Trial Magazine

Client direct examination is the jury’s first—and often only—opportunity to meet your client and form an impression about him or her. Your goal is to create a genuine and meaningful human connection that is powerful, persuasive, and able to withstand cross-examination.

Genuine connection is a two-way street.

Facilitate your client’s conversation with jurors. Genuine connection is a two-way street. Prepare your client to tell his or her story with what attorneys Daniel Ambrose and Alejandro Blanco call “emotional congruence”—the appropriate emotional processing of the stimulus presented. For example: If you encounter a lion, your negative emotional and physical response would be obvious and palpable. If you later described this as a positive experience, your audience would immediately spot a lack of emotional congruence, and your story would not be believable.

If your client can relive the experience, so will the jurors, and the story will resonate with them. Help your client get there with a few simple exercises, such as closing his or her eyes and describing the setting in which the events took place.

Supplement—don’t supplant—with visual aids. Timing is everything. Avoid interjecting visuals when doing so would break your client’s emotional congruence with his or her story. Visuals also should be clear, concise, and focused only on the topic at issue. For example, Google Earth’s “Street View” can help lock in your client’s perspective of the scene, and ­radiographic images of a fracture or surgical hardware will demonstrate the injury without explanation.

Don’t oversell. Even slight exaggeration might break the bonds of trust between your client and the jurors. If, for example, your client’s medical records indicate occasional mild discomfort, testimony of constant and debilitating pain will call into question not only your client’s pain but also his or her entire case. Prepare your client to talk about what he or she can do despite injuries. While this may seem counterintuitive, focusing on the positive will resonate powerfully with jurors.

For a favorable outcome, jurors must engage with your client’s story—and direct examination can help them get there.

Nathan C. VanDerVeer is an attorney at Farris, Riley & Pitt in Birmingham, Ala. He can be reached at nate@frplegal.com.