get a jury. i. e. a viable downloading of copyrighted content software. So it’s important to remember this. You’re not doing it for the copyright. Right. You’re doing it for the beneficiary of that right. You’re doing it for the beneficiary of removing copyright.
It’s your own permission. Because that’s the final item you need to use to protect your internal system. That’s stems from what I feel like is the purpose of that excuse. story. All right, 21. 2022 was a big [00:36:00] lesson of record it, document it, write it down. And I’m really good about taking notes. I’ve got about a thousand little pieces of paper I’m staring at on my desk right now.
And I had to start training myself to put it down. into the system. So a couple of ways that I did that was zoom. If you’ve done any kind of zoom with me, I generally we’re going to record it, right? Cause we’re going to talk about stuff and I’m going to take notes, but I’m not going to remember everything that’s said.
So I want to make sure record so I can go back and watch it again. And I encourage everybody, you got a focus group video, you video your witness prep, right? Watch it again, but just speed it up. Watch it on two times, right? Get it done quickly. You’re still going to get all the information out of there.
But if you got Zoom, hit the record button, right? Even free Zoom will give you 40 minutes free, right? All ideas, write them down. Call notes, write it down. I got the Adobe app on my phone that will allow you to basically scan anything using the camera and it’ll make a PDF and email it to you. [00:37:00] Then that goes straight into the file.
Or, a couple other apps is Obsidian, which is a pretty extensive note taking app that you can go on any laptop, and Kraft. I use Kraft on my cell phone to take notes. A lot of times, I may be somewhere, either traveling or sitting, waiting for an appointment or sitting somewhere and, oh, I get an idea or something comes to my head.
I gotta write it down, otherwise I’m gonna lose it. And, lawyers, I feel like we’re pretty notorious about carrying so much information in our heads. We get it out and then we remember it, or it’s there for later. So record it, document it. That’s a huge lesson from 2022. I’m going to get better at doing Obsidian, which allows tagging and all this like crazy organization of things and recall.
As I go further into it, I will definitely keep you all updated. Last lesson from 2022. And this is probably a lesson that is helpful to remember every single year. And that is. Take more vacation. Take time [00:38:00] off. Life is short. People around you want to spend time with you. I think that we’re all reminded of somebody that we’re not as close to, or somebody that we lost from this world.
And sending that thank you note, send that text message, it really makes a difference. And there are people in our lives that we should probably hug on and appreciate more. And it’s just a good reminder that If we need to take a little vacation, we should just do it because at the end of the day, you don’t want to look back and think, gosh, I worked all the way through that and I really, I wish I had done it differently and we can do that now.
You can do that today and I encourage you to do that. I made a conscious effort to do that [00:39:00] this year and I am so glad that I did. I’m not going to regret. Sending those notes. I’m not going to regret taking that time because it’s so much more sweet and precious when it’s limited, but all of our time is limited.
And we, I feel like sometimes we forget that. So 2023, it’s going to be about doing the same thing and telling people how much you appreciate them, saying thank you. And maybe even just smiling, asking people how they’re doing, to make them feel better. It’s going to make you feel better because it’s just moment to moment and we can get lost and forget all the things we learned from 2022 or 2021.
But sometimes when it comes down to just doing that one thing, giving someone that one hug, that really, that’s how you make people feel. And that’s, I think, what we always need to be reminded of. It’s [00:40:00] how we make people feel. So with that, thank you so much for listening. This was a really long podcast.
Lots of lessons in here. I just want to know, just real fast, we’re almost done, what you can look forward to for 2023, we are going to do more interviews, going to have at least one interview a month with somebody, we’re going to really try to hone in on persuasion and influence. We’re also going to do, Try to do some more book reviews.
Again, books that can help us in our profession and do better and prepare better. So all that being said, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate hanging in there. It has been a wild ride for a year and I appreciate your patience because I know not all these podcasts have probably been humdingers, but sometimes that’s what happens.
As I have also learned in the podcast world. So thank you again. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate or view it on your favorite platform. Share it with somebody who may want to try to prepare better. All right. Thank you so [00:41:00] much.
As a trial lawyer, what is your mindset around deposition preparation? Today, we focus our discussion around that. Lawyers have different mindsets going into deposition preparation. You want to get the most value from every single case but it’s also important to do things using a humanistic approach.
At the end of the day, our mindset should be focused on helping our client as they go through seemingly difficult chapters in their lives. They’re probably going through something horrible, whether that’s related to employment, injury, or a business situation – that’s impacting their life. And as their lawyer, you’re there to help them deal with whatever legal situation they’re in.
In this episode, you will hear:
The different mindsets lawyers have when approaching deposition
Selling your case is a disappointing mindset
The importance of shifting your mindset and using a humanistic approach
How your 30-minute conversations reflect the value you want to have
Subscribe and Review
Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet.
