Persuasion

What makes a lawyer in court, a lawyer's client, a television interviewee or anyone else think that verbal diarrhea is preferable over covering the subject to the extent needed, and no more? As much as I oppose fishing and other activities for catching animals for food and sport, trial lawyer Terry McCarthy makes utter sense when saying -- about cross examination -- once you catch the fish, bag it and don't play with it.

I have overtalked many a time, and probably even some of the greatest lawyers do it now and again. Hopefully by treasuring the power of silence, I will more often than not get it right.

A balancing act is involved between talking and talking during closing argument -- and during oral argument, which does not require using up the entire allotted time if not needed -- and having uncomfortable silences when trying to summon something to say. Of course, uncomfortable silences might be a cue that it is time to end the closing argument, or else the lawyer can share why the silence has arisen (e.g., "I am at a loss for words how to respond to the outrageous assertion by [opposing counsel] concerning [A, B and C]") so as not to lose credibility with the jury/listener, and so as to eliminate or reduce the listener's irritation at the lawyer for forcing the listener to endure what might otherwise seem to be the lawyer's plodding along to the listener's torture.

Over two years ago, I cited excellent examples of the power of silence and simplicity in argument, through Count Basie, Larry Pozner, and Hamlet. Another great example of the power of silence is yogi Baba Hari Dass, who went silent many decades ago and communicates by a chalkboard hung around his neck. Such communication helped Baba-ji free himself from excessive verbal and written noise so he could focus on living the yoga life. This is very much the opposite of sending multiple daily text McMessages from a cellphone followed by McTwitter.

Now to this list of inspirations for the power of silence and spoken simplicity I add Beop Jeong, a septuagenarian Korean Buddhist monk who lives/lived for years mainly as a hermit in the mountains, turning out an average of one essay per month for publication to offset his general unavailability to the public.

In one of Beop Jeong's infrequent returns to be among people, the story goes that a woman in mourning came to him. She poured her heart out to him. Instead of responding with words, he kept his full attention, mindfulness and compassion on her and on nobody and nothing else, including serving her food and tea. She felt more comforted by that than a whole bunch of words.

In Beop Jeong's May All Beings Be Happy is talk about refraining from speaking about great new ideas right away, lest that weaken the ideas, or prevent them from further developing their full strength. Certainly, trial lawyers do not have the luxury of saving ideas for the next day if in the middle of a closing argument that must finish the same day. However, Beop Jeong's lesson is a reminder that ideas that seem great at first blush are not always any greater than when we write down details of a seemingly great dream immediately upon awakening at 3:00 a.m. from the dream, only to realize at 8:00 a.m. that the writing was nothing better than gibberish.

I used to not understand the idea of the power of haikus, design minimalism, and feng shui. Now, I say hail haikus, the power of brevity, and the power of silence.  

ADDENDUM I: Google did not help me find out if Beop Jeong is still alive, although he sees birth and death as interrelated and unable to stand alone. In response to my inquiry about Beop Jeong's current situation, a U.S.-based staffer at Korean book seller Han Books replied on January 19, 2010: "We hear that he is seriously ill, but haven't heard that he's passed away."  

The 2006 Wisdom House Publishing Catalogue talks of his having "lived" in the mountains:

"From the humble, solitary confines of his wood hut located somewhere deep within the Korean mountains, Beop Jeong stands as one of the most well known Korean Buddhist Masters. Beginning his literary career working withing Jogye Buddhist Order and writing in protest against the SouthKorean dictatorshin of the 1960s, he would later leave everything behind to rekindle his life as a solitary mountain monk. Combining lessons for spiritual practice with a strident objection to the mundane values of the modern world, his works have maintained their popularity for over three decades, owing to the invigorating power they have in influencing the lives of his readers."

