The Impact of an Attorney's Speaking Fluency When Delivering an  Opening Statement on Juror Decisions

Juneau, Truley

Publication

The Impact of an Attorney's Speaking Fluency When Delivering an Opening Statement on Juror Decisions

Juneau, Truley

Date

2021

Additional date(s)

2021-05-19

Abstract

A wealth of research has focused on factors that impact jurors' decisions based on the information made available to them in court. However, in no prior research has the impact of how well an attorney delivers an opening statement (speaking fluently or disfluently) been isolated to evaluate its direct impact on jurors' decisions. By contrast, in a parallel literature, the impact of an instructor's lecture fluency on students' educational experiences has been studied more extensively. Thus, I borrowed methodology from this field and applied it to a legal context by evaluating jurors' perceptions of the attorney and level of liability when presented with a fluent opening statement versus a disfluent opening statement. To explore this issue, 83 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to read a fluent or disfluent version of an opening statement. Next, they gave ratings of liability, perceptions of the attorney, and likelihood of hiring the attorney and the defendant. The fluency of the attorney's opening statement did not impact liability ratings or ratings of the likelihood of hiring the defendant. By contrast, the fluency of the attorney's opening statement significantly influenced ratings of how likely participants would be to hire the attorney and for many of the traits referring to the attorney's competency and abilities.