The How-to-Win Trial Manual - 5th Edition

Win More Cases and Help More Clients! Ralph Adam Fine pulls no punches. In the newly revised 5th edition of his highly acclaimed The How-To-Win Trial Manual shows why the traditional ways to try a case in court are suicidal, and gives extensive examples of such suicidal advocacy by famous, high-profile, well-paid trial lawyers: In each of his examples, Ralph Adam Fine shows how the lawyers should have done it, and this will help you hone your winning skills. Ralph Adam Fine also demonstrates why many of Irving Younger s famous Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination are not only also wrong, but why following them significantly reduces your chance of winning. Since it was first published by JURIS in 1998, Ralph Adam Fine s The How-To-Win Trial Manual has been giving lawyers that special edge so they can win even the tough cases. Now, in its new revised 5th edition, The How-To-Win Trial Manual (JURIS, 2011) takes the unique extra step of showing how and why famed trial lawyers Vincent Bugliosi and Gerry Spence, both superb advocates, could have been even more effective in their ground-breaking face-off when Bugliosi prosecuted, and Spence defended, Lee Harvey Oswald in connection with the assassination of President John F., Kennedy. The trial, memorialized in a superb two-disc DVD set, On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald, was before a sitting Texas federal district-court judge and a jury of Dallas citizens taken from the Dallas jury rolls. Although the trial was more than two-decades removed from the assassination, Bugliosi and Spence managed to get as witnesses many of the persons who were at the assassination and its aftermath; none of the witnesses testifying in the trial were actors. The trial was in London, in a replica of a Texas federal courtroom, and both Bugliosi and Spence gave it their all preparing as they would have for a real trial, and arguing their respective positions with the gusto for which each is justifiably famous. Ralph Adam Fine has taken the transcript of the two-disc DVD set and shows with his interleaved comments, as Ralph Adam Fine does with the O.J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, Enron (Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay) trials, as well as a federal-court antitrust trial, how Bugliosi and Spence could have been better. The Oswald chapter, new for the fifth edition, will thus help all trial lawyers nail the winning techniques to be successful whenever they step into a courtroom. The fifth edition also gives us Ralph Adam Fine s special insights into the strategies and trial techniques of the prosecution and defense in the murder trial of Michael Peterson, memorialized in the six-hour DVD set, Death on the Staircase. Peterson was charged with killing his wife; The How-To-Win Trial Manual, claimed at trial that she accidentally fell down the stairs in their Durham, North Carolina, mansion. This chapter, too, is new for the fifth edition of The How-To-Win Trial Manual and shows what works and what does not work and why. It will help every lawyer better prepare his or her case and avoid the common traps that sink even the best plans well laid. The How-To-Win Trial Manual shows you how to win by using your most powerful tool: The jury s belief that you, the lawyer, knows the truth of the case. The How-To-Win Trial Manual also shows you how to ask questions on both direct-examination and cross-examination in such a way so the jury will know the answers before the witnesses (whether lay or expert) responds. Simply put, if you phrase your questions so that the jury answers them the way you want before your witnesses answer and irrespective of what your adversary s witnesses may say on cross-examination, you will win! Ralph Adam Fine shows you how to do all of this and more! You and your clients deserve no less!