Trial War Stories - Mind of the Jury with John Camillus

In this episode of Trial War Stories, host Andy Goldwasser sits down once again with renowned trial lawyer and nationally recognized trial consultant John Camillus for a deep-dive masterclass on advanced trial tactics.

John returns for a rare second episode — not to revisit a past case, but to dissect how juries think, how lawyers misunderstand juror psychology, and how trial lawyers can sharpen their craft by leveraging focus groups, mock trials, A/B testing, and big-data-driven jury research.

Together, Andy and John break down topics every litigator must master:

How to get inside the mind of the jury

The difference between traditional focus groups and John’s “no-presentation” method

How to isolate key facts and test juror reactions in real time

How to avoid subconscious anchoring traps in damages

Why credibility, authenticity, simplicity, and clarity are the pillars of persuasion

The three biggest mistakes lawyers make at trial

And the three most important decisions trial lawyers must make about every single fact they present

This is a practical, tactical, candid conversation between two trial lawyers who live in the trenches — and one who has built a career understanding not just trial strategy, but human psychology itself.

If you’re a trial lawyer, trial-curious, or simply fascinated by how courtroom persuasion works, this episode is a must-listen.

Subscribe for more conversations with exceptional trial lawyers and trial consultants who share the strategies, lessons, and stories behind the verdicts.

Chapters (6 Total)
0:00 – Off Script: Diving Into Advanced Trial Tactics

Andy introduces the episode and explains why John returns to talk about juror psychology and trial strategy. 

1:10 – Mind of the Jury: Blending Psychology and Trial Work

John explains the origins of his consulting firm, how psychology informs trial strategy, and why understanding juror thought processes is essential. 

4:40 – Focus Groups vs. Mock Trials: What Lawyers Get Wrong

A deep breakdown of traditional focus groups, why they often limit insight, and how John’s no-presentation method uncovers juror-driven issues lawyers miss. 


10:18 – Disentangling Facts: How Jurors Actually Form Opinions

John and Andy discuss isolating facts, avoiding subconscious juror rationalization, and why sequencing information matters. 


17:00 – Big Data & A/B Testing for Trials

John explains online jury research, large-sample testing, and how A/B testing answers high-stakes questions about damages, witnesses, and presentation strategy. 


24:55 – The Three Essentials & The Biggest Mistakes Lawyers Make

Andy shares his “Mount Rushmore” of trial skills — credibility, authenticity, clarity — and John responds with his own top three factors and common trial-lawyer pitfalls.