ADDENDUM II: After writing this blog entry, I went looking for my copy of Beop Jeong's May All Beings Be Happy, and could not find it. It is not readily sold everywhere, but I tried nevertheless to exercise the same non-attachment to the book that Beop Jeong and Buddhism teach. Interestingly, I tracked this Buddhist book down to the area's best bagel place -- where I ate last weekend with my boy --  that is kosher for its religious Jewish customers. The juxtaposition reminds me of the many Jewish people who have added Buddhism to their lives, which is a topic covered in many parts of Rodger Kamenetz's The Jew in the Lotus, which was born from his joining several rabbis to Dharamsala at the invitation of the Dalai Lama, who wanted to learn more about diaspora survival of religion and culture.

ADDENDUM III: Thanks to a former student of Baba Hari Dass, who may be posting a comment here, for sending me an email about his encounters with Babaji going back to the early 1970's, and for providing me the URL for the Hanuman Fellowship, which includes some of Babaji's words, and some of his photos. 

ADDENDUM IV: Regarding my foregoing reference to Beop Jeong, one of his passages about silence in May All Beings Be Happy is in "People of Few Words," which includes the following: 

- "Trust goes to those who know how to treat silence carefully." 

- "If an idea comes to you, and you hastily speak of it, it does not ripen inside. Because of this, one's insides remain empty. In order to allow the meanings of our words to ripen inside, we must be able to purify these meanings, waiting until they have passed through the filter of silence." 

- "The Buddhist sutras say, 'When there are few words in the mouth, idiocy turns into wisdom.' We must be able to endure the impulse to speak."

After fifteen years of t'ai chi practice, a fellow t'ai chi practitioner recommended that I re-learn the t'ai chi form through our mutual amazing teacher Julian Chu, who became my teacher just this past summer. So as not to start completely from square one, I attend Julian's beginner's class at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, and then join the 11:00 a.m. advanced class, at a middle school under a mile from my home.  

Last week, one of the most powerful things I learned was about connecting each body movement to the movement of a ball in one's tan t'ien, located in the abdominal area. I previously learned that in t'ai chi, one turns from the waist, but my teacher said that when one turns from the waist, the coordination must come from the tan t'ien ball.

My teacher does not know the English word for this tan t'ien ball. I am still looking. Jon Katz

The phone and emails are constantly ringing from clients, witnesses, courts, opposing lawyers, potential clients, and the list goes on. No sooner does one court date finish than the next court date begins. Snail mail is relentless. Common mid-day traffic jams in the Washington, D.C., area sometimes double and triple what should be a thirty-minute drive back to the office from court.

On the one hand, it is good to be so fortunate to have a full complement of clients and many successes in court and beyond. On the other hand, all these demands coming in almost as fast as orders at fast food restaurants (with fast-food restaurants only dealing with food and recipes, whereas criminal defense lawyers deal with people's lives and liberty, constantly acting on instinct and not just on recipe). On the other hand, to remain the most persuasive and effective lawyer I can be for my clients, I need to keep centered with my own humanity and not get caught up in lawyerspeak and lawyerthink. Sometimes it takes reminding, including a trial workshop I recently arranged to prepare me and my client for trial.

Whenever there is a good chance that my client will testify at trial, it becomes all the more important for me to organize a workshop of lawyers -- and preferably non-lawyers, too -- to prepare me and to prepare my client to testify, and to stay grounded in court, and, in case, to speak for himself or herself at sentencing whether or not my client testifies at trial.

Recently, I was blessed with the participation of two excellent and very experienced criminal defense lawyers to help prepare me and my client for his trial, which ended up with an excellent resolution, all things considered. We met at my office on a late weekday afternoon. Both lawyers braved the annoying traffic from two counties away in opposite directions. Sometimes clients pay for a psychodramatist/trial consultant to prepare for a trial. For this workshop, we had no trial consultant.

All three lawyers at the workshop had attended the full-length summer Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming, in separate years. All three had gone through the TLCs focus and stages of getting its participants back to the humanity zone and heart zone that law school, law practice, and the court system too often challenge law students and lawyers to dilute, diminish, and shed.

Early on in our gathering, one of the participants -- who attended the TLC this pasts summer -- asked what my goals for the workshop were. When I answered, she responded: "You are talking like a lawyer." And I was. I was so wrapped up in how to deal with some huge-seeming hurdles in this case that I had moved too far away from the human/non-lawyer component as a critical part of persuading. On the other hand, answering her question at first seemed to call out for the lawyer' answer about what I sought from the workshop, and I also felt I still faced big hurdles towards winning.

