Join us for the 2019 CATA Litigation Institute, Persuasively Presenting Damages at Trial, on April 12, 2019 from 12:30 – 4:00 at the Cleveland Ritz, with cocktails following.

You’ll earn 3 hours of CLE and hear from 3 masters of damages at trial:

Susan Petersen

Multi-million dollar settlements do not come unless the other side is afraid of trial, and they have good reason to be with Susan’s approach to digging into a case and getting results.  Damages are one area Susan excels with, as evidenced by the results she gets at trial. She has recovered more than $35 million for clients in the last three years alone. She has been a long-time CATA board member, was inducted into the International Society of Barristers, and has been selected as one of “Ohio’s Top 100 Trial Lawyers” by the National Association of Trial Lawyers every year since 2011.

Michael Jay Leizerman

Michael Jay Leizerman, author of “The Zen Lawyer: Winning with Mindfulness,” is a trial lawyer who has mastered the art of inspiring jurors in even the most conservative counties to return significant verdicts.  Michael has received record-breaking truck accident settlements and verdicts across the country: a $34 million Ohio settlement in 2014, a record $16 million Ohio wrongful death consortium-only verdict in 2013, and a $13.2 million Arizona wrongful death consortium-only verdict in 2012.

Gina Crawford, PH.D., J.D.

Gina M. Crawford is a practicing attorney and a licensed psychologist. Gina focuses her practice on litigation and trial consulting. She is particularly skilled in organizing the litigation timeline, developing trial themes and strategies, collaborating with demonstrative evidence teams, and preparing cases for mediations, arbitrations, and trials. Gina assists trial teams with jury selection, voir-dire, and courtroom observation. She also prepares witnesses to testify for grand jury investigations, depositions, and trials. She has testified as an expert witness and she understands how to teach effective courtroom presentation and communication.

Schedule:

Thank you to our Sponsor, SGS Planning!

Thank you to our sponsor for the Litigation Institute, including the after-party / cocktail reception, SGS Planning!

CEO Tom Stockett and Settlement Specialist Rimon Bebawi will be on hand to discuss how they can help structure settlements and attorney fees, and work with you and your firm to plan for your continued success.  Be sure to schedule a meeting with them or grab materials at the reception if you’re not already working with them.  Check out their information here.

Sign up now! #

Please join CATA for the 2015 Litigation Institute on Friday, April 24, 2015, from 8:00 am – 4:20 pm.  This year’s program is entitled “Hot Topics & Persuasive Techniques,” with a line-up of great topics and speakers.  See the Litigation Institute 2015 Brochure for the lineup and signup.

 Our morning topics include:

“Does the Affordable Care Act Affect or Limit Future Damages?”

The Affordable Care Act’s promise of universal health care has caused some defense attorneys to move to limit future damages to the cost of annual premiums.  Is there merit to these and related arguments defendants are starting to make in catastrophic injury cases?  Brenda M. Johnson, Esq. explores these and related arguments and provides tips for opposing them.

“Shhhh… Confidentiality Clauses in Settlement Agreements”

Can a defense attorney ethically stop you from talking about your recent, humongous settlement?  Can you at least get paid for your silence?  Brian N. Eisen, Esq. tackles these and other questions raised by confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements.

“Fighting Arbitration Clauses in Nursing Home Cases”

In the wake of Marmet Health Care Center, Inc. v. Brown, 132 S.Ct. 1201 (2012) and Hayes v. Oakridge Home, 122 Ohio St.3d 63 (2009, are arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts still assailable?  Nancy C. Iler, Esq. explores ways to defeat arbitration agreements signed by patients or their family members upon admitting the patient to the nursing home.

“College Athletes’ Rights to their Names, Images, and Likenesses and the O’Bannon v. NCAA Class Action Litigation”

The NCAA’s rules prohibit college athletes from receiving financial remuneration from their names, images, and likenesses (NILs).  Yet billions of dollars are made every year by the NCAA and its member bowls, colleges, and universities, who sell these NILs even though they never gain title to them.  Richard G. Johnson, Esq. discusses the O’Bannon v. NCAA class action litigation contesting this paradigm and provides insight as to the direction future litigation might take, as a slew of class actions are lining up to contest the exploitation of college athletes.

Our afternoon topic consists of a three hour interactive presentation:

Ben Sachs of The Landing Group is presenting on advanced communication techniques for managing clients & witnesses.

By special guest speaker, Ben Sachs, Esq., of The Landing Group, who is an adjunct professor at the University of Viriginia Law School.  His 3 hour interactive presentation is called:  “Adaptive Influence for Lawyers:  Advanced Communication Techniques for Managing Clients & Witnesses.”

Traditional public speaking focuses on crafting a message of broad appeal to a diverse audience; however, these principles start to break down when applied to an audience of one.  When managing a critical client or key witness, a skilled attorney must move beyond generic principles of persuasion and instead adopt a strategy of Adaptive Influence, carefully reading the other person and adapting the message and the delivery to land the point.

This seminar will teach you how to get inside the mind of another person and reach a deeper level of influence.  Ben Sachs will lead an interactive presentation exploring psychological, rhetorical, and behavioral models that explain how individuals connect with others and process information, allowing you to become a more persuasive, adaptable communicator.

