76. Storytelling for Defense Lawyers, with David Mann

Finding the right storytelling angle can be challenge for any trial lawyer, but for those advocating on the right-hand side of the v, it’s often even more so. In representing clients jurors may not automatically find sympathetic, defense counsel must express empathy for harms the plaintiff has suffered without admitting to their liability and present technical data that is critical to their client’s defense but wearisome for fact finders to follow. Good narrative technique can help, and in this episode, legal storytelling specialist David Mann shares the insights he’s gain in over a decade of working with trial lawyers to develop winning case stories. 

Topics
4:01  Changing defense landscape
7:20  Plaintiff’s automatic emotional hook
9:54  Humanizing the defense client
12:13  Importance of storytelling
17:34 Observing versus opining
20:31  Going granular
24:38  Being engaging and persuasive
28:12  Check your blind spots
30:26 Persuasive presence and turning facts into a story
35:03  Signoff question

Quote
“[Defense lawyers] need to be good storytellers, and they are just beginning to see how important that is and how they are now losing where they used to win. They’re also seeing the nuclear verdict problem. So juries are awarding tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars in cases that just a few years ago that would have been unheard of. And now it’s getting to be more and more regular. So that that’s how high the stakes are for the defense.” David Mann

Resources
David Mann (bio)
Turning Facts into a Story (May, November)
Persuasive Presence (October)
Building Trial Skills: New Orleans (program)
The Secrets of Persuasive Legal Storytelling (podcast episode)
Engaging the Jury in the First Two Minutes (free webcast)
NYT 10-Minute Challenge (gift article)

Transcript

Marsi Mangan 0:06

On today's episode of May the Record Reflect.

David Mann 0:12

There is a way to just present facts that is that appears to be just an objective presentation of facts, but have been skillfully and artfully arranged to cause the mind of the viewer to draw a conclusion from those facts. But it but you want them to feel like they are just observing. So it's uh, you know, it's that's the sort of the art of the storyteller in court.

Marsi Mangan 0:41

That was David Mann, and this is May the Record Reflect. David works with trial lawyers on case story construction and persuasive presentation techniques. He earned his stripes in storytelling in theater, having decades of experience as an actor, director, and playwright. Now he uses his craft to help lawyers turn case facts into an engaging story with simple and effective messaging for trial. With this storytelling focus, lawyers find they're also much better prepared for motion practice and mediation in the months before trial. David is an adjunct faculty member at Loyola School of Law in Chicago and a program director at NETA. His presentations before state bar associations, international law societies, federal agencies, legal nonprofits, and law firms, both large and small, have given thousands of trial lawyers the persuasive tools they need to tell the story of their client's case. Today, David Mann returns to May the Record Reflect with valuable insight on how defense lawyers can overcome some of the hurdles that are inherent to telling their client's story. Here's our interview. So my guest today is someone we've had before, and it's David Mann, and I am so thrilled to have you back, David. Welcome.

David Mann 2:35

It's great to be here. Thanks, Marsi.

Marsi Mangan 2:37

Well, I think it's always fun to talk to writers and communication specialists since that's what I do myself. And today we're going to be talking about storytelling for the defense lawyer. And I know that you work in that exact space. You work with storytelling for lawyers. Can you tell us a bit about what you do, both for NITA and as a private consultant?

David Mann 2:59

Yeah, sure. So I started out working with storytelling for lawyers based on my background working in the arts, you know, working in theater. I'm not a lawyer myself, and I also don't try to get lawyers to be actors, but there is a story that needs to be told to a jury in litigation that is that if it comes across like fiction, even though of course it's based on fact, they will just understand it better and they will, it will resonate with them. So, in other words, they want to make a decision as well as adding up, if they're critical thinking, that this is the correct decision to make. So usually lawyers are so focused on the facts and the evidence and presenting that all accurately that the story of it sort of gets lost in the mix. I help them re-get it to re-emerge out of the mix so that it can be shaped into something that can be told to a jury and have them feel like they just heard a story of this case rather than been presented with the evidence of the case.

Marsi Mangan 4:01

And so I know that you work with all kinds of trial lawyers, both in your capacity as a native faculty member and then again privately. And from what you've told me, David, from this wide range of exposure that you have, you've noticed recently that the landscape of what used to work really well for the defense, even just a few years ago, has radically changed. What exactly has changed for the defense? What are you hearing from the lawyers you you work with?