Then, I let go. I had spent so much time with my client over the last few months that I wanted to experience the fresh perspective of the two other lawyers. They immediately began engaging my client and me, each other, and the whole case. They were in the moment, despite their own immediate demands that night and the rest of the week on their schedules.

One of the lawyers had tried many bench trials, but not a jury trial yet. She could have fooled me. She seemed to know and understand my client at least as well as I. She spoke to him as human-to-human. My challenge as my client's lawyer is to talk in just-folks terms with my clients about such otherwise legalese matters as elements of the criminal charge, sentencing exposure, assembling evidence, and getting witnesses identified and subpoenaed to court.

As is often the case, I left the workshop a better lawyer than I had started. My batteries were recharged. My good relationship with my client had improved all the more. My client had a more realistic grasp on what we needed to do to win his case.

Then, the next day, in the car, I got closer than ever before -- much closer -- to visualize how we would win my client's case, as if the answer had been there all the time, but somehow shrouded in invisible paint, with our trial workshop having provided me more turpentine to strip away that invisible paint to reveal the answer. The answer came after I shed all my concerns about any uphill battles, evidentiary problems, and other hurdles, to focus on how to tell the most persuasive story to the jury, after having found the persuasive story. Getting to this point can be much harder when merely talking about my case with trusted colleagues over the phone, in the courthouse hallway, or through email. That hardly substitutes for assembling a workshop to last at least two hours if not the whole day or more, turning off the phone, and locking the door, on top of the many other hours working with the client, working with our witnesses, and working on my own.

I am eternally grateful to my many colleagues and to the non-lawyers who over the last nearly dozen years have joined me for many workshops to prepare me and my clients for trial, and to those who have invited me to do likewise. Jon Katz.

ADDENDUM: Here are some past blogpostings related to today's blogpost:

- Talking to everyone the same, and practicing non-attachment.

- Using scene-setting in preparing for trial.

- Visiting the scene.

- Anna Durbin on preparing clients to testify.

- It's not how you dress, but how you persuade. 

A client who was born in India recently gave me a beautiful framed painting of Hindu god Ganesh, created with simple red brush strokes on beautiful textured paper.

My client knows of my interest in Eastern and Western spirituality, including my fascination with and admiration for the late Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass, and Baghavan Das, with the first having been an Indian holy man, and the next two having learned closely and deeply from him since the 1960's and having been great teachers in their own rights. Around two years ago, a client gave me his wallet-sized picture of Baba-ji, which I keep displayed in my car.

I understand that Ganesh's worshipers see him as a god of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles, which is just the achievement I want in court.

Earlier this month, I visited Luray Caverns with my son. After passing by the kitsch of a huge parking lot, overly-touristy shops and people rushing to get a photo in front of the Luray Caverns sign, I experienced the most extensive and interesting cave network I have ever visited. One caving website says that some of the formations are partly human-made. In any event, it is a very interesting cave, right up there with the Narusawa Ice Cave, which was formed from lava from Mount Fuji, which I visited over twenty years ago.

Through free association, I thought I remembered that a church I had been meaning to visit was in the same county as Luray Caverns, which is Page County. However, when I learned that day on Google on my Blackberry that the church was in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, I mistakenly thought I was mistaken that the church was nearby, not realizing at the time that Page County is in fact in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The church I sought is the Fellowship Independent Baptist Church, in Stanley, Page County, Virginia, just a little down the road from Luray Caverns. The church interests me, because it was covered in my 1981 college ethnomusicology class with Professor Jeff Todd Titon (see here, too), whose study into the church and its music is entitle Powerhouse for God (see the YouTube video). Professor Titon showed us a film or video covering the church, including preacher Sherfey being shouted out through his own preaching; Sherfey said that the lord shouts him out. In one clip, hands are laid on a church member who has an illness, and Professor Titon remarked to the class that Sherfey felt he was there to help the member, no matter whether he smelled or not, and no matter anything else about him.

