Arguing Class Actions is a monthly column by Adam J. Levitt for the National Law Journal.
Reprinted with permission from the March 2, 2026, edition of the National Law Journal. © 2025 ALM Media Properties, LLC. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.
In civil class action and complex commercial jury trials, the parties’ opposing positions are expressed through the art of persuasion. Juries receive competing narratives, not neutral compilations of facts. The winning presentation ultimately compels the verdict. In jurors’ minds, it’s the clearest picture of what happened, and it’s the result of the communicative artistry of the best-trained trial lawyer. But how, exactly is a winning verdict most often built?
Unfortunately, law school doesn’t teach which persuasion techniques actually influence jurors’ decisions at trial. Instead, students quickly learn that professors give the best grades for the most comprehensive, detailed, and explanatory arguments. The students who focus on the details and who force their points of law and argument into the starkest relief rise to the top of the class. Through this process, students leave the classroom and enter the courtroom trained to approach a jury trial like a realist painter is trained to approach a canvas: showing all of the details. The assumption is that persuasion comes from completeness: The more facts that are marshalled, the more documents that are introduced, the more clauses that are parsed, the closer the jury will come to the “truth.” Whether the case involves product defects, contracts, valuations, accounting rules, or complex transactions, the instinct forged in law school is to explain everything. The novice trial lawyer assumes that if every detail is proven, the jury will necessarily follow. They don’t realize it at first, but after the jury votes against their side, they quickly learn that jurors don’t respond to the same things that excite law professors.
Most jurors don’t have the analytical tools of a scholar, who can absorb evidence and details like a hard drive. They don’t deliberate with the efficiency and precision of a trained academic. And, perhaps most significantly, they don’t experience a trial as an accumulation of facts—contrary to the appellate analysis of “weighted” evidence that is replete in legal briefs and decisional law. Rather, jurors take an ordinary-life, big-picture view of things as they create a story of what happened in the case. What stays with them throughout deliberations isn’t the weight of every detail, but the coherence of a compelling story. So, like an impressionist painter, a well-trained trial lawyer learns the art of holding back, omitting detail, and trusting their own subjective perception of the case, knowing that selective clarity—focusing on the most important facts—and not exhaustive detail drives verdicts.
That’s why communicating with a jury in a class or complex commercial trial is an act of communicative, persuasive impressionism, not realism. Call it courtroom impressionism. The goal isn’t to state every detail; rather, the goal is to validate and fascinate the jurors to teach what happened, why it matters, and who should bear responsibility. To be clear, this isn’t an argument for oversimplification or theatrics; rather, it’s an argument for discipline. In class and complex commercial trials, the most effective trial advocacy isn’t about saying more; rather, it’s about choosing what to leave unsaid, trusting the jury to connect the dots, and allowing jurors to discover the truth, rather than being dragged to it.
The artful trial lawyer, or courtroom impressionist, knows that jurors don’t want to be lectured; they want to be engaged. They want to feel competent. And, perhaps most importantly, they want to believe that the conclusions that they reach are both inevitable and correct. To that end, skilled trial lawyers don’t force their view of the evidence upon jurors. They refrain from telling the jury what everything means, how it fits together, and why their side should win. By contrast, while the lawyer hell-bent on drowning the jury in an ocean of facts may intend to provide clarity, the effect is often disengagement. When everything is spelled out, jurors stop trusting. When jurors stop trusting, resistance grows. And, when resistance grows, the case becomes harder—if not impossible—to win.
Cognitive science confirms what experienced trial lawyers have long intuited: People reach conclusions by filling in gaps themselves, not by adopting answers handed to them fully formed. The human process of resolving ambiguity, recognizing patterns, and drawing inferences is what creates meaning and empowers verdicts. The art of persuasion demands respect for that reality.
