FHTH Ep. 251 - Is it Ok to [GASP] CRY IN COURT?

Let's talk about a courtroom taboo: crying.

IS IT -REALLY- OK TO CRY IN COURT?

Spoiler alert: Mama Sari is giving you the green light.

Because here's the thing: showing emotion isn't a sign of weakness — it's a sign of authenticity, passion, and unwavering dedication to your client.

So, next time you feel that lump in your throat, embrace that shit.

Tune in now.

Xo,
Sari

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"If emotions are contagious, my question to you is: why are you not using that opportunity to set the stage, and to set the tone of what happened? It's not facts that make people mad or sad or any of the other things. It's tone of voice, it's word choice, which is nonverbal. It's body language. We have to do these things so that the jury does feel an emotion, and that will then motivate them to act. Remember that your job is hard because you have to motivate the jury to do something when the easiest thing is to leave things as they are."
sari de la motte

EPISODE 251 TRANSCRIPTION

Well, hello. Hello. We're going to start today with a review of the podcast. I told you that a bunch of had come in and I wanted to share them.

This one's from Tubby Shuffle. All right, this says:

"Love Sari Swears -- Five Stars. I have been following Sari since 2021. It is a whole body experience and you will undoubtedly be better for it, guaranteed."

And I was like, "Oh my God, how is this a whole body? And then I was like, I do not want to know how this is a whole body experience." Actually that sent Kevin whatever the word is. But yeah, I'm glad that what's ever happening in your body. I'm hoping it's not shitting your pants, like what happened in my body last week.

But yes, today we are talking about... Is it okay [GASP] to cry in court or even get emotional or any of the things? So we had Trial Lab, which is when I have three attorneys here for 4 days. And we have these amazing experiences in front of the mock jury. And this last Trial Lab was my Mastermind group because out of the four that I do a year, one is always reserved for the Mastermind clients that I'm working with for that nine month period. And this this current, Mastermind group that I have is all women. One of the women was doing her opening statement, and she almost cried. She didn't, but she almost did. When she came back, it was like she was about to do the harakiri, the dishonor sword in the disembowelment thing. By the way, I had to look that up. I was like, how do you spell this harakiri? And immediately it gave me the suicide hotline. Okay, if you're considering this, here's the suicide hotline, it's 988. So seriously, if anyone's ever thinking about that, and I know there's a high incidence of this in this field, so I don't mean to make a joke out about it even though I just did 988, just dial that number and that will get you through.

But it was incredible how the amount of shame and horror that this attorney went through over the fact that she showed some emotion. And I know y'all are thinking, "Oh my God, you never, ever, ever cry in court. Sari, do you not know that?" All right, put the sword down and back away slowly. Even though it's a metaphorical sword, that shit is sharp. I mean, this "crying episode" was like blink and you'll miss it. It was like the LaCroix of crying. You know how LaCroix, like lime LaCroix, is not really lime LaCroix. It's like, here's this sparkling water that sat near a lime for 20 minutes at some point in its life, and now we're calling it lime LaCroix. That's what this crying was like. It was not even crying.

And so again, the over craziness of how much this person wanted to beat themselves up, I just thought, I want want to talk about this. Now, if you are a woman and you're listening to this, I know that crying is a very touchy subject. There was a Twitter feed going, I refuse to call it X, even though I just did. But a while back that was so hilarious and sad at the same time. But it was like, tell me about a time that you cried at work and all of these women just came in, and it was just like the craziness that ensued because this woman had dared lose her shit in public.

So I know that, for women particularly, it's like, "Well, I'm going to be written off. I'm going to be told I'm on my period, that I'm too emotional" and all that sexist bullshit. And I know in general, crying or showing emotion in trial, whether you're a man or a woman, is frowned upon because it appears as though you're trying to gain sympathy or it shows a loss of control. And then if we can control it and we're doing it anyway, then isn't it a gimmick?

I mean, this is why y'all are so scared of voir dire, for example, is because voir dire is a loss of control. It really isn't. But that's a different subject.