My ethnomusicology class was at Tufts University in Massachusetts, far away from this church. I will try to visit. I will also try to visit the southwestern Virginia part of Appalachia beyond just driving through it, and more of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky; and I will try to learn more about bluegrass and other regional music traditions. 

During my first few years in the Washington, D.C., area, where I came for law school, I remained resistant to learn much firsthand about the South any further south than Northern Virginia, save for Florida, where I had vacationed a few times. By now, I have driven roundtrip from Washington, D.C., to Florida, and have visited such places as Plains and Atlanta, Georgia, and coastal North and South Carolina. My trial work has taken me to many counties in Virginia. The history of Virginia and the rest of the South include deep ugliness, to say the least. That is not to say that the rest of the nation does not include ugly pasts and presents, including the parts where Native Americans were unjustly slaughtered and marginalized; where land was forcibly taken, or purchased without the participation of indigenous people; and where racism has been practiced at different levels of virulence and overtness. If I am going to understand my clients, judges, jurors, prosecutors, jailers, and witnesses, I best stay out of ivory towers, rub elbows with the people around me, and get a better idea of what they experience with their own eyes, senses, and feelings.

The martial art of t'ai chi, of course, is an essential part of my personal and professional life.

It turns out that some lawyers brand themselves as martial arts lawyers.

Practicing in the nearby city of Fairfax, David Kaufman runs the Karate Law blog. I look forward to meeting him sometime.

David Nelmark of Des Moines presents the Mixed Martial Arts blog.

In Kentucky is Carl Brown, who wrote The Law and Martial Arts.

It appears that martial arts law practice areas include personal injury, criminal defense concerning weapons, and general contract and business work.

Today, I added more words from the guest blog entry of sage Rey Sipsa, here.

In case anyone is wondering, Ray Sipsa is not I, nor is Mr. Mary Jane. Unlike Ray Sipsa, I had access to a country club golf course as a child, but never cared to use the course, and would have immensely enjoyed spending time with Ray instead. As to Mr. Mary Jane, I still can count on just one hand the number of times I have smoked the stinky weed, which is a lightweight number among those born in 1963.

One of my favorite people and favorite trial lawyers wrote an excellent response to a lawyer concerned about juror bias against his injured client, for already having financial privilege. This friend -- and the plaintiff's lawyer -- permitted me to re-print his response, but with the writer's condition that he be the anonymous Ray Sipsa:

Is the practice of law all about making money? Many lawyers seem to think so. One of them unabashedly implored me point-blank over lunch many years ago: "Isn't the law practice all about money?," so he believed. He is fifteen years older than I. Had he become so jaded by the law practice that only the money kept him going, or had he alway been like that?

Is there anything wrong with wanting to be wealthy? Not in and of itself, so long as one is not stepping on others' heads, throats, and human  rights on the path towards wealth. Nevertheless, the law practice is by law protected from competition by non-lawyers, which automatically gives lawyers an obligation to serve justice and the public interest -- including pro bono and low bono work -- beyond just their own pockets. If a lawyer becomes wealthy honorably, fine. However, if the lawyer does not give a damn for justice or clients, s/he should consider other wealth-producing pursuits, including real estate or the stock market. (Oops! The recession/depression intervened somewhere there.)

What boundaries will lawyers place on marketing themselves? Some advertising lawyers claim that lawyers from long-established large corporate law firms who want strong limits on lawyer advertising simply do not want more competition from lawyers whose names have not been around in the public eye as long. On the other hand, just because I believe the First Amendment should assure robust marketing rights for lawyers, that does not mean that lawyers should not engage in self restraint, including refraining from sending solicitation letters to those accused of soliciting prostitutes, lest the solicitation letter be intercepted by the defendant's significant other.

Several years ago, I was talking with a local personal injury lawyer who has apparently amassed a fortune from his heavy, decades-long television advertisement presence. I commended him for having tasteful, talking-head, low-key commercials, with no crashed cars, ambulance, or wild promises or hand gesticulations. However, far from his ads' representing his boundaries of good taste, it was pure marketing strategy. He said that if he had to wear a clown outfit on television to attract clients, he would. Zippy the Pinhead lurks around the corner, if not closer.

