Ultimate Guide to Opening Statements in Mock Trial

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome into Mock Trial Masterclass, your guide to controlling the courtroom. I'm Luke, and this is the ultimate guide to opening statements in mock trial. Nothing in mock trial is a bigger indicator of whether you will win or lose a round than how you score in opening statements. It is absolutely vital to get it right, and this guide is going to show you how to do that. We're going to start by talking about what it takes to write a really good opening statement. I'm going to give you a sample outline, and you'll learn what a good opening is and what it isn't. Take a look. The first thing you'll need to do in your opening statement is tell the story of the case. Every case that goes to trial has a story. Sometimes that story is really, really exciting in an entertainment sense. Maybe like, you know, Kim killed Johnny, or Johnny killed Kim, right? It's all these great details. It's these great, exciting characters involved. Sometimes the story isn't quite so exciting. Sometimes it's Jim breached a contract. Sometimes it's Bill didn't uphold his duty to act reasonably, right? Something a little more boring. But whether the story is naturally more exciting than the kind of thing you'd see on TV or in movies, or if it's not quite so exciting, every case has a story. And as the opener, it's your job to tell that story to the jury. But here's the thing. You don't want to tell that story in a dry way. For example, let's go back to the Kim killed Johnny example. If I've got the story of Kim killing Johnny, and I need to tell that in my opening statement, what I don't need to do is say, well, on June 23, 2021, Kim pulled out a gun and killed Johnny, and Johnny died, and the police are... Boring, boring, boring, right? We don't want any of that sort of thing. When we're telling the story, we want it to sound really exciting. So why don't we reverse things a little bit and do it this way. It's 8 a.m. on a cold day. Johnny knows it's cold, so he puts on a coat before he walks out to his front doorstep. He looks down the street at the journey he's going to take to work, just like he does every day. But this day was a little different, because around the corner was Kim waiting with a gun. Kim pulls out the gun, aims it straight at Johnny, fires. Johnny dies. Right? You see how much drama was in that? How exciting your story can be if you just take it up to the next level? And that's the first thing you've got to do in every opening statement. If you're the plaintiff for the prosecution, that means probably literally telling the story of the case, what you believe happened. And if you're the defense, that means telling the story of why you believe it didn't happen that way, or what you believe really happened. Regardless of which side you're on, regardless of how you do it, you need to tell a story first and foremost, and it needs to be interesting, exciting, and even a little bit theatrical. The second thing you want to do in an opening is preview the trial. And the two ways you'll preview the trial is you'll do that through the law, and you'll do that through witnesses. You'll preview the trial through the law really only if you're the plaintiff for prosecution, or if you're the defense and the plaintiff for prosecution didn't do this. And what this means is that you simply give the jury a preview of what the law says for the case. Just about every mock trial case in high school and college has law attached that has specific elements that if this were a real live trial, the plaintiff for prosecution would have to meet those elements, prove those elements to win the trial. And so it probably is going to be helpful if we explain those elements to the jury. But here's the thing. We don't want to get too in the weeds. We don't want to get too complicated with this. I've seen too many opening statements that turn into legal lectures that would even put the brightest and most interested lawyer to sleep. That's not what we're looking for here. In and out, quick, and to the point. Tell us what the elements are. And if you can use smaller words instead of bigger words, like legal words that you'd find in a textbook, staying away from those as much as possible is a good idea. So we preview the case through the law of the case. We also preview the case through the witnesses. Typically in mock trial, you're going to be calling three witnesses, and it's a great idea to tell the jury who they're going to be hearing from. And a great way to make that happen is, instead of using everybody's full proper name, because those are really hard to remember, try using titles as much as possible. Because think about it. If you're sitting and you're a jury member and you're listening to this opening statement, previewing the trial you're about to hear, are you more likely to remember you're going to hear from a doctor who specializes in heart procedures? Or are you more likely to remember Dr. John James Reynolds III? You're going to remember that first part. There's a greater chance that during the trial, you're going to be sitting there anticipating, okay, we're going to hear from a heart surgeon later on, versus, oh, what was that guy's name? Come on, come on, come on. Right, if you can give the jury a title