So what I want to discuss today is this concept of trying to gain sympathy, being too dramatic, or too snarky, or too angry or any other emotion that is anything but stone-cold neutral and whether or not that is acceptable.

So let's unpack this for a second. In a jury trial, outside of the witnesses that the jury's going to see during trial, there are four major players. There's you, there's opposing counsel, and even if there's other people on that team, I'm including those as two separate things, right? There's the judge and there's the jury. Are we agreed? Okay, those are the major players.

Now, out of those four players who is supposed to be neutral? The jury, yes, I heard your response as you were walking with me this morning. And in some respects, the judge, right? The judge is more like the referee, should be fair, right? But making sure all the rules are being followed.

Now, I want you to notice how you are not a part of the neutral players. You are there to get justice.

Now I know I'm really simplifying things today, but my next question is how do we get justice? And the answer to that question, my friends, is we show the jury the injustice.

We show the jury the injustice. This my friends, is NOT done through sharing of facts, or figures, or reading journal medical journals or showing them manuals.

I know the other side wants to keep all of this on paper, so to speak. They want to show through facts, or figures, or journals or manuals why what they did or failed to do in most cases is justified.

There's no injustice here. I mean, just look at the facts. She was 93 years old. She would've died soon anyway. I mean, look at the actuary tables. She was already living on borrowed time. I mean, it was just a baby, regrettable, of course, but they can try again. Nothing we would've done. See, the medical journals says that we could have prevented this. These are the hazards of the job. We provided safety equipment, but it wasn't our job to train. See here, here's the manual. Where was the mother? How can any child drown within 15 feet of their mother? A lifeguard wouldn't have prevented that. The state regulations are right here. It proves we didn't have a duty. This is what they want my friends, to keep this about facts and figures, and journals, and manuals, but real people don't fit on pieces of paper or in any actuary chart. Facts and figures do not tell the story of Miriam, a Holocaust survivor who raised 7 children, had 20 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren when she died at the hands of an incompetent, understaffed nursing home.

Facts and figures don't tell the story of Abel, the little boy who died 24 hours after birth, and how his parents spent months stenciling his name on the wall of the nursery and anticipation of taking him home. And now they're going to have to go home without a baby and face that empty nursery.

Facts and figures won't ever be able to describe the dad that Hector was, or how he mowed his elderly neighbor's yard, or shoveled her driveway, never accepting payment, or how he taught his son how to fish, or how he coached his daughter's softball team.

And facts and figures can never describe the loss of an eight-year-old child. And the guilt her mom feels every day thinking if she just hadn't looked away for a second that her daughter would still be here. Not to mention, that an autopsy, a doctor's note, a lab report cannot begin to describe the suffering someone went through before they died or during their injury.

But you know what can and who must?

YOU.

You have to take facts and figures and bring them to life. And if you think that you'll be able to do that by just saying words, think again. When we take a look at decision-making and we look at how people make decisions, we tend to think that people make decisions from logic. And what the research says is that we make decisions from both logic and emotion.

You honestly cannot separate the two. I was reading this article and it says, "Emotions play a hidden role in our behavior. They help the brain choose what sensory information to pay attention to, how to process it, and what other data to weave into decisions." It's the Harvard Gazette.

They help the brain know what information to pay attention to. Do you not think that that would be helpful in a trial where there's all kinds of information, all kinds of sensory input, and the jurors have no idea what it is they're supposed to be paying attention to and now you can think, "Well, they can have their own emotions, Sari. I'm not saying they can't have emotions. I'm just saying I can't be the one having the emotions." And here's where you're wrong again.

People don't have emotions just based on facts and figures. They don't. People have emotions because someone shows emotion when sharing those facts and figures. We know this to be true.

If it wasn't true, we wouldn't even need actors. We could just hand everybody a script and put them in front of a camera and say, "Read the lines." And everybody would have their emotions think it was the greatest movie ever. That's not how it works, it just isn't.

