8 Basics 3 of 8 - Words

Welcome to We Win. Things Change.

Words we use win cases.  

Good trial lawyers sound like people. Not like lawyers. At trial you want to be calm, relaxed and in complete control. To be calm, relaxed and in complete control you must be confident in what you are about to do. To be confident in what you are about to do, you must practice. While all hell may break loose at trial, have at least 80% down cold before your trial begins. Practice what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it. Since you’ll use words to try your case, today’s talk is about a couple of word basics. After choosing your words and putting in the work, trying your case will feel as natural to you as a walking down a path. A path that, for now at least, you’ve chosen.  

1. Call It What It Is

When it comes to words, call it what it is. A placental abruption, for instance, is just that, a placental abruption. When you’re trying a placental abruption case though, you’re unlikely to be trying it to people with extensive medical training. So, explain placental abruption.  

Why is it called a Placental Abruption? Placenta originates from an old Latin word for cake and an old Greek word for flat, slab-like cake – a pancake, referring to the flat, round appearance of the human placenta. [SHOW] The Placenta is where the unborn baby gets all her oxygen-rich blood and nutrients and, as importantly, eliminates waste. 

The unborn baby’s lifeline, the umbilical cord, attaches the unborn baby to the placenta. [SHOW] It’s through this lifeline that the unborn baby gets her oxygen-rich blood and nutrients and eliminates waste.  

When that pancake peels away from the uterine wall (abruption), the blood intended for the unborn baby no longer makes its way down the baby’s lifeline to the baby. The unborn baby is starved of oxygen and nutrients and rapidly accumulates dangerous level of toxic waste. 

So now they know. 

2. Have Experts Adopt Plain English for Unfamiliar Terms

Have experts – yours and theirs - adopt plain English you’ll use for unfamiliar terms. When handling a medical case, for instance, learn the medical terminology. Use experts to translate medical terminology into words you want jurors to use when deliberating. Using your words. Powerful, descriptive words.

Q The unborn baby is attached to the placenta by the umbilical cord?

Q The baby gets all its oxygen through the umbilical cord?

Q Without the umbilical cord, the baby will not get oxygenated blood?

Q The baby will not get oxygen

Q Without oxygen the unborn baby will not survive . . . 

Q Without the umbilical cord the unborn baby will not survive?

Q The umbilical cord is the unborn baby’s lifeline . . . 

3. Use Names

Use names. Real names. As focus groups have long shown, when jurors deliberate, they use your words and your names – the ones you used during trial. You may have read that the use of the word defendant, for instance, depersonalizes the defendant to the jury. It does not. The defendant in your case did something wrong. Otherwise, you would never have sued him. Call it like it is. Call him by his name. Attach his name to what he did. Show what he Mr. [NAME] did that cost Ms. [your client] her child or her mother or her husband. Same for the hospital company. Attach his name to what he did. Show what they did too. 

4. Less Is More

Less words. A lot less. Less syllables per word. Single syllable words are best. Make your point and stop. Less is more takes work though. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in a letter to a friend, "Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." 

Imagine cross examining Molly Bloom on the final chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce.

“...and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

What do you want from this witness? What do you need from this witness to win your case? What’s important? The flower in her hair? The color of the flower? The Andalusia girls? The Moorish wall? The mountain? The throes of passion? 

Here are a handful of illustrative questions. Nearly all these questions are 3 to 5 words long. The lone 7-word question contains only single-syllable words.

Q A flower of the mountain?

Q You put a rose in your hair?

Q Like the Andalusia girls do?

Q He kissed you?

Q Under the Moorish wall?

Q You looked at him?

Q Put your arms around him?

Q Drew him close to you?

Q You could feel his heart?

Q Going like mad? . . .

5. Present Tense.

Use present tense and active verbs. Your opening, for instance, may begin, “Come back with me to January 3, 2018.” Then shift to present tense. “Your phone rings?”

When questioning witnesses take them back too. Then ask present tense questions. 

You look over . . .? 
You see . . .? 
You hear . . .? 
You walk to the door . . .? 
You look over at your patient . . .? 
She’s sitting there . . .?  
Slumped over . . .? 
In a chair. . .?  
She’s not moving . . .?
She’s no longer breathing . . .? 
You panic . . .?  

Next up in 8 Basics, “Pictures.”

Until next time,
James Hugh Potts II
We Win. Things Change.