to latch onto, that is the way to go. So, the first thing we do, we tell the story of the case, we do it interestingly. The second thing we do is we preview the trial. We talk about what the law surrounding the case is, and we preview the three witnesses we're going to call. Once you do that, you're ready for step three. The last thing you want to do in a great opening statement is give the jury a call to action. And a call to action simply means telling the jury, what do you want? So, what do you want? You want them to rule for you. At the end of the trial, you want the jury to, if this were a real-life case, go into the jury room and rule in favor of your side of the case. So, at the end of your opening statement, tell them that. Tell the jury that at the end of today's trial, we're going to ask that you find in favor of the plaintiff or the prosecution or the defense, right? Whatever side you're on, you've got to give the jury a call to action. Now, ultimately, a jury would know that that was at stake, right? You know, the jury's not sitting there going, well, gee, why are we here today? What are we going to have to do, right? They know that they're going to have to pick which side, put on the better case. This is more than anything a formality. This is how good opening statements end. So, if you have a theme, which, by the way, you should be weaving that throughout your entire opening statement. If you have a theme, you might say your theme one last time, and then you'll look at the jury and say, and we hope at the end of today's trial, you will find in favor of, and then say your side of the case, plaintiff, prosecution, or defense. It's that simple. It's a great way to end your openings, and because it's so easy to do, I hope you remember to do it every time. So, like we talked about in the beginning, opening statements are hugely important to the success of your entire team in a mock trial round. But nailing them is easier than you think. Now, there's other stuff we didn't talk about, like performance and preparation and practice, and all of that is important, too, but it really starts with the content. And if you can remember to tell the story of the trial, preview the trial, and then give the jury a call to action, you're going to have a pretty good opening. Now, you can't have a good opening statement and mock trial without a good theme. If you don't know what that is, I'm about to tell you, because we're going to watch a video I made breaking down how to create a great theme and how to use it effectively within your opening statement. We'll also talk about why it's important and why it's a non-negotiable if you want to succeed in opening. Here we go. All right, Papa John's loves to say, better ingredients, better pizza. Burger King loves to say, have it your way. The cereal Wheaties loves to say that they're the breakfast of champions, right? All of these different companies have slogans. Well, why do they have slogans? Well, I think probably the biggest reason these companies have slogans is that they're powerful. They're easy for us as customers and consumers to remember, and it makes us start to want whatever product they're selling. When I think better ingredients, better pizza, I want to go buy a pizza at Papa John's, not at the other places that, you know, have less good ingredients and less good pizza, right? That's how slogans work. They're really powerful. They're easy to remember, and they get people, us usually, to move to make a specific action. Well, within the context of mock trial, a slogan can really help you out as well. But in mock trial, we don't call slogans, slogans. We call them themes. When you hear about a theme in mock trial, that's all it really is, is a slogan. It's a catchy phrase or sentence or statement that ties together your case in a memorable way for the jury. But a lot of people, even though they know that and they know that it's important to have a theme, don't really know how to create a good one. So either they don't make one at all or they go into a trial with a theme, with a slogan. It's not very good. It's sort of weak. It doesn't really land in the way it needs to. So what we're going to talk about in this video is a two-step process that you and your team can take to make sure that the theme you come up with for your next competition on either side of the case is a rockstar quality theme. I promise, if you run your theme through these filters, you might not get there easily. It might take you some time to develop your theme. But once you do get there, once it is developed, it's going to be really, really good. So are you ready to hop into this two-step process and talk about how to write a stellar theme every single time? Let's do it. Step one to creating a good theme is really the easy part of this. And that's, you've got to figure out the heart of your case. What's the heart of your case? Well, it's actually pretty simple. See, the heart of your case is the whole reason that you want the jury to believe your side of the case. The whole selling point of your side of the case to the jury. So, for example, if you're prosecuting a murder trial and the defendant in this murder trial hated the guts of the person that he killed or that she killed, well, then the heart of your case is that the defendant hated the guts of