David Mann 4:28

I think that what I'm hearing a lot of and seeing in my consulting work on cases is that they're you know, defense, I work almost entirely with civil cases. So, you know, decades of defense basically needing to present an airtight defense, and they're gonna win much more often than the plaintiffs. That's been traditionally what has happened by just presenting correct evidence correctly and all that. What I'm hearing from them and seeing with my own eyes with juries and focus groups that I'm observing and being a part of those cases is that that's not necessarily happening so quickly anymore. And jurors are are have all they're always swayed to some degree by emotion. But it seems to be even more important now that that defense lawyers are matching the storytelling skills of plaintiffs rather than just coming in and saying, you know what, we've got an airtight defense, here it is. They need to also be good storytellers. And they are just beginning to see how important that is and how they are now losing where they used to win. They're also seeing, we're seeing the nuclear verdict problem. So juries are awarding tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars in cases that just a few years ago that would have been unheard of. And now it's getting to be more and more regular. So it's that that's how high the stakes are for uh defense. And it really is a fairly recent development, as far as I can tell from what the defense lawyers I've worked with have said.

Marsi Mangan 6:05

Aaron Powell And do you know what accounts for this change?

David Mann 6:08

Um I'm not I don't know if anyone can actually say with um, you know, credibility exactly why this has happened, but I would speculate that it that you know it's some of it on the verdict thing has to do with it being sort of a snowball effect. The jurors hear about huge verdicts in other cases, and it gets to be sort of normalized that those numbers are what you're gonna go for, and that it's fine. Now, $50 million is just $50 million because they may have heard, maybe even unconsciously, um, picked up on some other case with those kinds of numbers. I think jurors are also hearing numbers in the general culture, because you're hearing about the budget and the economy and stuff like that in billions and trillions of dollars. They're always hearing numbers like this. That it gets to be that that is normalized. And it's easy for a plaintiff's lawyer to go in and say, you know, where it might have a few years ago been a $5 million case, suddenly it's a $25 million case. And why that changed, who knows? Anyone can speculate, but it's what is happening, and it's it's meaning that defense lawyers have a lot more on the line when they're in uh in trial.

Marsi Mangan 7:20

Yeah, the new reality is very high stakes. So let's dig into this. And I'll start out by saying that I don't want to come across as sounding crasp, but one of the strong suits for a plaintiff is that um, by the very nature of being the injured party, the emotional side of their story is very easy to tell. It's just right there, it's baked in. And that is um because they've brought a case because they believe that in one way or another they have been wronged. And we all know what that's like, what those emotions feel like and how easy they are to access. And that's kind of a problem for the defense defense, isn't it?

David Mann 8:00

Absolutely, it's a problem. Yeah. I mean, the conventional story, you know, we think of it, I've heard if I've heard it once, I've heard it a million times in trial advocacy programs all over the place that, you know, lawyers, you gotta tell a story. So of course I'm saying that, but it's there's a lot, there's a lot of ways to tell a story. And the conventional storytelling format is that there is a hero, a main character, who's up against some obstacle and eventually reaches success, we hope, or maybe in a movie may not reach success. But that's that's the structure that we're very used to. Well, that's an automatic fit for a plaintiff's case. It is usually one person that has been gravely injured by the actions of the defendant, according to their case, by the actions of the defendant, which may be uh, you know, a doctor or somebody, but you know, also a hospital or a huge company behind them. So it's kind of sort of this impersonal thing that is, from the plaintiff's point of view, the villain in the story. So it's really automatic for a jury to hook into that one character's struggle because they've seen that kind of thing play out a million times in movies. Defense has to come uh up then and tell their story. And, you know, it's a hard sell to say, no, really care about this hospital or this huge corporation, because it's just like a person, you know.

Marsi Mangan 9:33

Yeah.

David Mann 9:33

Believe me, early on I tried that and it doesn't work that well. You know, it's the it just it rings really hollow. And so, you know, the the objective of defense is to humanize their case, which can be done, you know, many ways, but that's the first step in getting to feel more like a story.

