Jury Trial Organization and Management
Continuing this trial series today, we talk about trial management and organization, specifically, about organizing your team, organizing documents, and how to manage that day-to-day changes with your team. As you replicate trial organization over and over, it helps the trial team handle uncertainties and changes as well as focus more on the key things they need to prioritize.
Trials have different levels of management due to a number of variables – the number of witnesses, the duration of each trial, and even the types of trials (wrongful death, medical malpractice, or premises liability). But no matter what, applying the exact same strategy for organizing people and documents is one of the keys to achieving success.
When you start this organization at a smaller level, it’s just going to make it easier to apply it when it gets to a bigger level with more information, more people, and more documents to manage.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Forming the team and identifying each one’s designation
- Using the binder system for organizing people and documents
- The importance of team meetings after the trial
- The deposition designations and motions
- Managing the day-to-day life of a trial
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. It’s me, Elizabeth, your host, and we are working through a series right now on trial.
If you missed it, we have talked about opening statements and ways to help create that opening statement. We’ve talked with Jason, my [00:01:00] good friend out of California, about direct exam creation and preparing for that. We’re going to have a couple more people come in and talk about before and after preparation, trial continuance fatigue, cross exam.
And today I want to take a little bit of a step back and look at kind of a bigger overall picture of trial management and organization. And a lot of what we’re going to talk about is directly from my personal experience in getting a front row seat of working with the Kenan Law Firm and Don Kenan with three different trials over a span of several months, almost a whole year of the time that I spent working side by side.
And one of my biggest impressions that I gathered from our trial work together was the organization. We replicated over and over and over again in these three trials that really significantly helped us as our trial team handle the uncertainty, handle [00:02:00] the changes, really helped us be able to focus during the chaos and prioritize, which is so key when.
It’s a constant tumble of information and change and the judge and the jury and the defense. And so this particular organization comes directly from that, from my experience with those. And really we’re going to talk about people, talk about organizing documents, and then a day to day thing that we did, which I thought was super helpful.
to keep everybody on track with their jobs during trial and helping everybody kind of keep all in check with what was going forward with trial and staying cohesive with our case theme as well. So one of the things that we did before we ever stepped into the courtroom was We always had a team, right?
There’s always a team of folks, of lawyers. We had a few teams with non lawyers, but really we went through the team and designated [00:03:00] each person to cover either a specific topic, a specific issue. Everybody had witnesses they were going to cover, some people were in charge of the exhibits, but generally each person had several different things on their task list to handle.
And that meant that they were in charge of getting, if it was your witness, let’s say for example, then your job obviously was to put together the direct exam or if you had a defense witness, the cross. And then also if there were ever any issues in court. With that particular witness, then that was your job to step up and talk to the judge about it.
So that way, you knew, okay, that person’s handling that witness, or if it’s a particular issue. And what I mean by issue is occasionally, we had a particular motion that would come up. Continually, in all these trials about a particular trial strategy, you may or may not know what I am talking about, but we constantly got this issue and so we always had [00:04:00] one lawyer that was designated to tackle this, right, so the motion always came up before trial, maybe a pretrial or even before that, and so that lawyer obviously would have to brief the issue, create a response to it, but anytime it came up, That meant that they had to step up and go argue to the judge if the issue came up again and again, which it always does, right?
So they’re very relentless. The opposing counsel is very relentless. They keep going over and over and over. And so any time that meant that lawyer had that particular opportunity to get up and argue for that or argue against the motion. And we had other motions that sometimes had to be argued as well.
But again, one person would be designated to do that. If it was a larger thing than two people would be able to help, but that really helped the rest of the team be able to know, Oh, that’s their job. I’m going to work on my job and really helps everybody use their time much more wisely. We also would try to put people into either a damages category or liability, right?
So then when. Things came [00:05:00] up in trial that were, oh, well, whose job is that? Or where does that go? Well, if it’s damages, then that’s Elizabeth. Oh, well, if it’s liability, that’s gonna go to Andrew. And so that way we also would know, oh, if something new happens, Do I need to stop and pay attention to this or can I keep working on what I’m working on?
And throughout the different trials, it significantly helped because all the trials had different levels of management in the sense of some of our trials had four, five, six witnesses. That’s it. And some of our trials had 20 witnesses. And some of our trials went one week. Some of them went two weeks.
