The fewer obstructions between you and your jurors, the more persuasive you will be.  Yet many trial lawyers purposely place an obstacle between themselves and their jurors.  That obstacle?  Their notes.

Here’s the slippery slope your notes create: The more notes you bring with you to the lectern, the more you will depend upon them.  The more you depend on your notes, the less eye contact you will have with your jurors.  The less eye contact you have with the jurors, the less persuasive you will be.

Rather than bring copious notes to the lectern, try to bring no more than a one page outline with you.  Write out the main bullet points of your arguments, rather than word-for-word arguments, and you’ll force yourself to spend more time talking with your jury.  Your goal is to use an outline, not a script.  It’s okay to read quotations, it’s okay to read snippets of testimony, but please, don’t read your argument!

Here are a few tips you can use to minimize the amount of notes you bring to the lectern:

Use visual aids instead of an outline. If you use posters or computer images to help the jury follow your closing argument, you can embed your notes directly into your presentation.  Let’s say you have three posters for closing argument, one for each of the three elements you need to prove.  You can use the posters to remind you what point you should argue next.

Add secret messages on your flipchart. If you are using a flipchart, you can write notes to yourself on the flipchart.  If you write the notes in pencil, your jurors will never see your notes.  You can quickly glance at your handwritten note while explaining the flipchart to the jury, and they’ll never know you’re reading from your notes.

Use Presentation Mode in PowerPoint. In presentation mode, your laptop projects images onto two different monitors: the projection screen and your laptop monitor.  The jury only sees the images projected on the big screen.  You, however, see a completely different image on your laptop screen.  On that screen, you can type in whatever reminders you need, so you appear to be presenting without benefit of notes.

Embed secret images into your PowerPoint slides. You can also add secret to your PowerPoint slides.  In the bottom left hand corner of your slide, create a text box and type a few bullet points.  Use a simple font like Arial, and change the font size to 8 points.  At that size, most jurors won’t even see the text.  Their eyes will be focused on your larger text, and won’t look down at your hidden message.

Use bullet points. Rather than use an entire script of notes, condense your arguments to single bullet points.  Try to use fewer than 7 words to describe each of your argument points.  With only a few words written for each point, you’ll be forced to take your eyes off the paper and look at your jurors.

No matter which technique you use, endeavor to become less dependent upon your notes.  Eliminate the barriers between you and your jurors, and you’ll make more frequent eye contact with your jurors.  The more eye contact you make with them, the more persuasive you’ll be.

How many notes do you use during trial?

It’s a delicate balancing act.  Too few notes, and you run the risk of forgetting to address an important element of your case.  Too many notes, and you risk sounding scripted.

Here are a couple of quick tips for improving your use of notes during trial.

When Speaking Directly to the Jury

The importance of eye contact in the courtroom can’t be overstated.  The visible (sometimes barely visible) reactions of your jurors can help you decide whether or not to pursue an argument, whether to follow up on a line of questioning, and whether you need to return to a line of questioning to clear up potential misunderstandings.  You’ll need to pick up on the small non-verbal clues that they’re sending you, and you can’t do that if your head is buried in your notes.  Are they telling you to speed up?  To slow down?  Are they confused?  Bored?  Do they need part of the testimony repeated?  If you don’t look at them and read those clues, you’ll never know.

Make sure that you’re making eye contact with who you want to persuade.  Since you’re trying to persuade the jurors, rather than your legal pad, try to minimize how much time you spend looking at your notes.

When Speaking to a Witness

Jurors take their clues from you about how they should treat witnesses.  If you act like a witness is important, jurors are more likely to think the witness is important.  If you act as if the witness’s testimony doesn’t matter, they’re more likely to dismiss what he says, regardless of its actual importance.

When you look at your notes instead of making eye contact with the witness, it’s not only rude, it sends a message that you don’t care what he has to say and that his answers don’t matter.  To avoid sending the wrong message to your jury, look up from your notes and make eye contact with the witness before asking your question, and finish listening to his answer before you look down at your notes for your next question.  You can even hold eye contact with the witness for an additional moment after he finishes answering, to show that you’re paying close attention to what he’s saying and encourage the jury to pay more attention, too.  Just don’t stare at him, because it will make him feel uncomfortable and he’ll look uneasy on the stand.

Minimizing Your Notes

It’s okay to write out your arguments or questions word-for-word when you’re preparing for trial, so that you know what you want to accomplish.  But don’t make the mistake of bringing those scripts up to the lectern.  Those notes will become a mental crutch, and your eyes will never leave the page.

Anyone can read from a script.  With a well-scripted direct or cross-examination, you could pick someone off the street, send him into court with the script, and let him conduct the examination.  He’d do fine, right up until the point when one of the witness’s answers went off-script.  Then he’d be completely lost, and would have no idea what to do next.