You can earn 6 CLE credit hours for attending the full day seminar, which includes a Continental Breakfast and Buffet Lunch.  This year’s program will be held at the Club at Key Center in downtown Cleveland.  Members pay a flat rate of $199.00 — which, for 6 CLE credits and two meals is a fantastic deal!!! Non-members pay $249.00.

Here is the Litigation Institute 2015 Brochure with a registration form.  You can detach the form and mail it in, or fill it in on-line, or just email me with your registration information.

Hope to see you there!

This is an event you will not want to miss!  Registration materials will be available soon.  Please mark your calendars.

Cleveland Academy of Trial Attorneys

May 30, 2014

Story, Groups and Juries: Exploring New (and scary) Frontiers in the Courtroom

  We’ve all heard the importance of “telling a story”, but  when was the last time anyone helped teach you how?

This program will teach trial attorneys classic story structure and group formation as it relates to trial work, particularly in voir dire, opening and closing. It will be a working, on-your-feet program, utilizing techniques from improvisational acting, classic story telling and psychodrama. During the workshop you will:

*Learn the basic skeleton of the herocentric story

*Explore how the different herocentric roles (hero, villain, victim, mentor, trickster) apply to a trial

*Be introduced to some improv basics – the concept of “Yes, and…”

*Explore, in action, the story spine.

*Explore, in action, how to get a witness off the stand and set a scene in the courtroom

*Be introduced, through the action method, to some new frontiers in voir dire: How to really see who is in front of you; Can you “yes, and…” anything?

Faculty:

Carl Bettinger of Shapiro Bettinger Chase LLP in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has litigated hundreds of personal injury, medical malpractice and nursing home neglect claims.  Author of Twelve Heroes, One Voice: Guiding Jurors to Courageous Verdicts (Trial Guides 2011), he has some of the largest personal injury verdicts in New Mexico, first for $54 million in a 2007 trial involving a ManorCare nursing home and then for $54.1 million in a 2009 trial involving a ResCare group home. He practices and consults in New Mexico and nationally. He focuses on bringing trials alive, utilizing a variety of non-conventional approaches, including those from  improvisational acting, storytelling and psychodrama. In a recent trial, he sang part of his closing. Before attending University of New Mexico Law School, Carl went to medical school at Boston University School of Medicine and then completed an internal medicine residency at The University of New Mexico. In his spare time he goes fishing.

Fredilyn Sison: Fredi is an honors grad of Cornell University and New York University School of Law.  Prior to joining the Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina in the Asheville branch office, she served as an Assistant Federal Defender in the Districts of Nebraska, Nevada and Idaho.  In 2005, she was visiting counsel at the Defender Training Branch and at the U.S. Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C.  She has served on the faculty for the Federal Trial Skills Academy, the Sentencing Advocacy Workshop, 3Sisters Programs, National Advanced Defenders Program, Non-Capital Mitigation Seminar and Orientation Seminar for Federal Defenders.  Fredi co-authored Trial in Action: The Persuasive Power of Psychodrama, has written a chapter on child pornography in Practical Guide for Defending a Federal Case and on Voir Dire in the 3rd edition of Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense, co-wrote and edited chapters on Jury Selection and Foreign Law in Defending a Federal Criminal Case and has published articles on jury selection, cross examination and the effects of incarceration on families in The Champion and The Warrior.  She has been certified as a practitioner in psychodrama (“CP”), which employs guided dramatic action to examine problems and issues raised by individuals and groups.  Her interests include reading, hiking, piano, Improv and dancing.

Course Schedule

8:00 am: Registration

8:30-9:30: Herocentric story structure: The key to trial is story, but in order to understand how to tell a client’s story, the lawyer must first understand the component parts to classic herocentric story structure, as well as the character archetypes in such stories. This part of the course will focus on teaching the participants the nature of three act story structure (ordinary world, new world, climax and return), how the various parts of trial fit within that structure, how to paint the various characters in the case so that the jury will understand them to be Villain, Victim, Mentor or Hero, which, ultimately, is the role we want the jurors to play.

9:30-10:45: Improv exercises to warm up voice and body: As lawyers, our courtroom tools are our voice and our bodies. Of the five ways of communicating (spacework (i.e., engaging in a particular physical activity); movement; emotion; character; and words), lawyers tend to ignore all but words. These exercises will help the participants understand the power of non-verbal communication.

10:45-11:00: Break

11:00-12:00: Story telling exercises in action: This part of the course is designed to show the participants how to discover the stories in their cases through dramatic reenactment techniques that bring the stories alive, thereby not only discovering the stories, but providing the participants with material that can be shown to the jury, as opposed to just told.

12:00-1:00:  Lunch

1:00-2:30: New approaches to voir dire: The average voir dire often  produces nothing other than the resentment of potential jurors who see the attorney before them as trying to manipulate them.  This part of the course will explore techniques from improvisational acting and psychodrama that will provide the participants with new ways to connect with the jurors and to form a group.

2:30-2:45:  Break

2:45-5:00: Cont: New approaches to voir dire: A story which is told is nowhere near as compelling as one that is shown; that is why as kids we did “show and tell”, as opposed to “tell and tell”.  This part of the course will teach the participants the basics of setting dramatic scenes in the courtroom, weaving the same into their Openings and  Closings.