Learning from litigators: five tips for developing themes for persuasive presentations.

• Position: Legal Brief - Reprint

When an effective trial lawyer walks into court, she brings more than the raw facts of the case. She carries her theme--a concise statement of the most compelling reason that entering a verdict in favor of her client is the right thing to do. Skillful lawyers develop a theme to anchor their case, which they use repeatedly as they strategize and participate at trial. An effective trial theme provides the jury with a lens that brings testimony and evidence favorable to the lawyer's case into sharp focus, and causes unfavorable facts to fade into the background. Couple a great theme with an even better story and the audience will better remember and better be persuaded than if you simply present the numbers.

During jury selection, trial lawyers "diagnose" both sides of their audience: They learn which jurors are most sympathetic to their case and which ones are skeptical. Seasoned trial lawyers design a case theme not from the perspective of those already on their side, but instead, they develop a theme that addresses the doubter's point of view. The persuasive elements of a powerful theme aimed at the toughest jurors can go along way toward winning those jurors over.

Professionals working in fields far from law can use this strategy to their own advantage as they lobby for a variety of issues. When you present your own important ideas, take a tip from experienced trial attorneys to create a powerful, winning theme.

In a blog (www.persuasivelitigator..com) written by Holland & Hart's in- house trial consulting group, Persuasive Strategies, they suggest an effective theme isn't found in a catchy phrase, and it is not chosen by impulse. Rather, it is vetted based on its ability to live up to five standards of an effective T-H-E-M-E.*

Target Your Theme - Like a successful trial theme, your theme should target your toughest audience. Develop a theme that anticipates their objections and addresses the issue's biggest problem by providing a shield against your opposition's predictable emphasis on that weakness. Assuming your tougher audience will resist your new idea because of budgetary concerns, your theme might be, "We can choose to stall by focusing on line-item' concerns, or we can choose to enthrall by focusing the big picture on big dollars." Cheesy? Yes. Effective? You bet--but only if you marry the theme with concrete examples that counter your tougher audience's intuition.

Develop a Holistic Theme - Your theme should facilitate the...