Kurt Kerns

Kerns Law Group

I’m one of four children born to a football coach and a school teacher. I grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan and had one goal- play professional football for the Green Bay Packers.My parents moved us to Kansas my freshman year of high school. Upon graduating I took a track scholarship to the University of Florida. After a year I transferred to The University of Kansas where I played on the worst football team in division one. I made Sports Illustrated magazine with my picture and the headline, “How Many Jayhawks Does It Take To Make A Tackle?” Dreams of going pro were dashed so I talked with Dad who suggested going to a law school “as lawyers compete every day and there are winners and losers in every case.” Later I read “Gunning for Justice” by Gerry Spence and it inspired me to become a criminal defense lawyer. I have been gunning for justice since 1991.

Steve Linder · Kurt Kerns

Science of Persuasion

The 8-Phase Client Journey: A Roadmap to Success

Understanding where your client is, meeting them where they are, and pacing them through the journey of the case – is critical.Failing to gain or losing traction where your client “is” leads to frustration for both litigators and clients.

All plaintiffs, defendants, and jurors operate along certain states along a continuum. Quickly where they are, where they need to be, and use the right communication strategy for each milestone.What works in one phase can be detrimental in another.

We will provide an overview of the Neuro Strategies Framework Model as is relates to having the most influential message/approach for each location along the framework.

8-Milestone of the Client Journey

Stable Phase – Their “normal & ordinary” in life.
Significant Event – An event that disrupts the normal.
Pain Phase – Where the deviation from normal causes physical/emotional/financial pain.
Revolt Event – The pivotal point of revolting from the pain.
Change Phase – The changes that need to happen in the case, your client, your evidence, etc. that reverses course.
Return to Stability – Where most clients and litigators “settle” and even self-sabotage unnecessarily. Not confusing the lack of pain with success.
Growth Beyond Stability Phase – leveraging the previous phases and evidence to achieve a better position.
Achieving the Desired State & Verdict – Where the client not only attains the desired verdict, but also will serve as their “north-star” during the journey; keeping them from getting stuck in the drama, old stories, disempowering identity, etc.

Useful with clients:

Useful when determining whether to take on a client’s case. How to gauge the resilience and commitment of a client - before they “punish you”.
Ability to anticipate and solve potential problems BEFORE they happen.
How to best communicate with your client to increase the likelihood of a favorable verdict while minimizing the “brain damage” of a scattered client.
How to help prepare your client for the journey ahead and garner their support so that they will help support the plan that they’ve helped create.

You will learn and reinforce the techniques of:

Your client’s “identity” – not just in their mind, but in the jury’s and its impact on direct and cross examination
Linguistic presuppositions to influence the jury's decision-making by owning part of their thought process
Anticipating and preventing self-sabotage by your client
Helping your client prepare for the journey ahead and garnering their support

These tools have been taught to federal judges and lawyers world-wide for over 20 years with amazing results and feedback.

Please note: this is a highly interactive session so when you plan to attend, please be prepared to bring your A-game and PLENTY of paper for notes.

Steve Linder · Kurt Kerns

Understanding and Influencing the 84 Jurors

How to Win Friends and Influence Jurors: The Art of Neuro Strategies Communication in the Courtroom

In this session, you will learn how to recognize, understand, and most importantly, influence the seven thinking systems that are present in every human being. Whether in your client, your witnesses, the jury, the judge, your own team, and even in yourself, you will quickly build a much deeper level of impact when you can understand the micro thinking systems that govern how we all interface with the outside world.

We will cover descriptions of the key characteristics of each of the systems, when and how they are activated, and how they impact behavior.

These skillsets are particularly useful in not just identifying which thinking systems would be most valuable to your client’s position, but how to identify and effectively intercept communications from opposing counsel to these same thinking systems.

This will augment your existing strategy for jury selection by increasing the granularity of how to analyze prospective jurors and their thinking systems to create your most persuasive case.

This will be a highly-interactive session where it will culminate in scenarios for selecting jurors based on thinking systems.

This method of evaluation is based on the Neuro Strategies Framework and built upon the Gravesian model of the adult biopsychosocial system of human development. You will also see how this served as a Rosetta stone in helping breakdown incidents such as mass-casualty events.