Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. talks about several issues he sees with opening statements. Bill highlights the biggest issue the CSI team comes across in opening statements: starting the opening statement in the wrong spot. Bill emphasizes the importance of the first two minutes of the opening and how those first two minutes frame how you want the jury to see your case (i.e., the cognitive lens.) The first thing that the defense attorney has to do in their opening is put someone or something else on trial, state emphatically what the case is about, and not talk about what the case is not about, which only reinforces the plaintiff's perspective. The goal with the opening statement is to reframe what the plaintiff presents in their opening.

The next issue Bill discusses is how lengthy opening statements that include the attorney thanking the jury for their service, talking about themselves or their client, or sharing a story from their childhood are a waste of those critical first two minutes in front of the jurors. What attorneys have to realize is that jurors don't remember facts and details; they remember how you made them feel.

Lastly, Bill talks about the importance of testing opening statements with mock jurors. Getting direct feedback from jurors and practicing the delivery and story is a critical, but often skipped, step in the trial preparation process and attorneys who do not test their opening statements with mock jurors in a focus group risk their entire case.

Bill Kanasky, Jr. Ph.D. shares a comparison between two different performances by witnesses at a recent mock trial and how their deposition performance impacted jurors' perceptions of the credibility of the witnesses and jurors' views of the case. One of the witnesses gave several pivoting responses, using phrases like "Yeah, but...." many times, which the jurors found evasive and did not like. Bill talks about how to handle situations where witnesses are asked questions related to bad facts or potentially problematic information and describes a much better approach than pivoting or arguing with the questioning attorney. Bill emphasizes the importance of owning your conduct and why that's the best way to diffuse this line of questioning from opposing counsel. Lastly, Bill addresses how to help witnesses address accusatory questions without pivoting.

Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. talks about what attorneys and defendants get wrong about jury research. Defense teams that follow the traditional jury research model and only conduct mock trials ignore the scientific method. If you want results you can have confidence in, you have to follow the proven scientific method. Bill describes the two biggest issues with mock trials:

- conducting a mock trial as the first, and often only, research project invites a significant amount of error into your results, risking false positives and false negatives

- mock trials are built on argument and persuasion and when presentations are not balanced and when the presenters for both sides are not equal in their communication skills, their persuasion skills, and their appeal to jurors, significant bias can skew the results

The solution is to follow the scientific method and conduct focus groups before the mock trial. Focus groups allow the defense team to find hidden vulnerabilities and juror comprehension issues and avoid false positives and false negatives well before conducting the confirmatory research step that is the mock trial. The focus group is the necessary screening tool for litigation.