Episode #93 – Applying Sports Psychology to Litigation

Dr. Steve Wood and Dr. Bill Kanasky, Jr. talk about the relationship between sports psychology and litigation. They discuss the concept of forcing cognition, which is a gap of time that a witness is trained to take during questioning in order to maximize cognition prior to any response. Bill and Steve share examples from sports and explain how forcing cognition addresses the biggest mistake that witnesses make, which is the speed at which they answer questions. Steve and Bill also discuss the importance of relaxation training to help address the nervousness of witnesses and another technique that sports psychologists teach: the skill of positive thinking. They talk about how critical it is for witnesses to be taught to reframe negative events and negative stimuli to prevent themselves from falling into plaintiff attorney traps or losing focus during questioning, which can lead to disastrous outcomes.

Full Episode Transcript

[00:01] Steve Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences Inc. i am Dr Steve Wood and with me again is my co-host my buddy Bill Kanasky. Bill how is it?

[00:20] Bill what a rough 24 hours i got to tell you i didn’t shave my head i did not shave my head today i just pulled it all out by hand everything going wrong i mean and then i just i’m starting an argument on linkedin you know you got to be careful with that stuff but um i’m going to tell you why i just started an argument is that a company just go on my page you’ll see it i’m not going to mention them company just this happened within 30 minutes ago to all their you know thousands of followers it said the number one way to prevent a nuclear verdict is by developing better safety and compliance protocols huh yeah no no no no so i just i went did you read my response yet did you read it read it after the podcast i respond twice like people what what the hell is wrong with you what the hell is wrong with you hey let’s put more safety language in our manuals yeah that’ll work that’ll prevent no good god i just is today Tuesday?

[01:34] Steve today is tuesday

[01:35] Bill oh yeah i just i have a pounding headache and it’s tuesday because this yesterday was a complete epic disaster nothing going right okay so let’s start with uh i’m going to bounce this off you i want you to think before you vote it’s always important to think before you vote and boy it’s i think this is close to a tie for different reasons bigger idiot urban meyer john gruden that’s a tough one oh boy now really think about that i mean

[02:05] Steve yeah they’re both they’re both i’d give the i think i’d give the nod to gruden but ust by a hair because i remember seeing the video of urban meyer and and just doing like literally a face palm on myself and I’m thinking to myself what an idiot but i think i think i would say gruden takes it by by a little bit

[02:28] Bill i mean this is just the world we live in and funny enough apparently that happened what 10 years ago yeah so it’s really not the world we live in because but the fact of the matter that it came out right now 10 years later and being used again this is this is great stuff you got to love the litigation psychology pod and by the the reason why the story’s relevant is because the gruden stuff came out because of litigation right that’s why all that stuff was preserved and saved and then leaked um steve i’m not sure how many cases you’ve had in which you have um it’s typically business litigation where you have some pretty ugly emails yeah that are embarrassing

[03:15] Steve yeah that’s um the whole thing right like write emails assuming that they’ll be used against you at some point in litigation

[03:24] Bill email like a ceo like yes period no period that’s right thank you period no emojis no smiley faces no humor right you can’t do that yeah gosh um steve on today’s episode i wanna i wanna go because uh what we’re both really good at which doesn’t work with every witness or client we’re really good at sports analogies and i studied sports psychology i’ve done some sports psychology and i think a lot of the principles and techniques of sports psychology really do apply uh to to the to the witness training uh system and i was trying to think about this is what we know one of the core skills that we teach i think one of the most dif i think it’s the most difficult witness skill that we teach and it’s uh a skill that yes i invented i’m taking full credit for this um we call it forcing cognition forcing cognition where it’s a gap of time well first of all the word forcing is is is a bad word forcing is not a positive word but this is where the witness needs to force their brain to do something that they don’t want to do remember the brain wants to be the brain’s wired neurocognitively for efficiency right it’s not wired for effectiveness imagine if you took two to five seconds every day to make every decision before you said any every er two to five seconds you’d be a jellyfish by three o’clock right but by noon you’d be a your brain would turn to mush it just doesn’t it doesn’t make any sense right and so we teach witnesses the skill forcing cognition which means for you know forcing in a two to four to five second gap of time to maximize cognition before you open your yapper now imagine imagine if we went through life and all did that imagine how much better off we’d be imagine how much less imagine how much less trouble you we’d both be in if we actually just used our brain at triple the capacity that we typically do before we opened our mouths

