• How the stories decision makers imagine affect verdicts as much as their backgrounds and beliefs or the attorney’s presentation in court
• Which focus group method reveals the real range of stories decision makers can build from your case
• How to profitably apply focus group results in negotiations and mediation equally well as in trials
• How to run voir dire like a focus group (and a focus group like voir dire) improving both in the process—and how to avoid common misleading mistakes
• How focus group deliberations are the least valuable part of the process
• How asking focus group participants which side in a case they “like” could be a major mistake
• Why you should think twice before ever again asking a “why” question or using the word “any” during voir dire or in focus groups
• How to establish immediate rapport with decision makers and to manage how they build their perceptions of your client’s case story—in time to affect their final judgments
In this new edition, Eric Oliver dives deeply into cutting-edge research in communication, human judgment, perception, and influence and breaks down the process of turning theoretical abstractions into effective persuasive practices that help legal decision makers hear—and see—the case story from your client’s point of view. Each chapter is now supplemented with some of the most relevant developments in the science of decision making, as well as with the decade of additional experience Eric has acquired working with trial lawyers and their clients since the first edition was published in 2005.