By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Emerging from the dust and debris of a long campaign, there is one man who can claim a clear victory and a solid mandate: Nate Silver. If you don’t know who Nate Silver is, you haven’t been paying attention to the polling running up to the presidential election. But if […]
Tune in to the Signal and Not the Noise in Pretrial Research Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Litigators are interested in public opinion because cases are played out on that stage. Attitudes about lawyers, about corporations, and about case-specific issues like consumer product responsibility, serve as an important backdrop and starting point for jurors’ opinions and reactions to a wide variety of civil cases. For that reason, trial
Know the Perils of Polls Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: So you have just started the mock trial and you know this much: Your case doesn’t fare very well at all on first impression. After hearing a summary from you and the other side, your credibility is low, the proportion of those siding with your adversary is high, and you
Think Again: Escape Bad First Impressions By Encouraging Reappraisal Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When you lose a billion dollars in trial, you tend to look for every opportunity to get around that verdict. That would appear to be the explanation for Samsung’s recent efforts to target juror misconduct in its recent patent trial with Apple. Samsung’s claims center on the foreman of the jury,
Treat Post-Verdict Juror Interviews as Education, Not Discovery Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm It is the mantra of every political communicator trying to control the focus and avoid gaffes: Stay on message. In the current presidential campaign, however, that is easier said than done. Republican nominee Mitt Romney, for example, has had a particularly bad week. After some widely criticized comments on the
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Trial lawyers typically want a smart jury. There are definitely exceptions, but because advocates are prone to believe that they represent the side of light, logic, and truth, the feeling is that, “As long as we get a jury that is smart enough to see past our opponent’s error and
Don’t Fool Yourself on the Advantages of Intelligence Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Imagine you’re a hound in a field of rabbits. As you’re giving chase to one, you get the scent of another and off you go after that one. In the distraction of a new target, you end up with no rabbits. Now imagine that you are Rick Santorum questing for
Don’t Chase Every Rabbit: The Art of Issue Selection Read More »
Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The word “science” conjures up all kinds of images, and many of those images don’t quite match the realities. One context in which scientific perceptions are at a mismatch with reality is the area of jury selection. A week ago, Joel Warner wrote an article for Slate, the online magazine, that began with
Don’t Mistake the Purpose of “Scientific Jury Selection” Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Litigators expect to be fighting with the other side. After all, that’s what trial is about. But when it comes to making decisions within our own teams, we should avoid criticism, all pull as one, and cooperatively come together around a common strategy, right? Wrong! Instead, we should be fighting
Make Better Decisions By Fighting Within Your Trial Team Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It is an unusual research finding, but it explains a great deal of what we see in mock trials and litigation outcomes: Just as with naughty pupils, bad acts receive more attention than good acts. For both the plaintiff, as well as the defendant, juries and other fact-finders are likely