Welcome to the Mind Over Law podcast where we break the traditional rules of practicing law. Our focus is helping you first to become a better, happier person, which in turn will make you a better, happier lawyer both in and out of the courtroom. We will combine mindset and energy practices grounded in ancient wisdom along with cutting edge neuroscience give you those skills. Plus, I'll have deep conversations with some of the most thoughtful leaders that will share their life stories, their leadership journeys and their legal practice wisdom.
I'm Lexlee Overton and my promise is that each episode will offer practical insights and strategies to empower your law practice, your leadership skills, and most of all, your personal well being. Join me and I promise you'll become a better you lawyer and and leader. Welcome back to the Mind Over Law podcast where we explore leadership mindset and what it means to truly thrive in the legal world. Today, we're diving into one of the most human and often looked parts of the justice system.
What it takes to tell your truth on the witness stand. Our guest, Juliet Huck, is a pioneer in the art of persuasion. And for over two decades, she's helped legal teams and witnesses transform pressure into clarity, fear into confidence, and testimony into impact. As the author of Equation of Persuasion and the host of Trauma Trial and Transformation, Juliet brings a powerful blend of strategy, empathy and healing to the courtroom.
She's here to share what it really means to support witnesses, not just to win cases, but to restore trust in the process. And Juliet Welcome to the Mind Over Law podcast. We're so glad you're here.
Thanks for having me. Lexlee.
Yes. So I'm just gonna dive right in because I think that what you do is so needed and so missed and it's so interesting. So you've like spent so much time preparing hundreds of different kinds of witnesses to, to help, to really be able to tell the story that's the true story. And one of the things that you have really dived into is as in doing that, seeing that, being a witness, what that does to someone, the distress that it causes and not just being in the moment, in trial, but the lasting effects of that.
So I'd like to start there. Tell us about your journey and that and what you wish that lawyers would do differently.
My journey is starting in this industry. I was in the advertising industry. So advertising is about persuasion. And persuasion to me is, I define it as not a call to action, but a directed action.
So when you're a lawyer standing in front of a jury, you want to direct them to what you want. The Verdict that you want in your favor. Right through that process, you have obviously a lot of evidence and witnesses and things that have to come through that, that type that makes sense to jurors. And one of those things that I saw is the intensity that it takes on a witness to take the stand who has not an expert witness.
Even though expert witnesses, I think still stress out. I've talked to them. Yeah. But witnesses that are have never even thought about being involved in the lawsuit or had any connection to law and what that can do to their psyche and what that can do to them.
And in general. So as I in my quest of being in this business for over 30 years, I really started to see a few years ago how traumatic that can be and how can I actually work, help others, as I've worked through my own trauma and my own personal processes on allowing that experience to not be as traumatic. And so to work through the. Work with lawyers, really through the lawyer, to be the conduit of the mental health of the witness.
Because to me, a mentally healthy witness is always a very good witness. And you can see it. That's how I started in this journey. Just.
It's only been a few years focusing on the witness side, but I've been in trial for so long, I've helped prepare tons of witnesses to go to take the stand, from whistleblowers to Sharon Watkins on Enron, to Lacey Peterson or Scott Peterson's mother, to different people that have been pulled into personal friends who've had to take the stand in corporate trials that they never expected to be. And so I. I really thought that this is an area that just doesn't get a lot of attention.
And so what is it that you do to help the lawyer to see that? And what kind of techniques or methods do you use? Could you give us some examples of what you do to help witnesses to be in a better space?
Yeah. So I just came off a trial, talked about that a few minutes ago. Pretty contentious trial. But we had a witness who was extremely shy.
He was a technical background guy you could tell was scared to death to speak in public. And so the lawyer and I had conversation about how do you handle someone like that versus his counterpart who was just as contentious. It could be just angry and yelling at the lawyer, yelling at the judge. It was pretty shocking, actually.
Oh yeah, it was pretty. You saw his anger. So you really start to see personalities as. Especially the longer they're on the stand.
Right. You start to see it really come out because at first you're obviously On a cross examination, they're on a complete defense because they have no idea what's coming at them. And I personally have been deposed and it is. Was one of the worst days of my life, as I've talked about on my own personal podcast, Trauma Trial Transformation.
And it was. You just are on the defense immediately. There's just, there's nothing else you can say about it because your, your lawyer helps you support your story and set you up and then you know that they're coming in to take you down. And as I've talked about on my podcast before, the DOJ definition of a cross examination is to discredit.
