Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. and Steve Wood, Ph.D. discuss the most common mistakes attorneys make during litigation touching on jury research, voir dire, direct examination, openings, and closings.
Bill and Steve stress that in jury research, confirmation bias is a major pitfall and attorneys often dismiss unfavorable results instead of using them to prepare for trial. They also highlight how waiting too long to conduct research is another mistake, as early testing reveals vulnerabilities before they become entrenched. In voir dire, many attorneys aren’t vulnerable with jurors and also don’t go deep enough with their questioning. Bill and Steve argue that opening up personally with jurors and going deeper on their responses helps identify problematic jurors and builds credibility.
On direct examination, they caution against long, unfocused testimony, irrelevant background questions, and overly broad prompts that cause witnesses to ramble. Openings should avoid lengthy introductions and dense slide decks, instead focusing on clear, simple storytelling that doesn’t overload jurors cognitively. Lastly, in closing arguments, they remind defense counsel that the goal is not to change minds but to equip favorable jurors with tools for deliberations.
Full Episode Transcript
[00:15] Bill Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. Dr. Bill Kanasky, Dr. Steve Wood coming at you live from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is game day live on Franklin Street. Live on Franklin Street. It is 70 what? 76 77 degrees. Absolutely beautiful. We’ve been up and down uh Franklin Street here in Chapel Hill all day. Um spending ridiculous amounts of money on UNC gear. Uh and food and drinks and everything’s uh going good. We have a a big 8:00 kickoff tonight and thought uh we would do a uh do a podcast here from Chapel Hill. This is a first the first podcast from Chapel Hill.
[00:58] Steve It is. It is. Um, what better time though on a big Monday night football game?
[01:03] Bill So, it’s Monday Night Football. Bill Belichick in the house. We just saw Lawrence Taylor. Lawrence Taylor’s on Franklin Street. Uh, we didn’t bother him because we’re good people. Uh, rumors, strong rumors of a Michael Jordan appearance. Steve, what do you think about that?
[01:17] Steve Pretty excited. And I think we had the conversation before that as it relates to North Carolina, there’s probably fewer big names than Michael Jordan and he just doesn’t appear at too many of them. But he should be here tonight though, word on the street.
[01:29] Bill Yeah. So, we’re going to crank out a quick uh podcast today. We may be interacting like we’re literally right outside the hotel uh near the sidewalk on Franklin Street. So, we may have to be interacting with a few of the locals here. Uh there uh TCU fans have shown up.
[01:43] Steve Yes, they’ve traveled well. A lot a lot of purple. We saw a confused fan earlier. Purple TCU shirt, North Carolina blue hat. Not sure what was going on there, but yeah, but I uh what a beautiful day.
[01:54] Bill It’s going to be a beautiful night for football. However, we have uh let’s see. We still got 5 hours before kickoff. This is—Wow, we have to kill some time. So, podcast it is. Um let’s do we’re going to we’re going to call this the mistakes the common mistakes podcast. I get a lot of questions about like where do you see mistakes here, where do you see mistakes there, common mistakes, Steve? First one I’m going to throw at you. Uh this is um we talked about this earlier today. What are the common mistakes with jury research and confirmation bias? Now, Steve, this is a it’s a massive problem and I know you have some war stories. We can’t obviously we’re not going to say the who’s who on that but we talk it a little bit about some of the recent cases where there’s a question you know about liability about damages you do the research and oftentimes the research does not fit the way you want it to fit talk a little bit about like the challenges with that.
[02:55] Steve Yeah, I mean I think when we’re doing the research a lot of times the attorneys or the clients come in with the perception of this is a defend defensible case. We have a really good liability defense in this and they’re really strong all bought in. The problem is the jurors tell you otherwise and it ends up being one of those situations where maybe you’re going to get some sort of split on the apportionment, but the likelihood of having a zero percentage or a full defense verdict are are slim to none. And then it ends up being a really big mental battle because everybody thinks it’s a winnable case and then the jurors are telling you that your best case outcome maybe is a 50/50 or a 60/40 split. And that’s really difficult for clients.
[03:36] Bill And it may not be the answers you want to hear. And then dealing with that’s an issue. And we’ve had some clients that have uh maybe shocked or in disbelief or uh even worse they start to blame us or blame blame the jurors, going, “Yeah. you got 24 crazy people.” Well, no we didn’t. This is just how you know how they see the case. Uh and there’s there’s issues.