Transcript

0:00

Today we go off script. We start talking about some advanced trial tactics with a phenomenal lawyer, but also an incredible trial consultant. It's time to get into the mind of the jury. Every trial lawyer has that one case, the one that pushed them to the edge, changed how they practice or kept them up at night. This is trial war stories. And I'm your host, Andy Goldwasser. I sit down with great trial lawyers to unpack unforgettable cases the strategy, the chaos, the pressure, and the moments that turn the tide beyond the transcripts and verdicts. And now to the show. Well, welcome to the latest edition of Trial War Stories. This is a first for us because we have the same guest. But episode two, and you may be wondering, why do we have the same guest twice? Well, that's because John is both a fantastic trial lawyer, and we had an awesome talk about a trial recently, and he is also a trial consultant. He wears two hats. Today's episode is going to be really cool. We're actually going to roll up our sleeves and we are going to have a master class in advanced trial work. John, as you know, I love thinking about talking and studying trials. But what makes us difference, me in you is that not only do you love doing those things, but you're also a master at the mind of the jury. And that's the difference between us. You have studied the mind of the jury and trial work. I have just studied trial work, and I happen to notice that the name of your trial consulting company actually is mind of the jury. Can you tell us about that name? Yeah, sure. The so the business itself was started with me and my wife. My wife is a psychologist, and laid back, I don't know. What is it? 15 years ago now, when I hung my own shingle for my law practice. I had the idea that, And my, the my old firm, we had used jury consultants occasionally. I always thought it was fascinating. I thought we were under utilizing it. And I thought that between my background as a trial lawyer and my wife's background as a psychologist, we'd make a good team for doing that kind of work. So we started doing it. And the idea behind mind of the jury is essentially that that's what lawyers, trial lawyers are trying to do, right? Right. We're trying to get inside the mind of the jury. We want to know what they're thinking, how they're feeling about the case, about the case, and how we can influence what's going on in their minds about the case. Right. And so functionally, you know, the name is really just about what it is at, at the core that we're trying to do, which is get inside the mind of the jury. Right? Yeah. Yep. Totally. And that makes sense. And because of your trial work background and the psych psychological side that we just that you just mentioned, you you opened up this sort of separate part of your business, which which focuses on trial consulting. Can you tell us a little bit about the various services that you offer within mind of the jury? Sure. It started as almost exclusively focus group work. Because that's the jury consulting work that I was familiar with. And it was the work that I thought was really helpful. And that is still the bulk of what we do. But over time, that has expanded to, you know, there's sometimes not really a clear delineation between what's a focus group and what's a mock trial. But we do focus group work and what many people would consider mock trial work. My wife, at this point, what she does primarily is witness prep. So we do a lot of witness prep work. We actually will show up at trial, and help with jury selection. Working with a lawyer on how to frame and shape their voir dire, going in and then actually being there in the courtroom during voir dire to pass notes. Hey, follow up with juror number seven. Ask him more about that incident he referenced or what have you. Or just advising the lawyer on, exercise that parameters. We're starting to do a decent amount of big data online work, which we think could be a great supplement to the traditional focus group work. And occasionally we do shadow juries, which is where when we hire people to show up at trial and watch and then we do daily interviews of the shadow jurors, give feedback, provide that feedback to the trial lawyers to have a better sense of what's going on in the mind of the jurors. Make sense? And so how much of your professional time is devoted to consulting versus actually lawyering? Yeah. Great question. It's probably roughly 5050. Some months it's tilted very heavily one way, some months it's tilted very heavily. The other, this month, in November, I'm spending almost every day in focus groups. But there are other times when I have trials of my own and I'm ramping up for trial, and I'm doing very little of the consulting work. It really varies quite a bit, but over the course of a year it's probably roughly 5050. These days. So I worked with you recently. I had the privilege of doing that and it was fantastic. You have become really the go to trial consultant in Ohio and nationally known and what you do. So on today's podcast, I really want to narrow down and talk with some some advanced trial tactics with you if that's okay. Absolutely nothing I love more I. So what is in your mind because this is what you do for a living. If someone came to you and said, I want to do a focus group or I want to do a mock trial, or I want to do theme development, how do you help that lawyer determine what the best course is in preparation for his or her trial? Yeah. So, I would start by asking, obviously tell me what the case is about and tell me what you hope to get out of the jury research that you want to do. Right. Is it? I just want to know big picture more about my case. I worry that there are things I'm missing, a more that there are holes that I'm missing. Or do you have specific concerns? I'm worried about how my client is going to be received by the jury. I'm worried about whether this particular argument is going to be effective or not. I need to know whether to introduce this evidence or keep it out. I need to know, you