Marsi Mangan 9:54

Okay. So you said that humanizing is part of the emotional, I guess you'd say, on-ramp to create resonance and impact with jurors. What else do you have to say about how to how to get on that highway that you need to get on to?

David Mann 10:11

Well, the way to humanize it is sort of where there's variety to that. And uh that depends on the case to some extent. So you you might have a case where a doctor is being accused of malpractice, right? Um you can't necessarily go out there and say, hey, care about this doctor, you guys. He's really busy and you know, you can't do stuff like that because it's just not gonna work. But what you can do is you can paint a picture of the doctor in the room on the day and the moment that the decision was made, the decision in question in this case. Because in a medical malpractice case, especially just about you know, other types of cases too, but especially in that, plaintiff is usually saying um the doctor should have seen this and should have done this and should have seen this and should have done that, you know, this big long timeline. The benefit of hindsight, in other words, we knowing where what we know now, how it turned out, where this, you know, this patient died, doctors should have seen this stuff earlier. It's that's what's very, very important is for the defense to paint a picture of the doctor on the day of that decision so that we can say, this is a depiction, an illustration of what it would have been like to be that doctor on that day making this decision with the information that that doctor had at that time. That's a storytelling skill to do that. It's not as easy as just like listing off the decisions that were made on what whatever dates. You have to like paint the picture of he was sitting there looking at this monitor over here and picked up this, you know, uh pad and and and looked at the the chart and whatever, and the decision was made. So you you you make it an illustration with words. And that's one of the ways that it can become more human without trying to like pull on the heartstrings and make this big emotional appeal, you know.

Marsi Mangan 12:07

So you can't just stand there and defend yourself. You need to tell a story.

David Mann 12:12

Exactly. Yeah. It's uh the uh default for defense is to there, they know what the claims are, you know, and they in and we can always speculate on how the plaintiff is going to present those claims. And so it, of course, because the the task at hand in a trial is for, you know, the plaintiff to present claims and the defense to to defend those against those claims, that that's automatically what defense lawyers want to do, is they want to say, well, here's our defense against that, and our defense against that, and our defense. And they're kind of like anxious to get out there and start doing those defenses in an opening statement. And it can come across as, well, impersonal, first of all. It can come across as a lot of negative. And it can it can just get into the weeds too fast. It can, it can easily get into the granular data and details of the case before the jury has really comprehended things enough. And they it's like not finding the gear on a bike. Like it's just skipping around and they can't quite lock into what you're trying to say. And that's a big mistake, in my opinion, where it's not a story at all. It's just defense.

Marsi Mangan 13:26

So how do you avoid that?

David Mann 13:29

Well, of course, the simple answer is tell them a story. And then that's that's where I come in because um lots of lawyers have an intention to tell a story, but don't actually tell a story. Uh, you know, are thinking, hey, I'm telling a story, but really are just going through a timeline. So I will do things like uh, you know, like I just said a minute ago, find scenes where things happen and draw them to the foreground so we can say, you know, put people in the room where things happen. Um I look for those kinds of things all the time. So they're they're in there. It's just a matter of how you word it and how you present it to make it feel like a story rather than feel like, you know, a bullet point list.

Marsi Mangan 14:14

And some of that's really easy to do because we've all gone to the doctor, we've had that same experience, and you can just kind of latch on to what that feels like and know that that's gonna land with jurors.

David Mann 14:25

Yeah. And there's there's other types of cases that um, you know, uh sometimes I will work on cases where what's in dispute is whether the plaintiff uh would have been covered by insurance. So I might be working with the insurance company who's saying, well, actually, technically you weren't covered by insurance during that accident. Um and so we don't need to, you know, we don't need to pay you. So that's a really unpleasant side to be on. That you know, jurors can tend to like not react well to that kind of thing. Yeah. But what they're what they're looking for is they want to know how that decision was made, that the the decision was made to not insure. Why, why, what was the what were the thoughts that link together, not just the policy, but a human being making the choices. So I've done those kinds of cases where you humanize, you really put people there with like the insurance adjuster making the decision and going through his or her mind, like this is what they are weighing and why these choices were made. And you'd be amazed at how fast that becomes a story that is engaging and is relatable and is something that is much, much easier to agree with. You could, the jurors can say, oh, oh, I see what the thinking was behind that. Yeah, yeah, on a human level, not just following policy, which is very inhuman.

