Litigation
Cal. Litig. 2022, Volume 35, Number 1
Content
- 5 Ways to Optimize Your Video for Depositions
- Are Anti-SLAPP Fee Awards Stayed on Appeal? The Better Side of a Split of Authority Says Yes
- Business Litigation: Best Practices for Litigating a Civil Code Section 1717 Motion for Attorney Fees
- Civility in the Legal Profession: It's Up to Us to Save It
- EDITOR'S FOREWORD Bright Lights, Big Changes
- FROM THE SECTION CHAIR What's Happened and What's Coming
- Masthead
- Q&A with S.D. Cal. Magistrate Judge Allison H. Goddard
- Qualifying for the Ballot During a Once-in-a-Lifetime Pandemic
- Table of Contents
- The Evolution of Voter Access in California
- The Power of Speaking from the Heart
- What I've Learned
- Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers
Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers
By John P. Blumberg
Review by Stefan Caris Love
One thing about popular psychology is that it sells. Blink and Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell; How We Decide and Imagine, by Jonah Lehrer; The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt; Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman; you’ve maybe read and certainly heard of some of these blockbuster examples of the genre.
John P. Blumberg’s Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers (2022) adopts this genre’s central conceit — that psychological studies establish broader truths about human behavior — and applies it to the practical problems of persuasion faced by trial lawyers. Blumberg positions his book as an antidote to advice on persuasion that is grounded only in anecdotal experience. In keeping with the pop psych genre, his advice is presented as a corrective to our sometimes faulty intuitions: "We all like to believe that the decisions we make are the result of logic, common sense, and critical thinking," he writes, but the research tells us we’re wrong. (Id. at p. xxi.)