know, do you have isolated, targeted questions or you just have big picture? I've got this trial and I want to make sure it's ready to go. Because, the answer to that question will shape a lot of the pretrial work we do to get it ready. Right? If it's just, hey, I've got this case, and I feel like it could benefit from a focus group, that's great. And we would approach a focus group one way. And if it's I have questions A, B, and C, then I want a focus group to help me answer. Then we're running the focus group a different way to try to get those answers. So when I focus my case with you, it was a different experience than I had ever done with anybody else who's run a focus group for me, and I loved it. I don't know how much you want to get into it, like your secret sauce, those kinds of things. But can you just tell us a little bit about the difference between what you do is a part of a focus group as opposed to a mock trial? Sure. So my initial exposure to focus groups was, what probably most lawyers exposure to focus groups is and it's still, I think, the way most jury consultants read, most focus groups across the country today. And that is essentially a presentation from each side right now. It's not literally from each side. It's obviously one side. And the focus group is somebody stands up and kind of gives an opening. Or often we call it a closing because it's half closing, half open, that you argue in a way that the judge wouldn't let you do in a real opening, but give your side of the case, and then the somebody stands up for the defense and gives the defense side of the case, and then charge the jurors, the focus group participants, about. It, which is the way I've always done it, until I met you. Yeah. There is value in that, don't get me wrong. And we do focus groups that are structured that way sometimes when that's the best way to get the information that the lawyers trying to get in a case. But it is not our default or our preferred way of doing. And, and there's two reasons for that. One reason is many. For most focus groups, one of your goals ought to be to find out what the jury's going to care about, that you're not expecting them to care about, right? What is important to them that you don't anticipate? And when you do, what I would call a traditional focus group where there's openings or presentations for both sides. By their very nature, those presentations include the things that you, the lawyer, believed to be important, and then the feedback you get from the focus group is about those things that you've pre identified as being important, which is which again has value. I'm not trying to suggest that it does it, but what you've cut off in a situation like that is your real ability to find out what the focus group participants think is important that you had not anticipated, you're confining them to the scope of your presentation, and what you really want to do is free them up to talk to you about. Ask about the concerned about whatever it is that they want to talk about here, about or be concerned about. Yeah, that's what that was what my experience with you was, you know, the traditional focus group is you just describe where we do this opening. We're giving these prospective jurors sort of the ideas and the concepts to think about, as opposed to your method, which let's this mock jury or this mock focus group really decide on the issues that are important to them. And when you know what's important to them, it's a lot easier as a lawyer to shape the case. At least that's what I found. Is that in your experience. That's absolutely been my experience, and that's one of the fundamental points of doing it that way. Right. You need to meet the jury where they are. And we lose sight as lawyers of where they are because we think of our cases often in a very technical sense. And what are the elements of proof sense? How do I beat a summary judgment motion? How do I beat a direct verdict motion? Or how do I win? If you're on the defense side of summary judgment okay, what a directed motion, right? What are the elements? What are the jury instructions going to say? So on and so forth. And jurors tend not to think about the cases that way. And the case is going to be most influential and persuasive to a jury is a case that meets them where they are. It doesn't force you force them into your lawyer way of thinking about it. You're presenting it to them into their lay way of thinking about it. And yeah, it's such a good point. And so your idea is let's find out what that is. Let's find out what that lens is for a jury so that we could shape our case through that lens. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And then I'll tell you the second point, Andy, about why I like, the, the no presentation focus group, we can call it is that when you do a presentation, you or your presentation will again necessarily include all or almost all of what you think are the key facts. Right? So not only does that have the problem that we already talked about, which is it? It impairs your ability to hear the things that the jurors think are the key facts. But the other thing it does is it makes it very difficult to disentangle those facts. Right? In other words, once the focus group has heard the presentation from both sides, they can tell you who they think should win and they're telling you the truth. And they can tell you why they think that side you win and they believe they're telling you the truth, but they actually don't know why that decision has been made by a subconscious portion of their brain. And what you are hearing is a rationalization or a justification for a decision that's been made in a part of their brain that they can't articulate. Right. And so you don't really get to find out what's motivating their decision making, because all of the facts of the case, all of the arguments are clumped together. And then they say, I think the plaintiff should win or I think the defense should win. And here's why. And you can basically throw out the why because they don't