the person that they killed. If you're in a negligence lawsuit and the defendant missed important steps that they should have taken because they were distracted by making money, then the heart of your case is that the defendant was distracted because they wanted to make money. Now, do you see how when I'm stating the heart of the case, it's sort of clunky? It's not poetic. It doesn't sound like Shakespeare. That's okay. Because in step one of creating a good theme, all we're concerned about is getting the heart of the case accurate. It doesn't have to sound good. It doesn't have to be catchy yet. We'll get to that in just a minute. But the first thing you've got to do when you're coming up with your theme is ask yourself, what is the heart of the case we're trying to make? And here's why that's the first step. If you start with trying to come up with something catchy, you might come up with something catchy, but chances are it will be something catchy that doesn't land with the jury. Because for a theme to land with a jury the way that it needs to, it must get to the heart of your case. And so that's why it's absolutely crucial as you're coming up with a theme to start at that point. What's our selling point? What's our case all about? What's the number one reason we hope and expect the jury to buy into the argument overall that we're trying to make? When you can answer that question, that's the heart of your case. And once you've found the heart of your case, you're ready for step two. Okay, step two to making a great theme. Once you've decided on the heart of your case, once you've figured out your selling point, your primary argument, that's when you can start to make it catchy. Because a theme needs to, number one, get to the heart of your case, but it also needs to be memorable. It needs to be catchy. So how do you go about making your theme catchy? Well, there's no really great way to do that outside of just throwing out ideas and seeing what you think about them, which is why I think it's helpful to start with the heart of your case because that gives you something to work from. So you've written out the heart of your case and it's something clunky. It's not catchy. Something like we were talking about earlier, right? The defendant was distracted and really cared about money. So then we can take that statement and start to ask ourselves, okay, what's a more memorable way to state that? And there are a lot of different ways that we can create a theme memorably. And I'm going to give you some of my favorite right now. One way that a theme can be memorable is it can rhyme, right? If you have a rhyming theme, that's going to make it very memorable. But other great ways are to use alliteration, right? To say something to the extent of, you know, the defendant showed contempt instead of care, repeating that C sound, that's going to make it memorable. You can use a quote from the trial. A quote from a witness character will inherently make your theme more memorable. You can use antithesis, a contradiction using the conjunction but. For example, you could say, when the plaintiff wanted out, the defendant wanted to send a message or the plaintiff wanted out, but the defendant wanted to send a message, right? That's a really effective way to be memorable as well. You can use repetition. You can repeat a phrase. One of my favorite themes I've ever used was we used a theme that said the defendant was out of time, out of money, and out of options. Repeating that phrase out of three times made our theme very, very memorable. You can even use a popular catchphrase that you've heard before, you know, in conversations. I heard a great theme one time that said, you know, the plaintiff's plan was an accident waiting to happen, right? Accident waiting to happen is a phrase that we use in our conversations, that we use in everyday language, and because it's a catchphrase like that, it inherently makes it more memorable. Those are just a handful of the ways you can think about making your theme memorable. So take the heart of your case and ask yourself, is there a rhyme I can come up with here? Is there a type of repetition, like out of time, out of money, out of options that I can come up with? Is there some antithesis I can use? Is there some way that I can, you know, do any of those things on the list we just went over? And there are plenty of others as well. Now, this is the point of the process, again, where it's a little more difficult, right? Coming up with the heart of your case, if you're aligned as a team and aligned on the theory of your case and the strategy of your case, that's really the easy part. Making it clever is the hard part, but I promise it is worth it to do it this way because once you have that green light moment, once you hit that theme that is memorable for maybe one of the reasons we just talked about or another one that you come up with, that's the point that you have developed a stellar mock trial master level theme. And here's the thing about champions in mock trial. All of them have stellar mock trial master themes and they come out in the team's opening statement. They come out throughout the trial and then they come back out again in the closing argument. A great theme that centers on the heart of your case and is memorable is really the key to everything