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Supporting Resources:
If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth: 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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome. It’s Elizabeth, your host for trial lawyer prep. Thank you so much for joining us in this new episode.
It’s going to be pretty short and sweet, and the focus will be mindset, our mindset, right? What is your lawyer mindset around [00:01:00] deposition preparation? And this came up for me here recently, several different locations. There was a listserv conversation that I read about woodshedding the client. There was a presentation that I saw about woodshedding the client.
And then I had a conversation with another lawyer discussing how he prepares clients and what he tells them to do. That’s really kind of what set me on this idea for this. episode because I realize my mindset is different than other folks and I’ve worked significantly hard on understanding what it is it should be and how to help people, right?
If my mind is focused on helping the person and my mindset is that, yes, this is a case and this is something I’m going to make money on, but it’s also an opportunity to help this person in [00:02:00] their life. They’re probably going through something horrible, whatever may be, an employment situation, an injury situation, a business situation.
It’s changing their life and they’re definitely at a place where they don’t want to be in your office having to hire somebody to help them with a legal situation. That’s not always been my mindset. That’s obviously something I had to learn along the way, but once I was attuned to what my mind was thinking about, that also then attuned my actions at what I picked up on, what I heard and what I looked for when I spoke with clients.
In listening to lawyers here recently, I understand why we get in that mindset of this is a case. We’ve got to talk to the adjusters. This is the time where clients need to just basically sell their case. Those are actually words somebody said, well, this is us. What I tell clients is this is the opportunity to sell their case to the adjuster.
They need to sound the best, look the best, do everything they [00:03:00] can to basically sell it to get the most money available. That’s a pretty disappointing mindset. I mean, I walked in to hire somebody and they basically told me it was my job to sell my case, meaning this factual thing that happened to me that changed my life.
I would kind of have a pause and then I’d have a thousand questions. How do I sell myself? A lot of people hate sales. So I, that just seems to spin off into a whole nother level, but I also think people would take that definitely the wrong way. And the other conversation that I heard from this listserv was about woodshedding the client for specific questions that they may get that defense may try to trick them with.
And at the end of the day, there was lots of advice. A lot of it came from the same mindset of your client needs to say exactly what you tell them. And they need to be. selling [00:04:00] the case. That’s their job and deposition is to sell the case. And I quite frankly think that’s your job, right? We’re the advocates here, zealously representing our clients.
Our client’s job is to come in and tell the truth, tell their story, tell their impact, to stand up, to cross exam, to not fall for tricks. That’s a huge shift that we can make if we choose. But, What is up against changing our mindset? Well, it’s the fact that this is our job and as a personal injury, that’s difficult to get out of that mindset because it’s eat which kill.
Well, that’s a lot of lawyers too, but you want to get the most value of every single case. And so you want your clients to do some of that lifting for you. But instead of taking a very, humanistic approach and thinking about it in different terms, like what the jury would be thinking about. If you tried to sell your case to a [00:05:00] jury, they would not be having it one bit.
They would smell you out like the rat that you would be and dump it. So I don’t know why that would work for insurance adjuster because they have the same feelers, spidey sense for that information as well. So this is episodes really more about a question, you know, what is your mindset? When you’re going to get a client ready.
for deposition, what is on your mind and how does that then craft what you say to the client or not say how much time you spend with them or not. But either way, if you’re thinking about it, or if not, I always wonder 30 minutes is generally 30 minutes to an hour is generally about the time that most lawyers spend preparing their clients.
And how does that 30 minute, one hour, how does your conversation reflect the value that you have, or that you want to gain from this file? Don’t [00:06:00] think you’re gaining it from the clients from the file. How does that help? What can we do to change how we think about this? Because if we change how we think about it, we will look at it differently.
We’ll work it up differently and it will be reflected. In the value of the case, a hundred percent. Every time I hear from lawyers that take less cases, that they turn their mindset, it’s not about turning and burning files. It’s about helping people. It’s about talking to juries, getting people to work through this phase of their life.
It changes. And I guarantee you that you get more value out of the files. I’ve not talked to one lawyer said, you know what? It didn’t work. I’m going back the other way. Now, something else may pull somebody back the other way, and it may be, again, a different kind of mindset, but that’s my thought we’ll leave you with for this episode.
What’s your mindset around deposition prep? And also for next episode, we are going to do [00:07:00] a top 22 things out of 2022 that I’ve learned along the way in podcasting and also just in all the endeavors that I have gone through this year. So some of them will be very practical things, some of them will be probably pretty personal things.
But hope that you tune in for next episode. Either way, this episode drops right before two major holidays. Hope that you enjoy that. Take some time off to rest. And recharge. And until next time, thank you.
As we’re approaching 2023, this is the perfect time for planning, especially if you have cases that are going to be filed in 2023. And one useful case planning tool is a pre-litigation focus group.