[05:52] Steve yeah no i agree it’s too many times right like you said people just fire off something and then you want to pull it back later but once you you know as we tell i always tell witnesses that’s that a bell you can’t unring especially in litigation when you do it yeah we do it in society and we can say oh man sorry i i don’t see that but you’re doing it in litigation

[06:15] Bill didn’t mean that yeah didn’t mean that um well so i came up with some you know and there’s the reason why this two to five sec because i think this two to five second gap um i think everything else after that is really highly dependent upon this because i can tell you this witnesses that go too fast minimize their cognition and they step on landmines and make mistakes so the number one weakness we see number one problem with witnesses by far number one ranked is speed and neurocognitive efficiency as opposed to neurocognitive effectiveness and that effectiveness requires energy and effort and that’s that two to five seconds so i went online and looked up nfl quarterback release windows guess just take a wild guess what it is

[07:11] Steve well i guess it’s less than a second

[07:13] Bill no tom brady was the fastest the window no

[07:18] Steve okay that’s probably i would say three to four seconds

[07:23] Bill two to four seconds okay the fastest in the league through like the first four weeks was tom brady at 1.9 seconds but that’s the average right remember so on a deeper drop back but here’s the point and the reason i’m using this analogy is you have this window of time to make decisions right and when you look at uh trevor lawrence uh who’s the goofball out for the the jets that’s just kidding is his mom’s like amazing i see more of his mother than i do Zach wilson yeah his mom’s great i love his mom um but he’s getting crushed and the reason why is they struggle to to use the proper cognition within the two to four second window and they make mistakes right hey mahomes did everybody that first year is really really tough and what what do the quarterbacks say in years two and three the game is slowing down yeah no no no no no no that is completely wrong what they mean is my brain has adjusted right now in the same two to four seconds i make better decisions why because i took a year to throw a lot of interceptions and do this all wrong so one of the key purposes now i’m trying to circle this back around to litigation psychology is the process of witness training i i think it’s critical that the witness does the same thing right steve i mean the witness before they throw the ball right before you fire that ball you need to be knowing you’re throwing it to the right receiver the witness is doing the exact same thing and before they commit to an answer they got to be sure it’s the right target i mean speed speed i mean you’ve heard the phrase speed kills right which i think should be the title of this podcast if our producers will let us speed kills and what that means is that speed is generally on an athletic field or it’s generally a good thing right but in but there are some situations where it’s not right now think think about this if you do things too quickly right for example i i mean your son’s a monster baseball player and i know he pitches if if the pitcher’s pitching not speed kills pitching too fast as in the velocity of the ball but is cutting corners on motion right and delivery and mechanics because he wants to pitch more efficiently that’s not a good thing right it’s going to fall down

[10:15] Steve No it’s not it leads to injuries right leads to errors leads to walks leads all sorts of things

[10:18] Bill yeah and how many times you watch college basketball right and uh some freshman point guard you know gets the pass and then it’s the first pass of that particular possession and he just jacks up a three and clanks it off and you’re going dude what do you do like time time leads to better answers because you get to maximize cognition and again um yeah i guess a fast break is is a good thing when you dunk the ball and that goes really really fast but in most cases i think it’s the opposite because we maximize cognition witnesses get better answers the problem is and steve talk because i know that you work with a lot of witnesses on this the discomfort with not answering immediately is like through the roof right it feels it feels really awkward

