ARE YOU A TRIAL LAWYER and losing too often? Consider the possibility that it’s not the jury system, or a bad judge, or a witness that turned on you. Maybe you need to take a new look at what you’re doing both in and out of the courtroom. Isn’t there a better way to deal with jurors, with judges, and yes, with yourself? What you’ve been doing may have worked once, but it’s not working now. There might be something in these pages that will help. This book may save your bacon.
Going to court? You should give your lawyer this book. Is your lawyer representing you before a jury or a judge at his full, exploding capacity? Or is your lawyer making his presentation in the old, ineffective ways of most trial lawyers—his brittle, intellectual, nonfeeling, unemotional, passionless, stiff enunciations burdened with those big words? Is he conducting a distant, hostile examination of jurors and witnesses that make him look good but leave him distrusted by the jury? Worse, is he putting on a show that even you know doesn’t come from his heart? Your lawyer should read this book.
Are you preparing to make a presentment to the board or your boss? You’d better read this book. A principle theme of this work is that the techniques of a trial in court are as much a part of the presentation of your case before boards and bosses as the genes of the primates are a part of us. The means and methods and mental sets I teach in presenting a case in court are often parallel to those that should be employed in presenting a case to a board, a boss, a commission, or a customer. I’ve discovered in over fifty years in the courtroom that the most effective presentments out of court take on the format of a winning trial in the courtroom. You don’t have to be a trial lawyer to learn these methods. But you do need to acquire a winning state of mind, an approach that opens up both you and the decision maker to your presentation. If it’s time for you to present your cause to a power person, the decision maker, this book will show you how.