Conduct your entire cross examination of the defendant’s expert as a sharply directed, controlled cross examination. At the outset have their expert admit that she is prepared to give her full and final opinions at the deposition today. Use both constructive and destructive cross. Do not permit their expert to explain or elaborate until the end of the deposition, until after you’ve asked all your questions and gotten all your expert concessions.

Not long from now you will again find yourself sitting at your desk with a mountain of discovery you fought hard to get. You will be preparing your case for trial. Likely the most important case in your client’s life. All of your work. The risk you took. The piece of your life that you left behind for your client and her case. It all comes down to this.

In your opening you’ll introduce the main witnesses, the time period, place, and scope of the plot. For trial lawyers, the buildup includes unfolding subplots, introducing evidence to prove your case and exploiting witnesses to show the jurors what’s at stake. The relationships between the plaintiffs and other witnesses create a narrative arc, or plot, for your trial as much as it does for a work of fiction.

As for telling your story, your scenes will drive your directs and crosses at trial. You’ll play out your scenes and retell portions of your story with every witness you call, and cross-examine. You will begin to see too what’s at stake for each witness.

Unless you find your story, your jurors may be bored and uninspired to act. That’s never good for a plaintiff’s trial lawyer. After all, at the end of the case you’ll tell your jurors you want things changed.

Days like this are inevitable for a trial lawyer. What do you do? Ask yourself this question. What’s really going on here? No. Really! Ask it again. However deep you’ve been digging for the past 2 years, dig deeper. You must find and you must embrace the story – your story – the one you can’t wait to tell those jurors.

A Sunzi Strategy for Expert Cross: Make Their Expert Your Expert.

An expert, like a warrior with no way to flee, may rather make a last stand causing casualties to the enemy, your case. Fleeing soldiers are more easily killed than those with their backs to the wall, forced to fight to the death.  So have them flee.  Flee in the way most advantageous to your case and your client.  She flees as your expert.