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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: So Donald Trump now has the coronavirus. As of press time for this blog post, he is fighting the illness from the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed Medical Center. It is news that struck many as both surprising and predictable: Surprising in the way that it has upended a campaign […]

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It is worth remembering: The reasons that we have enforceable rules for a courtroom is to avoid the spectacle that Americans witnessed in the first Presidential debate this year. Commentators across the political spectrum variously called the match-up between President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden “unwatchable,” a “debacle,”

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Here is a scenario that might be playing out in various forms around the country: A judge looks at her increasingly crowded docket during the coronavirus pandemic and thinks, “Well, I’m doing professional meetings on Zoom every day. Why couldn’t I move some of these trials by putting all or

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Attorneys know the feeling: With some of your witnesses, you just want to keep it simple, encourage them to keep their heads down, and limit the possible damage. With any luck, they’ll get through it with minimal damage to your case. But for other witnesses, testimony is an opportunity. The

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There’s something that judges will often tell potential jurors at the start of the voir dire process: “We know jury duty is an inconvenience, but it is a necessary duty.” But what if it is more than an inconvenience? What if it was a threat to health, or even life?

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Across the country, restaurants are changing what it means to be a restaurant, movie theaters are changing what it means to be a movie theater, and conferences are changing what it means to be a conference. So maybe it’s time for courtrooms to look into changing what it means to be a courtroom.

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: So you’re conducting a deposition or cross-examination: Where is the witness? Are they right there in the room with you, or are they many miles away in a room with their computer? With the pandemic still raging across the U.S., many are social distancing their testimony via Zoom or other

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: “You would agree with me, wouldn’t you doctor, that a physician should never needlessly endanger his patient, right?”  That is a recommended question, probably the main recommended question to plaintiff attorneys who are applying the Reptile approach to persuasion. At first, it sounds like the answer would be an easy “Yes,” or

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: We are, of course, still in the midst of the pandemic, and if the question is, “How are people feeling about that?” there is not just one answer. There isn’t even a good answer that can be accurately expressed as an average. Instead, there are different constellations of opinion relating

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As of press time for this post, 173,094 Americans have died from the novel coronavirus. If the United States had followed the example of other developed countries by taking earlier and more decisive actions against the virus, our country could have prevented approximately 70 percent of these deaths. That, at