Maybe you’ve had this case for a couple of months now and you’ve done a little bit of investigating. So you have a little understanding of the facts around what happened, but you haven’t actually filed the case yet. This can also be the time for you to use a pre-litigation focus group for more in-depth planning.
The perfect time to use a focus group is when you have the information that allows you to make some predictions, and there aren’t any huge missing facts going on so you can pretty well predict the damages.
In this episode, I’m going to discuss planning for focus groups before you file a case, the importance of a pre-litigation focus group, what it looks like, what things you need to be looking for, and the benefits of using it.
In this episode, you will hear:
What happens during the pre-litigation focus group
Questions to ask and where to gather more information
Factoring in your expenses in terms of time and money
Ways to pick a case for a pre-litigation focus group
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.
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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode.
We are rounding out 2022 and I thought this might be a good time to talk a little bit about planning. I’m going to be doing a [00:01:00] live LinkedIn this week on planning for 2023, but focus group planning. And I thought we could go a little bit more in depth here on this episode about specifically using focus groups before you file a case.
So in this scenario, you would have probably had this case for a couple of months, probably, probably done a little bit of investigating, understand the facts a little bit about what happened, but you haven’t yet filed it. And I love using a focus group at this point in time where you have information.
You can make some predictions. There aren’t any big missing facts going on. You can pretty well predict a little bit what the damages will be. But you can use a pre lit focus group for a little bit more in depth planning. And that’s what I kind of want to talk about today is why we would be [00:02:00] running these things, what we’d be looking for, and really when we talk about planning, how can we get our bang for our buck here?
And overall, when I talk about what kind of focus group this would be, We’re talking about a very short, more than likely, it’s going to at least take 50 minutes. You may be able to get it done shorter than that, but I always encourage people to set aside at least 50 minutes when you’re going to go in and talk to a focus group about a particular case, because you’re going to have a narrative.
You may need to set the scene with some photos. Now that’s different than if we’re just going to go in and talk about a concept, we’re going We’re going to ask some really straightforward questions. We’re going to practice some jury selection that’s different, but when you have a narrative and you need to set up some information and probably give visual, I always say, try to leave yourself like 50 minutes.
And so that’s what I would encourage you to do here is have very neutral narrative of the facts, some [00:03:00] pictures, right? And sometimes pictures can eliminate possibilities in people’s minds. And helpfully explain things in a very quick fashion so that you can move forward with asking questions. And this style of questioning would be very open and what do you see, how this happened, what would be your concerns, what sticks out, or what could be missing very big, broad questions.
You’re given information. You just want to get whatever their first reaction is to the information or what’s going on in the set of facts. And that kind of leads me to why we’re doing this. So again, we’re asking questions to really figure out what stands out to them, what would be concerns for them, and those can be good things.
All those can be bad things. So we definitely want to make sure that we’re trying to find any negative facts, any negative assumptions that people may be making negative attitudes that could be out there about it. And again, also positive things. Hey, what are the positive facts? [00:04:00] What are things that just stand out in people’s minds?
Where are they needing more information is always a big question I like to ask. And this kind of leads you to, with all this information, we’ve got a good column and a bad column. Where does this lead us and to where we need to gather more information? And that can mean, what is that expense going to be for me as the lawyer?
And by expense, I mean, how much time? Is that going to take, is it going to be a big time endeavor or not? How much money is that going to cost in the sense of case expenses? Am I to hire a third party, whether it may be an investigator or a company to do a forensic exam or a download a vehicle. And will I need to have any kind of expert then to get this information in?
And of course, we’re talking about witness statements or cell phone records, right? There are companies that will do all that, of course, for you and then experts out there as well. And so we get this information. So is it reliable? [00:05:00] If you’re just running one focus group, one pre lit focus group, is it really reliable?
Well, you could certainly do more than one. You’re not limited, but again, I always try to think about, let’s be conscious of our case expenses when it comes to these. I think you can, as long as you’ve conducted it in a very neutral way or had somebody else conduct it for you, I think you can pretty well rely on the information.
Sometimes we go in with what we think the jury is going to tell us, but the feedback that I continually get from folks that I work with is they always learn something new from the focus group at some kind of level, something new. So I think you’re always going to have new ideas or new thoughts, new attitudes that you’re going to see when you run focus groups.
And when we do our pre lit focus group, that allows us then to kind of plan going forward, thinking about discovery to get what other information may be out there. And again, you could be trying [00:06:00] to see, is there any more bad information out there? Is there any more good information out there? At this point, it may help you with your themes.
I feel like most people say most trial lawyers go into cases with several different themes. And again, they’ll go with the strongest theme where the evidence is. Sometimes you may just go in with one or two. And then again, where does that evidence fall to reinforce those themes? And of course, in planning terms of case expenses, which we’ve talked a little bit about, will you have to go find that information at what.
What money expense, and would you need an expert to be able to come in if you do? Do they provide education? What are they bringing in? All those things kind of help you with the case expenses. And sometimes we know what kind of insurance policy we’re dealing with on the other side or what kind of ability to recover from the other side.
