Keeping It Real: Making White Collar Defendants Blue Collar Friendly

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

CLE TeleConference

Public opinion of the wealthy can swing from admiration to jealousy to hatred. In today’s culture, magazines and TV revere the rich and famous and pounce if they fall. While it may seem like a pop culture phenomenon, this attitude can affect the courtroom too.

In the wake of verdicts and convictions against Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart, more than ever defense lawyers must combat characterizations of their professional clients as arrogant, extravagant, greedy, and—perhaps most fundamentally—very different from their “peers” on the jury. As one defense lawyer joked, “Go easy on my client, he’s more human than lawyer.”

With today’s emphasis on the rise and fall of the wealthy, how do you protect your client from public opinion as well as the prosecution? This teleconference and live audio webcast will bring together trial lawyers, and the jury consultant who helped them, from the Kenneth Lay and other famous trials against professionals. They will discuss techniques for making your white collar defendant “blue collar friendly.”

• Amy E. Davis (Moderator)
  Hermes Sargent Bates, LLP, Dallas, TX
• Kim J. Askew
  Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP, Dallas, TX
• Bruce W. Collins
  Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, Dallas, TX
• Tara Trask
  Tara Trask and Associates, Los Angeles, CA

1.5 hours of CLE credit in 60-minute states/1.8 hours of CLE credit in 50-minute states have been requested in states accrediting ABA Teleconferences and Live Audio Webcasts*.

NY-licensed attorneys: This non-transitional CLE program has been approved for experienced NY-licensed attorneys in accordance with the requirements of the New York State CLE Board for 1.5 total NY CLE credits.

*States currently not accrediting ABA Teleconferences: DE, IN, PA, KS, OH