Some of them went three weeks. And then again, so Very different types of trials as well. We had a wrongful death, a medical malpractice, supremacist liability. But no matter what, we applied this exact same strategy of designating and organizing witnesses, organizing issues, organizing who’s going to tackle that motion, who’s going to tackle the jury instructions, whose job is it for the exhibits, depo designations, right?[00:06:00]
That way it was always filtered through, and if an issue came up, then, oh, we know that Elizabeth’s got that, or we’re all going to turn and look at her when the judge asks that question, or it’s on her. She’s got to get up first thing and go talk to that judge. And I had a lot of experience being able to do that in the last two trials of, okay, that’s my issue.
I’ve got to go talk to the judge about that. And lots of experience as well handling, oh, this is my witness. And all the things that go with that. And in Kentucky, which was our first trial, my job was to handle deposition edits and clips. Now, I’m not really sure how on earth I got volunteered for this. I had no background cutting clips or doing that.
But once I did it once, of course, then that’s what I did for the next three trials as well. But also, having done it before for other trials, but the difference being when the judge would make the ruling. Would [00:07:00] be in trial that happened multiple times where the designations would not be ruled on until during trial.
So that meant you couldn’t make that clip until then. And could you get it to that third party vendor to get it cut and get it back to you in time? Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes no. And my job was to take that cut. Listen to it. Go line by line to make sure the edits were done correctly. Very tedious thing, but it had to be done, and so whose job was it?
It was particularly my job. I was also in charge of doing some of the exhibits as well. That means just managing the documents. If someone’s going to go up with a particular witness, have the exhibits ready to go. We didn’t have a ton in that case. And also I had to do role play, a lot of role play help for the people who were taking our witnesses in that particular trial, which kind of brings me to our binder system.
So we had a way of organizing our people, right? How we organize our [00:08:00] team around issues, witnesses, motions, jury instructions, exhibits, organizing all that. If we had a focus group whose job was to do what or read the opening. So, we tried to organize our people beforehand, and we also tried to organize our documents, and we used a binder system, which is a lot of paper, however, as it turns out, the courts still love paper, even today, I feel like.
And so, each witness would have a binder. We didn’t have a binder for issues or topics, and especially if there was a researched issue that needed case law, that got its own binder as well, and that just really helped keep things separate. Because. Each witness had a binder. Each topic had a binder. If you had case law, that had its own binder, which ended up taking up a lot of space.
However, it made it really helpful because you never know when that particular issue is going to come up and you just reach back there, grab that binder, hand it to whoever needs it, or take it, if you need it, up [00:09:00] to the bench. To be able to make that argument or talk about the issue when it comes up instead of having either a giant binder or Or having things on your laptop, which is not going to be super conducive during trial because it happens so fast that you need to have that stuff ready and available.
One of the other documents that we use continuously. We spent a lot of time putting the document together before we got to trial and we spent a lot of time every single day with this document. And that would be the Order of Proof. And the Order of Proof document is just what it sounds like. It’s just a list of witnesses.
But It had a lot more information because obviously we would designate who was in charge of that witness, the direct, if it was defense side, then who was in charge of cross, and that also told us then about how long we could estimate that person. So, for example, one of the things that I had to do in. The Washington trial and then the Vegas trials, [00:10:00] I had to prepare before and afters and do direct exam for them.
Which means I was in charge of scheduling them. And so that order of proof document becomes really important for those before and afters because sometimes we just had to squeeze them in, right, or that helped us estimate, okay, well here’s what this morning is going to be stuck on, just expert A. Okay, well, obviously it organized our time, also the schedule, but also helped us know, how are we going to flow in with the evidence?
How is this going to go into the jury? And as you’ll hear me talk in a little bit, we updated that thing every single day and had a new one fresh and printed out for everybody. So everybody was on the same page and if we had to make changes or move things around or move people around, where was their flexibility?
Oh, this person’s coming up soon. Are those depositions designated? Are those lines designated? I should say, is that going to be done in time? And so the binder system was super helpful just to make sure we had everything and then also [00:11:00] our order of proof document that we used constantly, but also before we even got to trial to help us know how the information was going to go into the jury.
So that brings me to the organization of their management of information every single night. So during trial lots of information is happening and again, not everybody is paying attention to it because everybody’s got a different task which means you may not be all oriented to what’s happening in the courtroom.
