The great trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, said that we all have “psychic tentacles” that reach out from us and serve us in the detection of credibility and authenticity. Says Spence, “Like our immune system, our invisible credibility detectors are constantly searching for the enemy, for the thin clank of the counterfeit.”[1] It seems we generally
A recent post on an attorney listserv included the following message – having never encountered an expert in a particular field before, the lawyer explained that they had “used A.I. for a suggested cross-examination since I had never cross-examined [that type of expert] before…” The danger to a client may be readily apparent, along with
One of the things I love about reading and researching for this blog is finding brain quirks that I would describe as “hidden in the open.” When Jules and I write about heuristics in this space, they often strike me as patently obvious brain traits. Something I might have discovered on my own if I
Stand In the end, you’ll still be you One that’s done all the things you set out to do … Stand For the things you know are right … [Chorus] Stand, stand (Stand), stand (Everybody, yeah, yeah) Stand (Stand, y’all), stand (Stand), stand (Ooh, ooh) “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone (1969) – STAND
Back when I was trying cases regularly, I developed a little courtroom hobby. Police officers would take the stand and slip into what I can only describe as cop speak. Something happens when someone sits in the witness chair and suddenly every ordinary human verb in the English language becomes… robotic. “Upon surveillance, I observed
I teach torts to our 1L classes. In the exam I gave last fall, I posed a NextGen bar exam style question in which I invented a criminal statute relevant to the fact scenario and summarized the statute in about one sentence. However, I never gave my students the text of the statute. The text
We teach in classrooms and mock trial courtrooms, talking to and sometimes with our students and then making them speak and demonstrate skills. But I suspect that many of us don’t have the time in our syllabuses to add a “let’s go to court” requirement. Some recent research suggests that we should. But before we
We are exiting a season strong with signals. Christmas lights on snow covered houses. Lit trees sparkling behind windows that are shuttered or draped for the other 11 months of the year. The luminous march of Menorah lights on an 8-day trek. The tinkling drone of Salvation Army bells coming and going on winter winds.
In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, there is a climactic confrontation between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, in which Vader corners Luke and tells him, “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” Luke shouts back that Obi-Wan told him Vader killed his father. Then, Vader pauses. A long, deliberate silence. This silence
As much as I wish to resist it, the pull toward artificial intelligence becomes stronger every day. And as experiments proceed with LLMs (large language models) it may be easier to have AI ‘converse’ with humans, respond to the humans’ concerns, and ultimately change the humans’ beliefs. A recent series of experiments tested this –