Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers

Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers by John P. Blumberg.

https://www.amazon.com/Persuasion-Science-for-Trial-Lawyers/dp/B09RTNPVQT/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1695585330&sr=1-1

This is the email I sent off to the author.


“Mr. Blumberg,

I just finished listening to your book on Persuasion. I thought it was very insightful and it gave me a lot of things to think about as a trial lawyer, which I may not have given as much attention to as I should. I just sent your book as a gift to an attorney I work with.

The reason I am writing, though, is to offer what might be a unique perspective from reading your book. I belong to the Online Great Books program. OGB reads the great works. Before I started on your book, the book we read was Aristotle's Rhetoric. This is what I wrote my fellow OGB members:

After finishing Rhetoric, I listened to this audible book on “Persuasion” for trial lawyers. The author is a trial lawyer who integrates his experience with modern psychological studies on persuasion, memory, attention, etc.

What's interesting was the number of times that I said to myself, “That was in the Rhetoric.” For example, there is the idea of a “slow thinking” and “quick thinking.” Slow thinking is dialectic, step by step, the active intellect is fully engaged. Slow thinking relies on “heuristics,” cliches, stereotypes, rules of thumb, etc.

Basically, science is recognizing the “active intellect” from the “passive intellect” (as in De Anima) and “slow thinking” is what Aristotle called “enthymemes.”

Candidly, I had a better understanding of Rhetoric after listening to this, and a better understanding of this from being exposed to Rhetoric.

I am going back through the Rhetoric to sharpen my trial practices.

I wish your book had a lower price point. I'd like to go back and make some notes.”

The audio book is $12; the Kindle is $80.

Blumberg promises that he will not exclusively tell war stories, but there are a lot of war stories in this book. That is not a bad thing. War stories are stories and cognitive science tells as that we learn best from stories.

Concerning war stories, I've noticed that war stories are something that attorneys do. I've never seen doctors or accountants at a lunch or over drinks tells some humorous anecdote about some curve thrown at them by their practice. But once one attorney starts with a war story everyone does.

War stories are usually about problems and things learned. The attorney is usually under the gun or facing something unexpected. War stories are a major way that lessons and the ethics of the tribe are communicated. Blumberg points out something his father told him – but which I have always said – we learn more from our losses than from our victories.

The book has some redundancies. It does seem that the same quotes were being recycled as if this book is a collation from Blumberg's talks.

That said, Blumberg put me in mind of the importance of analogies, similes, metaphors and things that Aristotle called “enthymeme.” It occurs to me that “enthymemes” are the “heuristics” that Blumberg mentions from cognitive science.

There is a lot of good stuff here on thinking about juror bias, reframing, and other tips.

It is worth the time of a busy trial lawyer to give this a listen (or if the price comes down, a read.)