One plague was left in reserve, in the event that locusts, frogs, and killing the first born did not work. This plague is called "The Plague of Listening to Legal Education Seminars in which the Speakers are Jury Consultants". I have sat through or listened to many seminars in which the speaker of the seminar's sole purpose has been to point out to me how complex the task is, so that I will hire the specialist in question. In small measure, this can have a purpose. But if you are going to sit me down, via a cassette I actually pay for, *in my own (damn) car*, and tell me how much insight you have into people, then *please* have some insight into *me*, or any human listener, and try not to sound as though you were handing me down some new set of commandments (of which the first commandment is "Thou Shalt Consult No Consultant but Me"), when in fact you are droning on in a monotonic voice with such pearls of wisdom as "someone being Republican in Fresno does not tell you as much about them as a juror as their being Republican in San Francisco". I remember now why I never use jury consultants. I remember now why I like to try things to the judge rather than the jury. Maybe I should go into business, giving seminars to jury consultants on how not to earn my business. Lesson one: drone in a self-aggrandizing tone, as if the sheer pomposity of your tone of voice will make me an instant sell.
Heaven spare us from people whose lives depend on convincing lawyers that they are psychics.