Unlike trials on TV or in the movies, real trials don’t stick to a script.  Trial lawyers who depend on scripted examinations don’t always react very well when the unexpected happens.  That’s why, the fewer notes you bring to the lectern, the more freedom you enjoy.

When preparing the notes that you’ll bring to court, instead of writing out a word-for-word script, write down only what you need.  Rather than full sentences, use brief phrases or single words.  Besides, when you’re in the heat of trial, your eyes won’t easily focus on full sentences like “Mrs. Johnson, would you please tell us how you know the defendant?”  All you’ll really need is a quick reminder, like “RELATIONSHIP?” or “KNOWS DEFENDANT?” to prompt the correct question.

Make it Easy on the Eyes

Finally, if you want to minimize your time spent looking at the page and maximize your eye contact with the jury, it will help if your notes are easy to read.  To reduce how much time you need to look at the page, don’t rely on your chicken scratch handwriting.  Instead, type up your notes (preferably in 18pt or 24pt type) with a simple sans serif font.  You’ll be able to glance down at your notes for an instant, absorb the idea, and then immediately return to making eye contact with your jurors or your witness.  With a little practice and preparation, the jurors won’t even notice your use of notes, they’ll just focus on the strength of your case!

How do you structure your closing arguments?  If you’re like many attorneys, you probably take advantage of primacy to start strong and tell the jurors how strong your case is and show them why you deserve to win.  Normally, that’s exactly how I coach law students and trial lawyers to structure their closings.  “Start strong,” I’ll say, “disclose your weaknesses in the middle, and then finish strong.”

But…  That’s not necessarily the “best” way to outline your closing.

Trial advocacy is art.  Unlike mathematics or science, where only one correct answer exists, art doesn’t necessarily have a “best” way of doing something.  Working from the same palette, Cézanne, Picasso and Dali each created radically different depictions of the human form, but none of their masterpieces can objectively be called “the best.”

The same is true of closing arguments.  There are many different approaches, but we can’t objectively say one of them is the “best” way of structuring an argument.

So, with that in mind, let me offer another approach for structuring your closing argument.

Rather than starting with your strongest argument, then saying “But, here’s the weakness with our case,” you might want to consider starting with your case weakness before discussing the strongest part of your case.  That’s because the word “but” indicates, “Put aside what I just said, and pay attention to what I’m about to say.”

For example, let’s pretend that during your semi-annual review, your boss tells you, “Overall, your job performance is excellent, but… your communication skills need improvement.”

If you’re like most people, you probably fixated on the negative portion of the evaluation, even though the overall evaluation said you were doing an excellent job.  It’s just human nature – when we hear the word “but,” we tune out the previous statement and focus on what follows.  Don’t believe me?  Just imagine the person you love most in the world telling you, “I love you more than anything else in the world.  You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.  I can’t imagine life without you.  But…”

All it takes is one word and you’ve completely forgotten about how wonderful you are, haven’t you?

With that in mind, you may want to reconsider the structure of your closing argument.  Many cases have been won with arguments that basically said, “We have a strong case that deserves to win…  BUT, there are a few weakness in this case that you should know about.”  If you’re afraid this structure may increase the risk of jurors placing greater focus on your case weaknesses, you may want to re-write your argument like this: “There are a few weaknesses in this case that you should know about…  BUT, we have a strong case that deserves to win.”

You probably won’t want to try this format during opening statements, because at that point the jurors don’t know anything about your case yet, and you’ll want to fully maximize the power of Primacy by establishing a strong, positive image in your jurors’ minds.  However, by the time you reach closing arguments, the jurors have heard all of the testimony and seen all of the exhibits in your case, so Primacy doesn’t play as big a role.

By the time you reach closings, the only thing left is argument.  By discussing your weaknesses first before talking about the strength of your case, you may enhance your credibility with the jury and help them become more receptive to your arguments.

The important lesson is that there’s no “best” way to craft your closing argument.  Don’t get locked into thinking there’s only one way to structure your arguments or that there’s a “magic bullet” that will work in every trial.  Each trial is different, each client is different, and each jury is different.  As the trial lawyer, it’s your job to discover which structure you should use and which arguments you should make to create your “masterpiece” closing.  Good luck!

We were halfway through the direct examination of my star witness when I asked, “What did you hear Mr. Thomas say?”

Even if you got a “D-” in your evidence class, when you saw that question you instinctively thought to yourself, “Objection! Hearsay!” My question called for the most obvious objection in the world, right? That’s why it’ll probably surprise you that my opponent didn’t jump up from his seat to yell “Objection!” In fact, he didn’t say a word. He just sat there and continued taking notes.