Marsi Mangan 15:45

Aaron Powell And I can see how important that is because we've heard stories recently about how algorithms are determining what coverage applies and who's covered and who's not and what procedure and all of that kind of thing. And so that's, you know, it sounds like it's coming from a computer or uh, like I said, an algorithm rather than a human. So put a face on it.

David Mann 16:11

Yeah. Absolutely put a face on it because they want to. Another thing I think that has changed, you uh initially said, you know, how are things changed? I think in very recent memory here, um, you know, people were maybe a little more uh fair-minded, so is one way to put it. And now it's kind of like you don't know. Someone might be sitting there in that jury box being like, I just hate doctors, I just hate uh hospitals or especially insurance companies, or even more generally, I just think that the big corporate machines should just be punished. I just think they should be punished. Now, of course you've tried to weed them out in jury selection. Of course you have, but you don't necessarily succeed at that always. You know, that you might not quite have gotten to that. And they might just be sitting there with a need to like make their voice heard, punishing the man, so to speak. They're not supposed to be doing that. Of course they're not, you know, they're supposed to be just weighing the evidence, but they're human beings. So they might be. And that's sort of a little bit, that's a big, there's a big sort of swell of that going on culturally that is absolutely in the room for these trials.

Marsi Mangan 17:34

Yes, these are very polarizing times we're living through. And um I just heard something recently where somebody said, you know, it's okay not to have an opinion about that, but that's not the way that's not where we are right now. We don't have to weigh in with an opinion on everything.

David Mann 17:51

That's a great point. I'm so glad you brought that up because in my um in a stage of training as an artist, I did a uh a um little seminar at I attended or was a part of a seminar at Lincoln Center, which was just uh on aesthetic appreciation. And the biggest thing that was taught in this, and this was like for a month, you know, was how to look at something and simply observe it. Simply observe what it is before saying, I like it or I don't like it, or you know, it it makes me feel or does not make me feel. All of that is getting into subjective opinion territory. It is incredible, and this, I took this, this was 25 years ago. And I mean, imagine how much has changed in 25 years, you know? Yeah. Um, I think people have a really, really hard time these days just objectively seeing things before adding their opinion. And here in trial, it is exactly what we're trying to do is we're trying to say, hey, we're just presenting facts. We're just presenting facts. You know, you guys are just need to present the facts, while at the same time, we're totally spinning those facts in our direction. But a juror really needs to chill out the part of their brain that wants to have an opinion and just see facts while they're being sort of, you know, bombarded with storytelling the whole time.

Marsi Mangan 19:17

Yeah, and and just pay attention and notice things. When you were talking about the noticing aesthetic appreciation, it brought to mind the New York Times has this regular feature where they ask you to do to open a huge uh image of a painting. Um recently it was uh the the woman in gold. Um and you're supposed to just look at it for 10 minutes and do absolutely nothing other than look at it. And that helps you build your ability to know it, notice and pay attention and focus and not allow yourself to be distracted.

David Mann 19:55

Yeah. Yeah.

Marsi Mangan 19:56

And come in with judgment.

David Mann 19:59

It's from the point of view, then, of the of the lawyer or the storyteller, if you arrange it right, there is a way to just present facts that is that appears to be just an objective presentation of facts, but have been skillfully and artfully arranged to cause the mind of the viewer to draw a conclusion from those facts. But it but you want them to feel like they are just observing. So it's uh, you know, it's that's the sort of the art of the storyteller in court.

Marsi Mangan 20:30

So a minute ago you mentioned that um the defense has the burden of going granular. They have this unpleasant task of talking about the detail of events and policies and timelines, and it's kind of the boring stuff, right? It's uh not fun to listen to, it's hard to keep track of. But it's the flip side of it is that the plaintiff probably would also like to keep that narrative end of it pretty general. So they want to go in the opposite direction that you actually need to go to. First of all, why would the plaintiff want to skip over all of those granular details?

