Rita Handrich is trained as a psychologist and has been a trial consultant with Keene Trial Consulting since 2000. Starting in 2008, she became Editor of the The Jury Expert (a free on-line trial skills publication of the American Society of Trial Consultants).
Rita tweets at her firm account @keenetrial (sometimes) and @thejuryexpert (always).
Get to know her better!
1: What is your most favourite part of the day?
In general, mid-morning. By then, I’ve had my mandatory coffee, reviewed the news and my email, and I can focus on getting whatever creative/thinking work I need to accomplish that day, completed. But, depending on what I’m doing on any given day–my favorite time of day can vary.
2: What is the worst kind of person you ever sat next to on a flight?
I want to be left alone on flights. So any chatty or overly familiar person really annoys me. I generally plug my iPod in as soon as allowed and listen to an audio book or doze in and out at will.
3: Were you ever in a situation where you came up short with a good come back? You can give it now!
I’m sure I have been in many such situations. My teenage daughter has what she thinks is a “good come back”. If I say “please go do the dishes”, she says “you go do the dishes” with a big grin. Somehow, for me anyway, it defuses the tension in a situation.
I have begun to think that sort of response internally when people say things to me that are offensive, inaccurate, or otherwise disconcerting and it helps me to not react defensively and instead respond to the message rather than how the message has been delivered.
4: Which trial/case still haunts you till today?
We consulted on a case where a young girl had lost both parents and was being raised by her grandmother. The girl had flu like symptoms and grandma took her to a physician. Through a strange series of events (during which grandma did everything possible to get the girl help), meningitis was not diagnosed and the girl ended up horribly brain-damaged. She could not move or speak but seemed to understand some conversation and obviously recognized her grandma.
As the lawsuit went on, grandma suddenly died. The girl was alone in the world except for the plaintiff attorney handling her case who had to tell her that grandma was dead and never really knew if she understood why grandma quit coming to see her.
This happened before medical malpractice damage caps in Texas but it is still one of the cases I think about as so horribly sad and hopeless. But it was a case where the outcome really mattered.
5: If you have a blog, how did you get started? Who or what inspired you to blog?
I blog for Keene Trial Consulting’s firm blog: The Jury Room. We were inspired to blog by reading many other blogs on-line and in particular, by Anne Reed (who has since moved on from law to lead the Wisconsin Humane Society).
We wanted to write about litigation advocacy, persuasion, bias, communication, social media, generational issues, case presentation, and more. We run into all those issues in the work we do consulting with attorneys on litigation cases. But we have to translate what we know (with backgrounds as psychologists) to plain English so it makes sense to attorneys.
Doug Keene and I take turns writing the blog posts. What we’ve found is that it really helps us to take complex ideas and make them simple. When we see current events and then blog about them from the perspective of litigation advocacy–it sharpens our thinking. In short, blogging is fun, intellectually stimulating, and gives us a venue to share what we know and what is important to us in our day to day work. It also gives clients and potential clients a place to peruse to see how we think and how we work. And that’s terrific. It is also a whole lot of work!
6: Did you end up in the profession of your childhood dreams?
I grew up in a wilderness area in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula about 90 miles from the border of Canada. There were bears and mountain lions and bobcats and lots of other scary things in the woods.
My dream growing up was to live in the city where I did not have to be afraid of wild animals tearing me limb from limb. I went into graduate school after college because I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career and was invited to apply to a graduate program in Psychology.
In hindsight, I was really fortunate to have this area choose me because I’ve been able to do so many different things. I have had a checkered career. I’ve worked in a private psychiatric hospital, in community mental health, in private practice, in forensic rehabilitation with men adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity (aka the criminally insane), and in a university setting.
What I love about trial consulting is that every new case is like a puzzle. You immerse yourself in it. You learn the nitty gritty. (I realized this when we had a case where one of the expert witnesses talked about how many pounds of pressure it actually takes to crush an infants’ head and that the average adult male can do that with his bare hands.) You present the case to an audience. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You refine themes and presentation. You work with witnesses. You assist with a plan for voir dire and jury selection. Sometimes you attend every day of trial. And then…you move on.
There is not the opportunity to become bored by doing the same thing over and over again. Mock jurors (and real jurors) are constantly surprising. What we think is powerful is sometimes not so terrific to them. It’s a constant learning process with every new case. And after almost 11 years–I still love it and I learn something new in every case.
7: Is there something you always wanted to learn but never did?
I have always had dreams of writing the great American novel. Or, being a private detective and drinking coffee and eating donuts in my car on dark streets while tailing a suspect. Or, being on Oprah.