Trial Preparation

Theme Development

Trial themes are short, memorable taglines that summarize your main arguments. They are intentionally oversimplified to make them easy for jurors to understand, write down, and repeat in deliberations. Well-constructed trial themes leverage social science research on memory and cognition in a legal context. They create memorable “buckets” to help jurors absorb and organize the evidence they hear throughout the trial. When attorneys place each case fact, document, and witness into one or more of these buckets, jurors no longer have to remember every piece of evidence but can recall the thematic buckets and the essence of the evidence housed within them.

Juror Profiles and Voir Dire Development

Years of jury research and trial experience have demonstrated that jurors can hear the exact same information, at the same time, and yet come to very different conclusions. This is because each juror views the case through a lens that has been shaped by their entire life experiences and values. That lens causes them to filter the evidence and interpret ambiguities in a way that tends to confirm their existing perceptions and beliefs. There are some jurors who arrive with a lens that is so clouded with bias that they will never see your position in the case. Ultimately, if you can identify the lens through which a juror will view your case, you can most often determine the way the juror will decide the matter. That is what jury selection is all about and why the voir dire process is so important.