Brooklyn Law School presents The Impact of Cognitive Bias on Persuasion and Writing Strategies on March 1, 2013.
Research into the psychology of decision-making has demonstrated that when people are called upon to process complex and ambiguous information, they rely on mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive burden of these tasks. Such heuristics and biases, as they are called, sometimes lead to faulty judgments because they are naturalistic and intuitive (involving, for example, gut instincts and personal experience), and prone to error more than are analytical judgments based on careful consideration and logical processing of the information presented.
The legal profession has explored the role of cognitive bias in many domains, ranging from their contributions to jury-based and judiciary decision-making to their influence on negotiation. This symposium refocuses the discussion by looking at the function and role of cognitive bias in legal writing and explores both the persuasive power and the related ethical challenges of cognitive bias in this realm, with an emphasis on improving legal writing and legal writing strategy.
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