by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting It's been another unbelievable year at A2L Consulting. I'm very proud to see us again be voted best jury consultants and best litigation graphics consultants. More than 20,000 free e-books and webinars were viewed on A2LC.com. Incredibly, there were more than 300,000 pages viewed our site this year. About two-thirds of those visits were to our award-winning Litigation Consulting Report blog that now boosts 5,800 free subscribers (that's more than 2,200 new subscribers since last year!). On that blog, we will have published 115 articles by year's end. It's a few less than last year, but we have to confess, we were really busy being litigation consultants this year! Each year I list the very best articles based on your readership, and this year 14 articles stand out as the top-14 for 2014. Each of these articles was read by thousands of people, and some were read by tens of thousands.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In recent years, I have seen in-house counsel become increasingly involved in litigation. Gone are the days when in-house would simply hire the top name litigator and hope for the best. Today, in-house counsel help determine trial strategy, they closely manage budget, they assist in choosing litigation support consultants, and they sometimes take a leadership role on the trial team. However, since trials are relatively rare and not many in-house counsel are trial lawyers themselves, how are in-house counsel supposed to effectively contribute in a litigation environment beyond simply managing the purse-strings? Enter this new and free book, The In-House Counsel Litigation Toolkit, a first of its kind for A2L Consulting. We have published more than a dozen wildly popular books over the last several years that have been collectively downloaded more than 100,000 times. However, this new 172-page book is the first A2L book designed for in-house counsel and their outside counsel. It contains 50 hand-curated articles focused on litigation and the role of modern in-house counsel.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Most would agree that mock trials are not conducted as often as they should be. After all, why wouldn't you want to learn what kinds of jurors you will see on your jury, understand what works about your case and what doesn't, understand what works about your opponent's case and what doesn't, gauge your settlement position, provide outside counsel a chance to practice and gain many more benefits all for a tiny fraction of the cost of what is often at stake? Is a mock trial mandatory? Of course not—and neither is having someone else cut your hair. Both are entirely optional expenses, but both are very good ideas.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting If you can learn the secrets of how mock jurors commonly behave during mock trial deliberations, you will be better positioned to win at trial. These behavior patterns are understandably foreign since most people see mock juries deliberate infrequently. However, when you are a jury consultant, mock trials are routine, and repeat behavior patterns become clear over a long career. Surprisingly, it turns out that no matter where you go in the country, mock jurors tend to act in similar ways. Although there are venue-specific idiosyncrasies, mock jurors act quite similarly from locale to locale. If you understand the questions they almost always ask, the order of deliberations they usually follow and how mock juries address damages almost every time, you will be far ahead of almost all of your peers. We at A2L have put together a free 75-minute webinar, 12 Things Every Mock Juror Ever Has Said. It will be conducted live on December 9, 2014 at 1:30pm ET and is designed to share A2L's accumulated knowledge about mock jurors. Click here to register for it for free.
by Ryan H. Flax, Esq. (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting It is well known and generally accepted by the top performers in the litigation community that you need to use demonstrative evidence, including litigation graphics, to be persuasive at trial. As a scientific certainty, using visual support to back up your key points and arguments is critical to maximizing persuasiveness. As a litigator, I’ve personally created and used graphics, and developed litigation graphics for others, to use at trial, at Markman (patent claim construction) hearings, and for other presentations. As a litigation consultant, I’ve seen countless terrific litigators both understand that they do need graphics and at the same time misunderstand how they should be using litigation graphics in these and similar settings.
by Kaitlin Rothstein A2L Consulting Have you ever noticed that when you have someone else take a look at a problem or help edit a document, they find another way to address the issue or find additional areas that can be tweaked? That is what mock trials serve as, a tool to put additional eyes and minds on a massive set of data and find out where it can be fine tuned and perfected. The purpose of the mock trial is to educate the lawyers and clients on the case’s strengths and weaknesses and find where it can be enhanced. If you are on the fence about using a mock trial, think about these important ways that one could enhance your case:
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting A successful trial lawyer is one who is able to persuade a jury or judge of the truth of his or her client’s case. In order to do that, a lawyer must connect with people on an emotional level. The only way to do that is to tell a compelling story. Stories are the way in which people learn and the way in which they organize reality. Law school may prepare lawyers to build a case around the law, but it doesn’t teach the science or art of persuasion. Sitting in a jury and analyzing evidence is likely one of the most complex things a juror will ever do, so you need to make it easier for them and as entertaining as possible. You need to hook them early and keep them engaged.
by Elise Jefferson, MA A2L Consulting An intriguing and complex aspect of civil litigation is the use of damage awards as a means of achieving justice. This remains an inexact science; no one can predict the amount of money that a jury is going to award the plaintiff if liability is found. However, a good deal that is worth knowing has been learned about what goes into that decision. For example, studies have examined damage awards when jurors are asked to award a specific amount, as well as how jurors’ perceptions of the plaintiff’s motives for suing can affect damage awards. Although it can be difficult to predict how much money a jury may award, it is still important to consider the various theories that attempt to explain what influences jurors when determining damages. Following are four theories that reflect the current state of the art.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
by Ryan H. Flax, Esq. (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting
by Elise Jefferson, M.A. A2L Consulting
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