Boston Bar Article

Posted by Benson

Doug and Jamie recently wrote an article published in the Spring 2011 issue of The Boston Bar Journal.  The article is titled "A Likely Story: How to Use a Trial Consultant Successfully," and it discusses how a trial consultant can be useful in a venue with an especially restrictive jury selection process like Massachusetts State Court.

I think you'll find it interesting reading as Doug and Jamie primarily discuss the importance of narrative in overall trial strategy and how a trial consultant can be useful in developing and testing the efficacy of what we in the office are starting to call an organizational narrative.  As they write in the article: "The Organizational Narrative is the central theme around which all of the facts, witnesses and arguments revolve. Effectively controlling the narrative requires that each component of the trial be crafted to support the same story."  Narrative is an area that we have been focusing our practice on for some time now, and it is interesting to see how the word itself is slipping into the common parlance of trial attorneys.  I think the more we start to collectively look at every trial as a story, the easier and more natural it will be to bring together the different facets of trial strategy into a more cohesive whole.

We've also been seeing some interesting research into the psychological mechanisms of narrative persuasion compared to more traditional rhetorical persuasion.  A professor from my alma mater, The Ohio State University, named Phil Mazzocco, has been doing some provocative research into the question of narrative persuasion.  He and his co-authors streamlined their more academic articles into an interesting piece for The Jury Expert that will be published in the next few months.  It also makes for a very interesting read and I've written a commentary on the article that discusses its relevance to practical trial consulting.  I'll make sure to post a link to it when it is published.