July 2009

Dr. Noelle Nelson's Home Page Trial Consulting

You may never have tweeted in your life, nor do you ever want to, or you may tweet your every move. You may think texting was invented purely to bless your life with constant communication, or curse it.  Either way, love it or hate it, the different ways in which people are communicating impact the effectiveness of your trial work, in particular, how you express yourself in your opening statements.

Opening statements are the roadmap, that which helps the jurors make sense of the evidence as it unfolds, this you know. However, how you create and present that roadmap needs to take into account how today’s jurors communicate, not how those of yesteryear did.

What that means is:

• Use short sentences. Express just one thought per sentence. Texting, twitter, even IMing all rely on short bursts of information. These are easier for jurors to absorb than the long often convoluted sentences typical of lawyer briefs.
  
  
• Get to the point. People who text and tweet find ways to say what they have to say in immediate, no frills fashion. Convince jurors of your case by speaking a “language” they understand.
  
  
• Title your points. A short burst of information is followed by another, related, short burst, in most texting and Twitter. When you give a title to your point (or make it a bullet-point), you can then go on to elaborate, because you have a title you can refer to repeatedly to help jurors stay on track.
  

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Winning Words:

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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A Winning Case Dr. Noelle Nelson recently consulted on:

* Congratulations to Thomas P. Beck and Gregory R. Vanni of Thon Beck Vanni Callahan & Powell. According to Mr. Beck: “Our law firm substituted in to this case shortly before it was originally scheduled to start trial. Our three clients (adult front seat passenger and two small girls in rear seat) were passengers in a vehicle that made a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. The driver of “our vehicle” was an illegal alien, who did not speak English, was never a licensed driver, and did not have insurance. On top of that, she was convicted of a felony for child endangerment as a result of this accident. One of the girls in the back seat legally should have been in a booster seat and was only belted. The other child, age one, was in a booster seat when she should have been in an infant car seat.

The injuries to all three clients were hotly disputed by the defense experts. The case was challenged on both liability and damages.

We hired Noelle Nelson, Ph.D., to focus group the many problems presented by this case. We thereafter went out and hired our liability and damage team of experts. After over 30 expert depositions and answering ready for trial, the case settled for $7,250,000. The valuable insights we learned through Dr. Nelson were immensely helpful in preparing this case for trial.”

Dr. Nelson selected as one of  "100 Legal Consultants You Need to Know"
by lawdragon.com

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