And if you don’t, of course, that’s. Generally, number one thing we always get first, and that’s in the federal rules, initial disclosures, and in [00:07:00] most states as well, that’s kind of first blush, they’re supposed to get that right out the gate so then we can plan around that. When would you pick a case for this?
Well, you could have a case with an unusual fact pattern, maybe something that you haven’t experienced before. Maybe you’ve got a fact pattern with unusual damages, not really sure how strong a liability is. I mean, you’ve got really strong liability and not so sure about the damages. Lots of ways to pick a case to do this with.
Again, I think you’re going to learn at first blush what’s on people’s minds, and that may go one way or the other for you, but at least you’ve got that always in your mind as you’re working forward. I’ve got two particular examples to talk about with you, and the first one turned out to be negative. And in the sense that they, the lawyers I was working with, wanted to run a focus group before they filed this case because they just weren’t even sure they could get liability, or responsibility, on [00:08:00] the parties that had the Available resources for recovery.
Several different entities and defendants were involved. It’s a fairly simple fact pattern where an individual is working at a construction site, the The building itself, nearly done, just cosmetic finish out kind of stuff. And the person was working and suffered a catastrophic injury, paraplegic. And of course it’s under construction.
So there’s again, lots of construction folks involved, the building owner, the tenant, and unfortunately the responsible party who they needed to be tagged with. Liability did not come true in our focus group, and so it wasn’t necessarily they placed everything on the injured person, but more they placed it on a few other people in the line before it got to the party with the recoverable resources.
So as a lawyer, they got that information. [00:09:00] And they decided this would not be a case that they’d be able to file a lawsuit for because it was so tenuous, the law was going to be tenuous, the facts, again, according to the focus group was going to be pretty tenuous, but the case expense was going to be astronomical.
So high risk situation there. So that is where, again, focus groups significantly help people make that kind of decision. How risky is this particular case on all fronts? And another example that I have, medical malpractice case, and when we run a pre lit, Focus group for any kind of case, but really, sometimes we have more things that are medical related or scientific kind of related.
We always want to go in asking how much they really understand about what’s going on and understood. Where are the. So in this particular example, there were quite a few [00:10:00] gaps in understanding. People generally grasped all the narrative facts. But when you ask the big question, okay, so what caused the brain bleed?
What caused the heart attack? They don’t know. So that’s kind of where it’s like, all right, let’s figure out what they do know, ask some questions and really look at, okay, how can we best educate this? Do we need an expert? Probably not. Could we get this done with some demonstratives? Probably so. Some education pieces here and there, but really, as always, causation is a big issue for medical practice cases.
So helping get people down that road better with some kind of demonstration, demonstrative or education is always helpful. And those folks were a hundred percent moving forward because as far as liability and that kind of stuff. It was easy. It was a hundred percent good to go on that, but again, that causation part was a little bit missing.
So both those examples just gave the lawyers more information to assess [00:11:00] the good, the bad, assess the risk, assess, Hey, case expense wise, this is going to be a lot, not a lot. How much investment do we need to make in time and in money? And so that’s why I encourage you if you are, you know, it’s the beginning of 2023.
You probably got a few cases in there that you’re thinking, okay, well, these are going to be filed in 2023. Do you have any on that list? That you might need to check in, just double check and make sure, or that you want to learn a little bit more about before you start that discovery phase and have some themes in mind before you go into those depositions when you’re gathering up that evidence and looking for those documents, right, that will fit themes that the focus group gives back to you.
Well, I hope that this was helpful, lots of information there, but if you are thinking about doing a pre lit focus group, you have questions, please don’t hesitate to email me. I have lots of forms for virtual focus groups and also that can [00:12:00] help with in person focus groups as well. So just shoot me an email.
Now you can also find a lot of those forms on my website, LyricLawFirm. com until then, thank you so much.
As a trial lawyer, you probably know what goes into client preparation like the back of your hand but there could still be things missing in your process that you wish to improve on.
In this episode, I’m going to discuss four simple advice tips for successful client prep. These are simple yet sometimes overlooked, tried and true tips for nearly every single client and every single case.
These are small things you don’t want to miss during client preparation so you can learn more about the client, have an easier time preparing the case, and have more success at your client depositions.
In this episode, you will hear:
Why you should prepare the client alone
The pitfalls of preparing people together
Giving the client homework before the first client preparation session
The importance of creating timelines together and making them interactive
Breaking down the client preparation into two sessions
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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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hi there, Elizabeth, your host. I have a very short, sweet podcast episode for you today.
We are going to talk about four simple advice tips for successful client prep. And these are simple, but [00:01:00] they’re sometimes overlooked. And where these things came from is I teach. Uh, witness prep for many years with the Kenan Trial Institute. And these are common questions that I get asked, but also when I’m not teaching this, I work one on one with clients.
