I want to give you an example of me

against a big firm

some years ago

I was trying a case against the largest

firm in Phoenix

this is a firm that has offices in

multiple jurisdictions in the United

States and they were very condescending

to me

they thought that they were better than

me just because they’re big

and they had hired a Harvard Economist

to be their expert witness

and when we went to trial they had six

lawyers sitting on the other side of the

courtroom and it was just little old me

and my paralegal and my client on the

other side of the courtroom well

those six lawyers on the other side of

the courtroom not a one of them had in

their individual head

the entire case

they’d broken it up into little tiny

pieces

and so not one of them had everything

assembled in their own head only one guy

gets to stand at the podium and speak

and that one guy at the podium better

have all of the case in his head or he’s

gonna

run into a Chuck hole in the road

there’s going to be something that’s

going to trip him up

he’s going to say something that he

shouldn’t say

so you can compete with the big Law Firm

because with the computer you can match

Mastery of the documents in fact

they were fishing for documents onto the

other side of the courtroom they

couldn’t find them

and they had stacks of paper over there

that they were sorting through I had my

chronology

I knew where they all were

and the jury didn’t know

that I’m Just a Nobody one-man Law Firm

all they could see was is that I knew

what I was talking about in the

courtroom

you gotta seem to the jury like you know

what you’re talking about

if you don’t seem that way they don’t

believe you

I’m persuaded

that jurors particularly jurors today

aren’t searching for who’s telling the

truth

they’re trying to decide which lawyer is

telling the truth

because they don’t really

assimilate

everything that goes on in the courtroom

over the course of a five six seven week

long trial which most of my cases are

so they’re struggling with what to

believe

and if it’s lots of documents and lots

of experts and this expert saying that

you’ve got to be very careful with what

you present and in a fashion that the

jury can understand it so the big firm

I think is a disadvantage for the client

as opposed to a firm like mine because

they know I’m going to have the case in

my head

and they’re not going to uh have to

worry about they’re not having a person

on their team who understands the whole

case

I often use a metaphor

when I talk to clients because you’ve

got to make

them metaphor Wars similes figures of

speech these all help jury juries

and clients understand what happens

I tell them going to trial

you’re like going fishing

there’s a pier you got a fishing pole

the hook

you need bait

where’s bait

it’s over there in the field of

discovery

so if you’re a big law firm with lots of

lawyers

you have

all their your minions all the lawyers

all the new lawyers go to the field of

Discovery and start turning rocks over

looking for worms I call those guys rock

Turners they’ll go through that whole

field

looking for every worm they can find

and then when they filled their cans

with all these worms they go through it

again

looking for more worms

I tell my client

tell me where the worms are

and I go turn that rock over

and find the worms that I need for the

courtroom

because if you dump all those worms

on the jury

uh who knows if they’re gonna latch on

to your hook instead of what you’ve

chummed the water with

I get my can full of worms bait my hook

and drop in the water go to the

courtroom

that’s what trial work is