The Jury Charge: Your Case's Hidden Power Play

The jury charge.

Perhaps no other single component of trial practice presents such a significant disconnect between how litigators talk about it and how they treat it in practice. 

The jury charge is the combination of the court's explanation to the jury of the law governing the case or the court's identification and the factual questions the jurors must answer to render a verdict. Given that, most trial lawyers understand, at an intellectual level at least, how important the jury charge is. Indeed, because winning on the underlying law and on the questions posed to the jury often means winning the trial, few litigators would dispute that the jury charge matters. A lot.

And yet. . .