Practice Management

To jurors, do your associates and paralegals seem like creeps?*

By Dan Hull

Juries are not dumb and miss little. Jurors watch you and yours in the courtroom, the back of the courtroom, hallways, restrooms, parking lots, restaurants. Whether or not you think the people you bring to trial with you are capable of looking or acting like stone "creeps" at any moment during the roller-coaster ride of a trial, explain to these men and women in advance the importance of "maintaining" a demeanor which appears professional yet likable, amiable, fair and genuinely good-hearted.

Jurors, of course, will always surprise you. No matter what an expert might tell you, or how hard you've worked at selection, you are always wrong about two or three of them. You've heard that.

Now hear this: don't go out of your way to antagonize jurors with sideshows which have nothing to do with the trial itself. Bring no "creeps" with you to trial. Keep them in the office. Bring to trial no "non-creeps" capable of any snide, "mean" or creepy gesture, facial expression or body language glitch lasting more than one half-second. Instruct your non-creeps to read this post to be on the safe side.

Jurors don't like "assisting-creeps-in-suits".

Full post as published by What About Clients? on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).