And now another thing is with these types of cases much of the time which is not good is the case has been around for two three sometimes four years and the attorneys, the clients, they’ve been in this file. They have strong feelings about this case. And when the jurors don’t come back the way you’re expecting, I mean, I think it’s a good sign.
[04:19] Steve Yeah.
[04:20] Bill That you’re finding out, hey, maybe this case isn’t quite as, you know, it’s not gonna um, you know, we’re not just going to steamroll these guys at trial. Uh, we have some issues here. Talk about a little bit about the importance of identifying maybe some of the vulnerabilities you have that were hidden and how you should be embracing those, not arguing with them.
[04:42] Steve Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things that, you know, I’ve had recently is where we’re doing focus groups and I’m eliciting a lot of things that are against our case, you know, and I end up getting some push back of saying, you know, you haven’t really identified anything that helps our case. All you keep doing is pulling out or at least feeding off of the jurors rather than me trying to argue with jurors the counterpoints and that. I’m actually pulling out the things that are bad for our case. And the reason why I’m doing it though is if we know what the bad parts of the case are, then you can either inoculate jurors or figure out a way to defend against it versus just saying and ignoring the strengths of that case and just trying to prop up your defenses. I think there’s some value in finding out really how bad your case could be or really what’s resonating with those jurors.
[05:23] Bill And again, how many times have we said this, Steve, you don’t have to wait 3 years to figure this out. You really, really don’t. And now that we’re on the subject, I’m I should just go on my rant. How many times have you heard, “Well, wait, we can’t do jury research until our experts, you know, reports come in.” That’s not true, right?
That’s not true. You’ve got plenty, you know, whether it’s dash cam, surveillance video, police reports, medical records, you’ve got plenty to test early and then you can retest down the road, you know, once experts— In fact, um I mean, how many how many jury studies have you done in your career percentage-wise? Ballpark where the expert witnesses made a massive difference in the case.
[06:05] Steve Not a large portion.
[06:07] Bill Under 10%.
[06:08] Steve Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s fair.
[06:09] Bill Both sides typically have decent experts. They say the polar opposite of each other. They’re typically well credentialed. I don’t see that moving the needle with the exception of um if you do have an expert that may that’s maybe never testified before and they don’t do a good job or they’re they’re not credentialed or um you know we’ve seen experts get attacked for doing too much plaintiff or too much defense work but overall I mean the the kind of and I don’t think this is a myth. I think it’s true in theory on these cases most experts cancel each other out.
[06:44] Steve No, I agree. And I think a lot of other times we we run into is we know what the experts are going to say, right? So, we’re saying, “Well, we don’t have the expert reports. We don’t have the expert deposition, so we can’t do it.” How many times have you and I say, “Well, do you know what the experts are going to say?” And we always get a yes, we know what they’re going to say. Well, then you can do it without actually necessarily having the testimony because you know what they’re going to say.
[07:05] Bill Absolutely. Okay. I think we beat this issue to death. Um, it’s really filling up on Franklin Street. Pretty good here, Steve. We’re right across— We’re at the uh the— talk to the, this is very important for our our our business travelers or our clients that are traveling. Uh let’s do a little promo here for uh the Graduate Hotel uh by the Hilton and kind of what how they theme these things. It’s pretty cool.
[07:28] Steve Yeah. No, it’s very cool. They they have one they only have a few of them, but this one is fully decked out with UNCC. I mean, they got a UNC basketball court uh on the third floor where you can actually like a little on the carpet. Um, they have a big inflatable and as soon as you walk in, which uh I know I’m trying to convince you to get one for your house and put it in your front yard.
[07:46] Bill I could just steal this one.
[07:48] Steve There you go.
[07:53] Bill The headboards to the uh to the beds are uh basketball backboards.
[07:54] Steve Yeah, I got some Michael Jordan paraphernalia.
