Here's an interesting article from the National Law Journal: "Pitching the Gen X Jury," by Lisa Brennan.
An old-school trial lawyer's long-winded opening statement no longer hits home with today's jury the way it once did with more senior juries raised on newspapers, Walter Cronkite and Jim Lehrer.Generation X (defined as people born between 1966 and 1981) and Generation Y jurors (born in 1982 and after) were raised on cable television, computers and video games. They are more likely to zone out during a rambling presentation -- no matter how eloquent -- than they are during a succinct statement punctuated by electronic visuals meant to give them the feeling that they figured it out for themselves.
The idea is to feed information to the jury "visually, graphically and in 10- to 30-second sound bites." These ideas are really nothing new, but law schools are apparently catching up by incorporating technology into their trial advocacy programs. The only resistance to these new ideas has been from "more senior members of the bar who've built distinguished careers on their eloquence."
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