By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: What does it take to beat a reptile? In most cases, a mongoose will do the job. As attention to the Reptile perspective on plaintiffs’ advocacy has been growing, an interest in the best modes of defending against it has finally started to catch up. The “Reptile,” of course refers […]
Defendants: Be the Mongoose Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: On the 170th Christmas after the publication of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we finally have a diagnosis: Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from “affluenza.” That condition has surfaced most recently in the case of a well-off Fort Worth teenager who received probation and treatment, instead of a prison sentence for causing the deaths of four
Watch Out For Scrooge Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The Grand Old Party is putting a brand new emphasis on appealing to the female voter, even to the point of creating a course on how to speak to and run against women. This comes in the response to recent polling showing a gender gap in party support, and in the
Speak to the Person, Not the Gender Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Okay, let’s line up: Emotional people on the right, logical people on the left. Where would you line up? Too simple? Turns out it is. The idea of classing people in broad categories like emotional/logical, creative/analytic, or “left-brained”/”right-brained” is a staple of folk psychology commonly applied to the task of
Stop Trying to Adapt to ‘Left-‘ or ‘Right-Brained’ Jurors Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I have a few pet peeves. Some relate to language (don’t say “literally” when you mean “figuratively,” and don’t say “jive” when you mean “jibe”). Those I can live with. But a larger pet peeve that I have trouble living with relates to demonstrative exhibits in the opening statement. Or, more
Don’t Whine About ‘Argumentative’ Demonstratives (and Argue Back Against Whiners) Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There has been an appropriate swell of attention to the life and words of Nelson Mandela since the world leader’s death last Thursday. Less emphasized in the tributes is the fact of what Nelson Mandela was before he was a protest leader, then prisoner, then president, then father of a
Take Your Time and End Strongly (a Legal Lesson from Nelson Mandela) Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Ever felt like you needed a phrase to describe that moment when you are sucked into a client’s unproductive mindset? Well, here it is: “vicarious entrapment.” The condition stems from the fact that trial lawyers wear two hats. On the one hand, they’re advocates — zealous advocates – for their
Avoid ‘Vicarious Entrapment’ When Assessing Your Client’s Case Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The U.S. Senate has accomplished something at long last: a rules change. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the so-called “nuclear option” of allowing filibusters to be ended with a majority vote. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell laments the change, some will say the minority had it coming by
Pay Attention to Minority Influence Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Since 1998, more than 4.5 million people have discovered they have more of a racial bias than they thought they had. They did this by self-administering an online tool called the Implicit Association Test. Developed by researchers at Yale University and the University of Washington, the test looks at implicit bias,
Address Bias at its Roots Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The sacred can sometimes find its way into legal evaluations. Apart from jurors using or quoting the Bible during deliberations (see Miller et al., 2013), sacred values can also take a broader role in the form of moral imperatives we are unwilling to compromise. One researcher (Tetlock, 2003) in a relatively
Consider the Sacred Read More »