Trial Strategies with Bart Williams:

Bart Williams: It's important to make a connection with jurors, and to make jurors believe that your side of the case is the group that is the truth telling side of the case. And there are a few techniques that we use to try to do that. Obviously in a jury address it's important to make eye contact with folks. It's important not to overstate or understate your evidence, to deliver on the things that you say you're going to deliver on.

But I think it's also important when a witness is on the stand, and you are asking questions, and you're making reference to a document, and if, as inevitably happens in a case, you can misread something, misstate something, it's important to stop and start over again. And to be clear, and say, "Look, I got that wrong, let me restate that question."

The goal is that when they go into the deliberation room they think, you could count on what they had to say.

Bart Williams

All of those subtle things, over a week, or two weeks, or three weeks of a trial make a difference. And the goal is so that at the end of the trial they're not looking at you and saying, wow, he was really entertaining, wow, he was really cool to listen to, that was really fun. The goal is that when they go into the deliberation room they think, you could count on what they had to say.