[07:55] Bill Got some Michael Jordan stuff here. I kind of want to I want to steal most of the stuff from the hotel, which is which is probably generally um generally a problem. So, of course, they they just turned the music on behind us, so we’re going to have to deal with some music, but that’s fine. Okay, next topic. Remember, it’s all about mistakes. All about mistakes. Uh, number two. Boy, we could go on. This could be a whole podcast, too. Common mistakes. I can’t believe we’re going to bring this up again. Common mistakes you see in voir dire. Oh, we could just talk for the next hour about this. I I’m going to I’m going to start here. Let’s keep it big picture because we could get really nitty-gritty with this. I think the— This is the uh Chapel Hill International Speedway all of a sudden. Um, I think one of the biggest fundamental mistakes is in jury selection, wanting to avoid your— Go Heels. Let’s go. Got to get it done. Got to get it done. Let’s go. Sorry about that. See, this is the I think it’s I like interacting with the with the community, Steve.
[08:52] Steve We’re men of the people.
[08:54] Bill We’re men of the people. We’re all about community. Um, now, what was I saying? Oh, avoiding your case weaknesses. There’s this um I’m going to poison the well. I’m going to poison the jury. I don’t want to talk. No, I think you talk about things like, you know, if it’s a high damages case, talk about high damages. If it’s a case where you have a responsibility issue, well, talk about responsibility, get it out there because you’re going to see a lot of visceral reactions uh from this stuff. And I see a lot of attorneys, they want to ask the where do you get your news sources and uh you know, what TV shows do you want? I’m like, what are you doing? Stop it. Um, you could talk um you could talk about your case weaknesses, and I think that’s where you’re going to really find out where jurors are because you’re going to have some jurors that again visceral reactions where they’re going to be pretty negative.
[09:42] Steve Yeah.
[09:43] Bill Which is what you’re trying to expose. You’re going to have others that actually don’t care. Right. And I think bringing that stuff up, but I think there’s this myth, this is a myth that by bringing up my case weaknesses and jury selection, I’m going to get the jurors like I’m poisoning the well. Talk about that.
[09:59] Steve Yeah. I mean, why my why why wouldn’t you want to get those thoughts and opinions out early in voir dire so you can make decisions based upon it? Why do why would you want to find out later that they had a visceral reaction to something while they’re in the jury box? Um, and I’m always a big proponent of fronting those negative facts. The other thing, too, is, you know, the kind of the idea of stealing thunder or fronting the the negatives is that when jurors hear about them too, they’re they’re less inflamed by it or they’re less surprised about it because they’ve already heard about it.
[10:26] Bill They’re it’s they’re desensitized. So this is actually a really good thing. So I think that’s one of the key mistakes um in voir dire. The other mistake in voir dire which is again it’s hard to it’s like I can’t write a paper about this cuz I like I have to demonstrate it is the lack of a workup to the question you really want to ask. Like you can’t just go on there and go okay question number one this. Question number two this. No, you got to set it up right? You got to set it up. And sometimes I think you know using a we’ve talked about this in the podcast. you know, using a personal story or talking about where hey, you know, maybe you know, because some people because you want to test like um you know, people that jump to conclusions pretty quickly, right? Well, there’s going to be bad jurors for the defense, but you could tell a story to say, listen, you know, um I had a recent example where I jumped to a conclusion and I was wrong. And the reason why was I didn’t wait till I had all the information, you know, and then once I had all the information, I was like, oh man, I I screwed up. Has anybody ever done that recently? Right. Now and then you’re setting it up for the now how about this case, right? You’re going to be, you know, you there’s two sides of this case. And what if you make what if you make the same mistake like you did the other day like you were just saying, you know what, that wouldn’t be fair now, would it? Right. And you could, it’s a way to work up to the question cuz if you just rattle off questions down a list, I think you’re going to miss out a lot.
[11:49] Steve Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we said before, too, is normalizing the mistakes, right? And normalizing the behavior, whereas make people think there’s something wrong with them or they’re doing something bad when they make these decisions. But but basically to say this is decisions that people make or errors that mistakes that people make all the time so that people feel a little bit more comfortable saying, “Yeah, I’ve made that mistake, too.” Rather than trying to say, “Oh, no. I never make that mistake.” When you know full well that you have.
[12:13] Bill Yeah, absolutely. By the way, did you just see the TCU fan jaywalk? The the Chapel Hill authorities. They’re they’re on East Franco Street where all you know that’s where all the—But you know this this TCU fan just jaywalked right in front of us. There’s like no accountability. And by the way, he almost got hit by a car. saving him. So, I mean, we almost just witnessed a claim right here. You and I could have been deposed as witnesses in this case.
[12:35] Steve Well, safety was obviously not his top priority in the moment.
