Quick Tip on Using the Jury Questions in Trial Prep
One of the ways trial lawyers can prepare people for trial is the jury instructions where you basically look at how your client can help the jury answer the questions. Now, it doesn’t matter what level of intelligence or understanding a client is. That’s just the way a trial goes.
The questions that the jury is going to have to answer should always be the target. This way, you can help the client focus and narrow down on the information that they can help the jury with.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Looking at how the client can help the jury answer the questions
- Identifying which questions should be answered
- Recognizing what they can bring to the jury that’s unique
- Sitting down for trial prep in-person
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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:
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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.
Thanks for joining me today. This is probably going to be brief episode as I have a little bit of a cold and I may end up coughing a little bit, so bear with me. Even though it’s a [00:01:00] very short message today, something I think is really helpful. What I wanted to bring to you today was a very simple story.
I conducted a preparation with a client for a trial and an employment case here recently. And one of the things that I had been told was possibly going to be a hindrance to preparation was the ability of the client to remember things, to have focus, and to have kind of a deeper level of understanding of things.
That’s totally fine. A lot of people come to us in a lot of different ways and a lot of different levels of intelligence. And one of the things I always like to use when I prepare people for trial is the jury instructions because that really helps bring focus. And so that’s really what, just a really simple tip today was when I met with this person, that’s what we looked at was, Hey.
Let’s look at what in this trial. How can you help [00:02:00] the jury answer these questions? And as we work together over the few days, we use those questions over and over again. What are the strongest stories, what are the strongest facts that help the jury answer this question in your favor? And the beauty of it was We didn’t need to have like, oh, these are the exact questions.
They were framed enough that we could see, oh, this is so specific. And that’s really helpful for any client to get focused in on, okay, how can I help the jury answer that question? And when we had things that maybe weren’t going to come into the trial, there was a little bit of a relief because that’s okay.
It doesn’t help the jury answer this question. Okay. Now, it doesn’t matter what level of intelligence or understanding a client is, that’s just way a trial goes. So you may have somebody who is off the charts intelligent, [00:03:00] but that jury instruction, those questions that that jury is going to have to answer, that always should be the target when it comes to helping the client focus in, narrow down on the information that they can help the jury with.
Now, the nice thing is, there’s always more people coming into trial, and that’s also a really good way to explain, hey, here’s what this person’s job is going to be, is to also help answer this question. And there may be questions that you have on your jury charge that require an expert. And that’s great.
You’ve done your job. But that helps the client understand, okay, who is coming? Who am I going to hear? Who are the jury going to hear? And how are they going to help answer these questions? Because at the end of the day, that’s all a trial is about. Answer these questions in our favor. And how can the client help the jury do that?
So it’s a very simple tip and probably many people do it, but I [00:04:00] find it such a helpful backstop to start out trial prep looking at how can you, client, help the jury answer these questions. What is it that you have that is unique? Because every witness that comes in up to the stand should be giving the jury something different, something unique that helps them answer that question.
That you can echo back. It really did help in particular in this case that we had or that I had about a month ago because as with most things in an employment case there are hundreds and hundreds of excess documents and emails and conversations and when as more things you get more things that come about but.
At the end of the day, trial is very narrow. There are only certain things that are going to come in. There’s only certain exhibits. There are a lot of things that don’t come into trial and that’s really confusing for people who are not in the legal field. What do you mean it’s not in there? [00:05:00] Well, that’s the only way I can answer this question.
We got to think of another way. We got to get creative. So it really helped her when it came down to, we’re not going to talk about that. And instead of saying no. Don’t say that. We reframed it with that doesn’t answer either one of these questions. So guess what? We don’t need it. Our whole focus in our job is to answer these three or four questions.
And if we give it to the jury, They don’t need it. It’s going to confuse them. So we really want to keep the jury honed in on, Hey, does the jury need that to answer the questions or not? Great. If we don’t need it, we don’t have to talk about it. That’s a great thing. So it’s just spinning things a little bit differently and always using the backstop of the jury and the jury questions versus you I don’t want you to say that.
You don’t need to say that. Okay? But that doesn’t really give them an understanding overall of [00:06:00] what’s going on. Those jury instructions really help. And I’m really just talking about the jury questions. The instructions overall, they don’t need to see all that. They just need to see what are these questions that the jury is going to answer.
And how can they bring in something unique to the jury that other witnesses aren’t going to do. And take things off their plate. So I always like to help the clients. No, hey, you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. There’s going to be a lot of other people that come in to answer some of these things for the questions that you’re not going to have to do.
And we’re not going to be asked to repeat it either. Very short and simple podcast today. I appreciate your patience with my congestion, but simple is good. Having those three questions and using that as a backstop is great. One word of caution. At times, we like to save time. Always, right? There’s something we can do to save time.
And occasionally we will email things to a client, like, look [00:07:00] at this or read this. I would highly recommend you wait to do that in person because there’s going to be a lot of questions on their mind. They may not understand, like, when does a jury get this? And is this what it is? And why isn’t it this?
There may be a lot of other things that you need to bring context to these, what these two or three questions a jury is going to answer. So I suggest doing this in person when you sit down to do some trial preparation together, so Don’t send it ahead of time, could cause more questions and confusion, emotions that you can’t control.
We always want to do things in person when we’ve got something that may be emotionally charged. So anyhow, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. We’ll have a new episode with hopefully a very nice, clear voice in the following week. But if you liked the episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app.
Share it with somebody who maybe has an upcoming trial. Maybe they have a difficult client. It’s difficult getting lots of different things, but getting a client [00:08:00] focused in, go back to those jury questions. It’ll really help you out. So anyhow, thank you so much.