In the Press

"In January, [Mike] Panter will inaugurate a course at DePaul University College of Law that perhaps is a first for any American law school, according to one trial consultant. Panter's Litigation Lab will invite trial lawyers to present their pending cases to DePaul law students - one case for every two-hour class - to help the lawyer work out whatever problem the lawyer chooses. It could be the closing argument or the opening statement, or it could be how to depose a certain witness. Or the lawyer might want to bring the client in to see how the client holds up under examination by the students, Panter said. Trial consultant Patricia McEvoy of Zagnoli McEvoy Foley LLC in Chicago will assist Panter with the class. "

"People don't trust your apology if you don't tell them why you are apologizing. He especially was under more pressure because the previous attorney general was cracking down on prostitution, so there is this hypocrisy element. Frankly, he should have apologized for being a hypocrite."

"If you're the defense, you want people who are going to be skeptical of authority. But prosecutors are looking for the opposite. somebody who pays attention to authority, who follows the rules, who doesn't blame somebody else if they don't follow the rules."

"It starts with jury research and trying to construct a a juror profile. Whichever side you are on you want to know who your least favorable jurors are and your most favorable jurors. There is no perfect person; it is always on a scale. The other thing that both sides are doing is looking to see is there any reason thsi person obviously has a bias and can never listen to my case."

"He brought that cop role with him to the screen, to the television and he played it. I would not have advised him to do that... he's not even showing verbally or non-verbally that he's even interested in where his wife is."

"He is not making mistakes. He is not showing any nervousness. This does not appear to be a man concerned about his wife. He is concerned about his legal representation and the cost of it. He is very cold."

"Usually by the time closing arguments happen, people already have their minds made up."

"Nevertheless, I think she’s got to sit through it, Foley said. Otherwise, she appears to be in the dark, like, maybe he’s lying to her. She’s got to be there with the jurors, and hold her head high, and stand close to his side."

Eamigh said he sees a future in the courtroom for holographic imaging, a technology used by surgeons to prepare for complex operations.

"For $450, you can project a 3-D image in the air of a section of a brain. And the judge or jury can look around the image . . . and it's identical to the subject's brain," said John Eamigh, a technology consultant for the Chicago-based litigation consulting firm Zagnoli McEvoy Foley.

"The passage of time posed a huge challenge," Howard said. "There was a time-tunnel effect. . . . We had to get across that time had not just passed, but had been used as a conscious tool of the defendant to take advantage of a system that he had thought would always be protective of him."

''The jury really is just an audience, and every trial is drama,'' said Mr. Howard, 46, who has written for shows like ''The King of Queens'' and ''The Love Boat: The Next Wave''