Somebody’s out of the courtroom preparing an expert, somebody’s talking to before and after, somebody’s watching the jury, and somebody’s just, one of my jobs at Vegas was just to Hand exhibits to keep track of all this paperwork. We had so many binders of paperwork. So it was my job to keep up with all the exhibits and to help people who were doing direct exam.
By assisting with the documents, right, so you couldn’t mix them up if they had their own, of course, you got to make sure everything’s marked and all that good jazz, so [00:12:00] that’s why just there was so much. I just like, okay, I will work with the exhibits. I will be that person. That’s totally fine by me. But what we would do is every single night we would get together for a team meeting first number one after trial every night is important to go ahead and fuel up.
So we’d always eat. And then we go back and have a team meeting together. Everybody who was on the team had to come to the meeting unless you were off getting an expert ready or had to meet with a different witness. What we do is just sit down and basically take Everybody, if your job was to watch the jury, right, to give kind of a report of what you saw, what you heard in court, and we kind of would go through and just look at, hey, where are we on these issues?
We know that here was what we talked about opening statement, is all that evidence coming in? Are we missing anything, right? So we’d get feedback from each person who’d been in the room, who was listening, who was watching the jury, who was watching the judge. And that way we would collectively, everybody would be back on the same page.
And then there would have to [00:13:00] be, if things needed to be moved, or if a particular document didn’t come in, or if a chart needed to be made, or if a point was being lost. One of the biggest nights is the night after opening statements. Because then you hear the game plan, you hear the blueprint of which the defense is going to do.
So basically we just take that blueprint then and we follow, right, whatever cross exam they do every single night and look at who’s scoring points on their, basically on their order of proof. And then we have to divide up any tasks that may be left up and then basically we’re split up to do our things to do list.
Which always my thing to do was, was to update, order, or approve every single night for the two main trials that we did, uh, Kentucky as well. And then some of the tasks were just to help people role play. Right. If somebody’s got to do a direct exam of a defense witness, then, hey, one of my tasks, Hey, you’re gonna have to go help that [00:14:00] person role play, right?
Which means I’d have to know or read that deposition before we got there so I could role play. Sometimes it was just to review the motions that had been filed and figure out who’s in charge of doing the argument the next morning. One of the big tasks that I had for Vegas was depo designations again because They hadn’t been made, and they hadn’t been argued, I should say.
So one of my big things was I had to Every single day approach the judge. Hey, we need to have you rule on these designations. We need to argue about these. And she just really did not like having to rule on those things. And that was a very, it was a little bit of a challenge to get her in. So it was like, okay, well, This is a good learning experience.
I’ve got to talk to this person who does not want for some unknown reason to handle this issue or have us argue it. And I had to learn how to politely ask, this witness needs to be played tomorrow. One time she threatened all of us, me and the defense council to be thrown in [00:15:00] contempt over these designations.
And why weren’t they done earlier? And just kind of, you just stand there scratching your head like, okay, well, can we do it now? Again, make the clips like I talked about earlier, but You become so familiar then that other people on the team will come to you and say, hey, I know that this is your witness, or I know that you’re doing those designations.
I need to know, is this issue in there? Are you putting it, like, let me know. Oh, okay. No, it’s not. Or, oh, yes, it is. Or, oh, gosh, that’s a team topic we need to get back together with the team on. But other things we would look at is, do we need to change any kind of our witness prep? Do we need to change our direct?
Are there any visuals we need to create to make this clear to the jury? So that nightly meeting and those tasks became really helpful for us to prioritize And also to get together as a team to know what’s on everybody’s blackboard, like what’s going on in your mind? And are we getting our issues across?
Is everything coming in smoothly? If it’s not, how do we make that [00:16:00] happen? And then dividing up and divide and conquer here. So it was very helpful to do that every single night. And I would strongly encourage you, now you may not, you may be thinking, well, Elizabeth, I don’t have a trial that has 20 witnesses, or it sounds to me like that’s a pretty complicated situation.
And some of them are. I mean, some of them had very complicated rulings that needed to be made. And obviously that’s research and things that were done ahead of time. But even if you’re taking on a simple I’m in a car wreck case with just one plaintiff and one defendant. You’re still going to have before and afters.
