Understanding and Overcoming Cognitive Biases for Lawyers and Law Students ― Becoming a Better Lawyer Through Cognitive Science

Did you know that cognitive biases can affect your relationships with clients? Do you know the most important cognitive bias for defense attorneys in jury trials? Do you know why traditional sexual harassment training doesn’t work? Did you know that it is easy to make an ethical violation, even if you didn’t intend to? Did you know that cognitive biases can lead to malpractice suits? This book helps lawyers and future lawyers understand the cognitive biases that can affect their law practices. It introduces lawyers to cognitive biases and how to overcome them. It demonstrates how to think more clearly and how to avoid being manipulated by others through cognitive biases. It also explains how you can use cognitive biases in persuasion. Finally, it demonstrates how attorneys can avoid unconscious ethical lapses. The first part of this book (Chapters 1–5) introduces cognitive biases. It will help you understand these biases, show how these biases work in the law and legal profession, and give exercises so that you can develop the ability to overcome your cognitive biases. Chapter 6 will go into more depth by showing how the cognitive biases fit into a model of moral reasoning. Chapter 7 will demonstrate how cognitive biases affect legal ethics (behavioral legal ethics). Chapter 8 will present special problems concerning cognitive biases and the legal profession. Chapter 9 will contain additional exercises on cognitive biases in general, and Chapter 10 contains review exercises focused on lawyers and the practice of law.