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The Art of the Courtroom

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William A. Barton
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Raise your mastery of the craft of advocacy to a significantly higher level. Achieve a new level of excellence, elegance and success with Bill Barton’s trial-tested roadmap. This is not a basic trial advocacy course; come to be challenged; to be stimulated; to re-examine your personal approach to trial; and to consider a dynamic and ethical model that has proven to work flawlessly in Barton’s remarkable career.

 

Barton advocates and masterfully demonstrates a revolutionary approach to the art of the courtroom. He is a successful, internationally-recognized, precedent-setting advocate from a two-lawyer firm in Newport, Oregon. Yet, he has more than 500 jury trials under his belt (really!), and is the country’s leading expert in trying psychological injury cases. His courtroom-test and successful Integrated Advocacy Model (IA) will help you to become a more effective trial lawyer. Employing IA concepts in your practice will make the process easier, the dispositions faster and the outcomes better. Period.

 

Barton has already crossed the frontiers of effective advocacy and, in the not too distant future, successful advocates — plaintiff or defense, civil or criminal — will all be compelled to follow. Six short hours are packed with information, not war stories; practical, real-world strategies for success, not PowerPoint digressions or distractions;
disarming, honest, practical (decidedly not theoretical) conversation that will lead you to reconsider and refine your personal approach to trial advocacy.

 

Join Barton and your progressive colleagues for a stimulating, thought-provoking, practice and reality-driven discussion of a refreshing model of advocacy. Fully appreciating the rigid constraints of 21st century evidence, judges and jurors, Barton examines new ways to define yourself as a person and attorney, and to advocate for your client in a natural, efficient, non-combative way that produces positive, winning results! You will enjoy a practical and immediately useful CLE program combining the substantive trial technique and proactive ethical guidance of a truly revolutionary approach to the preparation for — and conduct of — a 21st century trial.

 

Program Agenda & Detail

6 Hours

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I. “Being” a Trial Lawyer

  • The adversary model encourages self-destructive behavior.

  • What you want is to be effective.

  • Success as caricatured by the media.

  • How we reinforce the negative stereotype of trial lawyers.

  • Trial skills are overrated, decency and caring are underrated.

  • Learn what and how, but most importantly, learn why.
     

II. Characteristics of Integrated Advocacy (a.k.a. IA)

  • Trials are a referendum of (lawyers’) citizenship.

  • Integrated in thought and action means consistency.

  • IA is a general methodology of litigation that applies to all.

  • Aristotle’s ethos — your essence.

  • Emphasize process, not results — produce better results.

  • Practical and pragmatic application, saturated with philosophy.

  • Preemption is enlightened self-interest.
     

III. Recognizing our aggression and modulating its expression

  • Our undue emphasis on winning.

  • Learning how to lose for the right reasons.

  • Letting the judge and jurors do their jobs.

  • The dehumanization process of law school.

  • Counter-intuitive techniques.

  • Two words… “Courtroom Drama.”


IV. Key Principles of Social Psychology & Communication

  • What great lawyers do intuitively are instincts you can develop.

  • Beyond primacy and recency.

  • The second tier, availability bias, defensive attribution and others.


V. Integrated Advocacy Before Trial

  • The first interview — explaining your methods to the client.

  • The two-sided investigation.

  • How to develop your theme — creative moralizing.

  • The many variations to $ = (A-C)B.

  • Integrated Advocacy in discovery.


VI. Employing Integrated Advocacy at Trial

  • Authenticity, Credibility, Effectiveness (ACE).

  • How your emotions empower your opponent (or vice-versa!).

  • Seizing and keeping the high moral ground.

  • Applying IA in jury selection & opening statement.


VII. What Jurors Think About the Way You Handle Witnesses

  • Learning to disappear on direct.

  • Kill the opponent — with kindness.

  • Silence is golden.


VIII. Presenting Evidence

  • Facts are a continuum of mixed data.

  • Jurors’ credibility assessments.

  • How jurors adopt the most credible factual scenario.


 


[Adjourn]

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Unconditional Guarantee
If you are not convinced that your understanding of the course topic has
improved after completion of any P.E.G.® seminar, we will refund your course tuition.

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