Rules

Jury consultant Dennis Elias (@JuryVox) twitted:

At opening statement you have no standing with the jury. Don’t tell them what the evidence will show; story them the evidence.

Break that down into a rule (tell the jury the story of the evidence) and a reason (because you have no standing with the jury).

The reason is not necessarily true. If you’re lucky, in any particular case it’ll be dead wrong; by the time of opening statement, you will have standing with the jury because you will have formed a group with them.

But the rule (if you disregard the disturbing verbing of the noun “story”) is still a good one.

The test of a good rule is not whether it is always right (rules seldom are) but whether it is right more often than the alternative—which could be another rule or no rule at all. I hope you’ll read my Simple Rules for Better Jury Selection in that spirit.