8 Basics 5 of 8 - Senses
Welcome to We Win. Things Change.
At trial you want to take hold of your jurors’ attention and keep it. You want jurors to feel what you want them to feel - empowered to right a wrong - inspired to reach a just verdict a case like yours requires. To do that your trial must be based on facts (See JHPII Talks re “Facts”). Not conclusions. To help jurors relive those facts, you must retell those facts using the 5 senses - what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch, stripping away all the oft-times intertwined opinions, interpretations, and judgments. Retelling your facts based on the 5 senses enables jurors to relive the facts of your case as if they were there. It is the most powerful tool you have as a trial lawyer to help jurors experience first-hand the facts of your case, and inspire them to act.
Trying Your Case on the Facts Using the 5 Senses
Rely on the power of your facts to take jurors on a sensory journey through your case. To enable jurors to relive first-hand the facts and events of your case as they were seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched - use their 5 senses. Stripped entirely of your opinions, interpretations, and judgments. Reliving just what happened, not how you interpret or judge or feel about what happened. Just. What. Happened.
Jurors Love the 5 Senses
By sharing events with jurors using their 5 senses, you share just what happened, fairly and honestly. You also let jurors know that you trust them to reach their own conclusions. By trusting jurors this way, jurors will trust you. When jurors trust you, they will follow you, and you will win - justice for your client. Once gained, never, ever, breach your jurors’ trust.
When your feelings and interpretations drive your case, on the other hand, you prevent jurors from fully experiencing what happened first-hand, fully experiencing the facts and events of your case and reaching their own conclusions. Even if jurors reach their own conclusions, they may feel manipulated, not trusting even their own decisions like they otherwise would. Jurors quite rightly prefer knowing they reached their own conclusions.
Moreover, a juror cannot simply experience what happened in your case when you are coloring the facts with your opinions. Jurors will be wrestling with your opinions while forming their own. This conflict, even momentarily, will clutter their feelings, their opinions, and your case. Opinions beget opinions; judgments beget judgments. Jurors will be put off and find it difficult to focus on your facts. Facts that will win your case. Jurors will also trust you less.
Using the 5 senses provides jurors with uncluttered facts, and factual details of important case events, leaving your jurors to relive, openly and honestly, the facts of your case. Jurors can then build their own versions of the facts - personalized for each juror by their own experiences - based on case facts you share with them along with their own lifetime of sensory experiences. Jurors will arrive at their own conclusions. Conclusion’s jurors will fiercely defend in deliberations because the opinions are their own.
When jurors experience you retelling the factual details of your case using their 5 senses, jurors see, hear, taste, smell, and feel as if the jurors were there - precisely what you want your jurors to do. Jurors see the patient struggling to breathe. Hear the patient’s blood curdling screams. Feel what it felt like to fight for her last breath. Jurors also relive hospital company directors hashing out plans to defraud taxpayers. While your jurors aren’t really experiencing these now, they might as well be. If, on the other hand, you merely share, “Struggling to breathe, screaming, she took her last breath,” your juror’s experience will be neither immediate nor powerful.
That’s the power that trying your cases using the 5 Senses gives you as a trial lawyer. Creating direct experiences for jurors and enabling jurors to relive your facts. Your trial’s scenes also benefit (See JHPII Talk “Create Scenes”). Using the 5 senses enables you to plan your sequential series of sensory experiences from beginning to the critical moment of your case, and beyond to your call for jurors to act. Once you have your story (See JHPII Talks re “Story”), crafting factual experiences for jurors at trial using their 5 senses, is both novel and powerful. With great preparation, you become the storyteller imparting the facts – just what can be seen, heard, felt, tasted, and touched - for each case event.
Full Creative License
Trying your case using the 5 senses may seem counterintuitive. Afterall, aren’t you supposed to argue your case? There is no better way for jurors to experience what your client experienced. Once you are comfortable simply describing what happened, what you can see, hear, taste, touch and feel, your creative freedom enhanced, it will feel as natural to you as sharing a story from your own childhood. Using the 5 Senses is a powerful tool that will connect your jurors to your client, your case and their verdict in a way that makes your case more personal for each juror.
Great trial lawyers take risks and make hard decisions every day. It’s the life we’ve chosen. For now, at least. You too can help your jurors relive your case using the 5 senses to provoke your jurors’ brains into seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling your case first-hand, inspiring your jury to act. To change things, too.
Next up in 8 Basics, “Story.”
Until next time,
James Hugh Potts II
We Win. Things Change.