Another article I was reading was saying, "Emotions are contagious." Now think about this. I don't think you think about it enough about how yes, plaintiff attorneys start behind the line in basically every regard. The other side has more money, more time, more resources, all the things. But the one thing that you do have, well, two things. The one thing you really have is you stand on the side of the right and that is huge. But the second thing that you really have is this primacy. You get to go first. Now, if emotions are contagious, my question to you is why are you not using that opportunity to set the stage, to set the tone of what happened here, right? It's not facts that make people mad or sad or any of the other things. It's tone of voice. It's word choice, which is a nonverbal. It's not an actual thing of words. It's like the choice of words. It's body language.

We have to do these things so that the jury does feel an emotion and that will then motivate them to act. Remember that your job is hard because you have to motivate the jury to do something when the easiest thing is to leave things as they are. I was just working in our Presentation Skills class yesterday, our session, we have a Presentation Skills session every month where three people can sign up to have a hot seat with me. They bring something that they're presenting and then I coach them on it in front of the group. It's a great call. I love doing this call. And what was happening is that the person was saying things instead of showing us. So they're telling me things instead of showing me things. And so they're saying, "And they swept it under the rug and there was a pattern of behavior and they overlooked this, or they thought that, or they realized this."

I'm actually using two different things. I was working on yesterday, two different attorneys, and I said, "You can't do that. You cannot tell me these things because then I have to take your word for it. You have to show me that they swept things under the rug by telling a story where the jurors can see that themselves." You can't say, "And the nurse knew X, Y, Z. You need to in your story say, and the nurse read the medical records of the incoming patient. And she saw on there that..."

That is much more tangible and it allows the jury to come to their own conclusion, which we know from all of the research is a more stronger conclusion than one that you've told them and asked them to believe. They've seen it themselves. You've walked them through it.

And not only that, when I go back the Trial Lab that we just had, all of the juries, we had three... One jury on one day with the three attorneys. And so really three separate jury presentations. And then we had did it again with a second jury. So six different jury presentations, all six of them. All of them, when they gave their verbal feedback said, "We want more." I said, "What do you want more of?" "We want more storytelling. We want more voice inflection. We want more anger. We want more snark." They wanted more.

I may have said this before, but if there's a choice between half-ass storytelling and no story telling at all, I'd go with no storytelling at all. If you're going to tell a story, you have got to go all in. Okay, I know what you're thinking now. "All right, fine, Sari, I hear you, acting fine. I can do acting but crying. That's too far." Listen, why do juries dislike plaintiff attorneys? Let me think about that for a minute.

They think that you're all about the money and why do they think you're all about the money? They think you do not care about your client. You are just there for the bucks, getting emotional shows you care. That could be tearing up, that could be having an angry tone, that could be having a sarcastic tone, which by the way is my favorite, but...

Getting emotional shows you are human.

You're not there just to get money and you actually care. Now the question becomes when you're using emotion, who is it in service to? So if the tears or the almost tears, I've actually never seen ever in the nearly 20 years I've been doing this, an attorney, male or female burst into tears ever. I've never seen it happen. It's always the LaCroix of crying, right? It's like misty eyed a little bit, blink it and you'll miss it, kind of deal, right?

So if that's happening because you love your client or if you are being sarcastic in service of can you believe this ridiculousness? Great. Versus let's turn on the waterworks to really dive into the sympathy and manipulate the jury, which none of y'all are doing. My clients aren't doing that. And now I know what you're thinking as well. I know you so well, it's creepy how I know you. You're thinking, okay, that's fine, Sari. But the jury won't know the difference. They won't know the difference between me actually feeling love for my client and trying to manipulate them. Two answers to that question or issue.

One is, yes they fucking will. In most cases they will because they are human and most of us can tell the difference between a manipulative gimmick and a real emotion.

And two, even if they don't, would you rather risk them feeling that? Or would you risk them feeling that versus being stone-cold, neutral, and never having any emotion whatsoever?

I remember when I was having some issues with my family, when am I not having issues with my family? But it was around the holidays, which are always a fraught time for most families. And there was some drama going on between me and my sister, and we were supposed to go to my parents' house and I didn't want to go over there. I didn't want to take my three-year-old at the time there because I just didn't want her to be in the middle of that. So I was working with my coach and I said, "I don't want to not go over there and for them to think that I'm using my daughter as a pawn." Well, if you don't believe or believe me or do what I say, well then I'm not going to let you see my daughter. I don't want them to think that that's what I'm doing.