actually know. Yeah. It's such a good point. And the other thing that you do that I found to be so effective when I worked with you is you take it out of the hands of the practicing lawyers, even though it was my case, you basically told me to sit down the let me handle this, let me roll it out. Meaning you and you do it in a more objective sort of roll out kind of way, as opposed to me just getting up there and telling this prospective jury about the case, which I find to be really effective. Is that also part of your strategy, and if so, why do you do that? So there's a bunch of reasons, Andy. One is I have an ability to be objective about the case in a way that the lawyer actually handling the case doesn't. And that manifests itself in a couple different ways. One is no matter how hard you try, no matter how smart you are, no matter how vigilant you are, your bias comes through. Because you've lived with the case. You love your client, you're passionate about the case, and it is essentially impossible to turn that switch off. So one thing that happens is you inform the focus group about the case accidentally in a way that skews the focus group in your favor. That's not what you want. The goal is not to win the focus group. The goal is not to walk out of. There was eight or 10 or 12 people saying plaintiffs got an awesome case in plaintiffs. You win and you just feel great about your case. The point of your focus group is not to instill confidence in the in the lawyer that hired us. Right. The lawyer, if they're interacting too much with the focus group, they will tend to ramble. Oh, that reminds me of something else you should know. That reminds me of something else you should know. And then it ends up being essentially a presentation which impairs our ability, my ability to disentangle, the various facts. And the other thing that I think is really important about it is. You, the more engaged you get, or if you're trying as a lawyer to run the focus group yourself, which can be done effectively sometimes. I'm not saying that every focus group requires an outside jury consult, but it's not just about the presentation. It's also about the interpretation. Right? And sometimes I've worked with lawyers who do a very, very good job of presenting the case in an unbiased way, but they still and they don't realize it's happening. They hear what they want to hear, right? They make an argument. And eight of the focus group participants think it's a stupid argument, and two of them are like, yeah, I agree with you. And that's the argument that the lawyers love the whole case and they're like, see, the focus group loved it. I knew I was right and you weren't right, right. But you hear what you want to hear. So the other thing that the outside consultant can bring to the table is not only objectivity in the presentation, but objectivity in the interpretation. Yeah. And that's also another good point, because the way you do it is as you're rolling out these facts objectively, you'll hit these break points, these pauses, you'll do a survey, you'll interpret the survey on the spot, you'll have a discussion amongst the jurors. Then you roll out a little bit more information and then roll out a little bit more information. And it's so fascinating to see this mock jury, how their mindset changes as more information is rolled out and becomes available to them. Yeah, that's that's one of the keys to the process. Right, is because remember what I said was the second key reason that the opening style focus groups sometimes don't get you what you want, and that is this ability to disentangle, right? So when you isolate facts and arguments and you are taking their temperature, whether it's through your conversation or through prepared surveys or both, that enables you to then actually evaluate the weight and the importance and which side this fact helped, of a particular thing. So, you know, they've they've heard about X and Y, but they haven't heard about Z. And we know through our conversation and through their survey how they feel about the case, everybody thinks the defense should win, right? Then they hear about Z. And now 80% of them take the client issue one okay. If we had given them X, Y and z in advance, and then 80% are saying the plaintiff should win, we don't know if that's because of X or Y or Z. But when we split it up, that helps us figure that out. Yeah. You know, you probably didn't realize this when you were working with me. I kept asking and sort of suggesting to you to allow me to do this opening or this opening, because I was I'm so interested in what the jurors are going to think of me personally, as opposed to what they're going to think about the case, which when you take a step back, it's just a terrible mistake on my part. And and you were so skilled in the way in which you handled that by just allowing us, at least preliminarily, to really dive into the facts, to find out what matters and what doesn't matter to a jury. So I just had I just I know I'm digressing, but I have to commend you, as your skill in managing your clients because you managed me without even realizing that you were managing which was which was a wonderful job. Well, that's nice of you to say, and I appreciate it. I do have to ask you, Jan, because we also we never got there in my case, but it was the next step in the process. We focused the case and then we are going to go to big data and and can you tell us a little bit what is this big data. How does it work. Why is it effective. What are the results that you're seeing? Tell us about it. Yeah. So, I am the biggest fan you'll ever find of small group in person focus group work. Right? It's what I'm devoted to. Half of my professional career. Two for the past decade. But that work has its limitations. And one of those limitations is sample size. Right. If we do a traditional focus group or a focus group, the way I like to do a focus group is eight or 10 or 12 people. And it's, intimate conversation all day long. And there's something special about that. And there are