[12:39] Bill Now, why this girl’s wearing a Buffalo Bill shirt, I have no idea in Chael—I don’t understand that. We’ve seen some weird stuff today, but you know, you get that in the college town. All right. Are we moving on from I think we’re moving on from jury selection. Okay. So, that there’s common mistakes. This is a good one. Most common mistakes made on direct examination. So, you’re getting—So, you you got your your defense witness up there at defense counsel and you’re asking all your open-ended questions. Now, is the time to explain. Yeah. I see I see a lot of mistakes here, Steve, with number one, going too long.
[13:16] Steve Yeah.
[13:17] Bill You don’t want to keep your own witness on the stand for hours. It’s just I’ve seen, so, there’s an issue with being on too long. And then also it’s almost like the opening statement stuff. It’s like it’s all these like you’re kind of screwing around with like way too much background and jurors are like half asleep. So you you blow the first 15 minutes, you know, where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? And then jurors are half asleep. And then when you get to the real questions, they’re they’re half asleep, right? Um I I would I would argue that if on direct examination, uh I think you go right I think you can go right to the heart of it, right?
[13:54] Steve Yeah. And I think one of the other things though too to be cognizant of in that when you’re doing your direct, I mean I want to get your thoughts on this as far as how much, you know, do you want to give your witness an open-ended question that leads them to have to provide 20 to 25 second responses or should you do them in short bite-sized—
[14:11] Bill 25 seconds? Try try try two minutes. I mean, witnesses don’t shut up. So, yeah. So, that’s a great mistake that’s commonly made is you’re asking your witness questions that are so open. But, here we go. Chapel Hill Speedway.
[14:26] Steve Yeah, buddy.
[14:29] Bill Is that the same guy?
[14:30] Steve Yeah, I think it is.
[14:31] Bill This is like the NHRA drag racing here on Franklin Street. Um, so if you’re asking these wide-open questions, right, what are you going to get? You’re going to get wide open answers, and your witness is going to be all over the place. So, I think it’s something when you’re I think it’s the responsibility of the defense attorney to author these questions in the way to get these bite-sized nuggets. I mean, talk a little bit about again, we talked about this a million times. It’s worth repeating. Why? Because nobody listens. Juror attention span.
[15:02] Steve Very short.
[15:03] Bill You got what people what do people do all day? They tweet. They text message. It’s a sentence maybe two. You ever get a long text? I can’t read a long. You send me a— You never send me a long text. My wife sends me a three paragraph text. I don’t even read it. I just go to the I can’t I can’t deal with it. Well, jurors cannot deal with with long elaborate detailed answers, right? It’s just it’s it’s just it’s neuropsychologically impossible.
[15:28] Steve And I think one of the other things that I see too is a lot of times when you answer those very or ask those very open-ended questions or very wide open general vague questions, the witness doesn’t really know what you’re trying to ask them either. Like I know you’re trying to hit a point. The witness doesn’t know what point you’re trying to hit, though.
[15:42] Bill Yeah, it’s um it’s tough. So, I think there’s some things that could be done. Um but here’s the here’s the problem that I see, and all these problems originate from the same thing. You, I think all attorneys learn from their mentors.
[15:57] Steve Yeah.
[15:58] Bill And there was a time in the place where your attention span was different because you didn’t have all this technology, right? Uh the brain has evolved and so maybe the way you learned it is not the way it it works now. So having the ability to make adjustments, but you know, you’re talking to an attorney that’s been trying cases for 20 or 30 years. I think it’s hard for, you know, old dog new tricks. I don’t know.
[16:21] Steve No, I I agree. And I actually want to ask you one question too though that you know what are your thoughts on some witnesses where you know they come up there and it’s maybe it’s a case where there’s a catastrophic event and the attorney wants to ask the key witness whether it’s the corporate rep or the named defendant about is there anything that you want to say or any sort of uh remorse that you want to express like what are your thoughts on those? I have a pretty strong opinion about that, but what are your thoughts about doing that?
