by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting If anyone thought the era of toxic tort litigation was coming to an end, they were wrong. The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced its priority list of 10 chemicals, including asbestos, that it is considering banning under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Although it remains an open question how aggressive the Trump administration will be with safety regulations, the reality is that regulatory lists like this, and the inevitable studies that follow, often become a treasure trove of “support” for a plaintiffs’ bar eager to add scientific credibility to their legal claims. This presents challenges for defense lawyers – especially given the continued currency of quasi-scientific principles or principles that are fine for regulators to rely on, but have no place in today’s courtroom, such as the “precautionary principle.” This is most evident with the mantra of “no safe dose” that asbestos lawyers and some environmental groups trumpet as justifying liability for even the most meager and infrequent of chemical exposures. Of course, toxicology, epidemiology and other scientific disciplines have exposed the fallacy of principles like “no safe dose” (after all, Paracelsus teaches us that “dose makes the poison – more about this later). But the appeal of the seemingly aphoristic “no safe dose” is tough to counter in court when an effective advocate plays to a jury’s fears and is buttressed by governmental pronouncements that, albeit for different reasons, embrace the notion that there is some theoretical, modeled risk from exposure to virtually any chemical. So the task for the defense bar is how to convince juries to reject these and other fallacious concepts that serve as easy, digestible substitutes for the more complex elements of true causation.
Tony Klapper
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by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting
by Tony Klapper (former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting In our last post, we discussed why expert witnesses should rely on visual aids and litigation graphics in preparing their testimony. Another key point for expert witnesses is that no matter how well credentialed a witness is, if the jury thinks he is a jackass or if he acts in a way that is inconsistent with jurors’ perception of how an expert should act, his testimony will be useless. In every trial, the jury and the judge evaluate the credibility of every witness who testifies. If you have done something as a witness to lessen your credibility quotient, what you say will either be filtered through that lens or not even considered. For example, some experts make the mistake of engaging opposing counsel in a pitched battle during cross-examination. While a feisty expert who resists answering “yes” or “no” questions might be seen by her attorney as a hero, the jury more likely sees an expert who is being difficult -- particularly when the “yes” and “no” questions are intuitively answerable. Similarly, an expert who regularly resorts to “I don’t recall” and “I don’t know” responses to questions that objectively seem knowable and recallable also undercuts her credibility. The same is true of an expert who fights over the meaning of words that have common meanings, or starts asking questions of the questioner.
by Tony Klapper (former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting In my last post, I talked about the fact that an expert witness needs to express her expertise in a convincing way – but also in a way that the typical juror can understand and not in the language of a specialist. The next step in becoming a truly effective expert witness is to understand the power and the importance of visual learning. It’s a safe bet that your peer-reviewed articles contain tens of thousands of words. Your academic poster contains hundreds, maybe thousands, of words. Your PowerPoint presentations delivered to your peers contain bullet point after bullet point of words (and maybe a smattering of cartoons). Ask yourself: How many television commercials convey the importance of the advertised product through words? How many magazine advertisements do the same through words? How many movies convey their story through words? How many architects explain their designs through words? How many patents have no pictures and just words? And how many biology textbooks have no illustrations and just words? In all these instances, the visual is what matters.
by Tony Klapper (former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting You are a specialist in your field of study. You are about to take the stand as an expert witness in court. You have read hundreds, if not thousands, of articles in your field. You likely have an advanced degree that touches on the area about which you have been asked to testify. You may have taught classes on the subject at a university. You may have presented your thoughts and research at conferences attended by your peers. You are smart. You are well-credentialed. But are you prepared to testify in a court of law? Do you know what you have to do to be just as effective on the witness stand as you are at the podium? To help you answer these questions, here is a series of articles that chronicle the unique challenges that a testifying expert faces and lays out a road map for overcoming those challenges and becoming a truly effective expert witness.
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting Everyone, regardless of political persuasion, can agree that a significant portion of the U.S. electorate voted for change in this week’s presidential election. And the way the whole 18-month campaign went certainly represented a change from the way most campaigns have gone in our history. But while we as a country – at least every four or eight years – seem to like change, lawyers not so much. Maybe that reflects what we learned in law school. Law is governed by precedent, and if there are changes to precedent, they are incremental at best. Or, maybe it reflects the role we assume as advisers and the tendency for many in our profession to be cautious and risk-averse. Regardless of your attitude toward changes in the law, in your political leaders, or in what your clients do, we believe that in the arena of trial advocacy change is very often a good thing. Here are five examples. Literally, change the font you are using for exhibits and displays. Mix it up occasionally. Pick a less common font, but not one that calls too much attention to itself. Jurors will notice the unusual font, although they may not know just what they’re noticing, and they will stay awake and attentive. See, Could Surprise Be One of Your Best Visual Persuasion Tools? Change your narrative. Don’t be wedded to telling your story a certain way, but be open to other people’s thoughts and perspectives. Aunt Sally’s apple pie wasn’t perfect the first time; it took years to fine tune that recipe. It could take many run-throughs to get an opening statement just right. See, 10 Types of Value Added by Litigation Graphics Consultants
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting At A2L, we strongly believe that strong visual presentations are indispensable to courtroom success. But great visuals don’t just create themselves. Top-notch litigation graphic artists are the ones who make unforgettable visuals, and that means that graphic artists need to be a crucial part of any trial team. And good graphic artists aren’t easy to find. As a graphic design website explains, a great graphic designer should “love art in all its forms” and “should live to create and to be inventive.” A graphic artist needs to understand color, composition, typefaces and dozens of other design elements and to use the best digital tools available.
