How to Remain Calm During a Heated Trial

If you have ever been in a courtroom and watched a trial, you know it can get pretty heated quite quickly. A good lawyer knows how to ask the questions and how to get the answers he wants through using professionalism. But when litigants start to question each other on the stand, animosity starts flying around and it takes only seconds for the witness to be intimidated enough to lose it. This kind of behaviour puts a damper on the credibility of each party and certainly doesn’t find any favor with the judge. On the other hand, if you can keep your cool during these moments, you will be establishing good credibility for yourself. Here are a few suggestions on how to remain calm during these moments of heated questioning.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Focus on the judge. Whether you are being asked questions by your counsel or representative or by someone from the other party, all your responses and answers are to be directed to the judge. Therefore, you don’t need to be intimidated by the questioner’s voice or facial expressions because what matters is giving the answers to the judge.
2. If the question is sarcastic, mocking or a statement of animosity, you need to turn to the judge and ask the judge to have that person put their words in the form of a question so that you can answer it. Almost every judge will react by telling the questioner to repeat it in the form of a question.
3. If the person questioning you is becoming aggressive in their comments towards you, ask the judge to have the questioner contain their words to questions and not opinions, (although the judge may step in on his own).
4. If the questioner approaches the witness stand gradually and is becoming intimidating, you have the right to ask the judge to tell them to please stand back.
5. When the questioner demands that you answer with answers that they want to hear, you can slow them down by saying, "I don’t know." When the questioner returns to asking questions properly, you can answer them accordingly.
6. When the questioner becomes loud and accusing, you can slow them down by turning to the judge and saying, “I don’t understand the question.” The judge will instruct the questioner to ask their question.
7. If the questioner begins to get riled or starts yelling, you can ask the judge to tell them to please ask you questions and stop yelling at you (although, most judges will step in at the first sight of this anyway).

Tips & Warnings

• By keeping your attention on the judge, you can answer any questions no matter how difficult it feels due to the animosity between you and the questioner. Remember, it is the judge who is ruling over the court and who will make the final decision, so you need to be as cooperative and responsive as possible to all questions asked of you. And you can always ask the judge to intervene when the questions become heated.