This is the story of a decades-long skirmish between Reptile and Mongoose: not a recitation of one of Rudyard Kipling’s classic Jungle Book tales, but, rather, a story about lawyers—trial lawyers, specifically—and their continual quest to present their clients’ stories more effectively to judges and juries.

Trial lawyers certainly do not suffer from a shortage of advocacy methods, strategies, and techniques from which to draw. But one such method—”Reptile Theory”—has garnered particular attention over the past decade. Prominent trial consultant David Ball and noted attorney Don Keenan formulated and developed Reptile Theory in 2009. Their seminal book, Reptile: The Plaintiff’s Revolution, drew on scientific research into primal safety instincts arising from the ancient “reptilian” region of the human brain and promoted a technique in which well-crafted metaphors could be targeted to empower jurors to address corporate negligence and other unethical dangers that galvanize the “reptilian” mind.