The emails and phone calls stream into my office at different clips offering me the latest lawyer marketing panacea. Some callers claim: "I am a lawyer in Chicago, and my firm is looking for a lawyer in your county to refer drunk driving defendants." When I ask the name of the caller's "law firm", there is none; the caller has a non-law firm or company, and instead is looking to sell something.

In my nearly dozen years as my own boss, I have spent little money on marketing beyond paying to register my website domain name, for sitehosting space for parking my website online, for webmastering help to run my blog and update my website design and efficiency (see the upcoming new design), for a Martindale-Hubbell listing (the cost is no longer justified, so I have stopped the listing), for the yellow pages guide (no longer), and for some small ads in a local college daily newspaper.

Maybe, or maybe not, spending more money on marketing would increase my income stream to the point of needing to hire associate attorneys -- thus bringing new headaches or growing pains. Fortunately, my marketing strategy to date has worked very well, which is to focus the vast amount of my time and resources on serving existing clients and improving myself as a person and lawyer, and to spend only a small amount of time getting my name out there. I enjoy blogging and maintaining my website; otherwise, I would not do it. If money were the overarching raison d’être for my blog, I would not be pushing my civil liberties and social justice agenda so hard on there. Fortunately for me, my Google rankings are strengthened by my having started a detailed static website in 1999, long before many of my local competing criminal defense lawyers; by having started my Underdog blog in 2006, before many other criminal bloggers entered the field; by my blog and site being recognized for their content; and by media coverage and other coverage by other sites on the web. Fortunately, through eighteen years of criminal defense practice; emphases including marijuana, medical marijuana, student discipline, and First Amendment defense; activity in the community, including civil liberties work; and referrals from satisfied clients and others, including lawyers who do not practice in jurisdictions where I practice, I do not need to think much about spending more money on marketing.

Do you love what you do on a daily basis, both in your personal and professional life? Do you feel a surge of energy when getting out of bed in the morning? Do you revel in today's professional successes as much as you did when you started out? Does much of your work feel like play? Are you willing to put the necessary time and effort into your work, and do you find ways to work smart? These are not mere platitudes. These are critical ingredients to getting clients and providing them service that they value. How much is a huge marketing budget going to enhance the foregoing factors?

Several weeks ago, AVVO.com invited me to join a speaking panel on online marketing, held yesterday in Washington, D.C., and today in Baltimore. I accepted the Baltimore invitation, with skepticism, about how much of this would be an AVVO.com show-and-tell. I accepted the invitation knowing that it will get my name out to local attorneys with whom I might have opportunities to discuss case strategy and to make and receive referrals; and to provide my own foregoing message about marketing, which is that first and foremost, professional and financial success as a lawyer must come the old-fashioned way, by earning it, without cutting corners and without relying on glitz. Perhaps my appearance on this panel is not much different than the distinction between capitalism and communism, which is that with capitalism, humans exploit humans; but with communism, it is the other way around.

 

Some amazing teachers are amazingly selfless. Ben Lo is one of them http://katzjustice.com/underdog/archives/1402-Learning-one-cookie-at-a-time..html.

At 82, ten years after a liver transplant, flying from his home in San Francisco, and -- as always --tremendously powerful physically, mentally and spiritually, Master Lo continues to come to the Washington, D.C., area each year to share his teachings and to give pointers to each attendee doing the t'ai chi form.

Yesterday, I attended my fifth training session with Master Lo. In the morning, he talked and took questions and answers about the t'ai chi classics, as covered in "The Essence of T'ai Chi," which was arranged by him and three colleagues many years ago. In the afternoon, we got thru not even the first third of the t'ai chi ch'uan Yang style short form, as he highlighted even to highly accomplished teachers and practitioners how to take their t'ai chi to the next higher plane.

