Hire a Skeptic, Not a Cheerleader
A trial consultant who only agrees with you is a liability, not an asset.
My clients do not hire me to admire their case. They built it. They believe in it. By the time I arrive, the trial team has usually lived with their theory for months and stopped seeing its seams.
That is exactly the problem I am paid to help solve.
My job is to find what the trial team may no longer see clearly. The weakness they have grown numb to. The evidence that reads one way at counsel table and another way in the jury box. The argument the other side has not made yet but will, the moment they are given the opening.
In that role, I often stand in for the juror who is not persuaded, the question the jury room will ask when no one is there to answer it, and the reaction the trial team may not see because it has lived with the case for too long.
This is not contrarianism for its own sake. It is healthy skepticism.
A good skeptic is not someone who doubts everything. A good skeptic doubts the right things, for the right reasons, with evidence supporting the doubt. Rarely is that pushback based on a hunch. More often, it comes from experience and data, from watching how real jurors actually think through problems, and not how lawyers assume they will.
When presented with the strong parts of a client’s case, I will say they are strong. When shown a weakness dressed as a strength, I will not pretend otherwise. I do not get paid to make clients feel good about their case. I get paid so that my clients can walk into trial having already stress-tested the hardest version of their own case in private, while there is still time to do something about it.
The cheerleader tells you what you want to hear. The skeptic tells you what the other side already knows.
My best clients understand the difference. They do not want a mirror, and they do not want a rubber stamp. They want a stress test. They take what is useful, set aside what is not, and keep the final call where it belongs, with them. They treat me as a force multiplier, not a substitute for their own judgment.
Sometimes the pushback changes the strategy. Sometimes it simply confirms that the trial team is comfortable with the risk. Either way, the value is in seeing the risk more clearly.
That is the whole point. I am not here to win the argument for them. I am here to make sure it can survive the jury deliberation room.
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