ULTIMATE GUIDE — Opening Statements at Trial - 10 Steps to SUCCESS!

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In this video, we're talking about how to write an opening statement, which means I'm going to be giving you the 10-step formula so you can have the perfect opening statement. I know, bold assertion. Let's see if I can follow through. Keep watching. Welcome to LawVenture. My name is Jarrett Stone. Now, I'm making this video about opening statements because I just released a mini e-book, which you can see right here, titled The 10-Step Formula for the Perfect Opening Statement. This is how you can win the jury over without ever presenting any evidence. Now, if you're interested in getting the e-book and getting the download, be sure to look in the description, click the link, type in your email address. It'll get sent directly to you. Now, what makes this 10-step formula super powerful is that you can use it in any opening statement. In fact, you should use it in all your opening statements because it really doesn't matter the area of law that you practice and doesn't matter the case complexity. If you apply this 10-step formula, you're going to be well on your way to winning the jury over before the case even begins. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into step one. The first step is super simple, super straightforward, and it's mainly a formality, especially in federal court, but I recommend you say these magic words even if you're in state court because it makes you look kind of fancy, which is the judge is going to ask you to proceed with your opening statement. So you stand up, you go to your starting point where you're going to address the jury, but instead of immediately diving in, turn to the court, acknowledge the court by saying, may it please the court, turn to opposing counsel, say counsel, and then turn back to the jury, and at this point say members of the jury. Now, the caveat is if you have the burden of proof to where you're wanting the jury to collectively rule in your client's favor, then you want to have members of the jury. You're planting that psychological seed to where everyone's going to start thinking the same way. On the flip side, if you don't have the burden of proof and you want to divide the jury up and you want to plant again that psychological seed, then you may want to just refer to the jury as ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and then further direct each part of your opening statement to individuals instead of the collective jury, because that'll begin to divide up their thinking. On the flip side, again, back over to having the burden, you may want to take it a step further to unify people by saying members of the jury, residents of Travis County, P.S. shout out to Austin, Texas. Using the fact that the jury members are from the same county is a great way to bring unity. The person sitting in the jury box who knows they're representing this county also knows that the person who's on their left and who's on the right is not a stranger. In fact, they're more like a neighbor, and that is a great way to bring unity. So whether you have the burden or you don't, try and start planting that seed in this first step. Now let's go on to step two. So this second step is probably my favorite part of opening statement, but at the same time, it's weirdly enough probably the most controversial because I know a lot of lawyers are about to disagree with what I'm about to recommend, which is that you need to start your opening statement with being personable and being likable. This is going to be controversial for some because a lot of lawyers recommend that you have a two-minute window in order to capture the attention of the jury members and to tell your story and to win them over in two minutes. So they recommend that you come in, bring the fire, bring the explosions, and capture that two-minute window and win it in two minutes. But jurors are actually really good at paying attention, especially whenever you consider the fact that whenever you're making your presentation or your opening statement, that you're about three feet away from them. They don't really have anything else to focus on. They don't have a cell phone distracting them. And it's not like YouTube where I have to bring maybe some fire and some explosions in order to keep you entertained in the first two minutes. to potentially watch a five or 10-minute video. P.S. By the way, if you're still watching this video... Given all this, my recommendation for your opening statement whenever you get it started is to be personable, be likable, and maybe even make a joke. And I know that can be a little bit out of the norm for most people, but it's a fantastic way to segue from your jury selection or for dire for the fancy people and to carry that mood and that tone into your opening statement. Hold back on the fire, hold back on the explosions just a little bit, because what you need to have is continuity from jury selection to your opening statement. Now, I talked about this in another video, which I think will be sliding here or not, but check that out if you haven't. In that video, I mainly convey the fact that if you have this really great jury selection, and you're able to develop a bond with the jurors, and you're able to maybe even develop inside jokes with the jurors, and then you throw that away by not keeping that bond going during opening statement by just bringing the fire and the explosions, then the jury is going to see two very different sides of you. And what you end up doing is, one, maybe losing credibility, but two, you're definitely going to throw away that bond you develop during jury selection. So, given that, just go ahead and just continue the mood a little bit, develop that continuity from jury selection to the beginning of your opening statement, and then get serious with step three. So, this third step is what I like to call the tone shift. And