After attending a CLE program on storytelling for lawyers conducted by Deb Pagnotta (who was herself a litigation attoney), I hired her to advise me as a narrative consultant on theme for an upcoming business litigation jury trial. 

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The lawsuit concerned a farming company which had been storing its crop at a cold storage warehouse facility. The operator of the warehouse mishandled the fresh produce by not timely unloading it, improperly maintaining temperatures of the perishable produce, and failing to maintain an inventory or timely loading the produce onto trucks. The client lost millions of dollars in the lost value of its destroyed and damaged produce. 

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Within days of hiring Deb, and providing her with the facts in key filings in the case, she provided me with 8 different story narratives to emphasize various aspects of the case, such as 

 

• the operator's egregious negligence:  "the ripple effect of negligence" and "a business left to rot"

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• the betrayal of the client's trust in relying upon the warehouse operator to care for its produce: "trust betrayed," "the reckless guardian," and "the house of neglect" and

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• the operator breaking multiple promises to the client that its entrusted produce would be handled correctly : "lessons in responsibility"

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Deb also offered relevant advice based on her extensive personal storytelling background on the most persuasive and credible story.

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As an attorney practicing for over three decades, I am not easily impressed but the different themes generated by Deb with her AI tool were insightful. Each narrative relied upon different aspects of the case, to allow me to pick the supportive evidence for the strongest theme, to keep the presentation at trial focused and allow both my client's facts, as well as the opposing party's position, to be combined in a cohesive, and persuasively unified, story.

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I was even more pleasantly surprised when Deb sent me various forms of opening statements not just for my client's position but also what opposing counsel might say as to each of the story narratives.  It was like having an AI mock jury to test out each of the story lines. While we all think we can see both sides of an argument, having Deb use her AI model to generate opposing counsel's narrative was eye-openings, highlighting how I needed to respond and helping in choosing the best story not just for my facts to to address the opposition party's narrative as well.

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And there was even more, as Deb also provide me a proposed list of trial witnesses, with anticipated subjects for their testimony consistent with the key themes of the case. The witnesses and subjects of testimony confirmed my view of how my case in chief should be presented with some nuances I had not considered but which the science and technology of AI, using Deb's proprietary frameworks, had developed.

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I could not have been more pleased with my decision to hire Deb. She responded immediately on issues, her financial arrangements were extremely reasonable, she is friendly and easy to get along with, and the value received easily exceeded her fee. My only regret is that I had not hired Deb earlier in the case as I could have used the various story narratives to explore those issues with witnesses in discovery, to craft more thematic arguments to the judge in pretrial motion practice, including on summary judgment motions, and to prepare for mediation and non-binding arbitration.

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In summary, any lawyers wh wants to put their client in the best position to win their case needs to have Deb and her AI storytelling platform on their litigation team."