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(formerly the Persuasive Litigator blog)

Testifying Effectively

Don’t Enter That Time Machine: Carefully Answer “What Would You Have Done Differently?”

Testifying Effectively / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: “Looking back at this situation, what if anything would you do differently?” Witnesses can be asked that question in a variety of case types: medical malpractice, products liability, contract, fraud, and really anything that involves a conceivably questionable past decision. And this question can be tricky to answer. For the […]

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Prepare Your Witness Virtually: Seven Best Practices

Testifying Effectively, Witness Preparation / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As we are moving up yet another hill on the pandemic case-count rollercoaster, hopefully the last rise before the final descent into a vaccine landing zone, courts are once again pulling back in–person trials, while lawyers look for ways to stay prepared using virtual tools. Along with web-conferenced hearings and

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Witnesses: Answer Both the Language of the Question and Its Implication

Testifying Effectively, Witness Preparation / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When preparing a witness, there can sometimes be a strong impulse to say, “Just answer the question.” That impulse comes from an appropriate desire to keep things simple, and to keep the witness from wandering or waffling. But it can be bad advice. The choice to just answer the question on

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Face It: Masks Don’t Hinder Credibility Assessment

Testifying Effectively, Visual Communication / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As a sign of just how serious the coronavirus pandemic is getting, the President has finally appeared in public with a mask. The precaution of wearing a face mask is still highly politicized, but it is slowly catching on. In the planning process of courts that are moving toward resuming trials,

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Web-Conferencing? Don’t Let Your Energy Zoom Away

Comprehension, Testifying Effectively, Visual Communication, Witness Preparation / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: These days, instead of spending our days in offices, conference rooms, and courthouses, we are likely spending those days in front of laptop web-cameras, negotiating our business lives in this new medium. I have noticed that even some contacts that used to be handled by telephone, are now becoming web-conferences.

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Adapt to Remote Communication (Including Testimony)

Testifying Effectively, Visual Communication / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Okay, show of hands: Two weeks ago, how many of you were familiar with Zoom, Webex, GotoMeeting, and/or MS Teams? And how many of you are familiar with them today? These tools for multi-party videoconferencing over the internet have been around for years, and in some law offices have even

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Witnesses, Return to Your ‘Home Base’ Where Possible

Testifying Effectively, Witness Preparation / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A couple of witnesses had about the most high-profile testimony turn imaginable the other day. As the public phase of the House impeachment hearings got underway on Wednesday, the first up to bat were George Kent, top State Department official for Eastern Europe, and the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine,

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Train Your Witness to Combat Simplistic Equivalence

Testifying Effectively, Witness Preparation / /

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: God is Love Love is Blind Stevie Wonder is Blind Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God That’s an exaggerated version of a kind of fallacious thinking that is often used in witness examination. It is a form of the “transitive property” in logic, If A=B, and B=C, then A=C. This idea, however, is

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