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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A seasoned trial lawyer stands in front of the jury, previews the critical argument, and then, making knowing eye contact with the jury, adds, “Now, you might be thinking…” before spelling out and then responding to a key point of expected resistance. That approach — anticipating and reacting to likely

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It’s America’s case of the moment: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, Hollywood’s former power-couple, now exchanging accusations of physical abuse in a Fairfax, Virginia courtroom. The defamation case initially brought by Depp has now centered on two starkly different stories about what went on in the marriage. At it’s heart,

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The reserved opening statement is a strategy that, in all my years helping in the courtroom, I have never seen applied. In theory, a defendant typically has the right to wait until the plaintiff or the state has put on its case, and then offer their opening statement just before

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: You have your witness on the stand in direct examination. You have finished laying out the positive story that you want to tell, but you have one more thing to do before handing that witness over to the other side: You need to cover the bad stuff. At this stage,

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: For those trained in the sciences, relying on illustrations or examples is not considered nearly as good as relying on data. If they call something “anecdotal,” then there is a good chance that the word “merely….” precedes it, and the adjective is being used to play down the point. From

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Even if the pandemic is finally over, and even if it is the last pandemic we will ever experience — and both of those seem pretty optimistic — it is still worthwhile to study and to learn from the unprecedented adaptations we have seen the U.S. trial system make in

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There was the childhood spent being a good student, then the hard years of college, and the even harder years of medical school, then residency, then years of building your expertise and your practice. Then came the event that many said was inevitable, but which you still thought you might

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Imagine you’re currently a citizen of the Russian Federation. The telephone rings, and the person on the other end of the line identifies themselves as a public opinion researcher, and they’re conducting a poll. “How do you feel about your country’s current ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine?” Well, given that

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When a juror looks at an act and declares it to be bad or good, where is that coming from? Well, hopefully, it is coming from the evidence. But inevitably, it is also coming from that juror’s own habits of moral judgment. And it isn’t just a choice formed in

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As you are putting on your case at trial, and you go to call your next witness, there’s always a reaction from the jury box. It’s an opportunity for fresh attention from them, but it is often a bit of a mystery: Who is this new person? What is their role