[16:46] Bill Yeah, funny enough, there’s been a lot of motions in limine lately on that where the plaintiff attorneys filing the motion saying, “I don’t want this witness to be able to discuss anything about remorse or any apology or anything like that.” Um, well, here’s the thing. I I this can vary from case to case and depending on, you know, are you admitting liability or not? You’re fighting liability and you want to you want your witness to say, “Yeah, this is a terrible tragedy. We all feel terrible here at company ABC. And at the same time, you know, we feel we acted appropriately.” Um, it’s a tight rope that you’re walking. I like testing this at the jury level to see if that’s going to blow up in your face, but I think it’s something you need to be you need to be careful with. But here’s what I do know. There’s a reason why plaintiff attorneys are filing motions in limine to try to keep that out cuz I think they’re testing this, and it may be working. Meaning you get defense witnesses expressing um again not not um saying they’re guilty but saying hey you know this is a terrible tragedy we feel remorseful showing compassion I think the plaintiff attorneys want to keep that out.
[17:51] Steve Yeah and I think if you do end up allowing to do it though I think it always goes back to what I’ve said all the time is to be genuine about it versus feeling like it’s a forced something that you’re trying to do to manipulate the jury though to try to drive down your responsibility because then if it does come in a savvy plan attorney is going to turn around and make an issue of it and point it out to the jurors.
[18:12] Bill Absolutely. Wow. So, anyway, beautiful day. Beautiful day in Chapel Hill. Um, again, way too many purple shirts here with these T these TCU fans, but I think so far, we talked to a few of them in the lobby today. These these are very nice people. They’re not like Michigan fans. How would you compare TCU fans to Michigan fans?
[18:31] Steve Oh, not not even close. This is not even close. No, I’d rather give me a 10 TCU fans over one Michigan fan.
[18:38] Bill Yeah, I know. Okay, we gotta keep this podcast going. Okay, let me go to my list here, Steve. Common mistakes. Common mistakes. Common mistakes. We covered direct exam. We covered voir dire. Okay, last one, which again I I talk about this every week pretty much is the uh uh most common mistakes in opening statement. Oh god. Again, this full podcast here, right? But um again, it’s it’s similar to the direct exam and stuff. It’s all jury intentions, man. It’s the go it’s the going way too long. It’s not getting right to the right to the point. It’s all these, you know, ridiculous. It’s like your introduction to your opening. It’s like warm-up act, right? It’s like the warm-up act. Now, and by the way, it’s, you know, Pantera opening up for Metallica, that’s one thing. But when you take 10 minutes of your defense opening and again, you’re thanking the jury. You’re you’re you’re quoting the Bill of Rights. You’re talking about the Constitution. You’re telling jurors the purpose of an opening statement. Where are some other ones? I mean, it’s just the those are pretty, the most egregious ones, you tell some story from childhood with some moral behind the story. The jurors are looking at you like what in the world is wrong with you? Like what what is wrong with you? You got to get right to the action. And I think there’s some I I think there’s some uh let’s see get away from cognit— or so get away from confirmation bias. I think there’s a little cognitive dissonance there where defense attorneys kind of want to do this warm-up act. I think you do your warm-up act in voir dire. That’s where you get comfy. That’s where you introduce yourself.
[20:13] Steve Agreed.
[20:14] Bill But you know, you do this stuff during the opening. It’s you’re killing this valuable time.
[20:17] Steve You know, actually I want to talk a little bit. We haven’t talked about it as much on the podcast. I don’t think about, you know, we talked a lot about openings and not and going right at it. But what are your thoughts about closings though because we know jurors have pretty much made up their minds by the time it gets to closing. So, you’re not really going to convince anybody.
[20:34] Bill Nope.
[20:35] Steve But giving them the ammunition because I can tell you that a recent case that I worked on, this is a good one. This is a very good story.
[20:41] Bill Tell tell the story cuz I thought this was a highly effective technique. Go Heels.
[20:47] Steve Uh, so I mean in this situation, in this case, I mean, we were not feeling quite as great about the case. But in closing arguments though, I mean, it was it was a masterful closing argument where the defense attorney, well, I won’t, like I say, I won’t name him, but did he’s a good friend. He’s been he’s been on the podcast.
[21:04] Bill He has.
[21:05] Steve But he did a really good job of kind of giving the ammunition to the jurors that they needed in the deliberation room. But the other thing he did was posed a lot of questions to jurors.
[21:15] Bill it’s a highly effective technique.
[21:16] Steve Yeah, you know, asking them like, “Why was the expert just now seeing certain pictures before trial? Why is, if they were a safety expert? Why hadn’t they seen those before trial started?” And just other these kind of questions that were more rhetorical, but at least placing it and playing it in the mind of the jurors of unanswered questions or questions that they should be asking in the deliberation room to say, “Yeah, that was a good point. Why didn’t he see these pictures? Why didn’t they do this? Why didn’t they do that?” And you know, rather than assuming that the jurors picked up on it, but just giving them the questions they could ask. Ask yourself this. Ask yourself that.
