The Most Important Juror: Embrace the Winning Story in Jury Selection, Opening Statement & Rebuttal
Jesse Wilson
Description
Description
Please note: This title is on preorder and is scheduled to begin shipping by 4/15/25.
Most trial lawyers follow a script. The best ones write their own.
In The Most Important Juror: Embrace the Winning Story in Jury Selection, Opening Statement, and Rebuttal, leading trial consultant Jesse Wilson delivers a transformative guide to courtroom storytelling rooted in his acclaimed victim-to-victor approach. Together with trial lawyers from across the country, Wilson teaches how to:
- Build trust and connection within the first minutes of jury selection
- Balance the science of storytelling with the art of emotional connection
- Embrace and reframe biases
- Craft opening statements that resonate with jurors and leave an impact
- Seed a moral argument throughout trial that will culminate in a powerful and compelling conclusion
- Strike the perfect balance between creating safety and delivering an “edge of the cliff” feeling that demands juror attention
Packed with an arsenal of transformative case insights, jury selection techniques, and communication strategies, The Most Important Juror will help you create compelling case stories, deliver powerful opening statements in trial, and maximize justice for your clients. This is your guide to becoming not just a better lawyer, but a director, storyteller, and a force of nature in the courtroom.
Details
Details
Paperback: 346 pages; 1st Edition (2025); ISBN: 978-1-951962-48-7
Publisher: Trial Guides, LLC
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Publisher’s Note
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Embrace the Suck
- Abandon Script—The Science & The Art of Advocacy
- Moneyballing the Courtroom
- The Art of Trial
- Who Am I?
- The Chapters of This Book
- The Most Important Juror: You
- The Victim-to-Victor Approach: When the Data Doesn’t Lie
- What Does “Hero” Mean?
- How Pain Fits in the Story
- How Do You Choose to See Your Witness?
- Ask the Movie Question
- Victim-to-Victor Framing—the Data Doesn’t Lie
- The Testing Methods
- What the Data Shows
- Breaking the Rules: How Victim-to-Victor Turns Trial Science on Its Ear
- Data-Driven Storytelling: When Starting with the Plaintiff Wins
- The Wrap-Up
- Getting Yourself on Board: Be the Underdog That You Are
- Act 1: Make It Personal
- Own Your Role
- Changing Your Role
- Listening to the Voices
- Change the Relationship to your Jurors: The Four Steps of Jury Selection
- Michael Jordan’s the Last Dance
- Making It Even More Personal
- The Wrap-Up
- From Storyteller to Director: Eight Fundamentals of Breakthrough Communication
- The Lawyer as Director
- The Eight Fundamentals
- Fundamental 1: The Most Important Juror—Yourself
- Fundamental 2: From Victim to Victor
- Fundamental 3: Flip the Script—the Value of Conflict
- Fundamental 4: The Crossroad—the Power of Choice
- Fundamental 5: The Surface & Beneath the Surface
- Fundamental 6: The State before the Story
- Fundamental 7: The Power of Nonverbal Communication
- Fundamental 8: Find the Greater Story
- Examples from Stage & Screen
- The Wrap-Up
- The First Five Minutes of Jury Selection, Part 1: The Difference between Talking about Bias and Embracing It
- The Story of You
- Embracing the Bias Versus Talking About the Bias
- Embracing the Bias Course Correction
- The Choto Case: The Beginning
- Jonathan Choto’s Victor Story
- Bringing You to Your Trial Story
- The Sound of Silence
- Back to the Golden Arches
- The Wrap-Up
- The First Five Minutes of Jury Selection, Part 2: The Mini Opening Statement
- Back to Your Story
- The Clock Is Ticking … Stop Saying “Good Morning”
- Breaking Down the Mini Opening Statement
- Mini Opening and Three Rules
- Rule 3 (Speak Up): Effective Communication among Medical Staff
- Integrating the Three Rules into the Case Narrative
- Mini Opening Is Everything You Say
- The Wrap-Up
- The Villain’s Victor Story in Jury Selection: Going Deeper into the Suck
- Act I: The Villain in You
- Act II: The Villain’s Victor Story—The Crossroad of Character
- Act III: Making the Jury Connection
- The Wrap-Up
- Opening Statement: The Dead Body in the Water
- The Power of the Body in the Water
- Storytelling Approach 1: “Introducing the Client”
- The Power of Not Telling the Victor Story in Opening
- The Wrap-Up
- The Power of Joy in Opening Statement: Blowing Up the Balloon
- Tapping into the Emotional Wheelhouse
- The Three-Act Structure
- Michaelson Opening Recap
- Variation of Blowing Up the Balloon: The Happy Ending
- “More Is More” versus “Less Is More” in Opening Statements
- Tell It Like a Movie: Applying Screenwriting Tools to Your Courtroom Performance
- The Director Is the Witness to the Right Story
- Where Your Eyes Go, We Will Go
- See It. Feel It. Speak It.