So it's not always about finding truth, it's about how many discredit what their truth is. So that's a pretty intimidating scenario for anybody to walk in. And this scenario, I couldn't have been more pleased with the lawyer I was working with. I call them my lawyers because I feel like sometimes they're my students and yet sometimes they're my colleagues and sometimes they're my teachers.
And. But anyway, my, so my client, the young lawyer, she just did such a beautiful job and I think what really made her so good as being a mother of three young children, she just really had a finesse on how to speak to this young man who was so scared and so nervous and she just, I hate to say, got everything out of him that she wanted, but she did it with such grace and such compassion. I don't know if I've ever seen cross exam human in that sense, just really in a human form. And I just, I'm hoping to her to get a white podcast here soon.
But it was, it's hard to watch people because then you see someone who's really angry and contentious and it's based on fear, but that just also sparks the lawyer to want to actually be more aggressive. And how do we back off? How do we put the hammer down? I had to send a few emails when I'm watching online or something like, we need to back off a little bit here.
There's. This is not only good for the person, it's not only good for you, it's not good for the jury. It's not good for everybody to be as stepping in that contentious ring with them. It's a very interesting place to be from a storyteller's perspective on how that perception is coming across to people.
So she did it instinctively, is what you're saying, because she instinctively. Is there something that you could give as far as tips to lawyers? That are listening to think about when they're in this kind of situation and when they're preparing witnesses to the things that they should think about that the witness is actually going through.
Yeah. As a matter of fact on my website I've put together some meditations that someone could actually listen to under juliethuck.com and yes, the first thing is really the preparation. There's not a lot of preparation sometimes with witnesses who are especially the ones that are most fearful. I I call it command testify.
Thank you very much. Here's your lunch, next witness kind of thing.
Right.
I think the witness prep and getting them comfortable with what the room looks like, walking them through the process just instead of springing it on them is a huge step. And it not just being at the last minute. I think it's also really important that they get something that gives them a little time. An explanation in the courtroom, who the judge is, what the jury looks like.
Instead of again just they have to walk in the room, put up their right hand and go start right there. Prep is definitely one. And then to get to know them and get them to trust you. I've talked to other lawyers who have domestic abuse cases.
Like to get somebody on the stand to do that. We've walked through the conversation of lawyers say look directly just at me. They give them clues and key components to stay focused on something. Or even if I get a lawyer who has a witness that is out of control.
We had conversation at lunch of just take a breath back and see how you can work with this lawyer or this witness who is just going to do nothing but fight you the entire way. So I think it's a step by step, it's a person by person. But it's also having compassion for the situation at hand. This is not an easy situation for this person sitting in front of you, no matter what side of the aisle you're on.
And then how can you make it more comfortable with them? By making things familiar, giving them the respect of some time and following up afterwards. That's a big saying. They're just see later.
And it can be pretty traumatic for people to go through this. So I think sometimes just yoga, chiropractic, meditation, anything that a witness could do afterwards I think is for their own self care is just huge. For sure.
Yeah. So you said a lot there. Let me unpack a little bit. The first part was and then and that part about helping them to be comfortable and to imagine what it looks like.
You could do a visualization with them. One of the Things that we used to do was. Or I used to do when I was trying cases, when I was prepping clients, we would set it up the way that the courtroom would be so that they have that experience of this is where they're going to be and this is. These lawyers are going to be looking at this and the jury's going to be on this side of them.
So they have that experience of getting familiar with it, role playing it, like I'm comfortable. And then interesting that you talk about the things that they could do afterwards. Those are things like you're talking about meditation or yoga or et cetera. The things that I'm always trying to get lawyers to learn how to manage their state.
So that like when you're talking about when you're on that lunch break, you gotta take a step back, you gotta reset. Don't get so triggered by what's happening so that you could be more powerful. We know that the science behind that is that literally, if we're in our own fight or flight state, then that means we're not as smart as we could be in the moment because we don't have access to that part of our brains. So learning to do the techniques that keep you centered, what we call coherent, so that you do that in the moment when it's really hot under the pressure and people hear words like meditation and are like what I break that down.
I teach breathing techniques. What are some of the things you teach that help people to stay? Whether it's the witness? Because I think it's important to teach the witness that.
If I have a breathing technique that works for me, I'm teaching it to the witness to be able to stay in that moment. Are there certain things that you go to that you think help people?
Yeah, breathing is definitely one. The other thing I highly recommend is putting your feet on the floor flat, both your feet on the floor, and then try to talk a lot of witnesses. Witnesses of what? When you're in that moment, it's.
