Registration Fee:
$215
CLE Hours
6
CLE
Hours
including 6 Trial Practice Hours
Planning to Win
Making the Theory of the Case Come Alive
Originally Aired January 9, 2004
Archived Webcast
Presiding:
James W. McElhaney
Part I—The Hunt for the Winning Story
Ever since the dawn of time people have used stories to teach, to explain what happened, to memorialize events, to instill moral values, and to understand the world around them. The story is how people process information, and every case is a story that gets tested against the jury’s inner scripts. That’s why you need to:
• Learn how to evaluate the real dynamics of your case so you won’t be trying the case you don’t have.
• See how a disarmingly honest argument can take the other side’s strongest point out of the case.
• Brainstorm the theory of the case and hear how the right words change your perception of a case and touch the jury’s sense of right and wrong.
• Learn the witness control that’s in the powerful Language of CrossExamination.
• See how to make adverse witnesses testify for your side of the case.
Filled with powerful demonstrations and great ideas, this fast-moving presentation will show you how to take charge of each case you have and plan its presentation so that even the most ordinary claims and defenses take on an air of excitement.
Topics Include
• The Psychological Theory of the Case.
• How to Keep from Destroying Your Own Case.
• How People Use Stories to Make Decisions.
• The Keys to Effective Case Organization.
• Seven Qualities of a Persuasive Story.
• Visualization—Making the Jury Become Eyewitnesses to Your Facts.
• Brainstorming the Language of the Case.
• How to Present Your Facts so they are “Happening Now.”
Part II—Making it Come Alive in Trial
MAKING THE THEORY OF
THE CASE COME ALIVE IN TRIAL - BECOMING A POWERFUL CROSS-EXAMINER.
Success at trial is more than just having good witnesses and the right facts. It’s how you make your case—warts and all—into the winning story. Planning to Win pulls together the ideas and techniques that actually make people want you to win.
“Putting Your Case Together So It’s Based on What Really Persuades”
From the Keys to a Persuasive Story to the Psychological Theory of the Case, from picking the Language of Persuasion to getting ready for the Character Battle and finding where to put the Focus of Judgment, Jim McElhaney takes you to the heart of advocacy.
Topics Include
• Why You are the Real Witness During Cross-Examination.
• The Language of Cross-Examination—Seven Rules that show you How to Ask Questions in Any Kind of Case—Questions that Put You in Control of Even the Most Difficult Witnesses.
• How to Use Make the Opponent’s Witnesses Your Own.
• The Story Line in Cross-Examination Shows You How to “Make Something Out of It.”
• Linking—the Magic Technique for Organizing Cross So The Jury Thinks Your Point Was Their Own Idea.
• Impeachment—How to Make the Most Out of Impeachment So the Jury is Convinced That You are Right and the Witness is Wrong.
• How to Talk About Your Cross and Theirs in Final Argument