Before you ask, no, he hasn’t been disbarred, and no, he’s not an idiot. The reason he didn’t object was because he couldn’t. Mr. Thomas was my opponent’s client, so the statement was an exception to the hearsay rule: Statements of party opponents (or, as it’s more commonly called, “admissions” or “statements against interest.”)

Admissions, especially when they’re caught on tape, are usually the most damaging evidence your jurors will hear. If you’re lucky enough to have a taped admission from your opponent, there are a number of wonderful things you can do with that evidence. For example, let’s say that you’ve got a 30 minute recording of a statement your opponent gave to the police about the crash. How many different ways could you use that recording? The first and most obvious choice would be to play the entire statement for the jury during your case-in-chief. You’d simply call the police officer to the stand, ask him to authenticate the recording, and then hit “PLAY.” Nothing to it, right?

The next way to use the recording is during cross-examination. Normally, when cross-examining witnesses about prior inconsistent statements, you confront them with the prior statement by reading it aloud from the transcript. Imagine how much more powerful your impeachment would be if the jurors heard the inconsistencies from the witness’s own mouth? It would be a lot more difficult to deny the prior statement, wouldn’t it?

Attorney: “You hoped Mr. Lumbergh would be fired, didn’t you?”

Witness: “No, of course not!”

Attorney: “Publishing the audio statement previously admitted into evidence as Defense exhibit #22…”

[Recording of witness's voice]: “Lumbergh is a twit. If I had my way, they’d fire him, and stick that coffee mug up his you-know-what…”

Another way to use recorded statements is during closing argument, by playing individual snippets of testimony back-to-back so the jury can compare and contrast the statements:

Attorney: “The day after the murder, John Jones said that he had been home the entire evening. Remember his statement to Ofc. Smith?”

Recording of Jones’ statement: “Dude, I was home all night, I wouldn’t lie to you about that. I swear I was home the entire night. I never left the house.”

Attorney: But the very next day, when he was interviewed again, he made a very different statement, remember?

Recording of Jones’s statement: “I left the house around midnight and went to Krystal’s for some mini-burgers. I was only gone for like 45 minutes or so.”

In the old days, if you were lucky enough to have a recorded admission you wanted to play in court, the only easy way to do it was to bring your handy-dandy cassette recorder and play the entire statement. But the problem with playing the entire statement is that the recording rarely consists solely of statements against interest. Usually, recorded statements also include lots of self-serving hearsay and irrelevant comments. Out of the entire 30 minutes worth of “admissions,” you may want the jurors to only focus on less than a minute or two worth of testimony.

Back then, if there were any parts you needed to skip (such as suppressed statements) or any parts you wanted to highlight, you’d be stuck hitting the fast-forward button and keeping your eyes on the tape counter until you found what you were looking for. At best, it took too much time to fast-forward to the appropriate spot. At worst, your presentation became a comedy of errors as you fumbled and bumbled with the fast-forward and rewind buttons until anti-climatically reaching your impeachment material.

Luckily, nowadays, you’ve got digital technology at your fingertips which dramatically improves the ease of presenting recorded statements. And the best thing is, you don’t need to spend a fortune on professional editing equipment or fancy software to get the benefits of audio editing. With the help of a free program called Audacity (available for both Mac and PC at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), you’ve got an easy way to edit audio statements on your laptop. All you need is a digital recording of the witness’s original statement and some basic knowledge about how to cut and paste on a computer. Once you install the program, you’ll see a screen that looks something like this:

The program is pretty easy to use, and they’ve got full documentation on their site. Once you or your assistant learn how to use it, you can do some amazing things with audio statements. For example, here are some of the different ways you can use this program:

Redacting an audio statement to remove irrelevant sections. No longer do you have to worry about the jury hearing irrelevant, suppressed, or improper comments. Simply highlight the improper comment and click <DELETE>. Presto! The statement will be removed, and you can now save the file as a new audio recording.

Extracting admissions from longer statements. Let’s say you don’t want to replay the entire witness statement, but only want to replay a small snippet. Audacity makes it easy to extract those admissions from extended audio recordings. Here’s all you’d need to do:

1. Go to <PROJECT> and click <IMPORT AUDIO>.
2. Choose the audio recording you want to import.
3. Use the selection tool to highlight the audio segment you want to export. (It’s almost the same as highlighting a paragraph in Word and clicking “Copy”)
4. Click <FILE> and scroll down to <EXPORT SELECTION AS WAV>
5. Choose a filename for your recording. (It’s easier to retrieve the correct statement during trial if you use descriptive titles for each file, such as “The Light was Red” or “The Light was Green”).
6. Click “SAVE”

That’s it! Now you have a standalone .WAV file of the admission that you can play on any computer. Be creative and think of how you could use those admissions. Could you use them during settlement negotiations by burning a “Greatest Hits” CD for your opponent? (“Here are the six times during depositions where C.E.O. admits to liability.”) Or import the statements to your iTunes playlist, so you can quickly click on the correct statement to impeach witnesses during cross-examination?

