Trial Lawyer Talk, Episode 61, with Marj Russell

About Marjorie Russell

Marjorie Russell of MARJury Consulting lives in Michigan. She specializes in holistic case development; client, witness, and lawyer preparation; and jury selection. Marjorie has been a law professor for many years. She graduated from Gerry Spence’s first Trial Lawyers College (TLC) class over 25 years ago. Marjorie has been on the faculty of TLC ever since training some of the best lawyers in the country.

About this case

Marjorie discusses a case of a 19-year old man named David who got into a car accident causing two broken wrists and neck and lower back problems. Four years later, he had undergone surgery and his hands were still injured and he was in pain. David was unemployed, living in his parents’ home, and drinking heavily. In depositions, he seemed lazy, greedy, and like he was waiting for a large payout from the accident. David’s lawyer felt the jury would reject him because he could not get David “to talk about himself in a way where he didn’t validate the picture that the defense lawyers wanted to paint.” He called Marjorie to help.

Marjorie tells the story of how she helped turn the situation around for the trial. She says, “I think my best help is connecting with people and helping them feel comfortable fully being themselves, especially about the things that people want to attack them for.” In reality, David was a good person who “had reached a point of hopelessness.” They turned the story around from David as a “bad, irresponsible, horrible person” into a story of David suffering because so much had been taken away from him. In the end, it was a winning trial and “a story of redemption” for David.

Results

Marjorie ends Trial Lawyer Talk with, “That’s my reward. When I see the healing and when I see the confidence. When I know that the lawyer has been able to take what we’ve discovered and make magic with it – that the jurors are lighting up with recognition. They know what that’s about. They understand that kind of struggle and that he did become a hero in his own life. And that is the bottom line for me. I want to know how has the person were helping become a hero in their own life, and how can we show that story?”

Transcript of Episode 61, with Marj Russell

Scott Glovsky:

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky. I’m your host for this podcast where we speak with some of the best lawyers in the country. Today, we have a real treat. We have one of the wisest, most thoughtful, and most strategic trial lawyers and trial consultants that I know. Marj Russell is from Michigan. She graduated from the first class of Trial Lawyers College and has been around TLC and teaching ever since.

That’s more than 25 years of honing, discovering the story, connecting with your clients, and really refining the skills that make us credible, genuine, and authentic. Today, Marj is going to share with us really a methodology for how to take the weakest aspects of your case, the ones that keep you up at night, the ones that you’re scared of, and voir dire, and turn those into part of our trial story.

Marj goes into aspects of discovering the story, of connecting with the client, of going to those places that seem the most dangerous, the most scary, and working through those and integrating those into the heart of our case, and then taking those issues and using them in voir dire.

You’re really going to enjoy this episode. There’s a lot of richness and a lot of lessons that Marj provides. So enjoy. And don’t forget, please subscribe to the podcast, I would really appreciate it. And if you could go on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and give us a good rating, because I really want other people to know about what we’re doing because I think these lessons are good for all of us. Let’s get going.

I’m very pleased and humbled and honored to be