I've talked about this in another video. Hopefully that's sliding right now. It may or may not be doing that. Let's see if I figure that out later. But with this tone shift, you take it from we're joking, we're having a good time. But unfortunately, what brings us here together is something very, very serious. And then you start kind of going into the facts. But this tone shift really starts making the jury think and more important. That's when they start paying attention, right? You don't really need to bring the fire and the explosions in order to get them to pay attention. You just need to basically almost ruin the party and ruin the fun that we're all having. And the jury starts wondering, OK, what's causing this person we bonded with for the last 30 minutes or an hour to start to switch his mood a little bit? They get curious and then you start satisfying that curiosity by moving on to step four. Now, with this step, we're going to be talking about the theme and the purpose of the theme is to set the mood for the entire case. This is going to be the theme that you're going to refer to over and over and over and over and over again during trial. Now, you need to take some time and figure out what's going to be a good theme. In fact, you need to also be critical of your theme and figure out how the other side can maybe flip your own theme into something that's beneficial to them. Here's an example. If your theme is about bad choices, that's kind of vague and it's kind of broad and the other side can actually flip that to say, OK, but opposing counsel made the bad choice about doing X, Y and Z or the other party made the bad choice about doing A, B and C. That's something that can be flipped very, very well. Now, if you just make it a little bit more specific, say the theme is about gambling, right? A lot of people are very, very critical of somebody who gambles at the expense or risk of other people. Now, with gambling, it's a little bit harder to flip because it's a little bit more of a serious theme and it's not as simple as choices like choices you do every single day. Gambling has this implication of high risk, high reward. So that's just an example off the top of my head. But what you need to do is find a theme that works for your case and definitely does not work for the other side's case. And all you have to do at this step is just use a simple sentence saying, and this is a case about an implement your theme. And then what you do after you've implemented your theme, go ahead and transition to this next step, step five. So at this point, you have primed the jury to be hypercritical and they're asking questions. They're wondering who or what has brought everyone here today and who or what's causing things to be so serious? What's going on? If they're asking questions, then guess what? You have their attention. So you're going to provide the answers to the questions that you know the jury has. And in order to do that, what you need to do is actually start talking about the other party's actions. You need to start telling the story, but allowing the jury to be critical of the other party. What you don't want to do is start talking about your client and your client's story. Because the jury, like I said, they're being hypercritical at this point. They're primed. And you don't want them to start basically focusing the eye of Sauron, Lord of the Rings reference right there, on your client. That's the last thing you want. You don't want them to start poking holes in your client's story. Instead, just focus and hone them in on the conducts and the actions of the other party. So in order to do that, in order to tell that story, be sure to speak in an active voice, right? Don't speak in past tense, but speak actively. That'll keep the jury more engaged. Be quick, be short, and to the point. Kind of like this step. Now, after you're able to do that, and you tell that story, we're moving on to the next step. Step six, we're talking about the burden of proof. So at this point, we're coming from, here's what the other party did incorrectly, and here's how we can either satisfy or how the other party can't satisfy their burden. And if you basically had a really good jury selection and really good voir dire, then you were able to already talk about the burden of proof. And I recommend with opening statement, be short, be succinct, and if you've already talked about the burden of proof during jury selection, just go ahead and touch on it for maybe 30 seconds. Just have a very brief overlay of how those facts that you just told about the other party's actions either satisfy or don't satisfy the burden, and then move on to the next step. So if you weren't able to talk about the burden during jury selection, now's the time to do so. And be sure to make it make sense. It can be kind of this abstract, esoteric line of thinking. Use examples, make it more concrete, and really drive home the fact that it either can or can't be satisfied based on the other party's actions in the previous step. If you're able to do that and kind of interweave it, then you move on to the next step. So with step seven, you're providing an answer to the question that the jury has, and you know they have. They just heard the burden of proof, they understood it, and they're wondering, okay, how is this lawyer going to satisfy the burden of proof, or how is the other side not going to satisfy it? So you're going to answer that with step seven by talking about the anticipated evidence, the evidence that you expect to come forth or come to light during the course of trial. So you can talk about the testimony, the witnesses, or the exhibits that will be presented and shown to the jury. Here's a warning though, and hope flashing lights are going off right now. If you aren't comfortable, or if you aren't confident that a certain testimony or certain exhibits may not come in, then don't mention them. The last thing you want to do is overpromise