else in preparing a mock trial case. It all sort of stems from that theme. So if you can follow the process we talked about by identifying the heart of your case and then finding a way to state it memorably, you're going to set yourself up for big time mock trial master level success. And when you do, I can't wait to hear all about it. Now it's one thing to hear me talk about what makes a good opening, but it's another to watch it in practice and that's exactly what we're going to do next. I'm going to show you an example of an awesome opening statement from an old college mock trial round and we'll be pausing it throughout to break it down and really talk about what makes it so great. Check it out. [00:15:59] Speaker 2: May it please the court. Miss Grant. Members of the jury. They took risks. [00:16:13] Speaker 3: They risked her life. [00:16:16] Speaker 1: So I'm going to go ahead and pause right off the bat because that statement that Travis just made, they took risks. They risked her life. What that's called is a theme and every opening statement needs a theme. It's really just a slogan, a memorable phrase that gets to the heart of your case, the sort of main reason that the jury should ultimately rule in your favor and is also memorable like Travis's clearly was, right? As we're going to hear throughout the opening statement, he's probably going to repeat that and it's going to be really easy for the jury at the end of the case to take this with them when they're evaluating the team or if this was real life evaluating the case. But you've got to have a theme in every opening statement. Don't always have to say it right off the bat like Travis did, but sometimes that works. I think it was effective the way he did it. It's a great way to start and you've got to have one in your opening. So love that he has that right off the bat. [00:17:09] Speaker 2: This is Jessica Marks. She was a daughter, a college student, a friend. But you're going to learn that about three years ago, Miss Marks got into a fatal car accident. She was driving drunk. [00:17:36] Speaker 3: She had just been out drinking with a friend at a local establishment here in Southern California. It's called Sonny's Rooftop Bar. [00:17:46] Speaker 1: So one thing that every opening statement needs is you've got to tell the story of the case because whether it's real life or mock trial, a jury is coming in with no knowledge of the case itself and every case has a story, whether it's someone killed someone or someone breached a contract and didn't do something they were supposed to do. Every case has a story and it's your job right out of the gate to tell that story to the jury. But you don't just want to tell it to the jury. You want to tell it in a manner, in a way that is captivating and interesting for the jury as if you were watching a movie or reading a really good book. And that's what Travis is doing such a good job of here. He's telling a story of, you know, this girl goes to a bar, she got drunk and all of these things. But he's not just listing a series of facts. He's giving us or giving the jury the story in a really engaging way that's fun to listen to. And that's exactly what every opening statement needs to have. You've got to tell the story of the case, but you've got to make it interesting just like what Travis is doing here. [00:18:44] Speaker 3: You're going to hear that over the course of three hours, Ms. Marks drank over four drinks. She had beer, wine, hard seltzer, even shots. That within just a few hours, Ms. Marks was stumbling, slurring her words, her eyes were bloodshot. [00:19:08] Speaker 2: But the bartenders, they kept serving her drinks. Not only that, members of the jury, [00:19:16] Speaker 3: you'll learn that Ms. Marks was underage. But the bartenders, they kept serving her drinks. [00:19:27] Speaker 1: Do you notice how often Travis is using pauses within his speech? It's one of the most important things you've got to learn as a speech attorney in mock trials. You've got to be comfortable with pauses. I see a lot of young students who are uncomfortable with pauses because they think they have to fill every second with something. But it's really okay to let the air breathe, if you will, to pause and let the things you're talking about sink in. And in fact, what we're seeing Travis do is when you pause as he is, it sort of creates a drama in the air. It makes what you're saying seem more important. It lets the things you're saying sink in a little bit more and almost seem like they matter even more than maybe they really do. So you've got to employ the power of the pause as a speech attorney in mock trial on opening or closing. And Travis is doing such a great job of that here. And if you're uncomfortable with pausing, just listen to how he's doing it and you'll start to realize, okay, not only is it not bad when I pause, it can actually be super effective as it is here. They took risks, members of the jury. [00:20:41] Speaker 2: When they took risks, they risked Ms. Marks' life. You're going to hear that they let her get into a car, [00:20:52] Speaker 3: drive down the street and within moments, she had crashed, fell into a ravine and died instantly. But you see, businesses like Sunnys, they can't just take risks and they can't ignore the health and safety of their clientele. And