Archive | Marketing your Business

Too many lawsuits, too many lawyers…

All of us who work with, for, or who are, lawyers, have heard it over and over, “there are too many lawyers/lawsuits” or “lawsuits are frivolous.” Sometimes this includes a reference to McDonald’s and coffee, but it is a comment that we at Magnus hear often in some form. I heard it recently when asked […]

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I am constantly amazed by many people’s willingness to say and do things that dispel any doubt that they have no idea about the subject they are speaking. I have lost count of the number of times when, after revealing my occupation to a layperson, he/she immediately regales me with boring accounts of jury duty; […]

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Why Buy from Mom & Pop?

Small businesses, especially those run by family members or spouses, are often called “Mom & Pop.” I have written about this previously and have planned other posts on this subject. Sometimes, there seems to be almost a negative connotation to being Mom & Pop and the implication is that Mom & Pop can’t be on […]

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As the co-owner of a small business in which the other owner is my husband, I am “Mom” to his “Pop.” In my opinion, and based on my experience, there are many advantages for clients and customers of small businesses that can never be achieved when doing business with a huge conglomerate. Having worked for […]

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“No thanks” to Bad Clients

The older I get, the more I choose to spend time with nice people and the less time I choose to spend with mean people. My philosophy has evolved to include family members, spouses of family members, friends, spouses of friends, and clients. Even though clients, unlike the other categories of people I have listed, […]

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We are fortunate that we have encountered only a few clients who are so abusive as to be the bad ones Melissa described.  The worst one we have encountered was a scorched earth litigator, but in his world, this extended to even include everyone on his team – and to us.  But, his true self […]

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Trial Consultants We Have Known

In any industry, business, or practice, one gets to know one’s colleagues/competitors. And, we have, in the past 30 years, seen the gamut of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Melissa started her career with Litigation Sciences, Inc. and many of the consultants who were affiliated with LSI remain among the top consultants in […]

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In every occupation, there exists a range of people, from the truly excellent to the amazingly inferior. The world of trial consulting is no exception to this general rule. I have a Ph.D. in social psychology and, given that a Ph.D. is the highest academic degree that exists (including M.D., D.D.S., D.O., J. D., E.D. […]

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Clients are People Too

Clients are people too.  I repeat, clients are people too.  This may seem obvious to the astute reader, however, there have been many occasions on which I have had to remind my staff to treat our clients like people, instead of merely treating them like clients.  Magnus’ clients are high powered attorneys, insurance adjusters, risk […]

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On a research day it is a bit of a toss up who the most important people in the room are. The participants, i.e., mock jurors are critical to our projects. Without them we cannot do our work. But, without the clients, we have no work to do. Our support staff usually is comfortable with […]

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Reducing Uncertainty

This post builds on the evolution of our experiences as trial consultants and goes further back in that history than a related post on a similar topic.  When Melissa and I first developed the marketing materials for our new trial consulting practice (in 1993), we started from scratch on everything.   In time, we developed […]

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As I have mentioned in previous posts, attorneys and psychologists have vastly different personalities and philosophies of life. As a social psychologist, I am, first and foremost, a scientist. Generally speaking, I require facts, figures, data, statistical analyses, and other science based information to make an informed decision about something important. Absent this type of […]

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Defining Success

As trial consultants, we work in a field where defining “success” is somewhat elusive. We have talked around this in other posts, but will explain it further in this one. In the civil arena in which we work most often, the outcome variables are a verdict comprised of liability and damages. While lawyer advertising often […]

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The primary difficulty in defining success, when it comes to evaluating a jury verdict, is that there is no objective way to measure it. In psychology and other scientific endeavors, there is a control group, which receives no experimental manipulation, and is thus, considered a baseline by which to measure the results of the experimental […]

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Debugging the Case

When I am wearing my marketing hat (one of many hats I wear, as discussed in other posts), I often find myself looking for ways to explain what a trial consultant does for a trial lawyer. As hard as it is for me to repeatedly explain, after 25+ years in this field, I frequently find […]

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As of this writing, I have consulted on thousands of high stakes civil cases. So far, there has never been a client who retained my services (or those of my employers, prior to the time David and I founded Magnus) because he/she believed he/she had a perfect case. Quite the contrary: 100% of the cases […]

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Blogger from Way Back

A Point of View

David H. Fauss, M.S.M.

On March 30, 2017

Category: Getting Through Life and Work, Life Outside of Work, Marketing your Business, Small Business Success, Travel, Work-Life

In thinking about our blog, which is about 3.5 years old, and has well over 300 hundreds posts. It has been a challenge from time to time to keep up with the pace we set for ourselves of 2 posts (1 each as primary writer) per week. Sometimes, we are ahead of ourselves by a […]

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Another View

Melissa Pigott, Ph.D.

On March 30, 2017

Category: Getting Through Life and Work, Life Outside of Work, Marketing your Business, Small Business Success, Travel, Work-Life

I learned something about David today as I read his latest post. I never knew, until now, that David was a “blogger” over 30 years ago with his creative newsletters from Australia! What a cool and efficient way to keep family and friends informed of his exciting adventures in an exotic land that many of […]

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Entrpreneurial Hats

I don’t wear (real) hats that often, unless I’m going to be in the sun, or in the cold weather.  I have lot of hats, a habit of collecting them picked up from my Dad.  He has quite a collection, many of them from trucking companies or manufacturers.  In fact, as a child I thought […]

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David is right: I don’t wear as many hats in owning and operating our business as he does. My job primarily consists of preparing for research projects, for example, mock trials; conducting research; preparing detailed reports containing research results and recommendations for litigation strategies; supervising our research team; selecting juries; making presentations to lawyers, insurance […]

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