By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Litigators expect to be fighting with the other side. After all, that’s what trial is about. But when it comes to making decisions within our own teams, we should avoid criticism, all pull as one, and cooperatively come together around a common strategy, right? Wrong! Instead, we should be fighting […]
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I’ve sometimes been asked, “what is the effect of the attorney’s gender to a jury?” It would sure be nice to be able to reply, “it doesn’t matter — a good attorney is a good attorney.” But what does the data say? Last week, the Forbes-affiliated “She Negotiates” blog reported on a survey
Female Attorneys: Expect (But Don’t Accept) a Subtle Bias in the Courtroom Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: If you are in court with a sitting jury, you can’t help but watch them for facial responses. Whether you are at the lectern, counsel table, the witness box, or the gallery, it is irresistible to observe the panel and it is inevitable to form conclusions about their attitudes toward what
Don’t Be Too Sure About Face Reading Your Jury Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A Google search on the phrase “no comment” appearing in recent news yields thousands of hits — various individuals and organizations responding in time-honored fashion to some sort of crisis. Recently, for example, after CNN Analyst Roland Martin had his finger too close to the Tweet button during the Super
Don’t Say Nothing: The Limitations of “No Comment” as a Litigation Crisis Strategy Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Perceptions can be tricky. Take the picture above for example: If you’ll do something right now, I promise that you’ll be amazed. Stand up from in front of your monitor and step back about 15 feet from the computer, and you’ll see Albert Einstein turn into Marilyn Monroe. Seriously! The image doesn’t change of
When it Comes to Bad Defense Venues, Treat Perception as Reality Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Sometimes the bandwagon isn’t a bad place to be. If your case embraces what is likely to be the popular position (e.g., the big company is to blame or the accused is guilty), then a tidal wave of opinion reaching a swift conclusion, and sweeping the doubters along in its wake,
Help Jurors Stay Off the Bandwagon Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Many hold that stories are essential to effective communication, and I am among them. Especially in litigation, there is a natural role for stories as a glue holding together the facts and the law, the ethics and the evidence, the logic and the persuasion. I believe that and apply it in my
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Apologies are very much in vogue. If you accidentally run your cruise ship aground, or surreptitiously wiretap phones in order to discover great newspaper stories, then it has become a well-known next step in the script to make a public apology. The shamed politician, loose-lipped celebrity, and the guilty criminal all recognize the
Don’t Make Fake, or Fatal, Apologies Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: At a conference, I once met another consultant who actually claimed that his mock trial findings would line up with actual trial results with a definite confidence interval of, he said, plus or minus five percent. It was one of those conference moments when you realize that you urgently need
Don’t Be Entranced By Statistical Claims From Mock Trial Research Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Leave it to the engineers. While we all have our subjective methods of estimating our odds in litigation, in the field of construction litigation, the act of handicapping has apparently been raised to a level of mathematical precision. Computer modelers have found a way to input known factors and predict
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