In our quest to perfect our trial skills and improve outcomes,
lawyers and trial consultants have, for at least 30 years,
turned to science. Our understanding of it is incomplete and our
implementation imperfect, yet we make progress. But sometimes
our incomplete knowledge does a disservice, as does the
treatment of the triune brain in David Ball and Don Keenan's
Reptile: The 2009 Manual of The Plaintiff's Revolution.  In the
Reptile Manual, the authors frame trial strategy in terms of
reptilian survival. Why? Because, they say, (a) jurors see you,
plaintiffs' counsel, "as a menace to their survival";1 (b) "it
is too late to respond with logic alone or even with emotion";2
and, therefore, (c) to prevail, plaintiffs' attorneys must frame
their cases to activate jurors' reptilian survival mode.3 In
Ball and Keenan's approach, your (the attorney's) survival is at
stake because jurors think you threaten their survival;
therefore, you need to show jurors that the defense is the real
threat. You need not be in terr