Haytham Faraj

Haytham Faraj

Advanced skills and techniques to make your story the only story the jury remembers.

In recent years, in no small part to programs like Trial Lawyer University and other excellent trial skills programs like the Gerry Spence Method, trial lawyers have come to embrace the crucial importance of storytelling in trial. Lawyers are effectively structuring their facts, identifying the protagonist and antagonist. Understanding the importance of having a villain and properly sequencing the case so the jury experiences the tension and the emotional highs and lows of a good story.

A good defense presentation will also present a compelling story. So how to insure the plaintiff’s presentation is the more memorable story? Neuroscience has definitively established the importance of the visual on memory recall. This presentation will explore advanced techniques and tools that are available to every trial lawyer that can bring the courtroom to life, from voir dire to closing. Participants will be taught skills to bring action into the courtroom and to put those tools into action during the presentation.

Haytham Faraj · Ted Wacker

1. Taking effective expert depositions on video tape to use as cross-examination at trial

2. Selecting the best experts for your case and preparing them for trial

3. Preparing your client and witnesses for their trial testimony

4. The use of storytelling using different scenes for greater impact in Opening Statement

5. Finding all of the problems in the medical records and then finding ways to explain and place into context

6. Using exhibits and visual aids during direct examination of plaintiff and all witnesses

7. The effective use of PPT slides to help educate the judge on the law

8. Recognizing and then handling the perceived “bad facts” in the case and making them your friend

9. The use of friends and family to help tell the plaintiffs story

10. Making sure your life care plan and the expert are providing realistic and reasonable future care costs

11. How to arrive at the damage valuation for the “big ask” in closing

12. Effectively describing the pre-accident and post-accident changes in plaintiffs life (aka “loss of activities”)

13. The best way to handle young children as witnesses at trial

14. When to have the plaintiff appear in the case and attend trial (and avoid eating double bacon cheeseburgers and churros at lunch when you weigh 500 lbs)

15. Capitalizing on mistakes made by the defense (including arrogant defense counsel)

16. What is a rebuttal expert anyway? Using effective motion in limine and argument to exclude testimony

17. Getting in front of bad facts in Voir Dire to neutralize them and exclude biased jurors

Haytham Faraj

The workshop will put into practice the voir dire skills discussed in the presentation which will include:

1. Empowering the jury to want to do justice

2. Avoiding attractive topics that appear to be important but which result in identifying pro plaintiff jurors and excusal by the defense

3. Avoiding profiling and working with jurors who may not seem favorable but who possess other qualities that help in achieving a plaintiff’s verdict.