And so I’ve done that for many years and it’s a multi step process and found that these are tried and true tips for nearly every single client, every single case. So these are things when I say success. They’re really small things that are going to help you learn more about the client, have an easier time preparing them, have more success at your depositions with your clients.
And by success, I mean, they’re not going to get tripped up by things that the opposing counsel may ask. They’re going to be much more thoughtful and they’re going to have a lot better memory and recall based on some of these [00:02:00] things that we are going to talk about. So let me jump in very quickly. And again, like I said, Simple tips, quick episode, first tip, and there’s four of them total.
So first tip is prepare the client solo. Do not prepare clients together. And I’m talking about maybe we’ve got parents or we’ve got spouses or we’ve got maybe Two folks are in the same wreck or both in the same incident, don’t prepare them together. They’ve had an individual experience. And so their perception is going to be different.
And what happens is when you group people together, one person tends to speak more than the other. And they also can speak for the other person, right? So parents will speak for children. The spouse that’s not injured will talk more than the injured spouse. That’s a total normal human dynamic that can happen in those kinds of relationships.
What we really want to do is make sure we are [00:03:00] gathering what this particular client experienced and giving them that one on one information for preparation. And in my experience, people will share much more when they’re solo. Versus when they’re with their parent, their spouse, their friend, and a couple of reasons why one is you’re focusing your attention on them.
So they may feel more compelled to give more, but also they’re seeing that you’re giving like individual attention. And so they want to make sure that they also give you more of their attention. Some of the pitfalls of actually preparing people together is they’ll just feel like share the same story versus actually giving maybe their own individual perception, which none, it’s a lie, but it’s not necessarily individual.
Sometimes we have people who have different concerns. One concern may be that they [00:04:00] don’t want to share about the impact of their injuries or how important their job was to them. And. They won’t share that if the other person’s in the room, maybe they’re scared to share in front of that person. And sometimes people just don’t want to share what they’re concerned about or questions they may have because they don’t want to be embarrassed.
They don’t want to waste time. There’s all kinds of things that go through people’s minds. So this is why I say remove the barrier, just prepare to share. I’m going to get there pretty soon because I know some people think, I don’t have the time to prepare people individually. Sometimes just spending 15, 30 minutes solo with somebody will do wonders and make you say, Oh, I need to spend more time one on one with this person.
It can also sometimes correct behavior as well. Tip number two, which would be give homework, always give homework before that first client preparation session. And it can be even as [00:05:00] simple as before you come to our meeting, I want you to bring three questions with you. That’s it. Three questions. Look how simple that is.
And one, you want to get them thinking, right? You want them to be thinking about the preparation, then be thinking about the deposition. It takes a little bit of work off of you, right? Because the Nick Cummins is the first thing you talk about. But also you are setting up a frame for what they’re expected to do.
They’re expected to participate. This is not just a sit and listen to my lawyer. Tell me what to do. I’m gonna be Participating in this and it’s a quick, easy way to get them to start working on getting things together, thinking about it, getting their brain working towards it. Just give that really simple homework.
You can ask people to bring in their concerns. Ask them, that’s what I say, make it as simple as just, at our first meeting I want you to bring three questions for me. Three questions that you’re going to have for me about this deposition. Super simple. Third tip would be use a [00:06:00] timeline or create a timeline together.
Timelines are great tools to refresh the memory. Depositions generally take Or occur years and months after the events that are in the lawsuit. So we really need to be refreshing memory And it is a fantastic visual aid to do that’s why I say do it together Even if it’s as simple as taking out a dry erase marker and putting a line On your board and then just taking things off together.
Okay. Here’s the date of the crash. Okay. Here’s the date of that surgery. Here’s the date. You lost that job. Okay. Here’s the date and it’s just, you’re putting things together for them in a big picture way. And as I’ve talked a little bit about visuals before, and we’re going to spend more time in other episodes talking about visuals, because I think we really have a great opportunity to speed up the learning and also retaining.
What they’re learning in their memory refresh. And that’s really what we want to do is. [00:07:00] Let’s go through an exercise instead of, hey, let’s just look at all this stuff. It’s all these documents, right, in a timeline that’s, you got asking people to keep multiple things together in their brain at one time.
And I’m saying, Hey, use a timeline to make this work quicker. And also it’s interactive if you do it together. If you use a timeline with the client, again, if it’s already made, that’s totally fine. But just remember from a standpoint of simplicity, keep it all on one page, like an eight by 10, or keep it all on two or three slides of a PowerPoint.
Because again, we really want to get that overall big picture and we overall make sure we’re refreshing that memory. If we get things too large and disjointed, you’ve got a medical timeline that’s 50 pages long, that’s too long, right? That’s just way too complicated, right? We’re missing the big picture here.