things you can get from that setting that you can't get anywhere else. But there's an inherent limitation, and that is sample size, right? All you're actually hearing is the thoughts, the feedback, the opinions from those eight or 10 or 12 people. Now you can repeat these small groups, focus groups over and over and over in the case. And sometimes it makes sense to do that, especially if I'm brought in early in a case. And the case has, you know, the value that justifies putting those resources to it. But the expenses add up. Right? And sometimes, what you want to find out in the case is something that can be ab tested. Right. And what I mean by AB test is let's go back to elementary school. Scientific method. Right. You have a control group and a test group. And you see if there's a statistic statistically significant difference between the two groups when you just change one variable, right. I would never advise, I think that, online big data stuff. Right. So unlike when we mean by big data is it's not in person, it's online. And instead of having eight or 10 or 12 people in a few iterations of that, we have 100 or 200 or 300 people and sometimes a few iterations of them. Right. That has its own limitations, right? I don't think you can do theme development as well. I don't think you can identify holes in your case as well. I don't think you can figure out how to sequence your case as well. But what it does do is it enables you to answer some of these light on, light off questions. Right. And if you let me give you an example, I. Mean, I was going to ask you if you can give us. An example. Let me give you one, from the plaintiff's side. Right. I in my law practice, I only represent plaintiffs in civil cases. In my consulting practice, I only consult for plaintiffs in civil cases and criminal defense lawyers. So I think about these things from the plaintiffs side. Right. But one of the things that we often confront as plaintiffs lawyers and injury cases is what do we do about the past medical bills? Right? We have passed medical bills of a certain amount. Sometimes they are substantial, but not enormous. And I want a verdict. I think I can get a verdict. I think the case merits a verdict that far exceeds the past medical bills. And do I want to ask the jury for the past medical bills to add that number to my total damages, or do I want to forego seeking the past medical bills because that relatively low number, relative to the number I want in my verdict, has the potential of anchoring the verdict down right now? There are some times where Andy, if you called me up and you said, hey, John, should I put in the pass measure? Not in this case. I think I'd probably be able to give you good advice about it without running a focus group on it. Right. I've got $7,000 in pass meds, but I think it's a $3 million verdict because the economics, the non economics are so high or whatever, then you don't put in the $7,000 in passing, that's for sure. Right. There are other cases where you have very significant injuries, but like a complete recovery, right. In which case the past you're not going to have future Maj, you're not going to have future impairment. And the pass meds are a really substantial component of your damages. So of course you want to put them in. But let's say you have a case where you have $400,000 in pass meds and you think you could and should get a $3 million verdict. Right. There's a question mark. Should I ask for the 400 grand and pass meds, or should I not? And you can't get a good answer to that from talking to nine people, right? Right. The way to do that is to get 200 people online, have all of them witness the exact same presentation. They all watch the exact same presentation. And then one subgroup, you have 100 people who hear a request for damages of $3 million, and they do not hear about the pass medical bills of 400,000. And you have a second group that hears the exact same request for damages number of 3 million. But they do hear about the past medical bills of 400,000. And then you compare, and then you can see with a sufficient sample size to tell you whether there's a meaningful difference or not. Am I better off asking for the pass meds or am I not there? That's a B testing, and there's a lot of cases where AB testing can be really important, even just does this witness add something to my case or not? Right. Do I get a better verdict if I ask for X or if I asks for Y? Right. If I ask for $30 million in this case, is that going to give me a better verdict than if I asked for 15 or a lower one? Because I'm worried the jury's going to be mad that 30 million is too much, right? Things like that. The online data work is really great for this. So it's really like almost that jury ball analytical analysis where you're playing Moneyball with the jury. I think that's right. Yep. That's right. And that's where I think it's effective is when you have questions that you can isolate to test. So John, I'm going to I'm going to switch topics with you because you, you've and you're probably not prepared for these questions. So I'm sorry if I put you on the spot. That's all right I enjoy the hot c. As as a trial lawyer and as a trial consultant, you have had the opportunity to see what works and what doesn't work throughout the course of a trial. And I want to really focus on the three things that I, at least from my perspective, believe are the most important. And then I want to hear your three things, and then I want to hear the three biggest mistakes that we trial lawyers make. So I want to start with the three most important trial tips. And let me give you my list first. Okay? If I had to create the Mount Rushmore of the most important three things that a trial lawyer should do in trial, it's these three things. Number one, credibility. And we've talked about that before. I am a firm believer that if you don't have credibility with the jury, you lose. Period. End of story number two. For me, authenticity. When I was a young lawyer, I tried to be somebody else. My father's a great