when we let restaurants serve alcohol, we trust that they'll do it responsibly. And when they don't, we can hold them accountable. That's why Ms. Marks' family has actually brought a lawsuit against Sunnys rooftop bar today. They brought a claim of wrongful death. Or as the plaintiff, we carry something called a burden of proof. [00:21:39] Speaker 1: Do you see how Travis is really teaching the jury here? He's not talking over their heads, even though he is having to use some legal terminology like wrongful death, burden of proof, bringing a claim, right? A lot of those legal terms you can't always get around, but he's educating the jury. He's not using those terms to make himself sound smart or talk over their head. He's using them and very quickly defining them and bringing himself down their level and saying, let's talk about what these words mean. Let's get on the same page. Really, really good stuff there. [00:22:12] Speaker 3: But all that means is that it's our job to prove by preponderance of the evidence that three things are true. March 24, 2019, Ms. Marks was underage. Two, that Sunnys rooftop bar served her drinks while she was obviously intoxicated. [00:22:34] Speaker 2: And third, that she died as a result. [00:22:40] Speaker 3: We're going to meet our burden today, members of the jury. [00:22:42] Speaker 1: So the second thing you need to do in an opening statement once you've told the story of the case is you need to preview the case, usually through either witnesses that you're going to call or the law. We just watched Travis do that with the law and it's just really important to accomplish that. And I feel like about to talk even more about that, about previewing the law, previewing the case, that's a must also for your opening statements. [00:23:05] Speaker 3: Because we're going to ask you to pay attention to three questions throughout the duration of today's trial. [00:23:10] Speaker 1: So those three questions is going to keep previewing the trial for us. First, how drunk [00:23:17] Speaker 2: was Jessica Marks that night? Second, did the defendant know she was drunk? And third, what did the defendant do about it? First, how drunk [00:23:33] Speaker 3: was Ms. Marks that night? Today, you're actually going to hear from the friend that she was drinking with that night. Her name is Morgan Levin. She's going to tell you that Ms. Marks had been drinking before she even stepped foot in Sonny's bar. And when she was there, the bartender served her drink after drink after drink. And so you're going to ask yourself, [00:23:59] Speaker 2: did the defendant know she was drunk? [00:24:04] Speaker 3: You'll hear that the answer is yes. Today, you're going to hear that Ms. Marks was actually stumbling. She fell down the stairs. You're actually going to see a video of Ms. Marks today. And the owner of that bar will tell you himself. She looked drunk in that video. [00:24:24] Speaker 1: So, in an opening statement, you're not allowed to argue. You're not allowed to say, you should believe this. Here's what all the facts are and here's the conclusion based on that. You're only allowed to preview the trial. Talk about things that you expect to come out. And what Travis is doing such a good job of here is staying in that lane of he's not arguing. He's saying, you're going to hear this. You're going to see this. But he's arranging the information in such a way that your mind is already starting to shift to agree with his side. So, in a good opening statement, you don't just list facts that you expect to come out. This guy's going to say that. This guy's going to say that. Because that's not really interesting. You do what Travis is doing. You preview the trial. You're not arguing. But you do it in such a way and you organize the information where those connections are maybe already starting to form in the minds of the jury. [00:25:18] Speaker 2: Finally, what did they do about it? Today, you're going to learn that the answer to that question was nothing. They kept serving her drink after drink [00:25:34] Speaker 3: after drink when it was obvious that she was intoxicated. Members of the jury, the fact of the matter is they took risks. They risked her life. [00:25:49] Speaker 1: There's the theme again, bringing it back at the end. They took risks. They risked her life. You want your theme to be throughout the opening statement. I maybe would have liked to hear it another time in the middle, but certainly at the beginning like Travis did and then here at the end to reinforce the point so that it's more memorable for the jury. [00:26:06] Speaker 3: That's why at the end of this trial I'm going to come before you again. I'm going to ask that you find the defendant. Sonny's rooftop ball. Liable. [00:26:19] Speaker 1: And like Travis is doing here, you always want to close your opening statements with a future tense call to action to the jury. When you give your closing argument at the end you're going to say right now find in favor of our side because the jury is literally about to go deliberate. Well, they're not about to make the decision in an opening so you're not saying find in favor right now. You do what Travis is doing. You say later on or we're going to ask at the end of this case that you find in favor of our side and that's always a really effective and