It's so great. My coach said, "Is that what you're doing?" And I said, "No, I just don't want her to be in the middle of all of this." And she said, "Well, then it doesn't matter what they think you are doing, your intention is I'm keeping her home because I just don't want her to be in the middle of this drama." Now, I know there's more at stake in a jury trial, but again, I know from watching hundreds of real juries and thousands of mock juries that you are never in a situation where this is going to be a problem for you. You just aren't. I've never seen it happen. What you guys think is, I just fell apart and cried my makeup off and peed my pants, and shit my pants, to continue a theme. Never happens, never has happened. I've never seen it happen. So you're not in danger of this.

I also want to bring up this idea of cognitive dissonance. You are like, "I'm a professional. That's not my job to be emotional about these things. My job is to go in there and tell the jury what happened, blah, blah, blah." I mean, think about the doctors that we all hate that have bad news, they just come in and they're professional. It's like the radiologist when I'm lying on the table having my breast biopsy after they did three mammograms, and I totally know that something is really fucking wrong. And not only is it really wrong, but it's really fucking bad because whatever they found is huge and I didn't have anything just 18 months ago, means aggressive and all these things I'm putting it together in my head and I'm like, I'm going to die. My daughter's like five. This is not cool. And the radiologist comes in and I'm like, "This is bad, isn't it?" And she looks at me dead in the face and she says, "Yes."

Do we admire that? Are we comforted at that moment by that person? She's being a professional. I guess. What's bedside manner? It's a thing and it's important. Same goes here when you are talking about things that have emotional qualities to them, and you say them in this deadpan voice with no emotion, it causes cognitive dissonance. The jurors don't understand because they're hearing someone got crushed under a bulldozer, which is horrific, and disemboweled and died at the scene, but they're hearing it. And so the bulldozer backed over the person cutting them in half and it doesn't make any fucking sense. They're like, what? It causes cognitive dissonance for just that point alone, you have to have emotion in your voice. You have to have sadness when you talk about a death. How many times have you guys gone, "And then she died?" Now the reason we're here is, and it's just like what? Somebody died. You know what that does? It makes you seem cold and calloused, and I know you're not cold and calloused, but when you take a beat, when your voice catches a little bit, when your eyes get a little misty, when you get a little sarcastic or have an angry tone when you're like, can you believe this shit? Is the undertone. You're teaching the jury that it's okay to be mad about this thing.

You set the tone at trial.

You open up space for the jurors to feel by going there yourself, not to extremes. It's not about you. It's not the "you" show. I know attorneys that get up there and they're just marching around being all pissy and they're almost yelling at the jury. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the appropriate level of emotion that shows you're a human being, that what happened here was avoidable. There's that angry sarcastic tone and that this is sad and horrific. That's what I'm talking about. And if that means, again, there's little misty, there's little LaCroix crying, then that's good in my book, that's absolutely fine and it's necessary.

I think back to Rick Friedman who says, "We are in a battle of human values versus corporate values." If there even is such a thing. Corporate values live on paper. They live on facts, and figures, and journals and documents. Human values do not. They live in you. They rely on you to be spoken, to put not a spike. What's in the ground? What's the thing? I want to put the ground.

A stake in the ground. Thank you, Kevin. That's what they're relying on. That's what your client is relying on, that you can go up there and appropriately communicate what is at stake here? Stone-cold neutral is not delivering on that promise.

So the next time that you get misty, the next time your voice catches, the next time you get a little angry, good. This is what the job requires. Mama Sari is giving you permission, so give yourself a big break. You're human. They want to see that you're human. I love your humanness. And so do they. Believe me when I say it. So do they. I love you. Talk soon.

Have you ever wished that you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I'm about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind. It's going to help you to understand what the jury is thinking, so you'll feel confident to trust them and yourself in the courtroom.

Ready for the address? Go to sariswears.com/jury. Enjoy.