About us

For more than four decades, we’ve helped witnesses change the outcomes of their cases and lawyers change the trajectory of their careers.

ACT of COMMUNICATION® was founded by Katherine James and Alan Blumenfeld — two idealistic young artists who saw that the skills of the stage could transform the courtroom not through tricky or stagecraft, but through empowerment and a focus on honesty and conviction. Since 1977, we’ve trained over 50,000 attorneys and countless witnesses. Our philosophy is simple: when you communicate with authenticity and heart, you win.

OUR HISTORY

ACT began with a radical idea—that advocacy is both an art and a craft that can be taught and practiced.

ACT began as small, dynamic workshops where actors taught lawyers, the tools of their trade. We grew into a nationwide trial consulting firm specializing in attorney skills training, case narrative strategy, and witness preparation. Along the way, we’ve seen shy witnesses become stars, stiff openings turn into poetry, and analytical trial lawyers unleash their hidden power to emotionally connect with jurors. Our work has impacted thousands of trials, including many landmark cases you’ll find in law textbooks or on the national news.

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the way we work

What is it like
working with us?

We don’t lecture—we play, rehearse, and refine until delivery feels natural and powerful. Our process is experiential, collaborative, and rooted in the idea that great advocacy is lived rather than just memorized and recited.

Explore

Explore your style and discover what’s holding you back.

Refine

Practice key trial moments in a safe, creative space with guidance from seasoned theater professionals.

Unleash

Polish your delivery so your authentic self comes through with clarity, confidence, and warmth.

Our Mission & Values

We are on a mission to make advocacy more human, more authentic, more emotionally intelligent, and rooted in genuine connection.

Our credentials speak loudly.
We try not to.

In a world where lawyers and other consultants are constantly plastering the size of their wins on advertising, we often joke about getting a “$1 TRILLION VERDICT!!!” We joke about it because talking about past wins is not us. Past win’s don’t help clients.

If you want a snapshot of our actual past results, here is what we can tell you: We did a casual, off-the-top-of-the-brain recollection of some of our bigger cases in just the last 10 years alone and the number got to be over $20 billion in outcomes. Our largest verdict used to be one of the 10 largest single plaintiff verdicts in world history. It may still be. We haven’t checked. We take a similar approach to our high profile trials. If you read the news or watch cable shows, you’ve probably seen more than one of our cases. We don’t tell people what we worked on.

How do you know if we are who we say we are? ACT has been around and good at what we do for a long time, so we have a LOT of references. We’re happy to connect you with top attorneys in your part of the country or top attorneys in your case type. We like to let them speak for us based on their experience.

Bottom Line: As a matter of integrity, we don’t make promises we can’t keep and we don’t live in the past. We attack every single case with humility and passion. The only outcome that matters to us is the next one.