The Litigation Consulting Report

The difference between preparing a case and preparing to win it may be the most expensive distinction in litigation. Imagine this scenario. A litigation team has spent three years preparing a complex commercial case. They've reviewed two million documents, taken 47 depositions, retained six experts, filed countless motions, and billed thousands of hours. They know the facts. They know the law. They know the opposing counsel's arguments almost as well as their own. Trial begins in three weeks. And someone finally asks: "What's our story?" Silence. Then another question: "Have we tested any of this with jurors?" More silence. "Who's putting together the opening statement graphics?" "We're working on that." "Have we hired a trial technician?" "Not yet." Sound familiar? After nearly three decades working with trial teams, I've seen variations of this scenario more times than I care to count. And here's the uncomfortable truth: Some of the hardest-working lawyers in America are among the least prepared for the part of litigation that actually happens in front of a jury. Not because they're lazy. Not because they're incompetent. And certainly not because they don't care. It's because preparing a case and preparing to persuade a jury are two very different things. Unfortunately, the distinction often becomes apparent when there's almost no time left to do anything about it. 1. Discovery Is Not Trial Preparation Let's start with a fundamental misunderstanding.

The billable hour is expensive. So why are so many litigators spending it doing graphic design?

The Perkins Coie Podcast Series: Bullet Points Are Killing Your Persuasion This article is part 5 of our continuing series (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are here) highlighting our conversation on the Persuasion Occasion podcast with Perkins Coie. In earlier installments, we discussed why fear often persuades more effectively than logic, how simplifying your opening statement strengthens your case, and how to overcome juror confirmation bias. If you missed those articles, be sure to check them out on the Persuadius blog. You can also listen to the complete podcast episode on Spotify for the full conversation. One of the questions Jasmine Wetherell of Perkins Coie (now Ashurst Perkins Coie) asked during the podcast was one we've been answering for years. "Why are you so against bullet points?" The short answer? Because they kill persuasion. That may sound like an exaggeration, but after helping lawyers prepare thousands of opening statements over the past three decades—and after writing about this topic for more than fifteen years—we're more convinced than ever that text-heavy PowerPoint slides are one of the biggest obstacles to effective courtroom communication.

Part 3: Insights from the Persuasion Occasion Podcast with Perkins Coie Most trial lawyers understand confirmation bias in theory. Fewer know how to actually break it in real time—inside a courtroom, with a jury that has already made up its mind. That’s exactly where this next insight comes in. In my conversation with David Biderman and Jasmine Wetherell on the Persuasion Occasion podcast from Perkins Coie, we got into a technique that sounds counterintuitive at first… and then becomes hard to ignore. The Problem: Most Jurors Decide Early—and Stay There If you’ve tried cases, you’ve felt this. Jurors don’t wait until closing argument to decide. They decide early—often during opening statement—and then spend the rest of the trial doing something very human: They filter. They listen for what confirms their initial impression… and quietly dismiss what doesn’t. That’s confirmation bias, and it’s one of the most powerful forces in the courtroom. Once it locks in, persuasion becomes exponentially harder. The Counterintuitive Solution: Make Them Work Here’s where things get interesting. During the interview, I floated a technique I haven’t seen widely used—but I believe has enormous potential: If you want a juror to really process something… make it slightly harder to process. Not confusing. Not sloppy. Just enough friction to force engagement. I've included that video conversation below:

The other day, I did a simple experiment in a room full of lawyers from the Los Angeles Bar Association. Roughly 200 people. I showed a few slides in a row. Same layout. Same structure. Same visual rhythm. Same title. Then I showed a fourth slide. Same design. Except for one thing: There was a typo on it. A pretty obvious one. Then I asked the room: “How many of you noticed the typo?” About five hands went up. Five… out of two hundred. The uncomfortable truth It wasn’t that the audience wasn’t smart. It wasn’t that they weren’t paying attention. It’s that their brains had already decided what my slides were going to say—and stopped really looking or reading. That’s not a presentation problem. That’s a human cognition problem.

