Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips

Denials aren’t always heard as denials

April 19, 2008 Paul Luvera Comments 0 Comment

My friend Eric Oliver is a communications specialist and trial consultant (www.Eric-oliver.com) at MetaSystems in Michigan. His publication News from the Mental Edge is always informative. His last issue (Winter 2008) reprints an article from the Washington Post "Difficulty in debunking myths rooted in the way the mind works." You may have read about the strange fact that no matter how often the truth that Iraq was not involved in the Trade Center disaster is repeated a majority of people…

Lessons from the roman army

April 7, 2008 Paul Luvera Comments 0 Comment

In the days of Roman glory it has been pointed out that the Roman army wasunconquerable. They might lose a battle or even a campaign, but they refused to accept losing a war. In the face of total defeat the Roman army would not admit defeat. This "Roman persistence" was the determining factor in the greatness of the Roman empire. In 212 BC Hannibal’s army routed the Roman army in total defeat. But, the Romans refused to surrender to Hannibal…

Impression vs logic

March 21, 2008 Paul Luvera Comments 0 Comment

There are many lessons learned from the five week trial I just finished. One of them was re-enforcement of the principle that a trial is not a battle of logic, but rather one of impression. We now know that well over 90% of our decision process is done at a level we are not even conscious about. Gladwell’s book Blink is one of the better recent books on this subject. What we know is that people’s opinion process is driven…