trial lawyer, but I'm not my father. My mentors are great trial lawyers, but I'm not them. So if I'm not myself and the lawyer who's presenting the case is not his self or herself, it just doesn't work. And the third thing for me is clarity. I am a firm believer that lawyers talk too much. We loo, we focus so much on the minutia that we lose relevance. We don't lay the proper foundations and we don't have clairvoyance of thought. So that's my top three. What's yours? Okay, so you're not going to get any argument from me about any of that? I think credibility and authenticity are almost one in the same, two sides of the same coin. At a minimum. But if I had to isolate three, trials are about the facts, and I think that there are three decisions that lawyers have to make going into every trial. About the facts. What facts do we present? How are they presented and when are they presented? And I don't think that trial lawyers give enough thought to any of those three questions. I think, let me ramble for a minute, Andy, if you don't mind. Well, let me stop you, because I have to ask. I have to follow up on. And I can't let that go, okay? Because it it is a truism. And I agree with everything you said. My question is, once you think about that, once you figure those things out now you're the lawyer who has to present those facts. You have to present the how. You have to present the why. You have to present the motive. What can we as lawyers do? What are the top three things we lawyers can do to make sure that those facts are presented? The right way? And I think I understand your point. Point one is you better think about those things going in. Yes, and I understand that. So let's talk about the presentation though. Right. The presentation. And that's fair. So this is, this is probably overlaps very heavily with your third point, which you were calling clarity. I think I might be referring to the exact same thing when I would call simplicity. Right. But simplicity, simplicity is not, is not, unyielding. Unyielding is not the right word. Simplicity is not, a benefit for simplicity's sake. In and of itself, even simplicity has its limits. In other words, your presentation of the case or any particular argument should be as simple as possible, but no simpler, right? In other words, we always want to simplify. But there is a danger of oversimplifying. Absolutely. So we have to find the sweet spot for that case. I think most lawyers on the side. Most lawyers make the mistake of not simplifying enough. And I think that's part of what you were saying with your clarity point. But I also think it's possible to oversimplify, to simplify too much. And we need to find the right balance there. Right. So simplicity is part of it. The second one is so simple. It's almost even not it's not almost not even worth saying, but I'll say it. We need to talk like people, right? That goes to credibility. So much so you're so right on that. That should have been on my on my top three list. You are. Right. I mean, especially when I work with medical lawyers and they they know the medicine inside and out. And they're proud of the fact that they know the medicine inside and out as they should be. But when they've got, you know, experts on the stand, they need to use language that the jury understands. And it doesn't matter if you've explained the fancy term to them in opening, they'd no longer remember what it means, or they're distracted by or you're asking a question and you use the fancy medical term and they're pause and think, wait, what did that mean again? To that? And meanwhile, while they're thinking about that, they're not paying attention to your cross-examination question. Exactly. Just talk in turn in people terms. Not only will they hear you and absorb it better, they'll like you more. You'll seem more relatable. It adds to your credibility, and your authenticity is just better all around. The, And the last thing I guess I would say, I think this is addressing the question in the way that you intended it, and you tell me if it's not, the last thing I would say is we lawyers get too aggressive and it's almost like I cut myself off there. Sorry. It's almost like the mistake. I think that happens in focus groups. We want to put the whole story out there too quickly. Right. So our presentation at trial can make that same mistake. We bombard them with so much on the front end in an opening or whatever, and it's too much to throw at them, and it can be counterproductive. And some of these things can lose their value because they get mixed in too much with other things, and we'd be better off saving them for later in trial. When then when they can do us more good? Yeah, that's such a good tip. And I've talked about this on another podcast, how I've often made the mistake of calling the defendant on cross-examination early on my, in my case, going after that defendant early in my case, and the jury's looking at me like, why is this guy so aggressive? We don't even know who these people are yet. Yeah, right. And there's a certain way that we lawyers have to hold back for the right time and place. I loved your answer, John and I. My next question is very much related to my first. So my first question, what are the three most important things we need to do? My second question are what are the three biggest mistakes that we see trials lawyers make? Not on the facts, but during the course of a presentation? Yeah. And let me give you my three. I'd love to hear. All right. So the first one we don't listen. We are so worried about our next question or getting our point across that we're not listening to the witness or we're not listening to the judge, or we're not picking up the visual cues from the jury. So that's number one on my list. Number two, and I see young junior lawyers make this mistake constantly. And even some experienced lawyers, we become so rigid in what we want to present that we refuse to adapt during the course of a trial. A trial, John, is, you know, better than anyone. It's it's almost like a living