Trials are not won when counsel sits down. They are won later, when twelve jurors sit around a table trying to persuade one another. That reality changes how trial teams should think about persuasion. The real question is not: “Did we present a compelling case?” It’s: “Did we give jurors arguments they can actually use?” Because once deliberations begin, lawyers disappear. The courtroom disappears. What remains are jurors debating facts, credibility, responsibility, and damages. Jurors become the advocates. And the side that wins is often the side whose arguments are easiest to remember, explain, and repeat. At Persuadius, this principle shows up across all of our services—jury consulting, storytelling and opening statement development, litigation graphics, and courtroom presentation. Each discipline contributes to a single goal: Equipping jurors with persuasive tools they can carry into the jury room.

You might be waking up today to a world that looks like it’s been quietly buried in snow. Sidewalks vanish. Cars turn into white shapes. The usual landmarks of daily life—curbs, steps, driveways—are suddenly indistinct.

Some lawyers know what a trial presentation company does. Other lawyers do not—not really. For those that do not, they hire a trial presentation firm because trial is coming, the exhibits are a mess, and someone needs to run the screen so the lead lawyer can focus on questioning witnesses instead of fumbling with a clicker. That’s the whole need, right? Not exactly. Some trial presentation companies are truly litigation consulting companies—and some are simply exhibit operators with good equipment and a clean suit. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, as far as it goes. But Persuadius was built for something deeper: lawyers and Ph.D.’s who can help you design persuasive trial graphics, sharpen themes, test jury reaction, and run the courtroom presentation as part of a strategy, not as a technical function.

A Year-End Retrospective Based on Reader Viewership What Persuasion Looked Like in 2025 Every year, certain ideas quietly rise to the top—not because they’re trendy, but because they work. In 2025, Persuadius readers gravitated toward articles that challenged conventional trial habits: over-reliance on logic, cluttered visuals, bullet-point thinking, and storytelling that tells instead of shows. The most-read pieces this year shared a common theme: persuasion is less about adding more information and more about shaping how jurors understand what matters. Below is our list of the 15 most-read Persuadius articles of 2025, ranked by reader viewership. Together, they offer a revealing snapshot of what litigators are rethinking—and refining—about storytelling, jury persuasion, trial graphics, and courtroom strategy. 🔝 The Top 15 Most-Read Persuadius Articles of 2025 1. The Paradox of Persuasion: Why Logic Often Fails in the Courtroom This article explores why purely logical arguments frequently fall flat with jurors, despite lawyers’ instinct to “prove” their case rationally. Drawing on cognitive science and real-world trial experience, it explains how persuasion is more often driven by meaning, emotion, and narrative coherence than by facts alone. 2. 5 Alternatives to Persuasion-Killing Bullet Points A direct challenge to one of trial lawyers’ most ingrained habits, this piece shows how bullet points dilute persuasion and fragment juror understanding. It offers five concrete visual and narrative alternatives that communicate ideas more clearly and memorably in the courtroom.

One of the most fascinating challenges in trial persuasion is deciding whether to take jurors back in time. When a case involves conduct from a decade ago—or even just a few years ago—the cultural lens through which people saw the world was different. What was acceptable in 2012 might look outrageous in 2025. What seemed overlooked in the pre–Me Too era became headline-worthy by 2017. And even that lens has shifted again since. As trial consultants, we often rely on a trial graphic to give jurors context. A good trial graphic can reset their perspective, reminding them what “normal” looked like when the conduct occurred. But like all powerful persuasion tools, this strategy has both pluses and minuses. Why Taking Jurors Back Can Work 1. Context Creates Fairness Jurors want to be fair. They know they’re judging past conduct, and they’re often open to guidance. A trial graphic that situates an event in its proper era can be invaluable.

In high-stakes litigation, a great trial graphic doesn’t merely “support” the narrative — it is the narrative. It is the difference between jurors leaning in or tuning out, between a judge following your logic or silently asking themselves, What is counsel even trying to say? After more than thirty years of building litigation graphics for some of the most sophisticated trial teams in the country, I’ve noticed a pattern: the teams who win consistently follow the same three core rules, whether consciously or not. Conversely, the teams who struggle with persuading lay decision-makers tend to violate these rules — sometimes subtly, sometimes flagrantly. These rules are not aesthetic preferences. They are grounded in cognitive psychology, attention span research, and the simple reality that most jurors don’t think the way lawyers do. Here are the three rules: Every litigation graphic should be understandable without explanation, and each should convey only one short sentence of meaning. Never — not once — read the long-form text on a litigation graphic.