“On July 25, my father Thadd Llaurado and I started a five day jury trial in Madison, Wisconsin. Our client was a carpenter on a job site and due to the negligence of the HVAC subcontractor, a 40 foot piece of air duct fell 25 feet striking him in the head (he thankfully was wearing a hard hat). Despite a cracked skull and emergency craniotomy, our client worked hard and actually returned to work just four months after the incident with certain restrictions. Liability and damages were heavily disputed. The $1 million policy was paid by the underlying insurer at mediation less than a month before trial. The trial was against the excess carrier who offered $250,000 pre-trial.

About a week before trial, Jesse came to Wisconsin and spent a day with our client and his family. He visited the family’s farm and learned exactly who our client was prior to this happening. Jesse then spent the next day with Thadd and I helping craft an opening statement that told our client’s story. Jesse was invaluable in helping us tell our client’s story. As lawyers, we sometimes get hyper focused on the facts and details and can lose sight of the bigger picture. With our client, despite his “remarkable recovery” as defense counsel quoted over and over again, he wasn’t the same person. He had permanent brain damage to his left frontal and temporal lobes that affected his short term memory, his speech, his personality, his affect. Jesse’s work in helping us tell our client’s story was instrumental.  On Friday July 29, the jury returned a verdict of $9.8 million, $3 million for past pain and suffering and $6 million for future pain and suffering. 

Thank you, Jesse, for helping us tell the winning story!”

  “Yesterday I did a short workshop with Jesse Wilson on the method of effective storytelling. We worked through a few of my cases and figured out how to tell the story so my clients were the victor instead of the victim. The comeback story is one of the most ancient and compelling. From The Iliad to Rocky to Black Panther to the 100, our society venerates the comeback more than anything. That story can be found in a great many of my client's cases. Overcoming incredible tragedy is an essential feature of all heroes. And it should be rewarded.I am incorporating that method into my standard procedure for working up cases. As some know, I have a model for damages that I explain to all of my clients at the beginning of the case so that they understand how their actions will produce the evidence we use to win. Now, I will also use this victor approach. This is similar to the idea of strategic reframing, a business strategy tool where you imagine multiple future outcomes from a single fact set and then work backwards from those outcomes to determine the necessary steps to achieve them. After imagining those outcomes and comparing their relative value, the steps taken to achieve the chosen goal are applied and then iteratively reassessed at each stage. In the workshop yesterday, we looked for what was missing from our facts to tell the story of our client needed to win as a victor. And now I will iteratively evolve those needed facts on each case in tandem with the forecasting approach I have already used to maximize client outcomes. This was a great strategic workshop. But we also went through some high quality tactics to use for witness prep and for narrative at trial that will be helpful. I have about 15 pages of notes and am excited to use this new tool on all of my cases.”

  “I wanted to share the results of last weeks trial using the methods learned from Jesse Wilson who helped me ‘tell it like a movie.’ I’ve never had a juror, much less the five who came up and told me how hard they fought for our clients, to the point that they stuck around to tell us. We tried a case down in South rural Georgia with our metro Atlanta clients last week with mostly chiropractic care and soft tissue care. Needless to say our clients did not look like the jury.
For our opening we told the story of the wreck as if we were reading from a screenplay. It really helped frame for the jury how the auto wreck happened. In our case in chief, Instead of focusing on the loss of the maternity leave with her newborn (victim), we focused on the clients’ family coming together to help her provide care for her newborn and new mother (Victor) during this precious time. We put only the clients up as witnesses and submitted the medical records into evidence. The defense focused their case on gaps in treatment, overpriced meds and soft tissue injuries.
The jury deliberated for two days and returned a verdict just shy of six figures at about 3xs meds!!!”