You’re still going to have treaters. You may even have an expert. So you’re still going to have a pretty well involved trial that still needs to be organized. I mean, after I did these three trials with this particular organization, that’s what I’ve done every single time. And it has been so helpful for everybody to have clarity and then certainty.
That [00:17:00] at least gives some amount of certainty to know We’ve thought ahead, worst case scenario, if it relates to damages, it’s you, Elizabeth. If it relates to liability, okay, it’s young you. So this organization really can help everybody. And again, having the documents organized, I think significantly helps if you have quite a few things, but also just to have them available and ready.
So you don’t have to worry about that. not opening up or trying to find it in your case management software or in your folder system, whatever it may be, is still a really helpful thing that kind of reduction stress because it’s available and it’s there and it’s with you. If you need to grab it quickly and also in our document system and in our binder system, we’re anticipating, What research we may need and we’re gonna know some of those topics So we probably have heard them or we’ve seen other motions Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into just the [00:18:00] research factor of a trial.
This podcast is really about organizing your team, organizing Documents and then how do you manage that day to day change with your team and Prioritizing and focusing and then just taking that time to get together to look at each other and say, what did you hear? And what did you see? Because if you’re up there giving direct.
Or doing direct of a witness. You can’t see everything and you’re really in the zone. If you’re trying to grill somebody on cross exam you’re not paying attention to anything else because you’ve got to focus so intently on what you’re doing and your questions and also knowing, Hey, we’ve got At any moment there’s going to be objection and then there could, you have to step up to the bench and argue, right?
So your attention is like zoned in. You may be so good that you can take it all in, but I promise you, going to [00:19:00] trial with a team will open your eyes to all of the information that just goes right past you. Because you’re focused on something else. So getting together with that team, even if it’s just you and another lawyer, significantly helps look at what’s been going on, their observations, your observations, and then coming back to, okay, here was our plan.
Like, here’s the way we wanted things to go in. Is that happening? Are they getting it? Okay, the judge said no, that that wouldn’t work. Okay, what’s the alternative? Like, what are other ways to work this information in? And that happened continuously in our Vegas trial. We had a very active judge every day.
There was something different. No, that can’t come in. Yes, that’s okay. Again, no, that’s a changing thing. So it was like, Woo. Okay. We really had to be on our toes and be on our game to be prepared for quick switches, which also let us have plan A, B, or C. Okay. If A doesn’t work, let’s go to B. B doesn’t work, let’s go to C.
But we never gave up [00:20:00] on getting something in that was super valuable to us. So I hope that this information helps. I hope that you know that even in your smaller cases, You can still do this organization and think about it from a higher level. Again, when you start using this information or organization at a smaller level, it’s just going to make it easier to apply when it gets to a bigger level with more information, more people, more documents to manage.
And that’s really what happened in my experience. We had a smaller trial and then a bigger and then a really big one. And it really helped to know, Oh, okay. Okay. I know I got a flow. It’s, there’s not confusion about who’s taking what or what’s going to happen. You knew exactly who to go talk to. And of course, we always designated like who above all is the first person that the judge is going to go to, right?
So who’s lead, if you will, who’s lead counsel. And sometimes it was [00:21:00] who you expect and sometimes it wasn’t. And sometimes this person does an opening, sometimes it wasn’t, right? So it’s just a matter of knowing who that is so that everybody is secure in that. And I think that this also helps when your client is there and they can understand, Oh, well, there’s a lot of people working for me and on all kinds of stuff.
And how do I fit into this team? And I always talk about that. We talk with our clients and get them ready to walk into that courtroom. What has been going on and why somebody may not be as attentive as they normally would. That’s because they’re zoned in on their issue or their witness. And they have got to do that in order to do their best job possible in that moment.
So, all right, I hope that this has helped either put some ideas into your mind or thinking about your next step. Um, and then, uh, you know, I think it’s really important to have that team meeting, that order of proof document. [00:22:00] Things to do, TTDs, our task assignment beforehand, and again, sometimes those tasks change during trial and every single night.
So I look forward to you coming back to our other episodes on trial. But until then, I’m going to encourage you to follow this podcast. It’s a little plus sign up in your Apple podcast app on Spotify, usually just a follow button that significantly helps other people be able to find this podcast. Of course.
And as always, Send them a copy of an episode via text. And of course, if you really appreciate it, write me a review because that helps people find it. All right. Thank you so much.