useful way to end your opening statements. Thank you. And that's it. To close this out I want to talk about one of the biggest mistakes that you can make in an opening statement. That way you are prepared to avoid it. It's one of my pet peeves. It really rubs me the wrong way when this happens and you're not going to do it because you're about to learn how to avoid it. Here's the thing about opening statements. They're the most important part of a trial to get right. I talk about it all the time on here. I talk about it in my book. 80% of mock trial rounds are decided by the opening statement. In other words, the team with the higher scores on opening statement goes on to win the round. And in the most recent National High School Mock Trial Championship, a school from Washington that made it to the final round and was going as the prosecution in the championship round made a huge mistake on their opening statement that I believe cost them a national title. What was that mistake? We're going to see it in play in just one second. First, let me give you a little bit of context as to the case that was used at Nationals this year. It was really, really interesting. It was about a journalist who was investigating a 50-year-old cold case, a murder that never went solved. And the person that this journalist was starting to suspect might have actually done it all those years ago attempted to kill them or allegedly attempted to kill them. And that person is now on trial for attempted murder of the journalist. This was the prosecution's opening statement. It's supposed to explain to the jury what to expect and what the story of this case is. But I want you to pay close attention to how long it takes before we actually understand what in the world this case is about. Take a look. [00:28:36] Speaker 4: A man with connections. Today you will learn that Paulus Trimble is a man with connections. Connections to wealth, to fame, to corruption. Connections that made him successful. Connections that were all about to be made public. But today the evidence will show that Paulus Trimble wanted to conceal these connections. Conceal them through the murder of Lupe Campos. Today the defendant Paulus Trimble is charged with attempted murder in the first degree. And we the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Paulus Trimble intended to kill Lupe Campos and that acting with premeditation intentionally committed any act that was a step in the plan to kill Lupe Campos. Members of the jury today we will meet this verdict. Now, taking a... [00:29:29] Speaker 1: Alright, we're about a minute and a half into this opening. I have heard that this is an attempted murder trial. That the defendant is on trial for attempted murder. You know what? I have not heard any details at all about what that looked like, why that may have occurred, and we're a third of the way through this opening already. Alright, that's absolutely crazy. We're about to get into a little bit of context now. Let's see how that plays out. [00:29:54] Speaker 4: Step back for some context. About 50 years ago, Don Bowles was an investigative reporter who was looking into land fraud involving prominent politicians and people with ties to organized crime. But in 1976, he got too close to uncovering the truth and was killed by a carbox. You will hear how the mystery of who exactly ordered the hit on Bowles is still unsolved today. But you will also learn that the defendant was 23 years old at the time and that at the time he wanted to be rich and successful. He became that. He worked with many people connected to organized crime, the mafia. And today, the state will prove that last June, almost 50 years after the murder of Don Bowles, Paulus Trimble shot and tried to kill Lupe Campos. [00:30:42] Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit more details now. We talked about that old cold case. We talked about the journalist who was killed 50 years ago and it's gone unsolved and then now this other guy has now been killed. But why and how? Now we're well over two minutes into this opening, about halfway through, and I still don't know what happened and why. Right? Real big problem. Let's keep watching. [00:31:10] Speaker 4: Why? Because Lupe Campos was about to publish an article that connected Hollis Trimble to the murder of Don Bowles. Today the evidence will show that the defendant didn't have an issue using force if the push came to shove. You will hear various people accused him of being involved in the murder of Don Bowles. And how did the defendant respond? With threats. You will end up tied to a cinder block at the bottom of Lake Powell. Get out of here before you end up like Bowles. Members of the jury, I remind you that Bowles was assassinated. But I want to be clear that today we are not prosecuting Hollis Trimble for the murder of Don Bowles. Today we are prosecuting Hollis Trimble for the attempted murder of Lupe Campos on June 13th of 2024. Today you will learn that on June 12th the... [00:32:04] Speaker 1: Okay. We're almost done with the opening and we just got to June 12th and the murder occurred or the attempted murder occurred on June 13th. So we were almost done with this opening statement and we haven't even gotten to the day in question yet. And look, I don't have to watch the rest of this opening and