Maybe you want to use the statements during closing to compare and contrast what different witnesses said about the same events: “What was their understanding of the performance metrics for promotions? Let’s hear what the CEO, Jon Smith, had to say [PLAY CLIP #1]. But the CFO, Jane Smith, said something entirely different [PLAY CLIP #2].”

Statements of party opponents, especially recorded ones, can be some of the most powerful evidence you’ll ever admit. But just as with every other exhibit or testimony that you’ll ever offer into evidence, it’s not enough to simply understand what you should show to the jury. To get the most out of your evidence, you’ll also need to master knowing when you should admit it and how you should publish it. Learn how to use an audio editing program like Audacity to extract your admissions, and you’ll be able to play them to maximum effect for your jury.

Every single second of every single moment of his opening statement was filled with the sound of his voice which when you think back upon it you have to admit you were kind of amazed because there wasn’t a single comma or period or pause I mean did this guy even need to breathe it didn’t seem like it because he just kept going and going and going without regard to oxygen or jury expectations or even the court reporter it was almost as if he was afraid that the thought of pausing would let someone else start talking and that would simply be unacceptable for him so rather than pausing for even a moment and letting you think about what he was saying he just kept talking and talking and…

Unfortunately, many trial lawyers’ opening statements and closing arguments seem to feel like this.

They either have such a poor understanding of the pause’s importance of pausing or don’t know how to effectively pause that you’re tempted to say, “Whoa, buddy! Stop! Take a breath before you pass out!” One of the most powerful tools in your opening statement and closing argument toolbox is the well-placed pause. Often, that brief moment of silence following a profound thought can be more important that the words themselves.

“WHY SHOULD I PAUSE?”
Imagine reading a newspaper without a single comma, period, or paragraph indentation – just word after word after word. How far could you read before losing your train of thought?

An opening statement or closing argument without any pauses feels exactly the same way to your jurors.

Do you want the jury to remember your message? To understand it? Do you want them to take the message into the jury deliberation room, and incorporate it into their verdict? If so, you need to give them a chance to stop and reflect upon what you’re saying. Here are three reasons why you need to effectively pause during your opening statements and closing arguments:

A pause lets us think. Many trial lawyers ask rhetorical questions during closing argument, but then move immediately to their next sentence without pausing. This robs the jury of their chance to think about how that question should shape their verdict or how it might apply to their deliberations. Pausing for a moment lets the audience answer the question and wrap their minds around your message.

A pause helps us feel. During opening statements, you often describe emotional scenes of great pain, fear, or loss. The best trial lawyers describe these moments with such clarity that the jurors feel exactly what happened to the clients and, on their own initiative, place themselves in the clients’ shoes. (Notice that I said, “on their own” — please don’t think I’m encouraging you to make any arguments that violate the Golden Rule!) After describing an emotional scene, give the jurors a moment of silence so that they can absorb its impact and “feel” the same experience.

A pause helps us absorb ideas. Your message travels at the speed of sound. Even in the largest of courtrooms, it travels from your mouth to the jurors’ ears almost instantaneously. But often, it takes a few extra seconds for your message to travel the last few inches from the jurors’ ears to their brains. Pause for a moment, and you’ll give your message enough time to complete its journey.

“WHEN SHOULD I PAUSE?”
There are several opportunities in every opening statement and closing argument where you might consider pausing:

• After you’ve said something important
• After you’ve asked the jurors a rhetorical question
• When you want the jurors to think
• When you’ve asked the jurors to remember a moment in
  their past or envision a common experience
• When you hit an emotional moment
• As a transition between points

Look through the outline of your opening statement or closing argument to find moments where your jurors need to mentally “breathe.” Notate your outline or make a mental note, so that you purposely pause at the appropriate moment.

“HOW DO I EFFECTIVELY PAUSE?”
Even when they purposely pause during their presentations, most trial lawyers underestimate the amount of time that they’ve paused. What seems like an eternity of silence before the jury may, in fact, last only a second or two. Here are three tips for holding your pauses for maximum impact:

Count silently. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi…” and then resume.

Look around. Make eye contact with at least three different members of the jury before continuing.

Get uncomfortable. Pause for one second longer than feels comfortable. The pause won’t be nearly as long as you think it is. You’ll feel uncomfortable, but your jurors won’t.

Effective trial lawyers know how to pause at the right moment and hold their pauses long enough to let jurors think, feel or respond appropriately. When you master the skill of pausing in your openings and closings, you’ll enhance the impact of emotional moments in your case and will help your jurors absorb the important issues in your case. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but before long, those pauses will become a natural part of your repertoire, and an essential element of your winning arguments.