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“The more tightly coupled the brains became, the more the listener said that heunderstood the story. This coupling effect disappeared if you scrambled the sentencesin the story. Something about the literary coherence of the tale seemed to do the work.”Id. A good narrative story is a kind of magnet that pulls people into the storyteller’stribe.To win a jury, the best opening statement is good story. Lawyers who bristle when thejudge admonishes them for arguing in their openings ought to thank the judge instead.She is doing them a favor, perhaps unintentionally. The lawyer who argues in openingis less persuasive than the one who brings the jurors into his and his client’s world,helping them feel, for example, the enthusiasm the client has about offering a productthat makes life a little safer, warmer, or better for customers, and their personaldisappointment and frustration when their product is maligned unfairly. A good story willput the jurors right into our client’s shoes, ready for a long walk with our client’s tribe.As British barrister Michael Mansfield has said, “The first thing members of a jury get ina courtroom is a gut instinct. They make up their minds with their hearts. The trick thenis to present the evidence in such a way that it corroborates that initial gut instinct. It’sjust like in everyday life. It’s much easier to convince someone that they were right allalong than that they were wrong all along.” 84F. Make It Simple84 Dutton, supra note 5 at 100.39