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Category: Miscellaneous

THE POWER OF IMPRESSION

THE POWER OF IMPRESSION

On January 14th  the New York Times published an interesting article by Sue  Shellenbarger about appearing to be an intelligent person. I was once again struck by the fact of how powerful our impressions are and even more than our rational analysis. The article  discussed research about how people form an impression about how intelligent another person might be. It turns out things we do to  promote an impression of intelligence  may do that or they may do the opposite of what we intended. In general, things that…

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TRIAL ASSISTANT INSTRUCTIONS

TRIAL ASSISTANT INSTRUCTIONS

When I was a young lawyer in the small town of Mount Vernon, Washington I would sometimes fly to places for legal work as the quickest way to get there. Just outside town there was a narrow dirt air strip right along a standing field of corn on one side and a drainage canal on the other. The local pilot who flew the farms for spraying the fields had his planes there and one was a small two seater he…

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THE SPENCE TRIAL COLLEGE

THE SPENCE TRIAL COLLEGE

In 1994 Gerry Spence asked me to participate in teaching at a new trial college he was creating for lawyers to teach them the right way to  be plaintiff trial lawyers. It was to be a non profit college and we would volunteer our  time  and transportation. I had known him for some time and quickly agreed even thought I had no real idea of what he had in mind. The other people, in addition to Gerry and I,  invited for this first college were: Judge…

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