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Emotions make Jurors Care

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The purpose of making a message emotional is to make the jury care enough to act. There are three ways you can infuse emotions into your presentation to the jury:

  • Use Associations: The easiest way to make a juror care is to create an association between something that the juror does not yet care about and something they do care about.. For example, you might use a simile: “This case is like someone setting up camp on your front law in the middle of the night and when you try to remove them, they claim squatter’s rights.”
  • Appeal to Self-Interest: You can make jurors care by emphasizing what’s in it for them. For example, you might argue, “This law suit is about the rights of the little person when dealing with the big corporation. Every one of us has had some unpleasant dealings with corporations who hold all the power. This is your opportunity to send a message to the big corporations. A finding for the plaintiff is the right thing to do but it is also your chance to have your voice heard.”
  • Appeal to Identity: Appealing to identity means asking people to behave in a manner that is consistent with their identity, or beliefs and values.  The advertising campaign, “Don’t Mess with Texas”, is an example of how to use identity. The research regarding the individual most likely to litter was transformed into a fictitious character known as Bubba, an eighteen to thirty-five year old, pickup driving, male, who liked sports and country music. The approach was to convince Bubba that people like him did not litter.  The ad campaign featured athletes and musicians from Texas who epitomized Texas. The message was, Bubba doesn’t litter and it worked.

To make an emotional message even more powerful, ask the jury to visualize some aspect of the message.  Jurors who visualize your message will carry the visualizations with them when they go to deliberations.

Putting it all together
Whether you are going to mediation or trial, you have to make the trier of fact care about your client.  You have to find a way to infuse emotions into your arguments.  This will help you Combine the art of Law…with the laws of Science.

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About the Author:

Dr. Ferrara is the president of Westlake Trial Consulting, LLC. He is an experienced trial consultant, writer, and expert witness.