The Opening Statement For the Defense
Lawsuits typically pro ceed in three sequential phases: gathering, distilling and presenting. Gathering refers to the acquisition of the facts and that a underlying the claim or defense and incorporates investigation, research, and discovery.
In the distillation phase, the lawyer crafts the overall theme around which evidence will be organized and presented.
This phase necessarily involves a good deal of judgment andn23ndemands a confident approach, since thenhoning of a central theme requires abandoningnall extraneous information. In the presentationnphase, the lawyer incorporates elementsnof theater and stagecraft, becomingnthe director of the play, making nuanced andndetailed determinations about how eachnpiece of evidence should be displayed andnoffered to the jury.
Invoking a movie-making analogy, gatheringnequates to storyline research; distillationnis analogous to drafting the screenplay; and the presentation phase mirrors the direction of the movie itself. The opening statement in this analogy is therefore the enticing and attention-grabbing movie preview.
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