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting We have always emphasized how important it is for a trial lawyer to organize his or her case so as to tell a consistent and convincing story to the jury or judge. In making that recommendation, we draw on experience and common sense, as well as on science that indicates that human beings are wired to follow intriguing stories and to look forward to their ultimate resolution. “Storytelling is essential to winning trials – and that goes for mediations, arbitrations, and hearings, literally anywhere you must connect with an audience,” we have written. “Whether it’s your story or not, a story will inevitably emerge during a trial. Mock trials and focus groups have repeatedly shown that when a jury has two camps representing the two sides of the case, each camp will have a fairly consistent story that it endorses and clings to. Consistently, we find that those stories are short, that they fit with common sense, that they borrow some of the salient facts from the trial, and that they are complete tales, with a beginning, a middle and an end – including what happened and what should have happened.” A story removes a case from the realm of the strictly legal and makes it personal. It humanizes one’s client and helps a jury identify with the client. But can storytelling go too far as a technique of persuasion?
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting When I was a practicing lawyer, trying high-stakes cases in the major law firm world, many of my colleagues would often cast doubt on the need for jury consultants and mock trials. They would say that as experienced trial lawyers, they already had a good feel for a jury and for the art of persuasion. In addition, lawyers would argue that very few reliable conclusions could be drawn from the attitudes and outlooks of a small number of mock jurors. Actually, this is a rather short-sighted way to approach the topic. A jury consultant can add immeasurable value to a trial team’s efforts in any number of ways. Here are five of them: Theme development. Working with a mock jury provides invaluable research into what themes will work with the actual jury and what themes will not work. The mock jury will get a chance to hear several proposed themes for your side, as well as the way in which the opposition can be expected to rebut those themes. Interviewing the mock jurors will shed considerable light on what works for them, emotionally, and what does not. Message clarity. Many lawyers on a trial team get lost in the weeds and develop countless lines of information without any concern for whether they contribute to their side’s main narrative. It is very easy to review documents for their own sake without any consideration of why they should care about the documents. A mock trial will force all those attorneys to focus on the facts that really matter to their case and will provide the needed discipline.
by Tony B. Klapper, (former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting & GC, A2L Consulting and David H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Innovative Science Solutions
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting I was reading the Washington Post’s Business section on Sunday morning, and a front-page article about Sean Parker caught my eye. Parker, dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Bad-Boy Genius,” co-founded Napster and was the first president of Facebook. He was also played by Justin Timberlake in “The Social Network.” Far from a routine business profile, this article provides several fascinating lessons concerning the importance of creative collaboration. Apparently tired of catering to the entertainment needs of millennials, Parker recently launched the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Although it was notable that Parker invested $250 million to support groundbreaking research into eradicating a disease that kills millions each year, even more important is his model of creating a “sandbox” for scientific research. At press time, six premier medical research institutions—Stanford, Hopkins, MD Anderson, UPenn, UCSF, and UCLA—had signed up to be part of the consortium that Parker is creating to fight cancer. The premise behind the effort is that working together in the sandbox is far more effective than working alone. That truism is not one that is always followed.
by Tony B. Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting & General Counsel A2L Consulting I’ve recently joined the litigation consulting team at A2L as its Managing Director. This means that I will be working closely with top litigators to help them craft persuasive themes and stories, assist in the testing of a case during a mock trial exercise, and develop powerful demonstrative exhibits. In my 20+ years working at Kirkland & Ellis and then Reed Smith, I have participated in many trials, arbitrations, evidentiary hearings, mediations, and board presentations. Almost without fail, I have been the attorney responsible for coordinating and developing the litigation graphics for these events. That did not mean putting mouse to screen in a graphics program or PowerPoint. Instead, I would put pencil to paper and sketch out a great idea that someone else transformed into a powerful litigation graphic. It is work that I have always been passionate about. As I transition from working on graphics two or three times a year to developing them every week, I want to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve observed about trial graphics as a litigation partner at two major law firms. Janus-like slides. Janus is the Roman god of gates and doorways. He is depicted as having two faces and typically represents beginnings and endings or contrasting experiences, such as war and peace. Although not one of your sexier Roman gods – clearly no Jupiter or Venus – Janus does inspire some effective litigation graphics: A split-screen slide that reflects a cause on the left and an effect on the right, or a representation or claim on the left and visual proof that the representation or claim is false on the right. A single, simple split-screen slide can instantaneously convey a powerful message without resorting to a series of dull, ineffective bullet-point assertions. The Timeline. Effective stories are not simply recitations of chronological events. But “when” something happens and how that something relates to “when” something else happens is almost always a central feature in litigation and part of a good story. Stories have beginnings, middles and endings. They transport us through a maze of actors and activities, all anchored in time. Instead of vertically listing from top to bottom a series of events -- as many fond of the easel and flip chart will do -- a well-crafted and visually appealing timeline allows you to elegantly develop your narrative in linear fashion. But it’s not just the narrative. A timeline that is chock full of entries may tell a completely different story than one with wide gaps of time, even without needing to read the fine print.
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