[21:49] Bill That was very good. Right. And not to. Now, you were there for that. Um, I was not. Also talk about the and again, the attorneys just racing through their presentation. Like you got to use silence. You got to let some of this stuff sink in. Use some repetition. I really like the whole I think silence is a deadly weapon both in opening and closing to really let something sink in. And I don’t think it’s used enough. Not.
[22:12] Steve Yeah. And in this one too, the the plaintiff attorney was a lot more he was a fast talker. He he blew through a lot of things. He hit on a lot of points. He was kind of a little bit chaotic. And our defense attorney was very slow. He was very methodical. He made his points clear. So, I think blasting through it is another key thing. I mean, like I said, it was it was a one of the best closing arguments I had seen. And the case turned out well. And I think I think a lot of it kind of hinged on the way he delivered that closing.
[22:42] Bill Yeah. Let’s finish up with this because this is a mistake both with opening and closing. Can you talk a little bit about the use of visuals every so I’m still I’m getting sent PowerPoint decks for opening that are 71 slides. I’m going what are you doing? Like what are you giving a DRRi presentation for 90 minutes? Like what are you doing? 91 slides and then each slide has like 8 to 10 bullet points with full sentences and I’m looking at the attorney like I know you put a lot of work into this but hey no juror’s reading all of this and the right way to do this is to put something brief in a bullet point and then you’re going to discuss that and get into you don’t put your you don’t put what you’re gonna here let’s do it this way you don’t put what you’re going to say on the slide right you put the topic or the theme and then you then you talk and you keep it up there. What I’m seeing is like bullet points with sentences and then they just read off of the like I don’t think it’s a very appealing presentation for a jury.
[23:44] Steve No, it’s not. And it comes across like you’re not prepared and that you’re basically using your PowerPoint as a crutch because you can’t actually remember what you were going to say and that you’re going to just rely on what your the words on your PowerPoint are. You know so I’m a big proponent as you know you and I when we give speeches it’s either pictures only that are going to the topic that we want to talk about or to your point couple words on a bullet point that that’s going to feed into what you’re talking about that way the the the jurors or the audience members are listening and focusing on what you have to say rather than looking at your PowerPoint trying to read it and listen at the same time
[24:16] Bill Less is more and you don’t want to it’s cognitive load right that’s the whole thing the more work you give these jurors to do the more their brain struggles, right? So, keep —So, decrease the number of slides, number one. If you’re going to use bullet points, that’s fine, but like you’re talking three to four per slide and maybe a couple words each, right?
[24:39] Steve Right.
[24:40] Bill And not putting all this text, they cannot handle it. But, dude, I see this every week. Every single week. I mean, I wrote the and I we just I I I republished the opening statement paper after update. The first one I wrote was like 12 years ago, 2014, something like that.
[24:59] Steve Yeah, about 11, 12 years.
[25:01] Bill And I had to republish it and it’s all in there and but no one no one listens as we as we as we know all too well. So, okay, we covered some mistakes. Uh good podcast. Let’s um should we talk about the sweatpants incident here on Franklin Street?
[25:15] Steve Well, let’s go ahead and do it. It’s going to come up at some point.
[25:17] Bill It’s going to come up at some point. Let’s Let’s lay it down. So, we’re we’re jumping from uh UNC apparel shop from apparel shop to apparel shop. And you had been really looking for a pair of UNC sweatpants and they’re nowhere to be found. I mean, how many stores have we been to? How many and we we and we don’t we don’t see them. So, the last store we went in, this is this is roughly what, an hour ago?
[25:39] Steve Yeah.
[25:40] Bill Uh you finally find some Carolina blue. You went Carolina blue. There are some sweatpants there, but like they’re gray with the UNC logo. you want the Carolina blue sweatpants. You found some. And I said, “Hey, dude.” He’s like, “Are you gonna fit?” I’m like, “You got to try them on. You got to try them on.” And so, you’re in line to try them on and I was going to let you take over the story cuz I totally bailed you out or bailed, my son bailed you out.
[26:01] Steve Well, I mean, for the record, I mean, I originally
[26:05] Bill Here we go. Here we go.