This is where courtroom impressionism matters. Just as an impressionist painter doesn’t define every edge, the courtroom impressionist doesn’t offer every fact. Rather, he or she selects the most meaningful facts—those that carry interpretive weight. It’s the artful execution of this selective process, born of a deep understanding of all the relevant facts, that invites the juror to participate. Just as the eye completes the impressionist’s painting, when the case is well crafted, the juror completes the trial lawyer’s sentences. In both the art gallery and the jury box, the audience isn’t passive; rather, it’s engaged in perception.
The most persuasive class and complex commercial cases are those in which jurors feel like partners in a shared project: sorting through conduct, motivations, and consequences to reach a just result. When jurors feel that the lawyer is walking with them—rather than pushing them—they’re more receptive, more attentive, and, ultimately, more engaged.
This has immediate implications for how trials should be framed from the outset. Skilled trial lawyers understand that opening statements are not inventories of proof; rather, they are journeys built from that inventory. What’s selected from that inventory establishes the lens through which jurors receive the case. That lens teaches jurors why the case exists and why they should trust the courtroom impressionist guiding them.
In a breach-of-contract case, for example, jurors don’t need every clause and term. Rather, they need to know why the promise was broken. In a fiduciary duty case, jurors don’t need to master governance structures; they need to know who was betrayed. The big picture, presented by the courtroom impressionist, always governs which details persuade.
The problem arises when lawyers confuse persuasion with explanation. Commercial litigators, particularly those steeped in motion practice, are trained to analyze and address every argument and counterargument. Before a judge, that approach makes sense. Before juries, however, it creates noise. Every additional explanation weakens momentum. Every digression framed as “what you really need to know” signals uncertainty. More explanation rarely produces more understanding. Indeed, it usually produces less.
This dynamic repeats throughout trial. On direct examination, effective courtroom impressionists don’t walk jurors through every procedural step, decisional iteration, or document version. Instead, they let witnesses tell clean stories with fewer interruptions and detours. They enable contradictions to emerge through contrast, rather than commentary. They allow silence. Used well, silence is one of the courtroom impressionist’s most persuasive jury communication tools.
Cross examination requires the same restraint. Jurors don’t tally points the way that lawyers do. The goal isn’t to extract every concession, but to create moments that jurors notice—hesitation, evasiveness, discomfort. The courtroom impressionist knows that a short, focused cross that leaves a question unanswered is often more powerful than an interrogation that answers everything.
Exhibits demand similar discipline. Jurors simply can’t absorb mountains of paper. Indeed, indiscriminate document dumps telegraph uncertainty about what really matters. By contrast, selective presentation communicates confidence. Often, a single email, letter, or text establishes credibility and clarity on its own.
Experts, too, must be used impressionistically. Skilled trial lawyers select experts who can highlight a few core propositions that align with the narrative: A valuation was manipulated, a risk concealed, assumptions ignored. Once jurors grasp the point, repetition undermines credibility rather than builds it.
All of this culminates in closing argument. The closing of a courtroom impressionist doesn’t persuade so much as confirm. It returns jurors to the path that they’ve already walked and validates the conclusions that they’ve prepared themselves to reach. When it works, jurors feel alignment and inevitability, not pressure, and they feel confidence that the verdict aligns with what they’ve already understood to be true.
None of this suggests that accuracy is optional or that complexity can be ignored. Commercial cases are complex because commerce is complex. But complexity must be curated. The discipline of trial advocacy lies in deciding which details illuminate and which merely accumulate.
Take it from the courtroom impressionists: Jury trials in class and complex commercial cases aren’t about proving every fact. They’re about teaching jurors what happened and why it matters. The trial lawyers who win aren’t those who show jurors everything, but those who show them enough—and then give jurors space to see it for themselves.
That’s courtroom impressionism. And in the jury box, it’s persuasion at its most effective.
Adam J. Levitt is a founding partner of DiCello Levitt, where he heads the firm’s class action and public client practice groups. He can be reached at alevitt@dicellolevitt.com.
Thank you to DiCello Levitt partner and Trial Center Chair Robert F. “Bobby” DiCello for contributing to this column.
