Shari Belitz: Wins Trials by Being Boring, Consistent

Asked where trials are won, a litigation consultant in New York answered with what she had been doing that evening. “Tonight I read a really long transcript that most would find boring. However, I found the story. In the boring, the tedious, and the consistent, you find the human story. And you find a way to tell it to invest your jury.”

The room she does that reading for has changed. “In the United States we find ourselves in unprecedented times of rising verdicts,” she says. The count supports her. Marathon Strategies identified nearly 200 jury verdicts of at least $10 million against companies in 2025, the highest annual total since it began publishing the report. Her reading of why is short: “The confluence of our zeitgeist, coupled with a greater understanding of social science has contributed.”

Shari Belitz is the CEO of Shari Belitz Communications, LLC, a litigation consulting company in New York. For civil defense lawyers and the insurance professionals behind them, it runs mock trials and focus groups, in person and online, prepares witnesses, develops case themes, picks juries, seats shadow juries and interviews jurors after the verdict. She also teaches, which is the part she says she is here for. “It is my goal to teach civil defense lawyers and insurance professionals how to harness the zeitgeist, and leverage our understanding of social science to achieve favorable litigation outcomes. I find the best way to teach is to make it fun to learn!”

The Cases She Gets Early

Shari meets defense teams at every stage of a case, and the stage decides what she can do for them. “Some cases, I pack my bags, read the file on the plane, and pick a jury a day later,” she says. “The really great cases are those we get early: we collect and analyze the data, evaluate it, find patterns, make predictions, test themes, then frame the case.”

The data is the part her industry likes to talk about. “In my work we talk a lot about data and numbers. Percentages, means, confidence intervals.” The part she wants lawyers to hear is where the data gets turned into a case, and it isn’t in the courtroom. In a post this month she listed where trials are not won: at the counsel table, at sidebar, in the suits, the ties and the heels. Then where they are.

Trials are won in your sweatpants reading transcripts. Walking in the rain, arguing plaintiff’s case to yourself. Watching your kids do a puzzle and realizing how it can be used to explain causation.

Her own answer to the question she asked under that post is the one at the top of this piece: “You win by being boring, consistent, and tedious.” The numbers she prefers to talk about are a different kind.

Fifteen Years as the Client

I know what my insurance clients need, because I was one for a long time!

This week she reached for a 1970s television ad to say the same thing. Sy Sperling, she wrote, launched a hair restoration business on the line “I’m not only the Hair Club president, but I’m also a client,” and she uses the analogy “to describe how I’ve stood in the shoes (hair?) of my clients.”

The psychology came in during the legal career, not after it. As a second-year associate she was sent to New York Supreme Court and watched a judge explain voir dire to prospective jurors. “School and practice taught me the SCIENCE and ART of voir dire,” she has written. “It was that judge who taught me the PASSION.” Her profile records the rest: “During my legal career, I took a leap of faith and pursued a dream I had always had which was studying forensic psychology, including advanced jury science and research at the graduate level.” That was at John Jay College from 2006 to 2008. A certificate in behavioral economics from Harvard University followed in 2022.

Shari Belitz Communications, LLC opened in April 2020. “Another great move was starting my company, scared but brave and executing my outlandish marketing as I see fit.”

The marketing has a source. “I always go back to a quote from my dad, ‘If you are slow, MARKET! If you are busy, MARKET.’ The consummate entrepreneur knew the secret sauce was not so much the marketing, but getting out there (whether on paper or in person) to teach and show how you can help.” Her parents were business owners, she says, “who achieved the American Dream through innovation and hard work. I want to protect business owners who have done the same.” That is the client she has in mind when she gives an answer a team doesn’t want.

What You Need to Hear

Asked for a hard moment, she offered a category. “Many hard moments. Entrepreneurship is constant judgment calls. In one matter, I offered a strategic solution based on the data. It wasn’t what the client wanted to hear, so they walked.”

I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. I will tell you what you need to hear. PS They are back.

The other turn she names is the opposite of walking away. “I have had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the best minds in this business. In an industry which I often find competitive, I choose to collaborate, and I couldn’t be happier.”

The method itself she teaches in public. In a post she set out why a prequel like Better Call Saul satisfies: it gives coverage and coherence, “two elements needed to tell a compelling story,” and a jury’s brain wants both. The obstacles in a courtroom are the rules of evidence, cross-examination and a competing storyteller. “This is why we theme. This is why we tell a story using senses. This is why we use rhetoric. This is why we win hearts first. This is why we make it easy for the jury.” Most of her teaching happens in that register.

Teaching It Out Loud

EnPSYCHLAWpedia is her course, described on her profile as “an educational platform which uses video and written materials to teach lawyers how to use social psychology to achieve favorable litigation outcomes, at settlement or trial.” She has guest lectured at NYU’s Schack Institute on cognitive biases in negotiation since 2020 and at Rutgers Law School on cognitive biases in the law since 2021. In 2020 she co-authored #Networked, a bestselling anthology written with nineteen other women attorneys. Her newsletter, LIT TIPS, is free.

On LinkedIn, where 20,000 people follow her, the lessons arrive as rewritten 1980s hits, a trial prep rap, a Gilligan’s Island theme about five witnesses and a CEO who was the worst of them, and a five-step guide to counter-anchoring explained through ice cream. Under the jokes the content is the same every time: a cognitive bias, a theme, a way to make the jury’s job easier. “I pride my presentations on being innovative, creative, and exciting,” her profile says. On her own profile she also admits the retirement plan: “My dream/retirement job is to write the headlines for the New York Post.”

My dream/retirement job is to write the headlines for the New York Post.

In an industry which I often find competitive, I choose to collaborate, and I couldn’t be happier.

Where Shari Is Now

The work this year is the work described above, for the reader she named: civil defense lawyers and insurance professionals facing a verdict environment she calls unprecedented. The teaching runs alongside it, through the course, the lectures, the newsletter and the posts, on the principle that the lesson lands when it is fun. She wants to hear from the defense teams and insurers who want her early, when the data can still shape the case, and from the ones who want to be taught.

Outside work: “I am a voracious reader. I read everything. Historical fiction, classics, biographies, bestsellers, business books. My favorite places are a library or used book store.”

Asked for a line she lives by, she gave six words. “Tomorrow is promised to no one.”