The Science of Attorney Advocacy : How Courtroom Behavior Affects Jury Decision Making

Successful advocacy approaches are essential for the practice of law. Lawyers, law professors, judges, and other legal commentators have offered numerous recommendations for how trial lawyers can persuade juries, including techniques in verbal and non-verbal communication, attorney demeanour, and so forth. These recommendations have been put into trial practice handbooks and are frequently taught in law schools as part of the trial advocacy curriculum. However, they often rely on popular assumptions or intuition rather than social and behavioural science. Research is needed to differentiate intuition and speculation from scientific proof of efficacy. This book fills this critical gap by reviewing the scientific support for popular advocacy recommendations. It first summarises trial commentators' recommendations, then reviews the scientific support for these recommendations, and finally evaluates the recommendations in light of the scientific support. Research is culled from not only trial and simulated trial settings, but also other social and behavioural settings. Topics include attorney demeanour, verbal and non-verbal communications, the attorney-client relationship, and storytelling (narrative techniques). This book will appeal to researchers in psychology, communications, linguistics, and other social sciences, as well as trial commentators and practising attorneys.