[11:14] Steve yeah and i and i talk about i usually talk about embracing the power of the awkward silence and i think one you know elon musk is one of the best at doing that and if you ever watch like an interview with him or he’s doing it it it it’s painful to watch but you can tell that he’s actually putting a lot of thought into his answers and he’s very he’s being very uh careful in how he answers and he’s being very thoughtful and yeah a lot of times witnesses just feel like they need to answer because like i said it’s very very uncomfortable to actually sit there when someone else is looking at you waiting for a response and you feel the need you have to give an answer right away and it feels very uncomfortable but it’s one of those things that witnesses just need to learn to to just get over i mean i always say you know do whatever you’re going to do before the deposition do whatever you’re going to do outside after the deposition but within that confines of however long your deposition lasts you’re going to have to change the way your thought process is and it’s going to be uncomfortable but it’s going to be for the best for you

[12:13] Bill but a lot of people don’t understand it’s a skill okay listening is a skill thinking is a skill responding is a skill and that’s where we come and that’s where a lot of attorneys don’t understand well i told my witness, i told my witness to listen you know and think careful it’s like you can’t just tell somebody right you got to teach them how to do that it’s a skill that gets better with practice and time and so i i thought maybe talk a little bit about some sports psychology today uh because an athlete is performing right uh in front of an audience a performer a musician a dancer and these are all performance issues a witness is performing i’m sorry they are they’re carrying out a skill set in front of an audience okay and so there’s a couple of different things that you know i would teach athletes which i which i i teach all the witnesses um um because i think it’s really important because you have to protect that two to five second gap of cognition we’ve talked about on other podcasts how fatigue wears people down and then that gap starts to get smaller and then they start making mistakes which is why the brakes are so important um and it takes a lot of energy to use that two to four five five seconds it’s really important but i noticed that witnesses particularly early on tend to abandon the two to five seconds um pretty quickly i think a lot of that is nerves a lot of that is kind of getting uh warmed up in the process um but um relaxation number one i think you know any i mean i’m sure you’re aware of this i don’t think the audience as a general public every pga golfer every single one of them has their own personal sports psychologist and you know what the number one thing that you work on relaxation training because that’s how their swing goes off because they start having anxiety throws off their breathing cortisol starts going throughout their their veins right from stress throws off your muscle mechanics boom you’re hitting in the woods or you know you’re you’re you’re missing that the the you know the big putt because you you know you you you pushed it and it’s the number one skill taught by a sports psychologist and quite frankly it’s one of the main skills uh that we teach because what i do know is that if a witness cannot relax they can’t think right i mean they they they can’t think nervous people can’t think which is again another reason why the the desensitization process is so important um you know in witness prep but you can see i can see witnesses like like almost mouth breathing and and upper chest breathing and not relaxed and i time out what are you doing they’re like well i’m just so nervous i don’t know what’s coming next so being in that environment can can lead to a good natural adjustment but they got to learn how to breathe i tell these witnesses i’m like by the way you can’t sit there like here’s the question then one one thousand two one thousand three one okay now i can, you can’t do that right that’s dumb but what you can do is question answer that’s three seconds that’s one breath in one breath out keeps you relaxed and i try to get them to focus on their breathing again you watch any prof look at the guy going to the free throw line talk about a uh a pre-shot routine right pre it’s like a pre-answer routine every witness should have a pre-answer routine these golfers have a pre-put routine they have a pre-driver routine every basketball player has a as a was it john stockton used to do this with his face to say hi to his kids on tv yeah i mean everybody has a routine before they do whatever they’re gonna do for their performance i think the witness can do the same thing i think it’s i think it should be focused on breathing i mean have you had witnesses where they kind of get all amped up and then before you know it they just they abandon the game plan and they get into that speed trap because they’re not breathing they’ve lost their focus and they’ve allowed the plaintiff’s attorney just to take over the deposition

