Trial Run Inc. > Trial and Litigation Consulting

Trial and Litigation Consulting

Trial Run consults on cases for trial lawyers and client companies, to review the trial organization, witness style and substance, and attorney preparation and presentations.

Specifically, we have prepared experts and important lay witnesses for deposition and trial testimony, using video tape and critiques, and with the presenting attorney on hand to practice direct and the use of documentary and graphic evidence.

We also review and critique attorney performances, such as openings and closings, and we provide advice to the attorneys on evidentiary foundations, the storytelling themes, and the most effective language to use to communicate those themes.

In addition to video reviews and in-person advice to lawyers, we set up focus groups so that attorneys’ delivery can be tested before live “jurors,” documentary evidence can be tested for impact, and witnesses can be observed for credibility.

Experts and executive witnesses have thanked us for the additional organization and comfort that we brought to their testimony, and the presenting lawyers have complimented us for contributing substantially to their success, both in obtaining larger verdicts and in positioning them to obtain more favorable settlements.

Trial Run’s consulting services include:

Scroll down for list of consulting services

  • Planning document sieves and discovery responsibilities
  • Developing the search-tree approach
  • Advising about consulting and testifying expert disclosures
  • Addressing expert report issues
    • Authorship
    • Drafts
    • Ghostwriting
    • Attorney participation
  • Preparing and presenting the witnesses and evidence
    • What the lawyer should tell and ask
    • What the witnesses should answer
    • The benefits of getting your witnesses out of the witness chair
    • Proper preparation
    • Encouraging, improving, critiquing the attorneys during trial
  • Determining the order of witnesses
  • Identifying and using the twenty-five crucial documents
  • Assigning direct and cross examination and jury speeches
  • Preparing and refining the core visuals, and defending them on document day
  • Creating effective exhibit books for the judge and jurors
  • Establishing superior credibility on matters of evidence and law; the bench brief
  • Evaluation of admissibility of evidence
    • Relevance
    • Factors countering relevant evidence (Rule 403)
    • Inadmissible expert bases (Rule 703)
  • Assessing evidence as to:
    • Authentication and self-authentication
    • Privilege
    • Hearsay
    • Original document rule
  • Brainstorming the case
    • Themes
    • Facts
    • Jurors
  • Storytelling
    • Witnesses
    • Boards
    • Documents
  • Experts
    • Reports
    • Daubert and other challenges
    • Presentation options
  • Culmination of preparation
    • Jury speeches
    • Evidence
    • Jury dynamics
    • Calendaring the Critical Path
  • Objectively determining the reasons for success or failure
  • Deconstructing the trial presentation
  • Building on strengths and avoiding weaknesses
  • Refining and promulgating the best graphics, witness examinations, and arguments
  • Analyzing human resources and human errors
  • Identification and execution of themes
  • Preparation of focus group summary statements or arguments
  • Opposition in moot presentations
  • Implementation of focus group recommendations
  • Judgement on judicial reactions to presentations
  • Preparing an issue-document-witness matrix
  • Screening out unnecessary evidence
  • Assessing the strengths of members of the legal team
  • Suggesting rhetorical devices to spur memory: repetition, parallelism, trilogy, rhyme
  • Four criteria of reliability from Daubert: peer review, known error rate, acceptance in scientific community, and testability
  • An infinite number of criteria from other sources
  • Testability includes replication and falsifiability
  • Impact on expert reports
  • How many factors, how many tests?
  • Reliable methodology, reliably applied
  • Supporting new technology
  • Protecting the witness in the engagement letter
  • Clarifying the witness's task
  • Selection of the material for expert review
  • Identifying and protecting the core opinions and bases
  • Expert goals at deposition
  • Learned treatises under F.R.E. 802(18)
  • Graphics, summary evidence under F.R.E. 1006, and the Expert
  • Organizing the expert's direct examination
  • Cross of experts: Imwinkelreid's dichotomy--what the expert brings to the case, what the case gives to the expert
  • Construtive and destructive cross of the expert
  • Focus groups are more efficient than moot trials
  • Test counsel, issues, documents, themes, graphics
  • Multiple simultaneous groups with different presentations
  • Presenting a strong case in opposition
  • Debriefing the focus group
  • Evaluating the results
  • Using documents, videos, and live witnesses
  • Typical structure and costs
  • Is meditation appropriate?
  • Favorable indicators for mediation
  • Unfavorable indicators for mediation
  • Selecting a mediator
  • Mediation advocacy
  • Helping counsel prepare for summary judgment and preclusion motions
  • Rehearsing experts and sophisticated lay witnesses
  • Practicing with pictures and graphics
  • Anticipating responses from opposing counsel
  • Developing credible approaches to answering cross-examination
  • Arguing the significance of the “14 Documents That Win A Case”
  • Creating realistic time-frames for structuring arguments and presentations
  • How to identify what you or the client wants
  • Short term goals/ long term goals
  • Negotiation Parameters
    • Positions versus Interests
    • BATNA
    • Reservation Value
    • Target Value
    • Common Goals
  • How to identify what information you need to gather
  • Size up the situation
    • How many parties
    • Nature of relationship
    • Costs and Benefits to delay
    • Will the negotiation affect future negotiations/linkages
    • Strategies
  • Claiming value in the negotiation
  • Creating value in the negotiation
  • Core values, shared with the community
  • Repetition of the theme as part of persuasion
  • Rhetorical devices that implant a theme
  • Using multiple themes for different issues
  • Analyzing facts, documents, and witnesses as support for themes
  • Testing themes with friends and focus groups
  • The witness’s needs and concerns
  • Explaining the process
  • Additional concerns for video depositions
  • Reacting to the conduct of opposing counsel
  • What the witness should expect from the defending attorney
  • Selecting the best 14 documents
  • Prepping versus “practicing”
  • Preparing the witness to resist abuse with documents
  • Preparing the witness for the tactic of exhausting memory and then using documents versus focusing on the document at the outset
Deposition and discovery preparation
Case organization
Case evidence/analysis
Analysis of readiness for trial: A critical path approach
Case autopsies
Case evaluation/analysis
Evidence: analysis of legal sufficiency and persuasive impact
Expert challenges under Daubert/Kumho Tire
Expert preparations and presentations
Focus groups
Mediation
Moot court panels for arguments and trial segments
Negotiation
Themes: effective indentification
Witness preparation