Persuasion

Is criminal defense work about proverbial war and sometimes bloodletting? Hell, yes, whether one wants it that way or not. As I have said before, t’ai chi principles are important to criminal defense, for focusing on harmonizing an imbalanced situation without applying more than a...

The closest I came to waiting tables was working as a pantry assistant in the kitchen of my old summer camp, making orange juice and bug juice with a garden hose and metal oar, moving food on hand trucks and flat trucks, shoving my hand...

When someone says “I want to get it over with,” is the person doing nothing but merely chasing after an illusion? Let us consider the ultimate effort to get it over with: suicide. My spiritual guru and friend Jun Yasuda told me that one day a...

In the middle of the then-four week Trial Lawyers College in its second year, I asked myself: "I have come all the way to a ranch in Wyoming miles from the nearest paved road to learn that the essence to being a great trial lawyer is...

The National Criminal Defense College and Trial Lawyers College focus on persuasion through storytelling. What to do, though, when a judge tries to stop the lawyer from first-person storytelling (“I was sitting there minding my own business, when he rushed at me with a meat...

What keeps me practicing law, and enjoying it? Law school was not sufficient to keep me practicing law and enjoying it, with the exception that I benefited tremendously spiritually, intellectually, and growth-wise from the immigration law clinic, through which I first-chaired the first two trials of...

Some people seek calm by avoiding conflict. I seek to use calmness to harmonize conflict to the advantage of me and my client. By applying the principles of t’ai chi to my practice as a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I do my best neither to chase...

On a trial lawyers’ listserv recently, a member passed on a law student’s request for publications for learning effective cross examination in criminal cases. While nothing replaces learning cross examination through live training and in the courtroom, some high quality publications do exist, including Larry Pozner’s...

Do jurors want to be tortured for hours by droning lawyers, witnesses and judges, interspersed with waiting for bench conferences with silence that might be even more excruciating? Or, do they want to be transported into the middle of an interesting story, experiencing the action with...

In the end, the best fight for and alongside the client comes from fighting to harmonize the client’s situation. Plenty of people think I am intense (I prefer to call it passionate), as much as I endeavor to be a t’ai chi peaceful warrior. Sometimes...