Answer a Primordial Question for the Jurors: Who?

 

The names, acronyms and abbreviations so familiar to you are not to the jurors. You may think that saying, for example, “Acme Building Supply, which we’ll now call ABS for convenience,” is enough to warrant saying “ABS” through the rest of your trial.

But “ABS” has no guts to it, has no uniqueness, no personality. As laborious as it may be for you to repeat the full name, “Acme Building Supply” has a history. It’s associated with events and people--it has a life. “ABS” is just another bit of alphabet soup.

Be sure to use the full names of people, entities or objects throughout your trial. Avoid the use of pronouns or abbreviated references. Jurors often have trouble keeping track of who did what to whom. They will be totally lost if they must also concentrate on which "he," "she," or "it" you are now referring to.

Certainly, well-known abbreviations are acceptable, but generally speaking, abbreviations used too often only serve to confuse jurors. A confused juror is an unsympathetic juror. An unsympathetic juror is the one who could cause you to lose your case.

Classic Juror Misunderstandings

 

The brilliant cartoonist, Wiley Miller (“Non Sequitur”), captured the misunderstandings between men and women as few others have. For example, the wife says: “Let's go shopping." The husband hears: "Let's go drain the life force from your body." The husband says: “Honey, are you almost ready yet?" The wife hears: "Life as we know it will cease to exist unless you can alter the space-time continuum."

My experience with jurors has led me to conclude that similar misunderstandings occur regularly in the Courtroom between attorneys and jurors. For example, the lawyer says: “Negligence.” The juror hears: “Forgetfulness.” The lawyer says “Proximate.” The juror hears “Approximate.” The lawyer says: “Standard of care.” The juror hears: “Like OSHA.” The lawyer says: “Preponderance.” The juror hears: “Heavy thinking.”

I could go on and on. Lawyers like to say a graphic will “depict” things. Jurors need to know what the graphic will “show.” The lawyer says this event was “prior” to the current one. Jurors want to know what came “before” what. And “aforementioned” doesn’t even compute.

You must speak a language the jurors understand if you are to persuade them. For example, explain legal terms such as negligence so there can be no confusion with the more common use of the term, forgetfulness. Use words you used before you became a lawyer: familiar words, easy-to-understand words, words that don’t require more than a high school education.

With that, you are far more likely to have – a winning case!