Trial preparation has a way of turning capable lawyers into reluctant experts in everything. One minute you are refining a cross-examination. The next, you are moving text boxes around a slide, troubleshooting a video, or trying to turn three years of discovery into an opening statement someone can follow in thirty minutes.

Several of our most-read articles this year ask whether all of that belongs on the trial lawyer’s desk.

Others tackle an equally demanding problem: what happens inside a juror’s head when the presentation begins? How do you hold attention, challenge an early assumption, or help someone understand why one event led to another?

10. Simplifying Your Opening Statement to Its Core

You know the case. Can a juror explain it after hearing your opening?

Part two of our Persuasion Occasion podcast series with Perkins Coie examines the work of reducing an opening statement to its essential story. It asks lawyers to think about what jurors will understand, retain, and eventually repeat. For a trial team staring at an overgrown draft, this is a useful starting point: identify the central idea before deciding which details deserve to stay.

9. The Simplest Storytelling Trick for Persuasion Might Have Come from South Park

An unlikely source offers a remarkably practical editing test. Look at the transitions between the major events in your opening. Do they amount to “and then,” or can you connect them with “but” and “therefore”?

This article explores how conflict and consequence give a story momentum. It is especially useful when an opening contains all the necessary facts but still feels like a recitation. Try the test on one page of your outline and see where the connections need work.

8. How to Break Juror Confirmation Bias (Using a Surprisingly Simple Trick)

What might make a juror pause before fitting the next fact into an opinion already formed?

Part three of our Perkins Coie podcast series explores the possibility of using a carefully chosen visual surprise or moment of difficulty to encourage closer attention. The article presents this as a technique to consider selectively; it also acknowledges the potential for distraction. Its most useful question is whether your presentation invites jurors to examine an assumption they might otherwise leave untouched.

7. Humor, Demonstrative Evidence, and the “Monster of Evidence”

Every additional exhibit has an advocate inside the trial team. Someone remembers why it matters. Someone worries about leaving it out. Eventually, the presentation becomes a creature with hundreds of attachments and very little room to breathe.

This article considers the cost of that accumulation and explores how appropriate humor and memorable demonstratives can help address audience fatigue. It is a useful read when your team’s answer to every presentation problem has become another document, another chart, or another slide.

6. Why Attorneys Should Not Run Their Own Trial Technology

A lawyer questioning a witness already has plenty to monitor. Adding exhibit retrieval, video playback, and screen management creates another set of demands at precisely the moment attention matters most.

This article makes the case for experienced trial technicians and hotseaters. It examines how dedicated courtroom technology support helps attorneys maintain their focus and the presentation’s rhythm. For teams making staffing decisions, it offers a practical way to think about what the person at counsel table should be concentrating on.

5. Why Fear Beats Logic in the Courtroom: Insights from a Perkins Coie Podcast (Part 1)

An argument can be carefully reasoned and still leave an audience unconvinced.

The first article in our Perkins Coie podcast series explores the role of fear and perceived risk in courtroom persuasion. It asks trial lawyers to consider the concerns jurors bring to the evidence and how those concerns may shape its meaning. The practical challenge is to build a presentation that addresses the audience’s underlying questions as well as the trial team’s factual points.

4. Why Trial Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing Their Opening Statements

Knowing a case intimately can make it difficult to hear it for the first time.

This article explores how an outside collaborator can help expose unexplained assumptions, strengthen narrative structure, and connect an opening statement with its visuals. The lawyer’s voice and judgment remain central throughout drafting, testing, and rehearsal. Published on September 3, this piece reached fourth place by September 23—a striking position for the newest article in the countdown.

3. Why Lawyers Should Stop Designing Their Own PowerPoint Slides

PowerPoint makes it easy to put information on a screen. Deciding what belongs there takes a different kind of work.

This article examines the time and attention lawyers invest in making their own slides, along with the communication problems that can survive all that effort. It explains the value of litigation graphics designed around what the audience needs to understand at each moment. Read it before assigning another associate a weekend of aligning boxes and shrinking type.

2. Why Bullet Points Are Killing Your Persuasion: Lessons from Our Conversation with Perkins Coie

The familiar bullet-point slide gets another hard look in this installment of our Perkins Coie conversation.

The article examines how text-heavy presentation habits can interfere with the work of persuading a jury. It focuses on the relationship between spoken explanation, trial graphics, and attention. For anyone revising an opening presentation, it raises a useful question: what should jurors see while they listen to this part of the story?

1. OnCue vs. TrialDirector: How One Trial-Presentation Platform Took Over (and the Other Quietly Vanished)

Our most-read new article of 2026 so far examines trial-presentation software from the perspective of the people operating it under courtroom pressure.

Drawing on reports from our trial technicians, I discuss their preference for OnCue and the importance they place on speed, stability, workflow, and video handling. This is a firsthand account of our team’s experience and preferences. For lawyers evaluating trial technology support, it provides a useful introduction to the operational details that matter when the next exhibit needs to appear immediately.

One Series Worth Reading Together

The articles about designing slides, running trial technology, and developing opening statements all finished in the top six.

Read together, they invite a practical review of how your team allocates its time. Which tasks need the trial lawyer’s direct attention? Which would benefit from a specialist? Where would an outside perspective reveal something the team has stopped noticing?

Those questions belong early in trial preparation, while there is still time to act on the answers.

Put One Idea to Work Before Your Next Trial

Choose one presentation you are developing now. Review its opening for a clear central story. Examine the transitions for cause and consequence. Look at the slides from the perspective of someone encountering the case for the first time. Decide who will manage the technology when you need to concentrate on the courtroom.

Our work at Persuadius brings together jury consulting, litigation graphics, trial technicians, and opening statement support to help trial teams make those decisions and carry them through.

• Schedule a free 15-minute case consultation to discuss your upcoming trial.
• Prefer a confidential email conversation? Contact us at confidential@persuadius.com.

Related Articles and Resources

• Persuadius’ Top 15 Most-Read Articles of 2025
• 21 Secrets From an Opening Statement Guru
• Give Jurors the Words: Building Arguments They Can Carry into the Deliberation Room
• Storytelling for Litigators—5th Edition
• The Persuadius Opening Statement Toolkit