We really want to keep it simple. And again, refreshing that memory in a way that it’s going to help them retain it for that deposition. Last simple advice tip, which would [00:08:00] be do two sessions. Two preparation sessions, even if we’re talking about two 30 minute phone calls, stay with me here. I know a lot of people are thinking, well, what if I spend more time?
That’s totally fine. Sometimes we put all of our time together in one session, like the day before, maybe the two days before the deposition. And what I’m encouraging you to do is whatever time you have allocated, split it into two sessions. Or maybe you do, you know. Um, 20 minutes on the front end, 20, 80 or however you want to split it up, but you always want to have a little bit of time in between the session.
That’s why I say due to, because that allows them to really absorb and start searching their brains for more information, more stories, more questions, right? They’re really able to now, Oh, they understand so much more about what it is they’re about to do. Whoa. What it is that their job is. Yikes. And they may be excited [00:09:00] about it.
It doesn’t really matter, but that time allows your brain to keep working on thinking about all of it. And it’s done on a subconscious level, but. That also allows them to really learn the information and that’s what I mean by absorbing it. So when they come back for that second session with you, they may have more questions.
Where, how does this fit in? Right? They’ve been thinking about it. Right. That’s what you want. You want some absorption. You want some questions or even better than they come and say, hey, we talked about this and this came to my mind. I totally forgot this story about how I tried to go volunteer and I couldn’t do it.
Great. So. You want to get those extra things and be able to be hands on when they come in the door. You don’t want that to be happening at the deposition because that’s It could be something that needs to be fine tuned, it could be something that needs to be organized, maybe something that doesn’t apply at all, or it could be a question that really needs to be answered instead [00:10:00] of being left lingering in the deposition.
So that’s why I encourage you to break up into two sessions to allow that time in there to absorb and search their brains more. It also allows them time to solidify their understanding. of what’s happening and that will give you a better opportunity to ask better questions, deeper questions, more challenging questions, get them to another level of being uncomfortable with what they’re going to be asked.
We don’t want to scare the pants off of them at the first meeting, right? We want to get them set, want to get them what to expect. And then maybe in our second session, then we’re getting them to that It’s going to get uncomfortable. Here’s how it’s going to get uncomfortable, right? Because we don’t want to scare them right off the bat and then just scare them.
They just, they don’t ever want to come back. Then they think there’s nothing I can do, right? I’m powerless over the situation. So we just want to divide and conquer here. That’s why I say two sessions. All right, now let’s go back [00:11:00] through very quickly. These are simple things. They’re simple not to do as well, but that’s why, again, I want to make sure number one, prepare the client solo.
Don’t pair people up together in preparation meetings. Number two, give homework. Even if it’s just a super simple, Hey, when you come into our first meeting for zoom, when you come into our first in person meeting, bring three questions that you have for me about deposition. Number three, use a timeline or create a timeline together, right?
Really awesome tool to refresh, to get that 30, 000 foot view. It could be as simple as drawing a line on a page. And lastly, do two sessions. Split your time up, split that preparation time that you have allocated to allow the client more absorption time and things to solidify so that you can work even better with them when they come back because they’re going to stand on much solid ground versus still feeling uncertain about what’s going to happen.
Okay. I hope that [00:12:00] this was helpful for you. It’s a short one here. And that’s what I always try to do short and sweet. If you have questions for me, or if you have a topic that you’d like covered on the podcast, or if you want to come on the podcast, I’d love having guests, please shoot me an email. It will be in the show notes.
Bonding versus preparing a client for deposition are two things that we are told we need to do as trial lawyers to set ourselves up for success. Indeed, both are vital and important parts of client interaction, but where do we draw the line between the two?
Sometimes, when you’ve already built a solid relationship with a client, this can be difficult to separate. But bonding and preparing a client for deposition are two different things. They serve different purposes. Bonding is taking a separate interest in our clients, outside of the legal matter. It’s as simple as asking clients about their families or sharing a common interest. You could also be sharing with this person about yourself or other family details. It’s an important part of any relationship because it helps establish rapport with people. Conversely, preparing a client for deposition is a highly focused training and coaching task that involves things like teaching the client what to expect.
In this episode, we’re going to talk more about how they’re different and what you can do to resist the urge to bond with a client so you can bring it all back to the main task of preparing them for deposition.
In this episode, you will hear:
How small talk sets you up for success
Your specific tasks as you’re preparing your client for deposition
Things you have to do during preparation, which you never do when bonding
Resisting the urge to move into the relationship-building mode
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.
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.
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome to a new episode of trial lawyer prep with me, your host, Elizabeth Larrick.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend. I hope this will be hitting you after Thanksgiving or whenever you choose to tune in. But this is a podcast dedicated [00:01:00] to trial lawyers getting ready for trial, getting ready for depositions, but basically preparing their cases for success through thoughtful preparation.
And today we are going to talk about bonding versus preparing a client for deposition. And these are two things that we are told we need to do, and we being trial lawyers, we need to do to have success. They’re both vital. They’re important parts of client interaction. And I see this happen many, many times when I sit down to prepare clients.