and underdeliver on what you're going to present, because that'll end up costing you credibility. And credibility is king in the courtroom. So let's pivot a little bit, because you also want to talk about the weaknesses of your case. I promise you the other side can't wait to start talking about them, but at the same time, if you're able to talk about them on your terms, that can take a lot of the sting out of bad facts or bad witnesses. Let's say there's a document. You have the burden of proof, and you're trying to satisfy that burden. There's a document that's missing, but what you can do is explain to the jury that, yeah, it would be great if we had this document. It'd be fantastic. It would make things super simple, but we don't have it. But we don't actually need it. In fact, we have this witness, we have that witness, we have this document, we have this document. All of that satisfies the burden of proof. You can do the same thing with witnesses. If you know a witness just simply isn't going to play well, but the witness is an eyewitness who saw maybe a car wreck or he saw a crime, you can maybe take the sting out of the fact that, okay, we can't pick the witnesses and we can't pick who ends up seeing a crime or a car wreck, but he's going to come up here and he's going to testify to seeing X, Y, and Z. And doing that allows the jury to be prepared mentally for that. And it also puts in perspective to the jury of like, okay, yeah, it makes sense. They don't really need that document. I wish they would have had it and it would make my job easier, but they're right. I understand the burden and they don't need it. On the flip side, even if you don't have the burden, you need to address bad facts. And you need to explain to the jury that, yes, these witnesses will say this, or yes, these documents will say that. But even with all of that evidence, the other side is not going to be able to satisfy their burden. They need X, Y, and Z. And so you can address the bad facts and then spin it in your favor. And then this takes us to the next step. So we're at step eight now. And at this point, we have primed the jury to be critical of the other party's actions. We've also set the theme of the entire case. So the scene is set and the jury understands the burden of proof and knows the anticipated evidence that's going to be presented. And you've also taken the sting out of any bad facts. At this point, after you've done all of that, now you're going to talk about your client. You may want to end step seven by saying, also, you're going to hear from my client. Who's going to take the stand? And he or she is going to tell his or her story. And with that story, you're going to hear yada, yada, yada. That takes you to step eight. With step eight, you want to talk about how the other party's conduct and actions have negatively affected your client. Again, speak in active voice. Keep it very engaging. If your client did something wrong, own up to it, address it. But also maybe use passive voice at that point to where maybe the jury gives your client a little bit more slack. Now, after you've told this story, let's proceed to the next step, step nine. So with this ninth step, the second to last step, let's call it like it is. Nobody likes a complainer, especially the jury. They can find it very off-putting. So if you were to end on step eight, which is basically your client's story of how your client has been negatively affected, then your client runs the risk of coming off as a complainer. And that's not good. That's when step nine comes into play, which is to paint your client in the picture of basically the comeback kid. Overcoming these negative situations and coming out better and stronger than ever before. And what that'll do is that'll give your client a ton of credibility before your client even takes the stand. And if you can do that, that means you're on your way to the perfect opening statement. And you just have one step left. Step 10. We're at the final step. Step 10. We're here. We've made it. For those still watching, now my recommendation in order to end with the perfect opening statement is to end with what I like to call the soft pitch. A lot of lawyers default to the same simple request of just ruling my client's favor. But the jury at this point is primed. They know their jobs. They know there's a burden of proof. They know evidence has to be presented. So it's a really big ask to go ahead and ask the jury during opening before any evidence has been presented to rule in your client's favor. And what I don't want you to do is to ruin this perfect opening statement that you've accomplished through the first nine steps by just over asking with step 10. Instead, you need to do this soft pitch. You need to make it very clear to the jury that it would be unfair for you to ask the jury to rule in your client's favor. But you know that after they see the evidence that you talked about, after they've determined the credibility of the witnesses, after you've done a closing argument and you've put a bow on everything, after all of that, there's going to be one simple decision. And that's to rule in your client's favor. But you're not going to ask that until the jury is presented with all of that evidence. And that evidence will make it super clear and they'll be super comfortable ruling in your client's favor. It's a little bit of a ramble, but you get the gist of it. If you have any questions about this, be sure to leave a comment below. I'd be happy to answer it. For my go-getters who want to take their courtroom skills to the next level, be sure to check out Trial Ad Academy. The link's in the description. It's an online course that I put together that's going to take your trial skills to the next level. And if you've made it this far and you haven't given this video a thumbs up, come on, let's get on it. And also, don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you all in the next video.