Trial Tips - Reframing Your Client's Story
Elliott Wilcox has a great site devoted to trial tips and his latest article is on "re-framing" the story to benefit your client. He uses the story portrayed in the Wizard of Oz and then in the "re-framed" story Wicked (which is coming to Birmingham in April 2009 as my kids remind me).
Read the entire article but here is the final part and Elliott makes a very strong case for this type of strategy in trial:
For example, think about a case involving police brutality. Most of your typical jurors think that the police officers in their community are good, honest people doing a difficult, thankless job. If you try to frame your case as a story of “cops are bad,” then you’re swimming upstream, fighting against the jurors’ instinctual beliefs. However, if you reframe your story as “Cops are good, and the best way that we can continue to protect the good cops is to point our fingers at the bad ones,” you can use their instinctive beliefs and attitudes to your benefit. Same facts, different story.The next time you go to court, your client will be depending upon you to tell (and to sell) his story to the jury. Don’t merely recite a bland story for them — pick through the facts so that you can tell the most persuasive story possible. Don’t accept the common thinking that your client is “wicked” — spend as much time as necessary thinking about how to reframe your facts, and you’ll be able to tell a story that portrays your client in the most positive (and persuasive) light possible.
Well said.