I don't want to make this kid feel bad but as soon as I watched this opening and I listened to it live as it was happening during the national championship round. I was driving in my car, I had it plugged into the speaker and I might have even said out loud to myself, yeah, it's over now. Because the worst thing that you can do in your opening statement, the biggest mistake you can make is to bury the lead. What does that mean? Well, in journalism when you talk about the lead, the lead is kind of the first little paragraph or the first few sentences of an article you write that really kind of sum up the whole story and tell you exactly what it's about. It's, if the reader doesn't read anything else besides this one paragraph, that's what this story is about. And what it means to bury the lead is instead of putting that paragraph front and center at the very top, you, for whatever reason, trench it in some other place in the article closer to the end. It's called burying the lead and it's a real problem because the reader misses out on the whole point. They miss out on the actual juicy details of what's going on. The reason that's such a problem in opening statement is one, it confuses your jury. This jury's been sitting here for nearly four minutes at this point and hadn't even heard about the day in question. It also puts them to sleep. And this is especially tragic in a murder trial because you've got such an exciting story to tell. So, if I was writing this opening statement or helping a student write this opening statement, develop it, that whole business about we have the burden of proof today and it's our responsibility, yeah, you need some of that in there, but I'm coming out of the gate swinging with this story. I'm not going to make the jury wait four minutes to hear about the day before the murder or the attempted murder. I'm hopping right into June 13th, 2024 or whatever year this occurred. This journalist is investigating a 50-year-old cold case and he thinks he's figured it out. He thinks that, what's the guy's name, Lupe Campos. He thinks Lupe Campos is the one who did it. And he's closing in and he's about to publish an article that could get Lupe Campos indicted for this 50-year-old cold case. But then Lupe Campos figured that out himself and decided to do something about it. Right? Do you see how I just summed up? And that was completely off the cuff, not planned. There's no script. All I have right here are just some notes for the video to make sure I stay on track with you guys. There was no script there. That was literally just off the cuff and it was a million times better than what we just saw. And here's the thing. It didn't take any remarkable skill for me to do that. That's something that every one of you watching is capable of doing. Every coach that is watching is capable of doing. That attorney is capable of doing. You just have to make a commitment to not burying the lead, to getting to the story of the case very, very quickly and doing it in as few words and as dramatically as possible. There was no remarkable skill in what I just did. I just said I'm going to start this opening by telling a story and that's what I did. And it's a lot clearer than what happened in that video. And I feel bad because the national championship is supposed to be even sparring back and forth. When I won nationals back in 2019, our two teams, it was very even and it was back and forth and we got to the end and we didn't know who won. Five minutes into this trial, I knew who had won. Because they buried the lead in the opening and you just can't do that. And I don't have a list of the three things you need to keep in mind. You just have to not do it. When you're preparing an opening statement, you have to set out to tell the story of the case immediately. I don't want to know what your name is. I don't want to know about your co-counsel, how you're honored to represent the people of the state of wherever. I want to know what happened. And that's not just me as a mock trial coach who studies this stuff. That's every juror. They just want to know what happened and you owe it to them to get them that information quickly. And because this team didn't do that, it cost them a national championship. They wound up losing to a school from here in Tennessee, Montgomery Bell Academy. And it's really, really sad because that simple tweak I think could have transformed the entire round. So what you have to understand here is the stakes are really, really high. You've got to tell your story quickly. And it's a missed opportunity if you don't. That does it for the ultimate guide on mock trial opening statements. But openings are just one part of succeeding as an attorney in mock trial. There's so much else that goes into it. And if you want to take a deep dive into some of those other areas like closing arguments, impeachments, objections, pick up a copy of my book, Mock Trial Masterclass. It's a deep dive not just on opening statements but every part of succeeding as an attorney in mock trial. And you can pick up a copy by clicking the description on YouTube or the show notes on podcast platforms. But that's it for today. Let me know if you thought this was helpful. I'm excited to hear about the great opening statements that I know you're going to give. We'll see you next time.