By divine coincidence, a seat remained at Master Lo's table for lunch, even though I was one of the last to arrive. There, I asked Master Lo whether he saw a connection between non-duality in Buddhism and non-chasing in t'ai chi. http://bit.ly/10TlEP. He did, but that is about as far as I got with him on that topic as he was engaged in talk with those sitting closer to him. My three-year-old son so much enjoyed meeting Master Lo that he gazed for a long time at the picture we took together, which I do not post here based on Master Lo's preferences.

Master Lo came to t'ai chi around sixty years ago so weak that his body could not even absorb medicine to make him better. His teacher Cheng Man Ch'ing came to t'ai chi sick from tuberculosis. They both experienced rapid returns to health after heavy t'ai chi study and practice.

Master Lo's most basic teachings are to relax and to correctly practice t'ai chi morning and night, even if for as little as ten minutes. However, more time than that is needed to make one's body strong enough to take the essential t'ai chi approach of bending at the hips and knees to be in sitting postures as if on only one leg that moves from substantial to insubstantial as the insubstantial leg transitions to substantial. Master Lo and the other t'ai chi masters teach of the need to strengthen our bodies at such a level in order to have a lifetime of physical, mental and spiritual strength, including being relaxed.

T'ai chi focuses heavily on relaxation and softness, but still requires enduring the discomfort of strengthening the legs. As Master Lo says, no burn nor earn, no pain, no gain. At the same time, he says that the burn means the practitioner needs to develop more strength.

Master Lo physically helped align several of the approximately seventy attendees' bodies to stand relaxed in the wardoff posture and to not be moved off balance by substantial force. However, each time he asked them to stand up and resume the posture themselves, with little force he was able to push them over. This highlights the great importance of having a quality t'ai chi teacher.

Here are some other highlights from the session with Master Lo:

- How does one reach the necessary level of t'ai chi relaxation and softness if one also lifts weights? (Perhaps the same answer applies to those who do external martial arts and who do heavy lifting at their jobs).

Answer:

Doing t'ai chi and lifting weights is like having two significant others. You cannot marry both of them.

- If the practitioner has substantial knee pain or back pain, alter the physically demanding  t'ai chi practice accordingly.

- The whole body must be connected in doing t'ai chi.

- One day Master Lo was doing t'ai chi meditation, and started feeling his body parts disappear. He got concerned, and the sensation went away. This might be  similar to my several experiences doing t'ai chi in a mirrored dance hall or a yoga practice room and seeing my body parts start to become transparent or disappear, and in feeling some of them disappear when practicing in my backyard. Even if the mirror experience was an optical illusion resulting from looking at the same point in the mirror for a long time, it was a great experience that went away when I let my fear take hold of disappearing for good.

- Doing the initial raising hands move as shown by Master Lo, I felt the ch’i or else bloodflow in my fingertips more than ever before.

- To prevent an opponent from moving your extended arm, it is necessary to actively relax the arm while putting the mind in the arm.

- Cheng Man Ch'ing's teacher Yang Cheng-fu could push people by barely touching them. Jon Katz

ADDENDUM: Taichicenterofmadison.com quotes Cheng Man Ch'ng's student Wolfe Lowenthl as saying that Ben Lo "has probably gone deeper into ‘the fearlessness of taking pain’ than any of Professor’s students in this country.” Master Lo's instructional DVD can be purchased here.

As I have said before, for me jazz is improvisation, spontaneity, feeling, being in the moment, tight interaction, entertainment, pushing the limits of excellence, creativity, expanding into new frontiers, fun, inspiration, and discovery. That also is what my criminal defense work is about, albeit with frustration frequently challenging the fun part. Moreover, my countless live trumpet performances with various bands helped make it more natural for me to perform before audiences in the courtroom.

One of the most amazing jazz photos is 1958's "Great Day in Harlem" (see the film excerpt), which assembled many of the time's greatest jazz musicians, apparently around 10:00 a.m., when many of them would have otherwise still been in bed after a late night of performing. I got into jazz bigtime in 1976 at age thirteen, which was early enough for me to have experienced the following people in this photo live, at the following places and dates. Of these thirteen musician, only three are still alive, those being Hank Jones, Sonny Rollins, and Horace Silver: 

Count Basie - (Massachusetts, 1983) See my blogposting "If Count Basie Were a Trial Lawyer."

