Day on Torts
Paul Luvera’s blog, Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips, includes a recent post from Paul titled "My General Views About Plaintiff Trial Work." I recommend the entire post to you, but here is a excerpt to wet your appetite for the rest:
Most important, our trials must be focused and limited to this approach. We should not just wing it and start talking because we all talk entirely too much and we are very boring people to jurors and judges. This requires discipline. It means we must abandon the idea that we are charming people the jurors and judges enjoy listening to, or that we need to demonstrate to the witness or the judge or our opponent how intelligent we are, or how well informed we are, or even that we are right. The truth is that it requires a lot of self control to try a big picture case because we don’t care what the witness or our opponent thinks of our intellectual ability, our knowledge of the subject matter, etc., etc. All we care about is the impression on the jury. It is the ability to stop making us the center of attention and instead make the jury the center of attention. In the end, it is our ego that drives us to intellectual battles that hurt our case.