And it's really a difficult thing to do sometimes is see if you can feel your feet. Because what it does is snaps you out of that moment and puts you in to ground yourself or put your hands on the chair and what is your hand feeling like? Go into something very specific that grounds you, that brings you back to grounding, that then you can say to then take a breath and then you breathe through it. And then I truly believe jurors will never reprimand you or give you a bad verdict because you're taking care of yourself.
And I think in the end, that's what this is really all about when you're sitting in front of a jury. More trials as well. But I think jury trials are probably even more so scary for witnesses because now you've got a 12, 15 people, 16 people looking at you, and then you've got a whole court.
I'm judging you.
Judging. Yeah, I'm judging you. And I'm. Yes.
And so a stage, step by step process to. So one of the first things I say to my witnesses is, it's okay to stop. It's okay. Just stop.
And it's okay to tell your truth. That lawyer may try to get something out of you, but it's your story, your truth. And that's one of the things that I do in my meditations that, like I said, people can listen to on the website is because it's more about stopping. So even at lunch break meditation, where you could just listen to it for five minutes, you just snap yourself back into, this is my truth.
This is not anybody else's story but mine. What I'm going to say. So I think there's multiple things that could be done, but one of the first things I really try to do is get someone grounded and see what they're feeling. Even if they put their fingers just on the witness stand and just say, okay, what a breath, and what am I feeling?
Because I do believe that jurors will honor that type of behavior versus the contentious fighting. But it is a cha. It's work. So you have to also prep them in that moment to do that.
You can't just expect them to do it in the moment in the courtroom. So like you said, when you're role playing, get somebody else to practice it and get the other person to start cross examining and saying, okay, you don't know the answer. It's okay not to know the answer. Put your hands on the desk, just breathe, get grounded, and go from there.
That's probably the very first thing I use is just that grounding technique.
I love that because I think that unconsciously we are actually more drawn to and connected to the person who is grounded as opposed to the person who is in a state that we don't necessarily want for ourselves. So if someone is in an aggressive, angry, over the top state, which is really fear and anxiety, we unconsciously withdraw from that. So imagine that for your jury, right when you say it's not necessarily, that's not the best way to connect with the jury, to connect with the story even, because that's really an incoherent place. But if you're teaching your witness, even if they can sense that your witness is nervous, that's a normal.
They would be nervous. Most of your jurors are nervous a lot of times about their responsibility. Right. Like, we're all sharing.
And they're also more compassionate for that person who's feeling exactly right. And so just because example we were in a couple weeks ago, the one who was more contentious, you could tell they were like, okay, this guy's kind of being a jerk, and you know what's happening back and forth. And then you get the guy who is his counterpart that we need to cross examine, who's so sweet and so nice, you could tell that jury felt bad for him. Like, you could just see they're like, oh, man, this guy's into something that he.
So then you don't know if they're going to believe him more or not believe. It depends then, on how the lawyer handles that witness and that cross examination. Because that's why, to me, I'm so happy to be on your podcast, because how a lawyer handles that cross examination with that kind of witness is just so important because of the mental state that they may be in that jurors will see.
Yeah. And if the lawyer is not managing their state, they're going to miss that opportunity because they'll be too wrapped in their own anxiety and war that's happening in their own system. Yeah.
And their own, I will say, ego. Sometimes it's. They have. They want to win.
That's what they're there to do. Their lawyers are wired to win. And this guy on the witness stand who was contentious with me is not going to take me down. I'm going to win.
And then, as I say, both of them become right fighters, and right fighters cancel each other out and try to be right, and they try to be right, and you try to be right, and they try to be right. And the witness cancels himself out, and the lawyer cancels himself out, and they'd rather feel for the guy who was sitting there, who's really a sweet man, and they will connect to him and really listen to him. So how can you get your witnesses to, from a lawyer's perspective, not only their mental health, but to. In a cross examination, how can the lawyer handle a witness so that there doesn't become this basically just searing each other out kind of scenario?
I like the term right fighters. That's so true. I've witnessed that many times. Felt myself get drawn into it But I also like the idea of teaching what we.
You're referring to as grounding. And whether it's the feet or it's the hands that are touching. And what I'm feeling, one of a simple way that I try to teach when I'm teaching lawyers to manage their state is to use that. And it's just to say when you're really anxious, you just need to come back into the present moment.
So use your five senses. So you're using of touch.
Same page. Yep.
Feet on the ground. What am I hearing here? What's this heaviest sense of touch in my body that will just bring you back like what you're saying to the ground. It's coming into the now because you're literally outside your body.
When you're in fight or flight, you're not here. Right. You're in that whatever perceived threat is. Yeah.
