Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips

. Recently an outstanding plaintiff’s attorney shared the report of an obituary about a talented reporter and writer Pete Hamill. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/nyregion/pete-hamill-dead.html The key to Hamill’s writing skill was noted in the obituary where it reported: “He idolized Hemingway.” Hemmingway’s writing style was brevity and simplicity with powerful words that dispensed with adjectives and got straight to the point. . There is much lawyers can learn from Hemingway’s writing style. Lawyers are afflicted with the curse of lacking an awareness of…

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. I recently read two books on persuasion and communication. Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs and Lawyers, Judges and Semi Rational Beasts by Daniel Holloway. They both had excellent advice for trial lawyers. Here is a summary of ideas from both books As we all know, an essential part of persuasion is showing you share your audience’s values. We divide the world into US and THEM, and reserve good feeling and thinking for the former. We are tribal…

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This article was written by Steven E. Perkel, DSW, LCSW from Steven E. Perkel & Associates, LLC. and published in The Jury Expert May 1, 2010. He has given me permission to reprint it in this blog. Twenty-three hundred years ago in Rhetoric, Aristotle wrote that persuasive speech was dependent on three variables: the speaker, the subject matter, and the listener. More specifically, Aristotle taught us that three key issues impact persuasiveness; the character of the speaker or Ethos, the…

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