WHY HIRE US
Call the “Trial Whisperer” and give yourself a winning edge on your next case!
- 510-245-2468
- leigh@trialwhisperer.com
- 166 Geary Street Suite 1500 #2658 San Francisco, CA 94108
Call the “Trial Whisperer” and give yourself a winning edge on your next case!
By the time you go to trial, you’ve put in countless hours of preparation. You know the facts, you’ve lined up your witnesses and experts, and you’re ready to tell your story.
However, no matter how careful your preparation or artful your presentation, you can never be absolutely sure how the trial will unfold. You must be prepared to adapt and overcome challenges quickly and competently because a judge won’t suspend the trial just because you’re caught off guard. Winning attorneys expect the unexpected.
As a Trial Consultant, I can help you consider all the key issues, analyze the applicable law, develop a sound strategy, and craft a clear and simple story that will connect with the jury. In addition, I can help you focus on the essentials by handling the day-to-day logistics, helping you craft or reshape strategy on-the-fly, and heading up a rapid response team to deal with the ever-changing landscape of the trial.But how do you prepare for something that hasn’t happened yet? By hiring an experienced Trial Consultant who can help you see what may be invisible to you because you’re too close to the facts. One who can run interference for you and reevaluate strategies when the case takes an unexpected turn. One who can serve as a mirror reflecting back to you the areas where you are failing to connect and where your story is less than compelling. One who can help find the danger points in your case and create a plan to successfully navigate them.
They say luck favors the prepared. But really, winning attorneys don’t rely on luck, they simply prepare for the challenges they know and have the right Trial Consultant on the team to handle the unknown challenges that can pop up at any time.
The most successful companies always do extensive research before developing a product marketing message. They want to know how people think and feel, what concepts they will most readily embrace, and how to craft a product story that will win hearts and minds.
The same is true during jury selection and when you craft the story of your case. In any jury trial, the jury members are your “market.” Through carefully constructed focus groups, I can help you learn about your potential pool of jurors before you begin organizing your facts and crafting your message to maximize your chances of success.
How is this done? By assembling from the general population one or more groups that share the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the pool of jurors most likely to hear the case. By discovering how they think about the issues and how they feel about your client’s actions, you can frame the facts and present your story in a way they will relate to and understand.
Ideally, you want multiple focus groups, from the moment your case comes in the door to the beginning of the trial. The earlier we start, and the more often we run a focus group, the more reliable and comprehensive your information can be. The typical case may require 5 to 7 focus groups. Complex cases may require more.
Winning a legal case is all about problem solving. But arriving at a winning solution is only possible when you can properly diagnose the problem. It’s more difficult than it sounds.
Too often, attorneys take a shallow, one-dimensional approach. They think the problem is merely that their client is being prosecuted for something wrongfully, or that their client has been harmed by another’s negligence. They conclude that the solution is simply to convince a jury that the client did nothing wrong. In the broad sense, this is true. But at the strategic or tactical level, this isn’t very helpful.
In fact, every case is a collection of problems. Why is your client being prosecuted? How was your client harmed? Which facts make this case difficult? What are the most important issues? What scares you most about the upcoming trial? How will the judge respond to the case? Why can’t you get your client to open up?
Through careful and objective Case Analysis, I can help you “unpack” all of the individual problems you face. These problems fall into 4 categories: the issues, the law, the client, and the audience or jury.
By identifying and analyzing the core problems in each of these categories, I can help you solve each challenge individually. These solutions help build a stronger case brick by brick and helps remove weaknesses opposing counsel may exploit.
Moreover, by helping you to construct an “action-based message” that will re-frame the facts and tell a story a jury can understand and relate to, my analysis can dramatically improve your odds of success.
The idea of a lone lawyer tilting at the windmills of injustice is a romantic idea found only in the movies. In real life, important cases are won by legal teams.
So by the time you’re ready to bring me in as co-counsel, I will probably have run several Focus Groups and worked with you on Case Analysis and Trial Consulting. To be valuable to you and to give your client the best possible defense, I must be an active participant in the case and perform extensive pretrial work.
There are 5 key areas where I can offer my Trial Collaboration services:
As co-counsel, I can do as little or as much as you need. For example, you may want to do your own opening statement, direct examination, and closing argument but let me handle voir-dire and cross-examination. Or in a more complicated case, we might tag team direct and cross-examination, each focusing on particular witnesses and issues.
Often what happens is that I’m hired for voir-dire and if it goes especially well and the jury bonds with me, I’m then asked to participate in other elements of the trial. Having a deep and trusting connection to the jury makes the entire trial run more smoothly. Having effective co-counsel leads to better trial strategies and maximizes your potential.
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