- Screenwriting Tools in the Courtroom
- Variations of Tell It Like a Movie
- The Wrap-Up
- The Victor on Video: Leveraging the Victor Story in Day-in-the-Life Videos and Settlement Documentaries
- The Swimmer
- Video in the Courtroom
- A Day in Molly’s Life
- Limitations of Day-in-the-Life Videos
- The Settlement Documentary
- The Victor-Centric Documentary
- The Wrap-Up
- The Knockout Rebuttal: Beginning with the End
- Why Rebuttal Matters
- The Moral Framework of Rebuttal
- The Messaging Thread: Jury Selection
- Inspiration for the Moral Argument: Lessons from Moe Levine
- Anatomy of the Knockout Rebuttal
- The Special Sauce: Your Personal Story
- Jurors Seeing Themselves as Your Client
- The Wrap-Up
Conclusion: The Final Wrap-Up
About the Author
What Legal Leaders Are Saying
— David Ball, PhD, trial consultant and author of David Ball on Damages“Almost as soon as we can understand words, we are attentive to and swayed by story. This is an inbred trait of the human mind and it stays with us for the rest of our lives—including our lives as jurors. Largely due to where we first heard stories, they create rapport with jurors and act as a preconstructed framework for everything jurors hear and see during the case. Good stories well told are a key that lets us into the minds of jurors. But few trial lawyers can tell good stories. And other than Jim Perdue and Joshua Karton, there’s a surprising scarcity of people who have any idea of how to teach us to create and use story in trial. Jesse’s first book opened the doors and this new one walks us through; it’s a practical, how-to-do-it guide through each element of trial. The book provides ways to fill in the story as trial progresses. Of course those fill-ins will vary trial to trial and preference to preference, but this book shows what to do whatever fill-ins you need. The book is simultaneously a primer (Storytelling in Trial for Dummies) and an advanced guide (Storytelling as Surgical Persuasion). Master Perdue’s work, try to work with Karton, and read this book along with Jesse’s first—and the insurance companies will never think about you in the same way again. Good story makes jurors want what we want. Good story rivets attention, creates motivation, and wipes the opposition off the map because the defense rarely has any story at all, much less a good one. Jesse joins the scarce few in gifting you with that ability.”
— Keith Mitnik, senior trial counsel for Morgan & Morgan, author of Don’t Eat The Bruises and Deeper Cuts, and host of the Art of Outsmarting podcast“I have read Jesse’s books, and I work with him. Why? Because he and I are aligned in our core beliefs about what jurors respect and reject. Americans respect people who buck up and reject those who give up. The quickest way to lose is by whining. Jesse’s first book was about taking the whimpering out of plaintiffs. Now he is helping lawyers carry that victor’s message from the beginning of trial to the end. I will be telling all of our lawyers to read it.”
— Judith A. Livingston, senior partner at Kramer Dillof Livingston & Moore and past president The Inner Circle Circle of Advocates“Jesse Wilson’s new book is a masterpiece for the trial lawyer. Beyond understanding the fundamentals of persuasion and storytelling, he lays out the tools for presenting the case and preparing witnesses in the most understandable way. No trial lawyer should ever again think that they have to recite a script handed to them by someone else. Instead, by following Jesse’s brilliant, yet easy to understand insights, we learn how to make the plaintiff’s story persuasive, enabling every advocate to present their case convincingly. This book is a must reading for new trial lawyers and the most seasoned lawyers among us.”
— Lloyd Bell, the Bell Law Firm and member of the Inner Circle of Advocates“In The Most Important Juror, Jesse shakes up traditional courtroom storytelling by encouraging trial lawyers to present our clients as victors instead of victims. He urges us to ‘embrace the suck’ and find the winning story for our trials, while eschewing ‘templates’ and ‘formulas.’ His fresh approach, backed by real-world data and compelling case examples, highlights how framing clients as fighters on a journey to overcome their struggles can resonate more deeply with jurors. The Most Important Juror is packed with practical tips from accomplished trial lawyers around the country, making it a useful guide for lawyers who want to connect more authentically with their juries. This is not a book that will sit quietly gathering dust in the corner book shelf. Instead, you will dog-ear and highlight pages as you return to it frequently for inspiration on the
— Michael Leizerman, managing partner of The Law Firm for Truck Safety and author of The Zen Lawyer: Winning with Mindfulness“Jesse’s compelling new book delivers actionable techniques that elevate trial advocacy to an art form. His approach is honest and powerful—embracing, rather than sidestepping, the truth of each case. Drawing from cinema and theater, he gives examples of scenes that inspire and shows how directing techniques can transform courtroom storytelling. I recently worked on a wrongful death case with Jesse that went to trial and in my client’s case in chief, I chose to call the company to complement their safety practices and called the truck driver in a soft cross that started with ‘I like you.’ The jury returned an $18.5 million consortium-only verdict for the death of a twenty-one-year-old unmarried person. This is what happens when you take the counterintuitive approaches Jesse details in his book.”
— Chris Madeksho, faculty of the Trial Lawyer’s College, Super Lawyer continuously since 2020, and multi-state trial lawyer“Jesse shares with readers what has previously only been shared with the lawyers he works with to prepare for trial. Real trials, real stories, and real application of Jesse’s powerful insights and methods. I employ Jesse’s insights in every trial and to great effect. This book will change the way you try cases. It will change your results. It will change you.”
