Episode #87 – Attorney Credibility

Steve Wood, Ph.D. talks about what he’s been witnessing lately with attorney presentations in mock trials and focus groups, how those attorneys are being perceived by mock jurors, and the impact that has on jurors’ impressions of the attorney’s credibility. Steve shares the research and insights he’s collected on attorney credibility and the impact attorney credibility has on case outcomes. Persuasiveness and credibility are impacted by likeability, similarity, and physical attractiveness, plus trust. Steve offers suggestions on what younger attorneys, in particular, can do to become better and strong presenters and exude more credibility. He also talks about approachability and authoritativeness and the importance of finding the balance between the two to establish trustworthiness and credibility with jurors.

Full Episode Transcript

[00:05] Steve Welcome to the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences Inc. Dr. Steve Wood and I’m here by myself, solo podcast. No guest today, and the reason why I wanted to do this is because now that I’ve gotten back out with COVID slowing down, getting more mock trials in person and, you know, more normal trials as the courts are starting to open back up, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that for some attorneys—and it more often than not as younger attorneys—is the presentations that are given to the juries are are just bad. I mean, there’s really no way about it, and they they end up not being very good. They end up being very distracting to jurors, and jurors love nothing more than to start off the focus groups at the end and say, you know, they just have to get it off their chest. They just have to tell you and let you know how bad that attorney was.

Now, before I dive into it, I’m sure some of you are saying, “Steve, what the heck do you know about attorneys and attorney credibility because you’re not an attorney?” Fair enough, but I’ve been doing this long enough, I’ve been around enough attorneys, and I’ve spent about 18 years researching, reading, writing, talking about attorney credibility. It was my master’s thesis, it was my doctoral dissertation on the topic. I’ve given CLEs on the topic, so this is really a topic that’s very near and dear to me about looking at credibility, looking at it from an attorney’s perspective and how the credibility of attorneys can influence and impact the way jurors perceive the evidence.

Now I know there’s probably some listeners out there and some attorneys out there that say, “It’s not about the messenger, it’s about the message, right? It’s about the case facts. Who cares if I put my glasses on and take them off 15 times in the middle of opening statements? What does that matter about anything? You know, if it distracts you, just you should look past it because you shouldn’t worry about what I’m doing, worry about what I’m saying.” Well, I mean, I think the truth of the matter is we know that that’s not true. I mean, if it didn’t matter who the messenger was, why would we have celebrity endorsements? Why would we have attractive models selling food and selling cars and all the different aspects that have beautiful people on? Why would you see the quote-unquote man on the street in those infomercials who are giving their customer testimonials to say how much they love the product?

[02:31] Steve The reason why that is is because from a persuasion perspective, those are absolutely the things that we look at. Both likability, similarity, and physical attractiveness—these are all things that are tools that are used to increase the persuasiveness of the messenger in order to increase the effectiveness and increase the chances that the message gets landed home from the actual person who’s seeing and perceiving the message.

Before we get started though on that too, I also want to be clear on what I’m referring to when I’m talking about attorney credibility. And if you look at the academic literature, the academic literature talks about expertise. So, do you know what you’re talking about? Can you actually put together a coherent argument, a coherent narrative when you’re talking? And then the other one being trustworthiness. Okay, are you are you a trustworthy individual? Can people believe what you’re saying to be true? Well, obviously for attorneys, a lot of times you know the old joke is: how do you know an attorney is lying? They’re moving their mouth, right? So you’re already, from an attorney’s perspective, you already have an uphill battle with that trustworthiness. So where you can land on is the expertise.

Another element of credibility—and you know if you had asked me this probably five, six years ago, I would have given you more of the “this is the academic belief” you know about what it is—but I think another aspect that gets brought into and talked about is likability. I think there’s something to be said about likability. There’s something to be said about people, you know, just seeing you as someone, “Hey, I’d go have a beer with that guy.” You know, I’d rather just go out and talk to them a little bit because they seem like they’re approachable, they seem like somebody who would be cool to hang out with. So I’d say when we talk about credibility, not only going to talk about the academic aspect, but I think the more true life kind of realistic aspect of likability is another element of credibility.

[04:30] Steve So, from a young attorney’s perspective, a lot of times what ends up happening is they don’t have a lot of experience up in front of jurors. That’s why a lot of these presentations end up not going well is because maybe the mock trial is the first time they’ve ever actually been up in front of jurors. They’re nervous. They might be prepared on the case facts and then they might have scripted it out to what they want to say, but then when the time comes time, they’re stumbling, stammering, and “um” and “ah” and they’re shuffling their papers and they’re doing all these things that just become very, very distracting to the jurors.

And kudos though to those law firms and those senior partners who say, “You know what? I want this younger attorney to get an opportunity to present in front of jurors so that they can get some experience.” The problem is though, for the younger attorneys, I think there’s some aspects you can do on your own outside of that one time in the mock trial because that might be the one time that that partner gets a chance to see how you move and operate on your feet. And if you crash and burn, it’s not going to be a very good look.