[16:54] Steve well i think that’s exactly what you said at the very end about allowing the plaintiff attorney to take over the deposition and that’s where you see it right is they they start off on a good path of of staying slow and and breathing but then what ends up happening is plaintiffs council starts trying to speed them up and rather than take the time and allow themselves to slow the pace down they get into that rhythm because then it feels good then it feels like the normal everyday conversation

[17:26] Bill yeah it feels good that’s the that’s the problem and here’s here’s the problem with um with um making mistakes at deposition and it makes no sense whatsoever it’s like going into the matrix right i tell the witnesses i’m like if it feels good you are really screwing this up yeah if it feels terrible you’re probably doing a good job right yeah because it’s so unnatural i mean nobody talk i mean nobody talks that slow right i mean no one no one no one pauses like that um and it’s just i think a lot of it’s our society just the way we are i mean i know if i go that’s why i gotta take my damn phone with me to the gym because if i don’t answer an email or a text timely you know somebody’s pissed at me yeah right actually i take it to listen to my podcast or listen to music is why i take it but now it’s all in one but yeah it’s like this society i mean we are like speed speed is really good and then you take somebody and by the way it’s gotten worse it’s gotten worse meaning speed and efficiency the reinforcement of those behaviors is really really high so now this is probably the hardest time in human history to prep a witness isn’t it i mean because of the speed of everything else i tell the i know i try to use as many analogies as i can to make people comfortable because everybody comes in the witness prep uncomfortable and i told the one guy the other day i’m like listen you’re used to driving the car at 75 miles per hour well i literally need you to drive it like 20 for the entire dep but he’s like i don’t like driving 20 i know because it’s uncomfortable to drive 20. i know i know but that’s what i need steve i mean correct me if i’m wrong but i mean you’re a social psychologist i don’t see these trends getting any better i think it’s going to become harder and harder to prep witnesses because i think technology is changing the brain which is altering cognition which makes our jobs difficult and it’s gonna get worse

[19:40] Steve no i absolutely agree i mean we’re we’re a society of instant gratification right and they talk about how i’ve seen studies where they talk about the release of dopamine that you get when you’re checking your phone about whether or not there’s a text message or an email

[19:57] Bill doing that right now i’ve already violated the rules

[20:01] Steve and that’s the point i mean how many times have you ever seen an email where somebody fires off an email then they send a follow-up email with the different additional information that they forgot to send in the previous email because they wanted to get out the email to you so quick rather than let it sit you know for 15 minutes so i think to your point we’re instant gratification we want to we want to do things quickly because like you said it makes us feel good and as you said if you feel good in a deposition give it up i mean you should not walk out of a deposition feeling like and the other thing too is when we talk about answering too quick or not thinking fully is that’s when people will essentially you know barf their guts on the table because they want to get the whole story out and then just set the record straight because they want to feel good at the end and feel like they absolved themselves of everything and as we know that position is obviously not the time to do that it goes back to the gratification i have to feel like i got everything out you know i have to feel like i got my side heard and rather than pulling back and doing things that don’t feel comfortable i do what feels good