So that's really great. I love that. One of the things I was reading about with you, and I'm really curious about this idea that you say that you're a bridge between law and real life. Can you tell me more about that?
Yeah. It might sound a little corny or a little cheesy, but I was raised on a farm in Ohio and I was raised with super. I have my. I always laugh.
I had my PhD in common sense because it was just. I just think sometimes that's what farm kids end up with. Even though I went to college and I've got degrees and all that stuff. But I feel like there is this place where real life does not happen in the courtroom.
And let me give you a perfect example. We were going over jury instructions a couple weeks ago, and the language is so legalese. Right. And so the lawyer sat down with me and said, what do you think about these jury instructions?
And I said, it's taking me a while to get through these. So what if we said took out this or put this in just to make it understandable in a more common sense way for a jury to. To actually at the time of the contract execution. And it's like, how about at the time you signed the contract, there was already information in the public?
That simple. Right. So you have to decide that. But the paragraph was so long.
So I feel like my role sometimes is to simplify this down into common sense language. And I use a lot. Language is a big part of it. Words are a very big part of it.
Instead of getting. Because the law is very technical and the law is very as we as being a lawyer and most lawyers. But I Have clients that come to me now and they're just like, okay, how would you say this? How would you do this?
And so instead of stating it in a legal form, which the court would want, you need to get the jurors understand. So how many times we see these jurors that go through these deliberations and they come back and say, we don't know what this means. It happened, it just happened on what was a Diddy's trial or somebody's trial that was like, they couldn't understand what the count was. So my job really is to help them become a more common sense storyteller.
The ability to ask questions in more common sense language. Words that are like, include responsibility, accountability. Most lawyers don't use the feeling words, right? They use the logical words.
And how do I get those? How can I work with my lawyers? To anybody really that can actually. Because I've also been one who says when you can relate to something, you can persuade.
And the only way you can persuade somebody is if they can relate. And the only way you can relate is if you have words that you have in common. And so that equation, to me, that's why my book, the Equation of Persuasion, is to walk through that on how you need to go through the steps to persuade. It's not just, oh, it's a call to action.
They did what I asked them to do. It's no, but they had the option to say no. That's a 50% chance of losing. You want the percentage to be down if you're going to persuade.
So the only way to do that is to relate to each other. And language is the way to do that. So I feel like that's one of my strengths is to be able to come in and like on the Enron litigation, I don't know if we talked about this. We may have talked about this in our past conversations, but I picked two words, truths and lies.
That's really all that case was about. Let me give you a good example. On the Enron litigation, that case was so complex between Wall street and creating energy, all this stuff. But when it came down to it, it was just two words, truths and lies.
It was two words that connected every single person what was true and what was a lie. And then jurors got to decide when the complicated stuff came in the end, was it true or was it not? And so that, that's a good example of what I end up doing a lot of times.
That's amazing because when you talk about as lawyers, we get really Stuck in the legal ease. And it's just because our brains are taught, oh, we have to prove this element. This is the way it sounds. To have someone reflect off of that just sounds like a lawyer.
And that also makes people not trust you in some ways, because it's like we're trying to use big words or something. When you use the words truth and you're saying that words connect us, and you're saying that lawyers don't use emotion words. I think emotions is what we really pick up and can connect with or not. So the words truth and lies invoke certain emotions.
Yeah.
Because everybody can connect to that. I just, again, I go back to this case just so recently. It was that empowerment. I said to the lead attorney in our closing argument that it was helping him, that it was like, we need to empower them.
Empowering a jury is everything. Empowering a witness is everything. And so how do you do that with gratitude? How do you do that without big legal words?
And man, he nailed it. I was just sitting there.
Yeah.
National Star Spangled Banner, because he was good at it. But just he was connected with them emotionally. And I just really felt that, that authenticity. That's another word I use.
Is that authenticity?
Yes.
It's so important to be just to yourself in that way.
Yes. Awesome. We're going to link everything. We're going to link to those meditations for a client.
We're going to link to your books. And I also want you just. You mentioned briefly your podcast, Trial Trauma and Transformation. Could you tell us just a little bit?
Because I think that it would be so important for lawyers to go and listen. They can learn a lot more about the impact that they could have and helping witnesses to testify better. But also just the wellness part that we're talking about.
Yeah. I started a podcast. Gosh, it's almost been two years, which is crazy. I've got about 60 episodes or so.
And it's everybody from lawyers, witnesses, and mental health professionals. And even I got my chiropractor who talks about how to heal after going through trauma, through chiropractic, through med yoga. I've got a yoga instructor. But from a lawyer's perspective, what I've also found important is I've got a really.
