jury

Savvy CLNC^® consultants have realized that smartphones are their mobile office and use them not just to talk with their attorney-clients, but also to keep up with their appointments, contacts and important email. No more waiting until you get to your computer to check your email or respond to an attorney-client.

However, smartphones have a darker side, especially when people are talking or texting while driving. In motor vehicle accidents (MVA) cases attorneys are now requesting the opposing party’s cell phone records for the time period of the accident. Those records will show whether the party (plaintiff or defendant) was talking or texting and that fact will not go down well with the jury. For a defendant, cell phone use will be labeled as negligence despite the fact that it is so ubiquitous. For the plaintiff, cell phone use can cause the jury to determine that the plaintiff was comparatively negligent.

Further adding to that already dangerous mix are the increasing complexity of automobiles with in-dash DVD video playback and GPS-aided driving direction systems that can be programmed while driving. As the technology available in our cars increases so does the complexity of MVA cases. They’re getting more and more interesting by the mile and by the minute!

Success Is Inside!

A recent article in Lawyers USA titled “When Jurors Zone Out” claims that trial attorneys assume that they must treat all jurors under the age of 30 (some attorneys say under 40) as if they have ADHD. This isn’t a medical diagnosis, but an assessment based on behavior during voir dire and at trial. It doesn’t make someone with ADHD a bad juror, but it does create special challenges for the attorney trying to present a complex medical-related case. Some attorneys are even making decisions on whether or not to take a case to trial based in part on whether the subject matter will be of interest to a jury and whether the case can be presented simply and relatively quickly.

This issue will only get worse in our age of increased distractions. What kinds of jurors will our children make tomorrow when they are slaves of video games in restaurants and church today? How about our teenagers, who are genetically attached to their phones, texting and Facebooking, all while doing their homework and watching television? What kinds of jurors will they make?

While I don’t necessarily agree with the attorneys who believe that the distractions today are creating a more “shallow” jury pool, attorneys will have to change how they present cases to jurors used to living in the world of game apps, Facebook, Twitter, texting and the Internet everywhere. Just the thought of facing a jury going through cold-turkey device withdrawal is enough to scare even the most seasoned attorney.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you can play a role in how your attorney-clients address the ADHD juror. First, you can provide a list of voir dire questions that assist your attorney-client in assessing whether or not a potential juror could have ADHD or another medical condition making it difficult for them to concentrate.

You can also consult with the attorney during the voir dire itself. CLNC^® consultants can also develop a list of medications used to treat ADHD and provide the list to your attorney-clients. Some attorneys are asking potential jurors to disclose their current medications and a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant could use that listing to identify possible jurors with ADHD.

You can also point out the possible drug interactions and side effects of those medications that make it difficult for a potential juror to concentrate. Finally, the savvy CLNC^® consultant can assist the attorney-clients in developing demonstrative evidence to help keep the attention of ADHD-challenged jurors.

Working with juries in an increasingly ADHD-afflicted world will be a challenge for your attorney-clients. Use and market your nursing knowledge about ADHD for your attorney-clients to ensure the attorney never forgets to retain you on an important medical-related or other complicated case.

Success Is Inside!

Courtroom technology is a wonderful thing. Use of technology in the courtroom has gone far beyond the good old days of poster boards, overhead projectors and VHS video playback. Now we see state-of-the-art animation played directly from attorneys’ laptops and viewed on wide-screen televisions that would make any sports fan drool. There’s touch screen technology which allows attorneys or witnesses to annotate projected images of evidence and portable Elmos to allow plug and play projection of evidence to individual video monitors for each juror. The courtroom is changing as jurors demand entertainment along with the evidence and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should always look for ways to recommend their attorney-clients make the best use of that technology.

There are two main purposes for using technology in the courtroom. The first is obvious, to assist the jury in understanding the evidence or to illuminate a salient point in the case. The second is to keep the jury’s attention and entertain.

Tom and I were having dinner with a friend at their new house. The husband went to show us his elaborate home theatre system. Four phone calls to his support tech, 45 minutes and a little bit of swearing later, he got it working. If we’d been a jury he’d have lost us at the blue-screen-of-death, which brings up another courtroom technology tip, always have a Plan B.

Success Is Inside!

The original Impressionists were considered radicals in their day as they departed from what was considered the “old-school” of artists. Time after time, impressionist painters would submit their work to juried art shows but their paintings would be rejected in favor of lesser artists who painted in the “approved” style of the times.

In order to exhibit their own works, these revolutionary artists rejected the establishment and formed their own society of painters – the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs (Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers). Their first show was met with a firestorm of criticism and the term “Impressionist” was given to their artistic style as a derogatory term. The artists chose to adopt this derogatory term “Impressionist” and proceeded to make art history.

The “Impressionist” school captured the scenes they were painting without the strictures placed upon painters by the “Realism” school that was dominant at the time. They focused, or unfocused, on a new way of painting light into scenes of everyday life, rejecting the minute details of realism. When you look at an Impressionist painting up close, there is no detail – there are only short thick strokes and unmixed colors. When you stand back from the painting you see, with a realism not present in the “Realist” paintings, the diffused sunlight on a haystack, people strolling down a boulevard or partying on a Sunday afternoon in a park. The works come alive from a distance.

When an attorney-client is presenting a case to a jury, too many details can bog it down, distracting the jury and leading them down rabbit trails. Your job as a CLNC^® consultant is to help the attorney present the picture with the broad strokes and bold colors needed to show the case in its best light. Sure the underlying details will need to be there to back up your opinions and the attorney-client’s case, but sometimes it’s best to present an Impressionist view of a case to an attorney-client and then to the jury before breaking it down to the details.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. What sort of Impressionist impression are you making on your attorney-clients?

Success Is Inside!