The idea of a mock trial is something used by legal firms for centuries. Nonetheless, with the help of the internet and the automation of the legal process, this luxury is now available even to some of the smallest businesses in the game. This means that a lot of firms fail to utilize not because they don’t have the means to do so but because they fail to see the advantages of this method. Here are five of them that might just change your mind.
1. Determining the most persuasive arguments
The problem with arguments in court is the fact that you can never tell which of them are the most persuasive. When arguing the case, you need to determine which arguments give you the quickest result. Remember that, as a legal expert, you examine these arguments in a different way than an average jury member does. Therefore, organizing a mock trial gives you a chance to test these arguments out in a much more faithful environment. Needless to say, without this, you would have to wait for the actual trial to see what gives the best result.
2. Establishing a dollar range for the settlement
Sometimes, trials are not about winning or losing but about creating leverage for a better settlement. By creating a mock trial, you get to see what your chances are, which, in turn, may help you establish a much better dollar range for the settlement. Therefore, this helps you provide a better service for your clients and ensures that the end result is more satisfactory. Due to the fact that the law-industry is the one that’s dependent on the return clients, what you get is a much more reliable business model.
3. The client gets the chance to participate
Perhaps the most important of all is the fact that the client might get a chance to see what this would look like for themselves. Every now and then, you’ll have a client who mistrusts your judgment or fears the outcome of a trial. This way, you have a unique opportunity to show them exactly what this would look like, once it came to it. There’s a saying in the legal world that once you go to the court, you’ve already lost but people without previous legal experience (clients) might not see things that way. Fortunately, organizations like mock Australia can be used to naturally raise their risk awareness.
4. Trials are not as frequent as you think
More and more cases are settled without the trial, which creates an unexpected problem in the legal world. Namely, a lot of lawyers that are on the retainer in large law firms seldom see the inside of the courtroom. With the mock trial, they get a training ground where they can practice their trial skill. In other words, companies that practice these trials for training purposes have a lot more capable manpower than companies that don’t. In other words, frequent use of mock trials increases battle-readiness of the law firm.
5. Discovering which themes need further explanation
As we said in the part about the arguments, sometimes a thing that sounds logical or persuasive to you might not sound like that to your audience. By rushing through such a theme, you’ll create a scenario where you only confuse your audience or leave something important unsaid. From here, you have a choice to either dumb this down or add a visual and graphic aid. Needless to say, the use of such tools is quite efficient, but doing so for every argument and theme would A) slow you down and B) be completely impractical. In this way, you get to use it only where you absolutely need it.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it’s more than clear that it’s much safer to have a mock trial before an actual trial or a settlement. Sometimes it’s just to get another opinion. Sometimes it’s about showing your client the real situation instead of sugarcoating it. Finally, there are some scenarios in which it’s all about keeping your team sharp. In other words, a mock trial is definitely an option that a law firm (of any size) should consider.
