The secret to success in the Supreme Court revealed: Researchers say lawyers who DON'T have a masculine voice are more likely to win

Men who sound very masculine are less likely to win a US Supreme Court case than their gentler sounding peers, a new study has found.

Researchers analysed recording of laywer's voices and then asked volunteers to rank them.

They found that just one trait emerged as an indicator of how they would do - how masculine their voice was.

The team led by linguist Alan Yu of the University of Chicago and legal theorist Daniel Chen of ETH Zurich in Switzerland collected 60 recordings of male lawyers in the Supreme Court making the traditional opening statement: 'Mister Chief Justice, may it please the court'. 

200 volunteers rated these clips for how masculine they thought the speaker was, as well as how attractive, confident, intelligent, trustworthy and educated they perceived the voice to be.

After accounting for the age and experience of the lawyers, statistical analysis showed that only one of the traits could predict the court outcome.