Persuasion

In court and beyond, we are offered many opportunities to react angrily to others' seeming trespasses and lack of consideration. Some police and prosecutors try to talk uncalled-for trash about my clients. Other cars cut us off on the road. Others at restaurants and elsewhere...

Jurors are yanked from their jobs, families, and other obligations to be paid a pittance to render verdicts on monumentally critical criminal and civil matters. If the criminal defense lawyer does not appreciate this state of affairs, it is at his client's peril.

I have experienced firsthand the power of my presenting closing argument storytelling to the jury in the first person of my client. Doing so in the right circumstances transports me outside my lawyer role into the very person of my client, in the moment in...

Some judges seem to take delight in trying to dispirit lawyers. Others do unintentional things that dispirit lawyers. The right lawyer is hard to dispirit. Being dispirited interferes with powerful battle.

Successful courtroom performance necessitates a combination of thorough preparation and improvisation. The preparation is needed just as any battle requires preparation.

If we let it happen, we are constantly bombarded with gunk, garbage and negative energy. With me, it can start with something as small as facing a choice between cursing or blessing the driver in front of me who sticks his stinky burning cigarette outside...

Preparation is essential for any trial. Then, to bring the trial to higher quantum levels of persuasion, the criminal defense lawyer must feel the fire for his or client in the belly, and share that fire with the jury in a persuasive way.

People so often are busy playing their roles that they hesitate to shed those roles to relate soul to soul. Just about everyone likely yearns to find people with whom to relate soul to soul, but is not ready to bare their soul to just...

If the trial lawyer has done his or her job well enough, at the end of the trial, not only will s/he win, but will leave the jury and judge wanting to hear the lawyer talk even more, rather than rushing to their cellphones to...