Philip Becnel presented at the 2025 National Defender Investigator Association (NDIA) Regional Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. His talk, titled “Techniques of Persuasion,” covered the psychology of persuasion and how to get interviews when witnesses are otherwise reluctant. He talked about maximizing the effectiveness of an investigator’s introduction, methods to overcome objections, and questioning techniques to fill in omissions and to elicit more information following evasive responses during investigative interviews.