And so I thought this is probably something other people can get trapped up on. So I want to talk about what are these two tasks, right? Like how they’re different. How bonding and preparing client for deposition are different and they serve different purposes and how we can get this urge to do this bonding with the client during deposition prep.
That’s real and how we can avoid doing that [00:02:00] and keeping these jobs very separate because brain science tells us we can only do a one thing at a time and we don’t want to bond. bond with our client at DepoPrep. Right. We don’t want to move into that and we don’t want to endanger our preparation time and risk the client’s deposition.
And so let’s talk a little bit about bonding because it does happen that we bond with our clients. It’s something that we need to do, but really it’s taking it at face value, what is bonding? Well, it’s taking a separate interest in our clients outside of the legal matter. And it’s as simple as asking folks about their family and when you see them every time, sharing a common interest, sharing with this person about yourself or other family details.
And it’s really, it’s an important part of the relationship for any relationship. It’s very important. And it really does help establish rapport. with people and tells us that small talk really does help people succeed, especially [00:03:00] they’ve studied this basically in adversarial negotiations that even just a little bit of small talk beforehand can help negotiations succeed, getting people to feel comfortable, feel at ease.
And so it’s something that you must do. That’s something that’s talked about in the book influenced by Robert Cialdini. Something that we really need to be doing. And again, I know that we’re not negotiating with our clients. We’re just trying to basically bond with them. Most of the time our clients spend a large period of time, longer than sometimes they want, a year, two years, four years, five years with us trying to handle a problem.
And so really the purpose of bonding is about relationship building. And when we hear about this is when lawyers urging other people to go share a meal with the client, go to their home and have a visit, keep up with client’s birthdays, anniversaries, their kid birthdays, pets, sports, hobbies, but it’s something again, it’s outside the legal matter.
So really relationship building, when we talk about this, if it’s something that. Maybe you struggle with, or you have questions [00:04:00] about how to do this in a good way, I really would suggest reading Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Total classic. If you haven’t read it in a while, like, put it on your list to do because it’s, I find it to be a super helpful refresher when it comes to really simple things that we can do that people light up with.
One of the simple things he suggests is using people’s first name and remembering. It really does help. Okay, so here’s this task of bonding, but let me switch and really talk about preparing for deposition because that task is really a high focused training and coaching task, right? I mean, when I think about preparing for deposition, we really are trying to accomplish three really big tasks.
And the first one being teaching the client what to expect, but we have to do that teaching in a format That makes sense and with language that they understand. And so many times I hear lawyers [00:05:00] explaining depositions and using words, objection, elating questions, testimony, rules of evidence, discovery, all these words that total legal jargon, not anything that clients use regularly.
And when we do that, like, they’re not retaining it because it’s like, let me give you an example. When we go to talk to an expert, let’s just happen that this expert’s a rocket scientist, right? That rocket scientist is going to probably use terms and phrases that are 100 percent foreign and that can’t be understood in context clues.
So you’re having to like, whoa, whoa, I got to step back here. You’re using all these words that, Like, I don’t understand. Now, lawyers will do that, right? Lawyers, hey, you need to under, help me understand what that word is. Clients won’t do that, right? They won’t ask that question out of embarrassment, like, wait a minute, like, what is a leading question?
What do you mean, what’s the word objection? So we really have to stop and teach them in a format with language that they understand, because that’s hurdle number one, right? Getting them to [00:06:00] understand and what they can expect. The next hurdle would be organizing all that information that they have to share.
Because they have a lot, and a lot of it could be past, it could be stuff that’s involved with the lawsuit. Thinking about injury cases, we’ve got to organize all the information about injuries, medical treatment, future medical needs, limitations, the pain, impact to family and self. That’s a lot of stuff to organize.
We’ve got if you’ve got an employment case, right? We’ve got job events, job history, probably lots of documents to organize. And in this phase, we’re really helping refresh them on it. But also we need to help them organize it around. The areas that they’re going to get hit on, but also just with questions are going to be asked.
It’s not a normal conversation in their minds, right? They’re thinking it’s going to be questions that don’t have unusual terms or are phrased in a way they’re going to understand. So that’s kind of where the organizing [00:07:00] helps. So once you do that, we taught them what to expect. Number two, we’re organizing the information that they’ve got in their brains.
And finally, number three is testing, right? Role playing with the client, giving them that experience, and really testing what you worked on. So the purpose of preparing for deposition is a hundred percent case related, right? It’s not relationship building like bonding. Now, it will benefit your relationship, but in that preparation, you’re going to have to cover uncomfortable issues or bad habits.
And you want to do that before the defense does, but that’s not something you would ever do in bonding. So two really separate tasks. And I definitely would encourage people to do the bonding early. Often, you could do bonding on breaks when people first come in with icebreakers, but once you turn the task to deposition prep, then we really need to be honed in and focused on [00:08:00] doing that task and not moving back and forth between bonding and preparing.
