Category Archives: Uncategorized

We have re-branded and are excited to announce Trial Dynamics, a full-service, national trial consulting firm. For current clients, DON’T WORRY! Nothing is changing that will impact you or our service to you. The Hoffman Brylo Consulting name was created when the firm was first founded. We were small and local and people knew me, the owner, from my maiden name, Jessica Hoffman. Through the years, we have grown and there is no longer a need for the Hoffman name as I am well known as Jessica Brylo. We now have a larger national presence and the growth seemed to require a more adequate name.

Please do TWO things:

1. Update your contact information for us as the email will slowly switch over to Jessica@TrialDynamics.net
2. Check out our new website! (And as with anything new, there are bound to be kinks, so please bring those to our attention so we can iron them out): www.trialdynamics.net

We look forward to continuing to serve you.

What does Trial Consulting have to do with Family law/Divorce/Child Custody matters? A whole heck of a lot! In the consulting field, we prepare expert witnesses and clients for testimony often. It’s a known fact that the way your client presents at depositions or trial can easily make or break the case. Why would this be ANY different in family law disputes where the stakes are, arguably, higher than in other civil cases? What if I could perform short-term miracles on clients in a divorce? What if your client could come across as genuine and likable without the anger and feeling of betrayal? What if I could shift their thinking to realize that the way they are viewing their circumstances are not in line with a mentality needed to “win” their case (money, rights to the kids)? And yes, I do this work in general civil cases as well and it is highly effective. Please contact me to discuss this further.

Have you ever had a trial where you found out after the verdict that one juror had something in their background that biased them against you and may have lost you the case? Most likely, it’s happened many more times than you realize as it’s rare to talk to jurors in depth after a trial or to find out things jurors may be hiding. Doing some deep digging on jurors BEFORE trial is a necessity in today’s litigation world where jurors sometimes have agendas and lie in court. In fact, it almost constitutes malpractice NOT to do some background searching on jurors if you have their names in advance. While many attorneys will try to Facebook search jurors pre-trial, Facebook is simply not enough. There are numerous social media pages that need to be searched and cross-referenced. Photos need to be searched for facial recognition to find other sites where the potential juror may have posted. Background searches can reveal past criminal activity, sometimes in an area related to the trial itself. These are things you should not overlook as it can easily cost you the trial and you would never know. At Hoffman Brylo Consulting, we now offer juror reconnaissance as a service. And for existing customers doing other work with us, we discount the work. Contact us to find out more: trialstrategist@gmail.com

In an effort to allow access to my consulting help for cases where there would otherwise not be the budget, I am rolling out “Concierge Consulting” as a service. Similar to concierge medicine, you would pay me a set amount per month to have unlimited access to me and the services you personally find most valuable, along with lower hourly rates on additional services you may need on a less frequent basis. The amounts could be billed toward clients when there are specific cases that time is being devoted to, allowing you to recoup most, if not all, of the monthly fees. Fees range from a few hundred dollars a month to a few thousand dollars a month depending on what services you in particular want included. I will customize a plan that works for both of us and which will allow us to get help to every single one of your cases. After we work together, my clients almost always tell me that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, they wish we had started working together sooner, and they wish they could use me on more cases. I have thought long and hard about how I can direct my services to more cases and this will accomplish just that. If this seems to be of any interest to you, please reach out so we can talk further.

trialstrategist@gmail.com

303-653-2233

I came across this article on Establishing Credibility in Plaintiff’s Opening and, with no disrespect meant toward the author, I was shocked at the amount of misinformation. She starts by saying that the goal of opening is to establish credibility with the jury. That is a statement with which I certainly agree. However, the author’s method of doing so, in my opinion, is extremely ineffective.

The suggested opening begins:

“May it please the court, counsel, and may it please you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury:

As you know, if you haven’t forgotten since last Friday morning, and to repeat, my name is Judith—Judy they usually call me—Cartwright, and I represent, together with Mr. Michael Mills, Norman Ames, the plaintiff in this case….”

This is useless information to jurors at this point. They’ve already been introduced to you and they care about why they are there (or at the very least it’s your job to make them care about why they are there) and not about who you are. You lose their interest in starting this way and you’ve said nothing useful.

Next, the author suggests stating that “with reference to everything that I tell you, that we will have substantial evidence for each issue or each point that I mention to you.” Now you have changed your own burden from preponderance (slightly more than 50/50) to beyond a reasonable doubt. Jurors already are programmed to evaluate evidence based on a much higher standard than you’re legally bound to. Your job is to constantly remind them that your legal burden is only to prove “more likely than not.” There is a way to do this while still ensuring jurors that you plan to make a stronger case than slightly more likely right than wrong. This is an art. I rarely see it done correctly and the author’s suggestion is a step in the opposite direction.

