Legal Research

"Simple Jury Persuasion Rule 1: There Is No Such Thing As 'Persuasion'."

Posted by Douglas Keene: "We've been reading Mark Bennett's Simple Rules for Jury Selection and wishing we'd thought of that! So we are 'liberating' his idea with some simple rules of our own. Once you have your jury (perhaps using Mark's 'simple rules') how do you persuade them?

We spend a lot of time reading the research on persuasion and have determined that we're not sure we believe in persuasion per se.  If it exists, it isn't in the form most people think of as 'persuasion'.  We have all been working on our world view our entire lifetimes, and by the time jurors are sworn in, they aren't subject to being swayed by your soaring oratory.  The bad part is, "Wouldn't that be nice!"  The good part is, "What a relief--I'm off the hook!"  Jurors want to do their own assessment of the case, and they will use their own yardstick to measure. Therefore, rather then trying to persuade them to adopt a new view, spend your time crafting a trial story that connects the case facts with their already-held values and beliefs.

There is no such thing as "Persuasion"

• What the most gifted and skilled advocates do is not "persuade", but rather they craft a story that connects with the strongly held beliefs of jurors.
• They don't create arguments or conflicts...
• So tell the jury's story while you tell your client's story...

Over the next year (or so) as we see new research that reminds us of the persuasion strategies we recommend using--we'll write blog posts about them and categorize them all under "Simple Jury Persuasion Rules". We hope you enjoy them. We know we've enjoyed Mark's excursions into jury selection!"

Full text and the active link are available at the source site listed below.

Source: The Jury Room, 14 September 2009 [Hat Tip to Tom Mighell at Inter Alia, 23 September 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on September 23, 2009 (boomark / email).