THE BIZ

From Raymond Burr to Susan Dey, every actor knows that pleading a case in court translates into high drama. But even the most loyal “L.A. Law” fan would rather clean the bathroom than serve jury duty. The truth be known, most attorneys give boring courtroom; law schools prefer teaching torts and contracts to teaching thespian techniques. Alan Blumenfeld, on the other hand, wants to put the juice back into justice. “I was studying acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco when one of my professors sat on a jury,” Blumenfeld says. “He told our class none of the jurors could follow the attorney’s presentations well enough to understand what the trial was about because the lawyers weren’t good storytellers.”

After graduation, Blumenfeld and fellow schoolmates Katherine James and Joshua Karton formed BJK & Associates, based in Culver City, and since 1977 have taught a course called Applied Theatre Techniques to more than 8,000 lawyers worldwide--500 in Los Angeles alone. “Lawyers don’t come here wearing leotards and memorize Stanley Kowalski’s lines,” Blumenfeld says. “We work on eliminating stage fright; we teach lawyers how to walk, when to walk, proper eye contact and poise, so the jury pays attention to what the attorney wants them to.”

Blumenfeld, a veteran actor whose credits include “Roseanne,” “L.A. Law” and “Brooklyn Bridge,” insists the best courtroom attorneys know how to spin a yarn. “They are the same talking to their husband, wife or neighbor as they are in the courtroom.” BJK workshops and seminars coax trial lawyers into shedding their stiff courtroom manners. For about $150 an hour, barristers, from firms including Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro and Morrison & Foerster, begin training with breathing and facial exercises and graduate to such serious stuff as compressing the storybook case of State vs. Goldilocks (of the Three Bears variety) into one vivid and exciting sentence, 10 words or less.

“It’s really appropriate for us to glom onto acting technique in this era of ‘L.A. Law,’ when juries have lost the patience to sit and listen to dry testimony,” says workshop graduate Nancy Adel, a West Los Angeles-based personal injury and medical malpractice attorney. “Suddenly I’m competing with Ann Kelsey, where a whole case is settled in a neat 47 1/2 minutes. That makes our job tougher.”

But should lawyers be allowed to learn how to persuade a jury with fancy theatrics? “It’s part of a good trial attorney’s job to learn how to use his or her voice and physical presence as a weapon,” replies Sid Kanazawa, an Applied Theatre Techniques graduate who specializes in product liability cases. “I think it should be taught at the law school level.”