Finally, she suggests a full paragraph explaining who else will be trying the case and how much experience they have in the case. Jurors could not care less. This does nothing to advance your case. This author’s goal is admirable and, I believe, correct: Establish credibility with the jury as soon as possible. However, the effective ways of doing so are opposite of what this article suggests.

If you need help editing your opening statement, contact me directly at trialstrategist@gmail.com

Due to an unusual amount of movement in trial dates and settlements, I have an opportunity to offer some last minute help at a discounted hourly rate. If you have anything you would like worked on in the next couple of months, please contact me ASAP as I will offer up these openings on a first-come-first-serve basis. I can help with:

• Case analysis (spotting and resolving issues in the case)
• Editing opening statement
• Jury selection
• Crafting voir dire questions
• Voir dire practice
• Focus Groups/Mock Trials
• Witness prep
• Juror interviews

Contact me for more details or with questions at:

TrialStrategist@gmail.com

Phone (303) 653-2233

You hear about focus groups at every turn – in books, at CLE events, from colleagues. They must be helpful…right? The answer is, it depends.

Focus groups are a scientific experiment. There are variables and outcomes. Playing with some of those variables will directly affect the outcome. But even more important, you’ll probably never know if your outcomes are valid and reliable measures of what actual jurors will do with your case by simply looking at the focus group results. Confused? Let’s break this down.

When consultants run focus groups, they control as many variables as possible. They match as many aspects of the focus group to a real court setting as is feasible. For example, it’s important to have jurors who match the demographics of the venue, who do not know which side is putting on the focus group, who are randomly recruited, and who are screened properly for issues in the case which could disqualify actual jurors. It’s also important that information is presented neutrally in order to remove presenter personality as an extra variable. Evidence should be sifted through to determine what is helpful to present in a focus group setting and what should be left for court. If any of these variables are off, it will affect how jurors discuss the case.

Consider, for example, during case presentation, there is a slip in wording or tone which tips off jurors as to who is putting on the focus group. Jurors may never mention having known who was paying for the study yet the knowledge will subconsciously affect how they discuss the case, knowing that one side is listening. In watching deliberations, however, you would never know that the discussion is being altered and that the information you are getting isn’t full or accurate. Or consider a scenario where a piece of information is presented out of order and later in the story than it should have been. Jurors who heard the information in the correct order could easily have formed a different story about the case than jurors who had already formed opinions and now are rationalizing a way to maintain their story of the case by dismissing or discounting the new information. In watching the deliberations, you would never know that jurors’ feedback is skewed.

If you rely on feedback that is invalid or tainted, it could hurt your case rather than help. And the scariest part is that you would never know.

So how can you prevent damage to your case from running focus groups? Be sure you know what you are doing. Talk to attorneys who have done them before – lots of them. Hire a consultant to run them for you. If budget demands that you do them yourself or you simply wanted to do “quick and dirty” focus groups, just know that you need to take the information with a grain of salt. Assume that there are other opinions you are not hearing and don’t revamp your entire case based off of what a couple jurors have said. Match your expectations to the level of expertise that has gone into your focus groups. If you do that, they can only help.

Bull is a new television drama featuring a Dr. Bull, modeled after Dr. Phil in his jury consulting days. This high powered, all-knowing consultant acts as a puppet master, anticipating what jurors will think and say before they know it themselves. While entertaining, the show is mostly “Bull.”

While it is true that trial consultants try to anticipate what issues will come up in a case and what types of beliefs and attitudes will shape how a juror views the case, no jury consultant can anticipate what each individual juror or the jury as a whole will ultimately do. While Dr. Bull uses technology to trace every keystroke ever made on a juror’s computer, in most instances, a jury consultant knows nothing about the jurors sitting on a case until they walk in the courtroom doors and begin introducing themselves. On occasion, we will get some information in advance on a questionnaire but the information is limited.

Dr. Bull uses what are called “shadow juries” to determine what the real jurors are thinking at any given moment. He claims to be able to match the jury’s characteristics (including demographics, upbringing, beliefs, and even looks!) by 85% or higher. While shadow juries are used (very rarely) in very large cases, this type of matching of backgrounds is impossible.

Dr. Bull places great emphasis on a juror’s backgrounds and beliefs and while these are certainly important factors for any consultant to consider, the beliefs on their own tell us nothing. We need to know how a certain belief/attitude will impact how that juror feels about the issues in this case. Many background beliefs or personal characteristics will be irrelevant to the issues at hand. And often people with similar backgrounds react differently to the case facts due to other differences in life experiences or opinions about the subject matter. A consultant’s job is to find out what issues are pivotal in a case (in the jurors’ minds), craft the case in a way to minimize those issues, and direct attorneys on how to ask meaningful voir dire questions to get at jurors’ beliefs for that particular case. A consultant’s job is make the case stronger but no consultant can guarantee a win or know exactly what jurors are thinking. That’s just “Bull.”