Probably one of my most important witnesses was a mother from Sandy Hook, Scarlett Lewis. She had a child. It was in the Sandy Hook shooting, and she had to sue Alex Jones and her episode, two episodes with her. And it's just so powerful to be.
Have to become a witness and go back and relive that trauma and how she's gotten through it and how her lawyer helped her through that. And so some great, great things from witnesses that I think your lawyers could. Your audience could really learn on how such a stressful situation to find out that she was going to pass out on the stand. So how to work through that and walk through it step by step.
And then to, like I said, because I'm really an overall, my bigger job is really as a storyteller. So to help them become the puzzle piece that fits into that story is also a key component that they see themselves as part of the process, not the thing that they're not the only thing that's happening. They're a piece of the process, which takes a lot of pressure off of them, too. And I talked to.
I talked to one of my lawyers out in Las Vegas who actually has to help children who have to take the stand. What kind of techniques you need to look for. Yeah, so I'm excited about that. I've got some people coming up, Jury consultant, and then my two books, the Equation of Persuasion and 50 Ways to Get yout Way.
50 Ways to Get your Way is a little heartfelt book on how to look at yourself as a persuader versus what you need from others, but how to yourself in that way. And. Yeah, so that's. The podcast is still going strong, and I'm excited about it.
Just to talk to people on how we can help each other get through a very stressful process.
Wonderful. Yes. I listen to the two of the mother that you were talking about was a very powerful episode. Very insightful.
Okay. So I always close out with three questions, and some of these I think you've answered in some way. I know you're excited about the podcast, but I also know what I want to know something else that you're excited about creating right now.
Working on a memoir, actually.
That's great.
Yeah. Thank you. It's been. It's a process.
It's. Anybody that thinks it's easy is I've learned my lesson the hard way. And. But, yeah, but my own processing of trauma and how it's helped me to relate to people that go through trauma, but also through these cases that I've learned a lot about myself and different aspects of each case that have come through growing up through trauma as a child.
And so, yeah, I'm super excited about that. I'm really hoping that somebody's going to pick that up. My fingers are crossed on that one. So that's kind of a big One right now.
I am sure that's going to happen. That's very exciting. I think you've talked in some ways about this, but if you could put it maybe in a sentence or two, what's one rule that you would tell lawyers to break? It seems to be a traditional way we practice law.
What would you tell us to do differently?
I would say to stop and really think about the mental health of your witness and witnesses. And then as you talk about a lot your own personal. Because if the lawyer comes in mentally healthy, their witnesses will be mentally healthy. And so I think it's.
I always call it an energetic connection when the. Starts from the top down, when the household is calm, it's because the parents are calm. And so I think the thing to break is not forget and be more compassionate as to what that person walking in the stand that day is to go through and check in with them later. Don't.
Just because trial's done doesn't mean they're done.
Yeah, Great advice. And then finally, what's one habit or practice that you do that helps you to be a happier person?
I love therapy. Yeah, I take it. I looked at more like life coaching. It's the word therapy is bad stigma to it because I.
If I have a problem with my car, I take it to a mechanic. Right. I'm not going to fix the car. If I have a problem coming down after such a stressful trial, then I need somebody who can help guide me through that process or just then how I blend back in with my family.
And after going through such a bubble, I call the trial bubble. So anything that is mentally a is one of my religious followings. He is so amazing on how to heal trauma, especially through the. One of his areas he talks about is the legal system and through jails, he calls them trauma centers.
He doesn't call them jails. And so to read up on that and to really understand how the mind works when we go through stress and trauma. So I. One of my things that I really try to do when I get back is to cook and really get the therapy as much as possible.
That's why I don't like the word therapy because people think you're just sitting down with somebody. Therapy to me is the chiropractic, the food, the meditation, the doing something for the community. So that's giving back. So self preservation, self healing is one of the biggest things for me that what makes you happy, what makes you in your happy place to get grounded and come back a better person.
Yes. Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here, sharing all your wisdom, your medicine into the world. It's been a delight.
I hope so. And I can't wait to get you on mine. So we'll get that worked out. But thank you so much for having me.
Lechley yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Mind Over Law. We hope that you're walking away inspired and ready to embrace your life and law practice in a more holistic, healthier, happier way. Don't forget to hit subscribe and let us know what you think.
Leaving a review helps us to spread the word to others. Be sure to follow us on socials for all the behind the scenes fun and sneak peeks of upcoming episodes. Until next time, Remember, with intention, anything is possible.
