Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips

Eric Oliver is a trial consultant whose company is MetaSystems Ltd (www.eric-oliver.com) is in Canton, Michigan. I’ve known and respected Eric for years. He has consulted on my cases. I particularly look forward to his newsletter he labels News from The Mental Edge. Eric is t he one who first introduced me to the knowledge that decisions are made at an unconscious level and ratified by our intellect. We can’t access the unconscious process where decisions are made to see…

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On the flight here to Los Cabos I finished Malcom Gladwell’s new book Outliers. I believe his previous two books The Tipping Point and Blinkhave invaluable information for trial lawyers. I’m not sure this one does or at least not to the same degree as his previous books. His new book does discuss what I’ve told lawyers. He calls it the "Matthew Effect" and I call it the law of abundance. The point is that Matthew 25:29 quotes Jesus as…

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I’m a great believer that lawyers must use a checklist for every deposition they take no matter how experienced they are. If seasoned airplane pilots use checklists, lawyers should too. It’s too easy to get side tracked during a deposition and forget some area of questioning. What follows is an example of a verybasic and simplistic outline for the deposition of an eye witness in a damage case. I take an outline like this and revise it by adding areas…

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