EVASIVE WITNESSES

EVASIVE WITNESSES

Recently plaintiff’s attorney Rick Friedman shared an article from the defense publication ” For the Defense” published in December 2015 entitled ”Strategies for Responding to Reptile Theory Questions” by John R. Crawford and Benjamin A. Johnson. file:///C:/Users/pnl/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/EEHZ7017/Strategies-for-Responding-to-Reptile-Theory­Questions-compressed.pdf The article is written in response to David Ball and Don C. Keenan’s book Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff’s Revolution.” The authors summarize the concept in the book as: “In brief, the theory calls for convincing jurors that a defendant’s conduct…

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If They Don’t Like You They Won’t Hear You: An Essay on Persuasive Communication

If They Don’t Like You They Won’t Hear You: An Essay on Persuasive Communication

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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