organism, right? It's got a feel to it that just you can't explain unless you're in it. I am constantly having conversations with my partner and other people after a day of trial, and I try to explain the day, and it's almost impossible to explain because there's a feel to it. There's a rhythm to it, and we have to adapt. If something's not working, adapt. Right. And the third thing, which is, is close to my first with listening is that I think, at least for me, one of my biggest issues I get so worried about what I'm going to say, and it has to be the precise word. And it really comes up a lot in opening because I script my openings before I give them that, I'm focused more on the words than the presentation. Yeah, and when I do that, I lose all effectiveness. So those are my three big mistakes your comments, your thoughts, and your three. Let me give you a comment on the last one. If there are books out there, I probably have 1 or 2 sitting on the shelves behind me right now that are like transcripts of the greatest closing arguments in history, right? If you read those books, you read those transcripts of closing arguments given by the greatest trial lawyers ever and the most important case ever, you will come away from it, complete underwhelmed. You will think that there was nothing special about that closing, right? Because the presentation of it is an enormous component of it. It's not just about the words you say, it's how you say them, how they presented, how authentic you are in presenting them. And 100 other things, that we lawyers, you know, we think about cases in a certain way, but you can't present something to a jury the way you presented to a judge in a brief or whatever. And so your last point, I think, is exactly right, Andy. And, how it's how it's delivered is wildly important, often more important than what it is. It's being delivered. Let me give you my theory. If the idea is biggest mistakes, and, I can't swear that I believe these are the three biggest mistakes that in prepare this answer. But here's where they are. Off the cuff. Right? I can't I'm saying I'm sorry for throwing this question at you. This is fun. Nothing to apologize for. All right, so number one, I would say, and again, I'll give the same caveat I gave earlier. I think of these things all from the plaintiff's perspective. One the one biggest mistake I see potential errors make is what I would call premature advocacy. The jury does not want to know what you think about what happened. Maybe they do by the end. They certainly don't. At the beginning. You dig yourself a hole when you stand up an opening statement and you say, this is a case about a company putting profits over people, right? Or this is a case about a truck driver who didn't care enough to protect other people on the road or whatever it is. Right? The jury doesn't know the case. They don't know you. They know that you are trying to influence and persuade them. They have a built in resistance to that and their reaction is going to be B.S.. I bet you're lying and I'm going to prove it in my own mind. I'm going to figure out how you're trying to trick me, and I'm going to get you. That is so counterintuitive to everything that we were taught as young trial lawyers and in law school. I'm going to file I'm going to follow up on that. But I continue with you. I will put a pin in it for now, and I'll let you follow up. So premature advocacy is the first one. The second one to me is lawyers as a rule, not always, but as a rule are too aggressive on cross-examination. All right. We do cross-examinations and we think we've pinned somebody down and we will high-five each other in the break room, on a break, thinking that we really crush. That's so. True. And the jurors could care less. They think you were being a jerk. They think you were using lawyer tricks. They're thoroughly unimpressed when jurors are watching an examination, particular cross-examination of a witness in a courtroom. They're not lawyers. They do not picture themselves in their in the lawyer shoes. They picture themselves in the witness box. And the way you are treating that witness is the way you would treat them and the way you are twisting their words and raising your voice with them and bullying them is the way that you would treat them. And it almost always doesn't work. There are times when you have the jurors permission to do. It is almost always with professional or sophisticated witnesses. It's almost always after you've proven them to be a liar in a non-aggressive way, that you can then get away with the bulldog. Cross-examination attacks that law students think is what cross-examination is supposed to look like. It's not you lose points with it far more often than you gain points. And I think the third thing to relate to maybe our first list, but it's getting bogged down in minutiae, right? It's it's standing up on redirect and going back with your client into something that technically they flubbed in cross in some way, but nobody cares. It doesn't matter. But you care and you're thinking about it too much, and you think it needs to be fixed and it doesn't, or objecting to something that's technically objectionable, but it doesn't matter. The chances of this thing impacting the verdict you ultimately get in the case, or 1 million to 1. Don't bother with the sidebar. Don't bother with the objection. You know the jury at the end of the day is going to be thinking about the case from a 30,000ft view, and we lawyers spend almost all of our time way too granular. And it just bores them. And it doesn't help us, and it doesn't advance the case for. I loved your answer so much to those three things, because it it brings us back to the beginning of this podcast where we talked about what I believe makes you great, John. And what makes you different is that you look at the case from the mind of the jury, and what you just described was from the mind of the jury. So thank you for that response. I could tell you I learned a lot. Need to chill the hell out sometimes on cross-examination, but