Vic Dickenson - (France, 1978)

Roy Eldridge - (New York, 1979)

Dizzy Gillespie - (CT, 1977; France, 1978; New York, 1985) In 1977, I was floored when one of Dizzy Gillespie's band members welcomed the offer of me and my brother to help load their instruments and equipment onto their van, after Dizzy and the band mesmerized me at a local nightclub just twenty feet away.

J.C. Heard (France, 1978)

Milt Hinton (France, 1978)

Hank Jones  (France, 1978)

Jo Jones (France, 1978)

Gerry Mulligan (CT, 1978)

Sonny Rollins  (Carnegie Hall, Newport Jazz Festival, New York, 1978)

Horace Silver  (Blue Note, New York, 1985). I met Horace Silver at the Blue Note after his performance finished. When I mentioned having recently relocated from Boston, he said he wished someone would arrange a performance for him there; to this day, I do not know if he was exaggerating. 

Dicky Wells (France, 1978)

Mary Lou Williams (France, 1978). Ms. Williams and Dizzy were having a good time talking during afternoon practicing before the nights-long outdoors Nice jazz festival. After buying my tickets, there were no restrictions on roaming the three-stage performance grounds.

The energy that -- in particular -- the above-listed Count Basie, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver gave me was to seize the moment, before I ever knew about Ram Dass.

One of the early critical lessons taught to trial lawyers is to visit (and photograph) the scene of the alleged incident, even if that takes substantial time, effort and discomfort.

Recently, two fellow trial lawyers, myself, a client, and top-notch jury trial/psychodrama expert Don Clarkson joined to visit the scene beyond what can be photographed, to get into my client's mind, memories, feelings and experiences relating not only to defending against the current prosecution against him, but to understand him as a whole person, and for him to understand his situation and to help him and me tell his persuasive story.

Nearly three years ago, I wrote why psychodrama works, as I have known for many years, as well as knowing the power of focus groups and mock trials in preparing lawyers, their clients, and witnesses for trial. Of particular importance is to get input from non-lawyers, who are not stuck in lawyerthink.

I deeply thank Don Clarkson and the other participants in this and all other workshops that I have assembled over the years to prepare for trials. It goes without saying that I remain happily available to help them and their clients, as well.   

Thanks to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, trial lawyer Anna Durbin for authorizing me to post her attached excellent email message responding to a listserv discussion about how lawyers prepare their clients to testify at trial. I have known Anna for many years, through our having attended the Trial Lawyers College in separate years. She has been selfless in brainstorming cases with me, and driving to my office for a recent workshop to prepare my client to testify at trial. I highly recommend Anna for Pennsylvania state and federal criminal and civil trial and appellate representation.

Anna Durbin wrote:

    "I ask my client to talk to the jury in my question:  'Would you tell the jury where you are during this ...?'  I once had a very nervous and shy client, and I asked her to look at the jury that we picked, and find people that reminded her of her best friend.  And I told her to look at them and tell them her story the same way she would tell it across a cup of coffee at her kitchen table.  She did very well, although she was still her nervous self, and that was honest.  It was much better than totally paralyzed.  I want to be basically invisible on direct exam, because it is my client telling her story.  I am there to help her tell it in the most authentic way to the jury that is going to do justice for her.  I tell my client that this jury is going to do justice for her if she tells them what happened.  They are on her side. 

    "And I tell my client on cross to keep telling the jury her story, not to get mad at opposing counsel who is just trying to do his job.  The client just needs to tell her story and not let the other lawyer put words in her mouth.  And she should not try to fill in blanks in her memory - just tell what she remembers.  Dates and times are not that important.  Don't get nervous about them.  And don't try to anticipate what the other lawyer is going to ask or try to outsmart them.  Just stick with the facts you know."

     Thanks, Anna. "Just stick with the facts you know," warts, gems, and all. How brilliant. How simple. And how much of a struggle that is for so many testifying parties to put into practice. An essential ingredient on this path is to show our clients caring, patience, and total support. Jon Katz