Because again, we can really only do one thing at a time. And this is so easy to occur because we’re sitting down, we’re talking about events, we’re talking about what’s happened since the original events from the lawsuit, what impacts, repercussions, and inevitably conversations turn to difficult things, life changing events, severe injuries, loss of a job, loss of a business.
These are personal things and When you hear them, you want to be empathetic. You want to be sympathetic. But this is where we can creep in back into that bonding and move away from pair pairing for deposition. So let me give you an example. Sitting down to prepare, a young man, he’s 22 years old. His father’s died in an explosion.
And Sitting in to prepare [00:09:00] him for his deposition and we’ve got a couple people in the room and basically having the client kind of walk through growing up. Things he liked to do, how was his dad involved, and the client conversation turns to growing up and he had a very serious passion for breakdancing and went to competitions, and the, an associate in the room pipes in.
Oh yeah, me too. Oh my gosh. Do you know this person? Oh, I used to dance at this studio. Oh yeah, did you do? And the conversation takes a 20 minute detour. Now again, there’s nothing wrong with the conversation. They’re talking about common interests, things that they have in common, but now we’re having a conversation where it’s, Relationship building, and we’ve moved away from our task of we need to learn more about him.
We need to get more information on the table about this. Get him to go to a deeper emotional level to tell us kind of how dad’s [00:10:00] involved or maybe dad wasn’t involved, right? I mean that could be a painful thing. So, it’s so easy to slip into that, right? That, oh, like, it’s a perfect opportunity to talk about things that we have in common.
So, what can you do? Because you may be thinking, well, geez, Elizabeth, I don’t want to be a jerk. I feel for this person. They hired me. I want to be their champion, and I can’t be this heartless person who just sits there while they’re dumping their hearts out. And I know that, totally understand that, and it’s natural.
We’re humans. There’s gonna be a pull towards and somebody’s having an emotional moment, right? You want to get them a tissue, you want to comfort them, but Here’s what I’m telling. You got to resist that urge to move into that relationship building mode and that can look like talking about yourself, talking about another client with the same problem, right?
Trying to comfort them, right? Or even trying to sometimes solve the problem or the issue. Hey, [00:11:00] here’s how we can fix that for you. Oh, here, let’s do this thing instead. It’s like, wait a second, wait, wait, wait, wait, we can’t move into that mode because we want to keep them where they are. But we want to learn more and fit it into where we’re going with our preparation.
So what can you do? We’ll always want to be listened attentively, which means eyes up. We’re not writing anything down. If you want to comfort, just nod your head along that they’re going to get that affirmative agreement from you by nodding and ask questions to show that you’re engaged. Tell me more about that.
What was that like? You want to avoid some of those clinical lawyer questions though. When did that start? Well, when did it end? Did you tell your doctor? Did you make notes? That’s our lawyer minds working, like how can I get this into evidence? Where’s the discovery parts of things? And you will be so glad because you’ll learn so much more, but also Again, you’re giving that person the importance they need in that moment, but you’re staying focused [00:12:00] on the task.
And so really, again, this is the hardest part is for us, right? Clients are there to do whatever we ask them to do, but this is where it’s like, hey, if you feel like you’re slipping into that place, just go back and check, like, okay. How do I get us back on task? And sometimes it happens, but remember, that’s your job as lawyers to get back on task.
Now, bonding, right, that’s something, again, you can do on lunch breaks, you can do on breaks in the hallway when they come in. But once you turn to that depo prep, that highly focused three parts that we’re working towards, you got to resist, right? That bonding urge, that relationship building kind of moments, right?
Where you’re sharing something of your, of yourself, right? Or you’re trying to comfort them. And that’s really where it comes from. And we really just kind of want to resist that. Um, and keep everything focused on the client to learn more, to be able to prepare them better. And along the way, you’ll be able to, once you get through whatever the emotional moment you’re having and learning more, it’s okay to [00:13:00] come back and ask those clinical questions that you’ve got.
But just know like there will be a time and a place to ask those questions, right? We’ve got the organizational part of things, right? We’ve got the role play part of things. There’s a couple of different phases there where you can work in some of those questions that you need to answer. So I hope that this.
episode was helpful, right? So you can kind of catch yourself if you end up falling into that trap sometimes, because once we get off into that relationship building task, sometimes it’s hard to get back. And sometimes we spend a lot of time in that area. And when we really need to be bringing it back to the main task of preparing for deposition.
If you did find it helpful, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform. Share with somebody who may find it helpful. If you have questions or have a topic that you’d like to discuss on the podcast, or maybe you want to come on the podcast, just shoot me an email. My email will be in the show notes.
We’ll also put links in the show notes to the two books that we talked about, Influenced by Robert Cialdini and the Dale Carnegie [00:14:00] book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Alright, thanks so much.
