Live Webcast
CC

Effective Direct/Cross Examination: The Basics 2025


  • City:
  • Start Date:2025-07-28 13:00:00
  • End Date:2025-07-28 16:15:00
  • Length:
  • Level:Basic
  • Topics:Trial Skills

$299.00 ProPass

This program is eligible for 3 hours of CLE credit in 60-minute states. In 50-minute states, this program is eligible for 3.6 hours of CLE credit. Credit hours are estimated and are subject to each state’s approval and credit rounding rules.

Overview

A powerful cross-examination can shape the outcome of a trial. This intensive 3-hour CLE program offers attorneys practical tools to sharpen their cross-examination skills and enhance their courtroom advocacy.

Led by seasoned litigators, the course will explore proven techniques for crafting clear, concise, and persuasive questions that control the narrative and elicit key testimony. Topics include setting goals for your examination, structuring effective question sequences, handling evasive or hostile witnesses, and using exhibits to reinforce points.

Through real-world examples and interactive exercises, participants will gain greater confidence and agility in conducting direct and cross-examinations—whether before a judge, jury, or arbitrator.

Faculty

Kevin P. O’Brien, Esq.

Kevin is a partner at Stampone O’Brien Dilsheimer Holloway where he focuses his practice on catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death claims. Kevin is an active trial lawyer and is routinely sought out by colleagues as trial approaches to become involved as lead trial counsel. Kevin’s practice has involved all different types of catastrophic injury cases including product liability, trucking injury cases, medical malpractice, workplace injury, premises liability, civil rights, and institutional physical and sexual abuse cases. He is one of the leading attorneys in the Country on behalf of infants who have died from asphyxia and suffocation in the “Infant Inclined Sleeping Products” and individuals who have suffered scalding and burn injuries from defective pressure cookers, both of which have been recalled by the CPSC.I n addition to the monetary sums he has recovered, his legal work has led to the exposure of wrongdoing by large corporations and insurance companies. In a recent product liability case, as a result of Kevin’s work, the manufacturer of a piece of construction equipment which killed a young worker changed their sales practices to ensure that a piece of optional safety equipment was required to be sold with all products in the future. In another recent case, Kevin’s legal work resulted in an historic settlement with the City of Philadelphia in which they agreed to provide tasers to their entire police force at a cost of approximately $14 Million. The officers who shot Kevin’s client were not equipped with tasers when they encountered his client, a man in a mental health crisis. The city also agreed to pay a multi-million-dollar settlement to the victim’s family. Kevin’s verdicts and recoveries have been reported as some of the largest in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 2024, Kevin obtained a $55,000,000.00 verdict on behalf of his client who suffered a bilateral leg amputation when she was struck as a pedestrian by a careless trucker. The verdict is thought to be the largest in the history of Essex County, NJ. In other recent cases, Kevin and his co-counsel recovered $18.5 million for two men who were injured and killed in a gas station explosion; a $20,000,000.00 in a product liability case, a confidential 8 figure settlement in a product liability case, and $14,000,000 for a client in a product liability case. In 2023, Kevin obtained a $5.3 million verdict on behalf of a man injured by a construction worker sent home from a construction site, just days after obtaining a confidential 8 figure settlement in a product liability case. Earlier this year, Kevin’s work was reported in a medical malpractice case where he was retained just days before trial on behalf of the family of a man who died from a blood clot following routine Achilles surgery. Kevin called the Defendant doctor as the first witness to the stand in his case, and exposed his credentials as being mis-represented. The case settled for the entire seven figure insurance policy limits immediately after his cross examination, despite there being no settlement offer when the witness took the stand. In another case, after forcing the defense medical expert to admit that the doctor who hired him “breached the standard of care” Kevin was described by that defense expert witness as a “Philadelphia Bully” to another defense attorney. Kevin has obtained countless other seven figure verdicts and settlements on behalf of his injured clients. He is a 2007 graduate of Boston College, and a 2011 graduate of Widener University School of Law and is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida.


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