Your case usually begins with your testimony, both on direct and cross examination. Your testimony is perhaps the most important part of the trial. No matter how skillful and prepared the lawyer is, if the jury doesn’t like or doesn’t believe the plaintiff, the result will not be favorable.

    Direct examination involves your testimony in response to your lawyer’s questions. The initial questions typically are simple and concern background information such as education, family, and employment. These simple questions give you a chance to relax on the witness stand in the role of plaintiff. They also provide the jury with information which may help them to relate to you. Your lawyer wishes for the jury to like you so that it will want to compensate you generously for the losses and damages suffered in the accident.

    After the initial background questions, the testimony might turn to the facts of the accident. Your lawyer attempts to elicit a favorable and believable recitation of these facts. Hopefully, this will fix a version of the accident in the jury’s mind which will stay cemented in place all the way through to the conclusion of the jury’s deliberations.

    After testifying about the accident, your lawyer may ask you to discuss how you felt physically and emotionally at the accident scene and whether emergency room treatment was required. If statements were made by the defendant at the scene, this would be an appropriate place for them to come into evidence. Even a simple apology at the scene made by the defendant can influence the jury’s view of liability for the accident.

    The testimony then moves to the days and weeks following the accident. Eventually the jury will hear about the full course of medical treatment and, of course, how you are currently feeling. You may testify about the effect the accident has had on your life and on your family. Employment losses are also examined. Any other relevant aspect of your losses and damages are discussed before the conclusion of direct testimony.

    Your lawyer may attempt during direct testimony to take the sting out of unfavorable evidence. If, for example, you have a preexisting medical condition which calls into question the causal relationship between the accident and the injury claim, your lawyer may gently ask you about this medical condition during direct. This gives you the opportunity to discuss the prior condition and perhaps explain the effect the accident had on you. This can defuse an otherwise troublesome aspect of the case. By confronting the problem directly, you avoid the situation where the jury first hears about the damaging information during the insurance defense lawyer’s accusatory questioning. This preemptive strikes takes some of the wind out of the other lawyer’s sails.

    To illustrate, during the O. J. Simpson criminal trial, L.A.P.D. Criminalist Dennis Fung and the prosecution case were devastated by the scathing cross examination by Barry Scheck. The jury would have been much less moved by the allegations about Fung’s sloppy work if the mistakes had been confronted and disposed of during his direct testimony. He would have been able to calmly explain that although mistakes were made, they were of no relevance to his ultimate findings. The plaintiff’s lawyers showed during the civil trial that they had learned this lesson.

    After direct testimony concludes, the defense attorney cross examines you. This attorney attempts to discredit you, if possible. He may try to show that your version of the accident is unreliable. He will also undoubtedly try to prove that your losses and damages are not as bad as you would like the jury to believe. This is where the deposition testimony is so important. If you testified differently at your deposition than at trial, the defense lawyer makes this clear to the jury. If possible, this lawyer also brings out additional deposition testimony that hurts your case. Your lawyer makes similar use of the defendant’s deposition when he cross examines the defendant.

    One of the main purposes of cross examination is to set up the closing argument. Sometimes the lawyer asks questions on cross which seem unimportant to the outcome of the case. The importance may be made clear only during the closing speech. For example, the defense lawyer in a grocery store slip and fall case may bring out during cross examination that your shopping cart was empty at the time of the accident. During closing, the defense lawyer might argue from this that you should have seen the liquid you slipped on, since it was not blocked by any groceries in the cart. Rather than pressing the issue during cross examination to make its relevance clear then and there, saving the issue for closing allows this lawyer to avoid the risk that you will explain away the problem.

    This technique is employed frequently during the cross examination of a medical expert. The lawyer doesn’t expect to destroy the doctor’s credibility. Perry Mason, after all, was only a television show. In real life, the lawyer hopes to make a few points during cross examination and then to attack the doctor’s credibility or opinion during closing argument. The technique of a fleet footed boxer is much safer here than directly confronting the doctor with a series of impeaching questions, especially if the doctor is experienced as a trial witness. The doctor’s superior medical knowledge may allow him to talk his way through difficult cross examination. Jab and move, jab and move is the favored practice.

    The style a lawyer uses during cross examination varies from lawyer to lawyer and from cross exam to cross exam. The lawyer should use a style she is comfortable with and not try to emulate another attorney’s style if it is not a natural part of her personality. Juries can tell when the lawyer is putting on a false personality. I would not try to cross examine a witness using F. Lee Bailey’s approach even though he is one of the best. My cross would come off as forced if I tried to use an inauthentic personality.

    The traits of the witness affect the way a lawyer conducts cross examination. The jury may deeply resent the scathing cross of a sympathetic witness. For example, the jury may have great sympathy for an elderly plaintiff who was seriously injured in an accident. Similarly children are viewed with sympathy by juries. It will punish the lawyer who attempts to torch such a witness during cross. It would be better for the lawyer to make his points in a relatively gentle, respectful way and then sit down.