[26:06] Steve Yeah. Originally said, they’re over by the women’s section, right? And I’m like I said, Bill, these have to be women’s, right? They have to be women’s sweatpants. We’re like, I don’t know. I’m like, I’m looking. It wasn’t on the tag.
[26:14] Bill We did look at the tag.
[26:15] Steve Yeah. I’m looking at the tag. I’m looking at this. I’m looking at that. I said these have to be women’s. They have to be. And we thought, you know, whatever. So, I I grab a pair of large, right? And I I hold them up and I said, “You think these are women?” And you say, “Only if it’s a basketball player, right?” You said—
[26:32] Bill They were long. Yeah.
[26:33] Steve So, I’m thinking, “All right, well, you know, maybe maybe these are men’s.” Um, so I go to get in line and then sure enough, after I’ve stood there probably about 5 minutes and, you know, I’m texting my son, “Hey, get ready. I’m going to, you know, take a picture, see what you,”
[26:49] Bill I called the sales lady over and I’m like, “Hey, are these men’s or those are women’s.” So, I look at my son. I’m like, “God, those are I go, we got to I got we got to get Steve.” I go, “We got to bail him out.” And my son, my 24-year-old son, who’s which, by the way, I invited him on the podcast. He’s up in the room. Didn’t want to be on the podcast. That’s very disappointing. Um my son wanted to throw you right under the bus. He’s like, “No, let him try them on. Let him try them on. I want him to try on girls women’s sweatpants. That’s what I want. That’s what I want.” Hey, no. What did I do? Your podcast co-host. I bailed you out. I call you. I I pulled the rip cord on that thing. Got you out of there. That’s good.
Okay, game predictions, Steve. We got Bill Belichick coming back from the NFL, six-time Super Bowl champion, first year in Chapel Hill. His and why he’s here, his father coached here as an assistant defensive coordinator in the 1950s. And Bill Belichick grew up coming to Kenan Stadium. Um the spread is TCU minus three and a half. So, you got TCU as favorites. We have no earthly idea what to expect from North Carolina. TCU is a good team. I don’t know. I got I know where my my heart is, but I also know where my brain is on this one.
[27:51] Steve My my my brain on this one unfortunately says it’s that we’re going to lose by 10 or 14.
[27:58] Bill That’s I I think that’s that’s what you would think. I think that’s what you would think. I think the Belichick factor is the real deal. I think uh he’s going to coach up these kids. I think you’re going to see some solid fundamentals, but you know, will the— You know, this is a transfer portal team. Uh I don’t know anybody on this team. They’re all transfers.
[28:18] Steve We’d be learning the uh roster tonight together.
[28:21] Bill Yeah. And uh you know, how how how I mean, how much time do you have? What, a month to get ready for the first game? Yeah. You had spring practice. I don’t know. Uh my heart my heart let’s go with my heart first. My heart says um we make this game a grinder. You got the Bill Belichick offense. You know, going five to seven yards a pop, eating clock, keeping TCU’s offense off the field. On defense, Bill Belichick is a six-time Super Bowl coach. He’s a defensive mastermind. Uh they can’t scout us because we have no game film because it’s a brand-new team. Uh and maybe we we make this interesting. My heart is saying 24-23 UNC, but I think my I think my brain’s going more of a 27-17 TCU.
[29:06] Steve I think I was going to be more that or 27-14. I think something something like that. I feel like it’s going to be we’re going to be a lot of hype. Everything’s kind of electric right now. It’s going to be even more electric and then by about halftime everybody’s going to be let down.
[29:21] Bill Yeah. Well, you’re we got to figure out a lot about this team in the first half. Uh but you know, you never know. There’s been some massive upsets this weekend already. Uh time by the time this posts, we’ll be in week three or four of the college football season. But um good times, Steve. Uh thanks for coming to Chapel Hill. Uh to our listeners, thank you so much. Leave us a review. Leave us a rating on the podcast.
[29:44] Steve Like, subscribe on YouTube.
[29:46] Bill Yeah, do something please. And uh we uh we really really appreciate the audience. Thank you for participating in another edition of Litigation Psychology Podcast as the Harley. Is that Harley?
[29:55] Steve Yeah. Harley.
[29:56] Bill Good way to end. As the Harley goes by, go Tar Heels. Litigation Psychology Podcast. We’ll see you next time.
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