but I but I know we're going to conclude in just a minute, but I have to go back to this concept of premature advocacy, because it really is counter-intuitive to what at least I've been taught, right? I mean, I've always been taught you start out the first couple words out of your mouth. This is a case about X, and you define what the case is about in a way that works, that you want, how you want your case defined. And so I'm really curious then about how do you start an opening statement if you're not going to encapsulate the case within a couple sentences. And number two, if you're not going to utilize motive, or maybe you still do because you're afraid of premature advocacy. The reason I say that is because I am a firm believer that the jury's not going to do what you want them to do, unless they understand why they should do that. And if you can't explain why a defendant did something wrong, unless you explain to the jury why they did something wrong. So it's it's motive to me is important. And I always bring that out in the first paragraph of my opening statement. So I tell the jury this is a case about X, and then I try to weave in why they're bad or what the motive is here. And it seems like your response to me, if you were teaching me or training me, would be again, and he chill the hell out. There will be a time and place to get there, but it's not now. So how do you begin? And then we could end this. Wonderful. Thank you. Just so, the answer is it's storytelling, right? And storytelling is facts, right? And story in a great novel. A great movie doesn't come out at the beginning and tell you what the movie's about. Right? The first line of the book doesn't tell you what you're about to hear a story about the prince who saved the prince. You know that's not how it goes, right? Right. You know, after you've heard the story, what it's about, you didn't need someone to tell you. But people, people cling to stuff much more strongly if they've come to the conclusion themselves. Yeah, right. And as lawyers and this is not a plaintiff lawyer thing or defense lawyer thing, it's a lawyer thing that people have a built in resistance to what we tell them, because they know we're advocates in the courtroom, right? We have a job, and our job is to be a hired gun to win the case for our client, to advocate for one side, to not be objective by definition. Right. We have in our regular lives a truth default, right? If you run into your neighbor on the street, Andy, and you say, how was your weekend? And they say, oh, I was busy. Sally had a soccer tournament out of state and we were at the soccer fields from, you know, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. But it was fun, right? You're not thinking in your mind. I wonder if that's true. I wonder if they can prove it. Why would they be telling me this? Right? You just believe them. That's the way our human to human interactions work. However, if you walk on to a used car lot and you ask the salesperson, tell me about this Honda Civic, and they start telling you about the miles and how the repairs have been and what a great car is, you don't just believe them. If your neighbor tells you how much they love their Honda Civic, you believe them. Great point. But you don't believe the car salesman because they have skin in the game. The jury knows we have skin in the game, right? So so you don't benefit from telling them this is a case about x, y because they don't believe you, because they're sitting there thinking, and he's trying to trick me. Right. And so you have to show them that this is a case. Again, let me give one more quick example. If you don't mind. Imagine a politician, right? Imagine a president of the United States that you hate. All right. No suggestion about whether this occurred. Inhabitant of the Oval Office or not, right? Just a president that you despise, right? You hate everything about them, their politics, their personality, you name it. If you woke up one morning and you turned on the news and you saw the president and the president was saying, China has done something terrible, and as a result, we are going to bomb them or whatever. Right? What are you going to think? You're going to think this more is going to get us all killed. Right? I bet this is a terrible decision. I'm not taking your word for it that China has done this terrible thing that deserves this response, right. You won't. However, even if this president that you hate, even if this is a president you hate and you wake up and you turn on the news and they say, last night we I got credible evidence from our secret or, you know, from our intelligence agencies that China has secretly, you know, I'm making something up, right? But secretly hacked into our U.S government, you know, databases and is in the presently in the middle of an attempt to subvert the our Social security payments going out or whatever. Right. And therefore I'm you're probably not thinking, oh, this is B.S., you're making this up, you liar. I disagree with you. Right? You're thinking, wow, that this probably happened, right? I might want to hear more, but I want to see the evidence. But I bet this happened, right? So tell a story using facts that is going to cause the jury to conclude whatever it is that you want to stand up and say, this is what this case is about. John, this was fantastic. I can't I have learned so much in our I don't even know how long we've been going. 30 minutes or whatever. 45 minutes. But it's just been absolutely fascinating. We can't talk all day, so I gotta I gotta shut this podcast down. But thank you so much for doing this. It was incredible. I learned a ton. I know any lawyer who really wants a masterclass on trial work. This is the podcast to watch because it was really informative. Thank you so much for doing it Andy. You're fantastic. I appreciate you having me. I would talk I would talk trials with you all day, every day, anytime. So I really appreciate you having me. Good talk me as always. Thanks. Thanks again. All right. Take care. Bye bye.