David Mann 21:13

They're never gonna they're never gonna actually skip them because they have to present their evidence, you know, but they're they're they're wanting the jury, they're usually wanting the to kind of like, you know, throw a smokescreen up or something. They're not, I shouldn't say usually, but often that will happen. And so the the um the instinct of defense is to say, okay, hang on a minute now, hang on a minute now. We gotta get serious and we gotta get down to brass tacks, and we gotta look at all this stuff very, very closely. I've even heard defense lawyers in early drafts of openings say things like ladies and gentlemen, it's this is actually a very complicated case. You know, we have to look very, very carefully at the complicated details. Well, as soon as you tell any group of people that, they're like, uh, I don't want to, you know? So The skill, and this is what I always work on with, I mean, really, a lot of what I do that we call storytelling is simplification. It's just making it understandable at all, is like the first part of storytelling. Then you get to the good part of storytelling. But this is the um the hard work is, for instance, taking a timeline. I mean, boy, oh boy, do defense lawyers love a good timeline, you know? So I, you know, that and it'll be like on a PowerPoint slide with such microscopic lettering that you you can't expect anyone can even make out what's on this timeline. And they're going to go through it with meticulous detail, and then they're going to have their uh expert do the same thing. The key to this is to first of all, of course, simplify what is on that timeline down to the essential pieces. Just tell them what they just have on the visual what they really need to understand in terms of dates and times. And you can do the rest of it orally over the top, okay, especially in an opening. Make sure that you're just keeping the visual very, very, um, very lean. But but the kind of other side of this too is that are you telling a story with this timeline, or are you just going through the timeline? And it's really easy to mistake going through the timeline, because it's chronological, for a story, because stories are often chronological. You want to be saying that it should be crystal clear the point you're making by going through this timeline. The jury should never be wondering why are we watching this timeline? Why are we immersed in this thing? They should be always reminded this is the simple story that's being told while I'm going through 18 steps to get there. So, there, like, for instance, there might be a case where what's at issue is that uh a nerve was, the plaintiff is saying a nerve was compressed in a joint to the point where it caused lasting damage to the patient. And you're gonna go through all of the visits to the doctor that this patient um, you know, uh did to show that there is no evidence that that nerve was ever compressed. Now, if there, but you have to make the point that what we're saying here is there's no way that nerve could have been compressed. And now we're gonna, which is very simple. And now it might take us 10 minutes to show you all of the evidence that shows that one simple thing. But if you never really make that one simple thing clear enough, they're gonna be lost in 28 visits to the doctor. And like, why are we listening to all this? And that's the risk.

Marsi Mangan 24:37

So these kind of eye-glazing details that you have to share with jurors, um, simplifying them and making creating a context for understanding why you are sharing them are very important. Are there any other tactics to be engaging and persuasive?

David Mann 25:00

Oh, there's lots of ways to be engaging and persuasive. Um you know, like I say, keeping keeping things focused on the uh the simplest version of the story, going back to uh the you know, thematic phrasing that you've come up with that just keeps it simple in their mind. Um, some of it can also come down to delivery. So I with NITA, often I'm I'm there teaching, you know, about delivery. So how you speak can, if you you could have a really well-worked out story and have everything nice and lean and not too complicated, but everything you're saying is coming across in a monotone like this. There's no expression on your face and all this. And you're maybe not even facing the jury, you're kind of looking at the screen the whole time. And, you know, that's gonna kill the engagement for sure. So it's staying alive, having giving, putting more energy into it. And I would say one this is a kind of a subtle nuance. Often for defense, something really bad happened to somebody, right? It can be a grave injury of some form or other that, or even death. And the the the uh defense lawyer can inadvertently, if they're not careful, come across as sort of unfeeling, you know, just kind of like, well, you know, okay, that was we we feel really bad for the death of Mrs. Smith, but we are here to look at the details of who was responsible for her death. Right. Like that kind of thing can really be off-putting. So if we don't necessarily need to stand there and apologize, although there are cases where that is appropriate for defense, but it's more that if you're going to say the words, you know, um, you know, this this case no one is disputing that that Mrs. Smith's death is a terrible tragedy. Like if you're gonna say those words, you must say them with a heartfelt tone. You know, no one is disputing that Mrs. Smith's death is a terrible tragedy. And the suffering of her family is unimaginable. We are here to look at the difficult uh challenge of determining what went into uh causing this terrible tragedy. You know, getting it so that the tone of voice just shifts enough. This can really draw people in. I mean, I'm not saying I'm necessarily doing it perfectly on this podcast here, but you know what I mean. Um, it can draw people in to trust you. And that is a form of engagement too. Engagement is not always big drama. It's it can be warmth and sincerity and calm can also be a way to draw people in and engage them in what you're saying. Another thing just on tone and pace and stuff is vary the pace. Don't always be speaking at the exact same pace. Slow it down sometimes, speed it up other times. Pause here or don't pause over there. You know, that variety keeps people engaged too. So that's that stuff is fairly simple to do.