[21:07] Bill yeah it’s really amazing and so there’s times i’ve actually taken witnesses and literally stop like put them through the actual sports psychology breathing techniques you know the you know diaphragmatic breathing full volume title breathing to get them  to calm the hell down it works every time and the key which i find amazing is and you’ve seen this in the witness preps during my you see it like when the when the witness brain hits the groove they’re good right and then you got two three four seconds between each it’s good but they got to get there first they have to realize yeah this feels terrible but their brain has to learn this terrible feeling is actually a safety net this is really really helping me so there’s a lot going on there with that gap of time but i would say this as a witness training expert without that gap of time the witness is screwed period there yeah if they don’t think if they don’t think they have no chance number one in in the in the grand scheme of things number two you’re going against the reptile attorney speed kills that’s when speed really really kills so this force cognition is really important i think i think uh teaching relaxation skills to these witnesses which by the way attorneys are incapable of i see attorneys make people more nervous see they they don’t attorneys don’t make people relaxed they do the exact opposite and so that’s why these skills are so important secondly which i think is this never gets talked about this could probably be a separate podcast this could be this could be a paper you could write paper on this is the second skill that sports psychologists focus on is the skill of positive thinking positive being able to reframe negative events think about think about today okay so 2021 going on 22. oh man i’ve i’ve struggled with some uh cognitive reframing steve i don’t know about you but i’m trying to take negatives and not let them get to me and what the athlete is taught because listen i mean you well you coach baseball for years what do you tell your son after he strikes out because i tell you when i was playing baseball well first of all my dad was screaming at me he was like this is back in the day i [ __ ] you not in 1982 when i’m in like third grade in little league all the dads brought beer to the game like and every dad is just plastered at noon in the stand and i strike out my dad would start yelling at me and that strikeout in inning two would stick in my mind the rest of that game and then i then i’m fumbling the ball i’m overthrowing first base from shortstop i mean the negative thoughts that happen after a failure within an event just destroys athletic performance it can destroy witness performance i mean what do you tell adolescents after they strike out because they got to mentally keep it together right

[24:20] Steve yeah so i mean obviously you look for the positives in it you know did they follow the ball off were they taking close pitches did they run you know did they run the count up and have a good at-bat but i think the biggest thing i always and i i can i can vividly think of an example right now where we had we had a guy strike out you know he was he was really upset he was struggling for the whole weekend you know and i told him we need you we need you here we need you present we need you to just you know brush it off because i’m telling you right now there’s going to come a time where we’re going to need you and you’re going to come through and this is all going to go away and sure enough i swear we were down by one run this kid hits it walks it off and we end up winning the game and it was like his one hit of the whole tournament but yeah keeping him in the cognitive frame of mind in the right frame of mind of understanding like okay bad things have happened but i can’t let it steamroll and i you know with witnesses it’s the same thing right

[25:12] Bill you’re not gonna be perfect you’re not going to be listen i’m sorry witnesses you’re not going to be perfect and here’s the other problem we deal with a lot of corporate executives physicians right i mean people that strive to be perfect and boy when they when they when they [ __ ] up i mean they really really get down on themselves or they get mad and it can screw up the rest of the testimony and uh yeah i’m watching nfl the other did you watch the the packers um the packers bengals game they had like four field goals at the end miss miss miss miss went to overtime another miss and finally but it’s like it’s like after the kicker misses the field goal like you said it’s important for coaches and players to say hey shake it off get back to good men we’re going to need you again right this and the same thing as a deposition right if you step on a grenade or step on a land mine and that blast goes off doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the world right some witnesses are going to screw up and they may start going too fast but it’s the attorney’s job to maybe take a break right they may say too much in an answer it’s gonna happen witnesses are gonna make mistakes but i do see a lot of witnesses in our training sessions kind of kicking themselves after they make mistakes and i think that they need to go into this understanding you don’t have to be perfect you don’t have to be perfect you really really don’t and it’s it’s hard to teach that when you’re dealing honestly like now let’s go on the other end when you’re dealing with the truck driver maybe the lower level nurse you when you say you don’t have to be perfect they’re like perfect good great like they’re fine with that right they’re totally okay with that there’s no issue with that but you know when you’re dealing with your cardiothoracic surgeon your c-level executive i mean these people i mean they they have to be perfect or it’s like this narcissistic injury that they can’t get over i mean i don’t know do you think i mean i personally think this is gonna sound weird it’s gonna sound weird i think in many instances i find it more difficult to work with really really super smart witnesses than someone of average intelligence i think it’s really difficult

[27:42] Steve i agree 100%

[27:45] Bill they don’t bend they don’t bend and they think they know it’s like dude you gotta i mean it’s a it’s a headache

