Persuasive Litigator

Apologize: The Right Way at the Right Time

by: Dr. Kevin Boully

 

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is sorry.  Or is he?  He certainly apologized.  To everyone.  A lot of times.   But is he sorry?  Is he remorseful?  Do his constituents and his public audience genuinely believe him? 

 

“I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. I hurt friends like Tom Davis. I hurt a lot of different folks.  And all I can say is I apologize.”

 

Others have already analyzed the merits of this apology, but the truth is, “I apologize” (no matter how many times you say it) is not all that Sanford and other transgressors can say – and it isn’t what onlookers and the public might want to hear.  Experience, literature, and sound research [1] prove that social transgressors like Sanford, and more importantly that legal transgressors like Kenneth Lay, Enron, Union Carbide and many other corporate defendants since, have effective alternatives for credibly expressing remorse, accepting responsibility, and gracefully minimizing negative effects.  And they can do it without the boomerang of creating mounds of anger and resentment from jurors and judges who stand in judgment. 

 

Be Disruptive in the Courtroom

by: Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm

 

No, I’m not talking about a breach of decorum that could end with a quick trip to jail.  I’m talking about strategy.  To understand what I mean by a disruptive trial strategy, imagine a typical juror who walks into a courtroom wrapped in attitudes and experiences that she has built up over a lifetime.  Where an argument that flies in the face of her beliefs makes it through this perceptual net and makes an impression, it is still all too easy for the juror to discount that argument based on tried-and-true patterns of thinking. Many attorneys have gone head-to-head with this kind of pronounced bias (e.g., trying to prove that civil plaintiffs are not all greedy, or that oil and gas companies can be ethical) and know what I’m talking about.  When jurors are just fitting information into their already well-developed worldview, is “persuasion” even possible?  One thing we do know is that you don’t persuade in that context simply by putting in your case and giving jurors good reasons.  You persuade by somehow disrupting that juror’s existing patterned way of thinking about the issue at hand.