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Grand openings: just as a strong lead draws a reader into a news story, an engaging opening statement can grab the jury's interest right from the start. Follow these simple rules of storytelling to get jurors' attention - and keep it throughout trial.

Article Excerpt
In my career as a television reporter, my job was to go to work every morning, gather facts, and weave them into a compelling broadcast-ready story by 5:00 that evening. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. When a reporter fails to tell a story well, there is always tomorrow--another broadcast, another story, and another chance.

As lawyers, we have one chance to speak for someone, our client, who has an important story. We must not fail to tell it well.

Opening statement is the chance to tell our client's story. It is also the time to establish the proof that supports the story. If done well, opening statement prepares jurors to favorably receive the information you will give them throughout the rest of the trial.

Delivering the type of opening statement that engages the jurors in your client's story and leaves them with a mind-set favorable to your case requires more than night-before-trial preparation. It requires early preparation, an understanding of jurors' attitudes, and a comfortable, confident delivery.

Get detailed. Details make a story come alive. We all enjoy listening to stories that draw us in by telling us how things looked, felt, and sounded, and even how they smelled.

Sometimes, lawyers get lazy and want to use only photographs---of smashed cars, for example--to tell a client's story. However, photographs, no matter how graphic, don't ever tell the complete story. Details will bring your client's story to life much better than any image can.

Early in your case, you may not know what details you will want to use during opening statement to draw jurors into your client's story. But what you do know is that you will want to have as many details as possible available to you.

Many of the best details may come from the defendant. Early in the litigation process, you can use depositions to gather details for your story. For example, in a car wreck case, ask what the defendant had been doing in the hours leading up to the wreck. Where had he or she been? Who had he or she talked with? Where was the defendant going? What sights, sounds, or even smells does he or she remember?

The importance of getting details from the defendant is best appreciated if you have learned the value of the "availability bias." This principle teaches us that when jurors make decisions, they focus on the information that is most available to them. (1)

Research has suggested that the availability bias can be used to a plaintiff's benefit at trial by focusing the jury's attention on the defendant's conduct and away from the plaintiff's conduct, because the more you know about someone, the easier it is to find fault with his or her behavior. Therefore, even in a simple car-wreck deposition, you should strive to obtain detailed information about the defendant,...