Trial Practice

ATTORNEYS AT THE START OF THEIR TRIAL PRACTICE – Integrating Frame and Stance and Line Focus

It is important to recognize that at the start of a courtroom advocacy practice there is significant preoccupation with a list of important considerations. For example, ensuring that you comply with the demands of courtroom protocol, procedures and steps required to conduct voir dire, rules of evidence, foundation for admittance, and presenting exhibits. These considerations, and many more, can take front and center in your mind and communication strategy naturally takes a back seat. It is understandable that experience is one key to becoming confident in communicating within the structure and compliance demands of being in trial, but at the same time you can elevate your practice by employing supportive physical patterns from the very start.
Here are some suggested first steps.
As you have learned, how you frame your body makes all the difference. Start with a Basic Stance and Ready Position. From the very start, adopt a practice of establishing a balanced Frame and engage in a readiness pattern. Whether sitting or standing, addressing the court, jury or witness, this habit will set you on the track of communicative success. When the body is framed with energy and readiness it is available to communicate the content and material you have prepared with confidence, the various courtroom audiences see and sense your physical presence, readiness, and counterbalance. This indicates to them that you are prepared to communicate, conduct trial business, or listen with engagement.

Integrate the purposeful employment of Line Focus during your opening. Recall the demonstrations in the video

Select Full Front when you are comfortable with a full-on focus request and complete reception of the jury’s attention. This orientation is formal, presentational and direct.

Employ a Quarter Turn to mitigate the impact of feeling the Jury’s attention or to build a connection with the Jury and deliver narrative. Storytellers often use a Quarter Turn. You can always shift to Full Front to communicate more directly, deliver more structured material or for emphasis.

Observe how the Frame, Stance and Line Focus choices impact your communication during Opening Statements. Select patterns that best work for you and support sections of your address to transmit purposeful, clear delivery with physical confidence and presence.

FOR EXPERIENCED TRIAL ATTORNEYS –
Building a Courtroom Communication Strategy with Frame and Stance and Line Focus

With trial experience, you no doubt have more fluency in the mechanics of being in the courtroom and the necessary steps and patterns of litigation. You have the bandwidth for preparing a communication strategy that includes purposeful physical choices. Employing different stances and Line Focus positioning will impact your communication strategy.

From the perspective of the witness stand, begin to employ Full Front, Quarter Turn and Profile positions as you question witnesses. It is important that you consider what your outcomes are for each witness as you select patterns that encourage a particular kind of communication through a focus request, draw, or redirection. Remember that the orientation of the torso whether standing or sitting draws focus, directs focus and receives focus.

Think about how you want to shape the focus request or focus direction of your witnesses, to you? or to your jury? Think about what your Line Focus positioning suggests to the Jury from their perspective.
For example:

Do you want the jury to mainly focus on the witness or observe an exchange between you and the witness? To achieve either of those outcomes, try Full Front to the witness.
Do you want the jury to listen to the testimony and connect
with the witness? Do you want the witness to provide more narrative or feel more comfortable relating to the jury from the stand? To achieve either of those outcomes you can position in a Quarter Turn to the witness and jury.

Consider that departing from a Basic Stance to a Narrow Stance will soften your presence and a Wide Stance will amplify your presence. Both stances can be paired with Line Focus positioning to amplify or soften engagement. The seated body can be modified from the hip and foot placement. The narrow the seated position (one leg crossed over another at the knee or feet together,) the basic seated position (both feet and knees about shoulder width apart,) and the wide seated position, (knees and hips far apart or one leg crossed over the other ankle to knee) produce a range of softened and amplified presence from behind the desk.

The more you integrate shifts in your Stance and Line Focus to affect communicative outcomes purposefully, the more those patterns will be available in situations that will benefit from you countering physically as well as verbally. The key is to critically think about the impact of your Line Focus request situationally, with that individual witness in mind. Enter into the witness exchange with a clear understanding of what you need to elicit in their testimony and decide how best to set up a physical positioning in relation to the witness and to the jury. The physical patterns you communicate through will affect the quality of testimony and how it is received by the jury. The jury is watching your witness’s body and your body for cues about what is happening subtextually during an exchange. Consider that witness management can be affected greatly by how you position and move in the courtroom paired with your vocal production and words.