Marsi Mangan 28:11

Great. So you mentioned that um coming across as unfeeling can be kind of a blind spot for defense. Can you think of any other blind spots or things that um you want to watch out for and be mindful of?

David Mann 28:26

I think in addition to that one, one that is um that is very risky for defense is if somebody has been gravely injured, okay, and maybe the dispute is, you know, call it something like uh when the when the brainstem was separated, okay. You don't want to dive right into talking about the brainstem separation right away, even though that might be something that comes it it that becomes a very central focus of the case. If you hit that right out of the gate, because you know this is gonna be a central focus of the case, we got to get to this. All you're gonna do is keep reinforcing for the jury how awful that is. And so it's it's a it's a which is you know gonna help the plaintiff. So it's a really a balancing act. You know something's important, but you're already desensitized to stuff like that because you've been working on the case for a year and a half, right? Five years. I mean, it could be whatever it is. You're desensitized to all this and you're eager to just like, hey, let's go. They're not. They just learned about this like 10 minutes ago. They you need to give them time to catch up. And I think with with a lot of defense cases have to do, they're not always medical cases, but they have to do with people being physically injured or physically, you know, well, injured, I mean, in in many ways. You want to be very, very careful how quickly you get into that because, you know, it's visceral. It makes people feel things in their body when you're showing them medical charts and veins and nerves and and x-rays and stuff. You have to be very careful of that. So that's one blind spot, I think.

Marsi Mangan 30:11

Yeah, too much of a shock to the system right away, too.

David Mann 30:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Marsi Mangan 30:16

Well, this is really great stuff. And I love that you have come to the podcast responding to what you've been hearing and giving advice to program participants, exactly what they need, what they're asking for. I want to talk a little bit about some of the programs that you teach at NITA that actually address these very issues: turning facts into a story and persuasive presence. Do you want to share a little bit about those programs?

David Mann 30:43

Sure. Yeah, those are both online programs. They are two days each, uh, not full days, just three hours each day. So six hours total for each of those programs. The the one that's called Turning Facts into a Story is pretty closely what we've been talking about here. Of course, not always for defense, you know, but it's it's taking um how to take facts and transforming those facts into something that's an engaging, forward-moving narrative. I encourage everyone who takes that course to bring in their own real facts from real cases. So we can actually work on stuff that, you know, there's there is sort of this very, very light um NITA case that they can use, but uh, if they bring in their own stuff, I don't care what type of case it is. I don't even care if it's going to trial. This could be something that's a motion, even, you know, this delivered to just uh at a hearing. Right. There's always a way to take that complexity and simplify it and make it more compact and more engaging. So that's what that's what that course is.

Marsi Mangan 31:46

Yeah. Storytelling is not just for trial.

David Mann 31:49

No, not at all. I mean, when it's trial, it's probably closest to the type of storytelling we think of that has artistic intentions because it's like a performance almost. But I look at storytelling as being making anything simple and forward-moving so it's understandable and relatable. The forward-moving piece is important, and that's where it relates to things that are not overtly like a trial story. So I've worked on a million oral arguments with lots of lawyers. You have a list of four things that you need to go through in this oral argument. Well, what order are they in? Are they in an order that like adds up to something, or are they just in kind of a willy-nilly random order? That right there is an aspect of storytelling that can be worked on. And uh, and it and people, it's amazing how quickly the results come.

Marsi Mangan 32:41

And so you can bring that to the to the workshop and have get your advice and run it by other people who are participating. Yep.

