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Author name: ken.brodabahm

Avoid the “And Another Thing…” Style in Rebuttal

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – For all the careful attention and planning that goes into a good opening statement story, and a strong closing argument structure, the rebuttal can end up sounding like an afterthought — especially when it is an afterthought.  Composed on the fly while listening to your opponent’s argument, your rebuttal can often be reduced to […]

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Expert Witnesses: When Criticized, Don’t Just Respond, Riposte!

By:  Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – In fencing, a “riposte” is the act of turning away an attack (a parry) and converting it into a strike back at your opponent.  In common conversation, a riposte means answering an attack or an insult with a witty reply.  In either case, it is a good come back that converts defense

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Put Your Jury Selection on Steroids by Leveraging Pretrial Research: Lessons from the Barry Bonds Trial

By:  Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – This post is focused on bulking-up your ability to target high-risk jurors and performance enhancing your voir dire.  So speaking of steroids, let’s start with Barry Bonds.  Jury selection for the perjury trial of the former San Francisco Giants power-hitter, charged with lying to a grand jury over steroid use, starts

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Know Your ‘God Terms’ and Your ‘Devil Terms’

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – The need for a theme that communicates, simplifies, and unites your case has become common sense to litigators.  But the way that we come up with a theme is a little more mysterious.  Some see theme creation as an act of laborious analysis, developed out of a painstaking accounting

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Settle Your Case Without Setting the Dominoes in Motion: Research on the Demonstration Effect

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – The role of a positive example in creating a “demonstration effect” has long been noted in the fields of political science and international relations, with one of the classic examples being the American Revolution that was closely followed by the French revolution.  We’re seeing it now on a near daily

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The Jury is Out: Make the Most of Your Experience In an Era of Fewer Trials

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – We’ve now been using the phrase “the vanishing jury trial,” for almost a decade, and the decline continues.  The days when experienced lawyers could count on finding themselves in front of a jury several times a month are gone, as today’s cases are increasingly resolved by judges, mediators, arbitrators, and other routes

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Conduct a Social Media Analysis on Your Potential Jurors (But Beware of False Expectations of Privacy)

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Attorneys engaged in the process of jury selection have always been eager to uncover as much information as the judge allows through questionnaires and oral examination in court.  For that reason, it isn’t surprising to most potential jurors that the lawyers are trying to get a sense of any strongly

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In Patent Arguments, Remember that Words Don’t Have Meaning

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Okay, that is a deliberately provocative title, but I mean it literally:  words don’t have meaning any more than scissors have cut paper.  Meaning isn’t an inherent or immutable attribute or possession of a word (something it “has”), but is rather an effect of the word when used in

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When Crossing or Responding to Your Opposing Expert Witness, Look for the L.I.E. (Large Internal Error)

By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – When the case comes down to ‘expert versus expert,’ one important question is, what makes jurors believe one expert witness over another?  Applying the rational model of law, we would like to think that jurors would evaluate the credentials, the methodology, and the strength of the conclusions offered, and

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