[27:50] Steve i think the other thing the other thing that i find is the the this forcing cognition for them is really difficult as well because they’ve moved up to their positions of where they’re at by being smart by being johnny on the spot by having all the answers at the time and they more so than anyone because they’re used to people turning and looking to them to have the answers in the middle of a meeting they don’t like the feeling and don’t and just can’t force themselves and allow themselves to to take time before they respond so i think for for those this those group of people this forcing cognition is extremely extremely extremely difficult they just have the most trouble out of anything to try to slow themselves down

[28:31] Bill and it’s it’s it’s hard to teach it’s hard to teach and it takes but then once they get it they get it but the other thing they’re susceptible to is which okay so again i’m going i’m trying to keep this parallel of sports and sports psychology and litigation psychology the same thing happens um it happened during all the football games today saturday was terrible yeah college football is starting to really really irk me and don’t get me started on the targeting and the the refs are horrendous but the way these kids behave on the field just just just makes me nuts but but this has always been around uh well i’d say definitely during since tv and then definitely social media is the amount of taunting and trash talking is absolutely incredible why do you think that happens we we do this in our witness training it’s called the head game right the plaintiff attorney does this you give a great the witness gives a great answer and the attorney’s like seriously like what come on who you fooling here i don’t think he answered the question now let me let me ask it again they taunt the witness just like the cornerback right and so the wide receiver dropped the touchdown and i’m going son dude and what and what happens after that that cornerback is up in the ear or that receiver doing what i i’m in your head i’m in your head i’m in your head i’m in your head i’m in your head right and then that receiver has to go back to the huddle and if if that processes that guy’s going to drop another ball okay now in golf they don’t do this they’re it’s more of a gentleman sport right right somebody misses the putt you can’t say suck on it you can’t do that right but in football right i mean look at look at the baes i mean your favorite sport baseball i mean you know yeah you get into a pitch i’ve seen batters get into a pitcher’s head and the pitcher loses they get upset and they can’t throw strikes oh it’s over

[30:37] Steve and the funny thing you say that is you know for i’m in college station you know texas a&m university and they have they’re very famous for as the pitcher starts to throw you know multiple balls in a row ball five ball five ball six i mean yeah you get a big crowd doing that man you should see how how bad this pitcher struggles to throw a strike after that when you got the whole stadium just barreling down on you you know

[31:07] Bill it’s unbelievable so i think that we’ve proven that there are sports psychology techniques that can be used in witness training i think there’s a lot of parallels um but let’s wrap up this podcast by reporting i sent you the text yesterday on sun i think it was a sunday night football or was it uh whenever the chiefs okay so one of the chiefs so our last podcast which by the way i just put it’s it’s hilarious it’s absolutely hilarious but it’s also very scientific but we’ve been going over week by week steve and i go over baseball basketball football these fans continue just to beat the living [ __ ] out of each other it’s unbelievable and these are your jurors folks these are these are these are jury eligible people for the most part so so it was uh yesterday when um of course someone’s filming not trying to help the situation they want to make sure they could put it on twitter that someone’s filming and the i think it was the kansas city chiefs fan just got absolutely clobbered yeah and then the day but the day before that it was a couple uh uh of the college football games there were fights and i mean several nfl games there were there were people throwing haymakers and it’s happening every week and it just goes to show you that you know let’s kind of end on this you know when you’re when you’re when you have obviously emotion and alcohol really really really bad combo bad combo now the good thing is you don’t get that combo in jury selection but you better be you better learn how to assess the emotional status of your jurors otherwise um no again they’re not there’s not probably not going to be haymakers thrown in deliberations but you can see how those emotions come out and then people start doing crazy stuff