David Mann 32:49

That's right. And the other program is more focused on delivery, the things I was saying a few minutes ago about your voice and your uh pausing and intentions and inflections and um, to a little bit lesser degree, the body, because this is an online program. But we do a little bit on that, on gestures and standing and things like that. But we we get into, you know, how to take what's on the page or even just a bullet point list and make it come alive in the space. So it becomes, you know, engaging in that kind of like performance way.

Marsi Mangan 33:20

So you can take both of these classes and they they kind of play off of one another.

David Mann 33:24

Right. That's right.

Marsi Mangan 33:26

So you're also a faculty member for the New Orleans trial program, which is coming up in April. And the reason that I wanted to mention that is because if storytelling is kind of your thing, um this particular program run by Dominic Gianna, who was the trial consultant for my cousin Vinny, is has a very audience-centered focus. And so it approaches storytelling from the legal and persuasive point of view that you've been talking about, but he also brings in theatrical um consultants from Broadway. And he's got a psychologist who comes in and talks about the persuasive science of it, too.

David Mann 34:05

That's right. Yes, I've done that program for now. This is going to be the 14th year. So I will kick off the entire program. Well, Dom kicks it off, but I I am the first sort of like lecture, formal lecture of the of the course where I will talk about exactly what we're talking about here. Largely, that one's for my role is largely more on the level of the um performance and delivery stuff.

Marsi Mangan 34:30

Yeah. So it's a really special program. And I just wanted to mention it because um it's the only program where we really pay attention to all of those kinds of things, in addition to the usual advocacy skills, the openings, the closings, direct, cross, all of that. If anyone's interested, I'm gonna leave all of these uh links to the programs in the show notes and they can check them out.

David Mann 34:54

Yes. I welcome, welcome and encourage anyone to come to that program. It's a lot of fun. And being in in New Orleans is also a lot of fun.

Marsi Mangan 35:02

It really is. Okay, so we've reached the end, which means it's time for me to ask what TV show you've been obsessed with lately. It's my favorite question.

David Mann 35:12

Lately, I don't know if there's a lately one, but I did I did start watching uh or watched the whole season of Pluribus, which was a few months ago. That's Vince Gilligan's new thing. He did Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. That is spectacular. It really is. And it's so such an unusual show, you know. And and uh another one, this is from uh maybe a year or maybe even two years ago, adolescence. Highly recommend this. It's a British show that is um about a uh a boy who committed a crime. And but what's really awesome about this show is every episode is one continuous take with the camera. It's they actually follow it, it wasn't done by AI. They actually followed the cast around for a full hour, acting this in many different locations and everything. It's it's and but it that creates this like incredible intensity and urgency to it, which I just think it's it's brilliant. And it really takes good act actors to pull something like that off, too. One more I wanted to throw in. This is from a few years ago. My son recommended this big Japanese anime series called Attack on Titan. And I he I said, Oh, I'll watch that and tell you what I think. Well, it's 92 episodes long. Wow. Now, the the episodes are 30 minutes each, but it I did watch all 92 episodes of this thing. And I have to say it is an absolute masterpiece. It really, really, truly is. So I highly recommend Attack on Titan.

Marsi Mangan 36:53

That sounds like it's good for the airplane.

David Mann 36:56

Right. Long trip.

Marsi Mangan 36:57

Yes. All right. Well, David Mann, thank you so much for coming back to the podcast. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

David Mann 37:04

And likewise.

Marsi Mangan 37:05

And uh, like I said, if you would like to work with David, he's got you've got lots of opportunities. So check the show notes for that.

David Mann 37:13

All right. Thank you very much. It was so great to talk to you too, Marsi.

Marsi Mangan 37:17

Please be sure to check the show notes for more information about David Mann's persuasive storytelling and performance programs at NITA. They are a great opportunity to work one-on-one with him on your current case. And if you like this episode, why not share it with a workfriend, give our LinkedIn podcast post a thumbs up, or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. These quick actions boost our visibility so that other trial lawyers can tune into these conversations. Thanks so much for listening. We will be back again next month with a new episode all about soft skills that trial lawyers need and how to develop them. Until then, we wish you the very best of luck in your depositions, motions, and trials. Happy lawyering. May the Record Reflect is a NITA Studio 71 production. NITA, we are advocacy enhanced, mentorship reimagined. Welcome to the community.