So one of the things that I would recommend, one of the things that’s been helpful for me is I was there once and I actually got involved in Toastmasters which, you know, similar to the Dale Carnegie you know the public speaking, get it out and get in a public speaking group because that was where I learned in a more safe space about the “um”s and the “ah”s and the things that I was doing that was causing me to be an ineffective communicator. So it gave me an opportunity to learn in a group of like 10 people without any worry about whether or not my bosses were going to see it or anybody else was going to see the fact that i’m stumbling and bumbling. And then all they ended up seeing after the fact, right, was how well I presented, and it was all going back to Toastmasters.

[06:16] Steve So I would say to those younger attorneys: seek out those organizations that you can do. Now, it’s going to have to be something that you have to do after hours or, if you’re a law student, it’s going to be out to something you’re going to do outside of class. But if you think about it from a personal development, professional development perspective, it’s something that’s going to be—someone who’s going to be up in front of individuals speaking and talking—it’s going to be something that’s going to be very, very beneficial for you to do that. So I would encourage you to do that and that way, like I said, when it comes your time for the mock trial, you can hit it out of the park and you can gain a lot of favor both with the senior partners and your client as well.

One of the other things I’d recommend is there’s a lot of books out there you can read about credibility, and in there a lot some of them will talk about this dichotomy between authoritativeness and approachability. Okay, and that you can have too much one way or too much the other way, and too much either way causes a problem. If you’re if you’re too approachable, if you come across as if you’re giving a presentation and you’re walking around and you’re not dressed up for the moment, got your hands in your pocket and you’re just kind of trying to be cool and and not like you don’t have a care in the world, that is that ends up coming across as you not being serious and maybe it doesn’t look like you’re prepared or it doesn’t look like you’re actually into and engaged in the conversation that you’re being had. So that’s if you’re going too far an approachability side.

On the authoritative side, you might be the one who gets up there and you’re just really stern and you really act very strict and to the point and you’re not moving much when you’re talking and you’re doing these things that people are thinking, “Wow, okay, well this guy knows what he’s talking about, but sheesh, I don’t know if I’d want to have him at a dinner party. He’d probably be pretty boring or I’d be nervous to say anything around him for fear that, you know, he might get all uptight.” So you can go too far the other way.

[08:11] Steve What you talk about really is trying to find a happy medium, a balance of both of those. Okay, so from approachability standpoint, reach out and engage with your audience. Almost physically reach out as you’re talking, you know, and gauge eye contact, have good vocal tonation, you know, smile and do all these things to help bring in your audience so that your audience can come with you. If you think about it from an attorney’s perspective, a lot of you I’m sure have thought about and they’ve heard about the storytelling method and how as individuals we like to tell stories. That’s why you see all the time why we like to watch movies, why we listen to podcasts, why we read books—we like to hear stories. It’s also why when things happen, everybody always wants to say, “Well, why did that happen?” Right? Everybody wants to find a reason for why it happens because they want to tie up the loose ends, they want to piece together the puzzle to figure out what the story is.

Well, from an attorney’s perspective, you’re doing the same thing as you’re weaving the narrative of your case. Well, imagine if you were watching a movie and the movie was nothing but a bunch of jump scenes and jump cuts and you weren’t sure on what’s going on and, you know, convoluted messages and all these different things. Becomes really, really difficult to follow. That’s really what is happening when you’re an attorney presenting the case in a very “um,” “uh,” shuffling papers, looking down, and it’s not free-flowing and your jurors can’t follow where you’re going. So it’s—they can’t piece together the narrative. Well, you might have a good narrative there, you just told a bad story, not necessarily because the source material was bad is because how you presented it was really, really bad.

[09:50] Steve So we want to make sure that you reach out, engage your participants, engage your jurors. Make sure that they’re following along with you on that journey and that you get those healthy head nods and you get that eye contact and you get those mannerisms exuding from the jurors that they’re following along with you and they’re on the same page.

And then on the other side, when you talk about an authoritative stance, you know, what you want to do in that situation is keep good eye contact with people, right? Make sure that you’re being very looking around the room and being very cognizant of how things are being done and cognizant of how you’re being perceived, and using a more downward inflection in your responses and when you’re talking versus that… “This is the facts of the case” versus “This is the facts of the case,” right? You can see that there’s a difference in the intonation and how you’re speaking and how you’re ending your sentences.

So that’s how you can do that from an authoritative perspective, and then you can essentially have the best of both worlds so that you both look expert, that you have the expertise, you have that likability, and then once you have that, then comes along that trustworthiness. Then comes along the fact that jurors are more willing to say, “Okay, this attorney…” You know, the old adage that they’re lying when they’re talking, maybe maybe, but not for this person, right? I think I believe him. I I think he’s credible. I understand where he’s going and, you know what, I’m going to be more apt to listen, assimilate what he’s been saying, and really take his perspective versus the perspective of the other individual.

That’s all I got on that. Hopefully it’s helpful to both younger and more experienced attorneys. I’m happy to talk more about it. If you have questions, shoot me emails at swood@courtroomsciences.com. I have blogs, articles that I’ve written up on courtroomsciences.com if you want to talk more or look more at them. I encourage you to go to the website, check those things out. I’ll be back on another episode next time. I’ll have a guest. I appreciate you tuning in. We’ll see you next time.