I really liked and agreed with how your paragraph that started this way concluded:
There's a trick to being heard,
But since I'm just microscopic on language sometimes, thought I'd say this also popped up in me.
No tricks.
The thing to focus on is NOT how others will hear you. It's to focus just on how/what you speak.
See what I mean? "How you will be heard" is really, truly, out of your control. No positioning, facial expressions, vocal intonations, physical postures or gestures, or any attempts at "tricking" the listener into hearing you "the way you want to be heard" will succeed.
What WILL succeed (and I know it will!) is:
You focusing on the honesty, simplicity, directness, and clarity of your own speech, and story.
(Your organization and narrative and documentation are all a foundation of that, and invaluable.) But you do not need to suggest, plant little ideas, suggest nuances, in listeners' minds. Assume: They are intelligent. They can hear.
But just be aware, that you might have a tendency in your thinking about this upcoming trial, that without meaning to intentionally, you are thinking in some way...of manipulating: iow, "How do I 'trick' these people/this judge into "hearing what I want them to hear"?'
My advice, though my courtroom experience with my brother was infinitesimal by comparison, is that to be calm in my truth (not pretending to not have any feelings, but just having the inner moral calm of knowing I am being TRUTHFUL and that I am a GOOD PERSON) ... and state facts (not maneuver interpretations of others) -- was my task.
That was it.
Past that, I truly had to "release the outcome." I can't imagine anything harder, Lighter, than releasing this particular outcome you're being challenged on.
But still, I think speaking truth to power, as the Quakers would say (the judge being "the power") is the only thing you need to do.
No tricks to being heard. Only the NON-trick, of speaking truthfully. And even...simply.
love to you,
Hops