Jury persuasion Quotes

In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.

Every trial lawyer knows what it is like to sit patiently while the other side puts on its case. Inevitably they make a few points that appeal to the jury, and waiting for the opportunity to respond can be painful. The desire to jump up immediately - to point out the flaws in logic or the factual distortions - is often overpowering.

Talk to the jury as though your client's fate depends on every word you utter.

As a lawyer, particularly in criminal law, you really do have to try to tell your story to the jury and hope that the judge makes rulings that allows your story to get through.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

I don't think any prosecutor should walk into a courtroom and think they're going to wow a jury with catchphrases and cliches and that kind of performance.

I would go to trials a lot in Boston, as best I could. And it's incredible that, like, lawyers that had a good case weren't dramatic at all. Lawyers that had a horrible case would sing and dance and do whatever it took to convince the jury or the judge that this guy was innocent. So that was a cool thing to see because that made me believe that what the script [of From The Hip] was doing was totally believable. Now, maybe not ordinary. But it could happen.

Your job as a trial attorney is to try to convey to the jury the essence of the people you represent.

I can assure the conspiracy theorists who have very effectively savaged [Gerald] Posner in their books that they're going to have a much, much more difficult time with me. As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.

There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.