  “On October 2-3, 2020, per my commitment to improving myself, my skills, and my knowledge so I can continue to serve my clients to the best of my ability, I attended Jesse’s “Tell the Winning Story” workshop (via Zoom). In this workshop, I powerfully discovered how to tell my client's stories as victory stories instead of victim stories. In fact, I have a critical hearing coming up in less than two weeks where this workshop very well may make the difference for my client. In this particular case, rather than just show the court how well my client has done since he was originally sentenced over 20 years ago (it’s a post-sentencing hearing in a sex offense case), my client and I are portraying not only the actions that he has taken in those 20 years, but how he went from relief and gratitude that his original arrest stopped him from spiraling down a self-destructive path that he was powerless to stop, to intense anger and resentment at the criminal justice system five years after his sentencing, to terror over possibly being sent to prison for paying lip service to what the court and his probation officer ordered him to do, to surrender to the fact that his way of doing life on his terms was not working, to embracing this unworkable life and the actions that he was being told to take, and, after this surrender, to finally (and victoriously) living the life that he always wanted to live. This workshop was worth its weight in gold.”

  “Jesse Wilson helped me discover the emotional truth of my client's case about being a grandfather and why that was important.

My client had an unfortunate criminal past. Because of this, we were forced to drop all loss of consortium damage claims otherwise it would come into evidence. We were left with only damages to our Plaintiff(and not his loved ones). Our Plaintiff had done his time and was a fully reformed, dedicated grandfather. Nonetheless, his criminal past emboldened the Defendant to try this case and attempt to put the criminal history in front of the jury at every opportunity. So we had some hard decisions to make, trying the case on a razor’s edge.

Fast forward to closing. I teach the instructions to the jury and when it came time to close on damages--I put up a picture of a big, gray-haired grandfather riding an undersized red bicycle—huge, toothy smile on his face. Those of you who were in my small group with Jesse will remember that my particular client's story was about being a grandfather. Well--here's the photographic evidence.

But this picture really is about much more than being a grandpa. You see, this man you see in the picture began working at age 9. Dropped out of school in 10th Grade. Worked his entire life until retirement because of his illness.

So in this picture, you are seeing a man enjoy his childhood for the first time right before dying a painful death. That's the damages story I told to the jury. And the truth is--this story came about because of Jesse Wilson's work with us.”

  “Anyone who wants to better understand how to tell their clients’ stories should attend Jesse Wilson’s Tell The Winning Story programs. And, that means all attorneys who represent people. At the heart of Jesse’s work is teaching attorneys how to feel - not just logically comprehend - what happened to their clients and how it affected their lives. Being empowered with this knowledge allows us to persuade just about anyone - including adjusters, mediators, judges, and juries - with both logic and emotion, which can greatly improve our results. Ask the attorneys at Gerry Spence’s law firm or Nick Rowley’s law firm, who credit Jesse with helping them

achieve six-, seven-, and eight-figure verdicts.”

  “Working with Jesse Wilson was an incredibly positive and fun learning experience. I have brought what we learned back to OKC and have been working with the monologue form in the seminar with other amazing storytellers. I can’t wait to join more of these seminars in order to develop a deeper passion for connecting to my client and telling their story. Jesse’s energy and spirit infected the group with the courage, the willingness and the power to share our stories. This awakened passion has stayed with me, not just in the story I need to tell the jury, but the story I am trying to live… and for that I will be forever grateful. I will never again forget, ‘a monologue is always a dialogue!"

  “Two days of breakthroughs working with Jesse Wilson in the theater on my case coming up for trial. Who would’ve thought the hardest state before the story to connect to would be JOY and AWE? Or that the language of universal connection, inspiration, and motivation is not some reptilian FEAR, but instead is that one truth worth living - and dying - for … LOVE. I have always believed this and rejected the idea that fear - fear of the defendant’s case - is what motivates jurors. That’s only part of it. LOVE is what makes a stranger run into a burning building to save a child, not fear. The jury may not always love my client, but when the victor’s story rather than the victim’s story is told, the jury will love what my client does - after all she’s been through just to feed herself after losing over 90% of her small intestines - to still rise everyday, greet her garden, nourish her roses, feed for her horses, and sing to the flora and fauna surrounding her. Thank you, Jesse.”