[32:58] Steve yeah there’s definitely definitely a level of anger that i have have seen personally and on the internet that i just haven’t seen haven’t seen in a while and yeah i could definitely bleed over like you said not haymakers but definitely perceptions of of cases and whether or not someone is sympathetic to a plaintiff attorney or a plaintiff injured plaintiff yeah before they might before they might have been very sympathetic now they’re probably less sympathetic you know and those people who are die in the world defense jurors are probably going to be even more so so yeah it’s it’s crazy times with

[33:32] Bill i mean the courtroom i mean luckily luckily for trial attorneys see there’s always a negative stimulus that pushes the person it’s not just alcohol because there’s plenty of sober people on airplanes that have gotten in fights although alcohol is a problem there too but but not nearly as much as at the at the ballpark or or the football but the negative thing is okay well if i’m in the stadium is okay there are people around me a i’m sitting really close to people but b i don’t like a lot of these people because they’re wearing a different jersey so that’s my negative stimulus i’m going to lose my mind and then the airplane it’s the mask wearing and people you know um sitting too close to one another and and then the the fly to this came out the article this week hey maybe all the fights are because flight attendants are not being particularly nice to people and you got people there’s always a negative stimulus that i think is really the the trigger i don’t think alcohol is the trigger because this alcohol is not a trigger it’s not it’s a very very different role but there are several triggers like that the courtroom in the deliberation room i think purposely doesn’t have those triggers right it’s a very controlled environment really designed to limit emotion in in a way to keep everybody um on the same page and so that’s why at least with the mock trials we’ve done and talking to um attorneys and things like that um um i haven’t seen anything crazy in a deliberation or courtroom environment i in fact i mean i’ll go out there and go out on a limb for now knock on wood um a lot of what i’m seeing right now is exactly what i saw in 2018 2017 2016. i it there’s not a i don’t see a tremendous difference in that controlled environment i go out to the grocery store i see clerks getting knocked out i see road road rage is tripled um fights on airplanes i go to a stadium and i gotta have my head on a swivel those environments have completely changed i mean i think i think it’s just the benefit of the court system and having bailiffs with guns probably helps too just keeps everybody in a very controlled state of mind um and i have no reason yet to see that changing going forward why don’t you close up on that

[36:20] Steve i think you’re right i mean one of the biggest things it’s a difference in environment you know you and i have had this conversation before where i can see litigation coming from these from these stadiums because security is not doing their job right i mean how many times when you i were talking the other day i was talking about a situation where one of the fans was yelling up at at the securities and hey do your job these guys are fighting down here do your job uh so i think to your point in the courtroom right you got to judge everybody always the refers to the judge and they’re very respectful to the judge you got the bailiff you have a lot of different aspects

[36:55] Bill yeah there’s authority authority and accountability yeah right authority accountability

[37:00] Steve yeah there’s not that accountability anywhere else you knock someone out at the grocery store it goes up on twitter you walk away and nothing happens after that

[37:07] Bill i know and that’s and that’s why people post the stuff they post they do what they do i mean go to a nightclub right and there’s there’s five bouncers that weigh 275 and bench 500 pounds you ain’t screwing around you’re not doing it right but you know you go to a stadium you know and you got you know eight rent a cops when you probably need 25 in one section no one’s scared of them no accountability i don’t know but we will continue to discuss the human behavior aspects because these are jury eligible people but um cool why don’t you close this out steve thanks for thanks for setting this up i think things are we’re approaching 100 we’re approaching the end of the year um and i think um i think there’s going to be i think i think the world’s going to continue to change in the into 2022 and we’re just gonna have to keep um adjusting by doing our jury research uh to keep you know honing our witness training skills because uh it’s a pretty fast-moving world out there

[38:13] Steve no i agree yep always adapting we’re always trying to get more information gather information tweak you know tweak things make adjustments like you said learn from jurors learn from attorneys learn from everything that’s going on around us just to make us better at our job so that we can help our clients make better informed decisions and have them have more you know beneficial outcomes so with that i’ll sign off and say thanks for joining us this has been another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences Inc.