Search

Great lawyer Gerry Spence wins trials by embracing and revealing his entire self, warts, fears, vision, astounding ability, oration, and all. For the entire month of August 1995, I was in Wyoming at the then one-year-old Trial Lawyers College, at Gerry's beautiful Wyoming Thunderhead ranch ten...

Recently, I was minding my own business, waiting for my client in the hallway of the Fairfax County jail's attorneys visiting section. Then I heard commotion where three meeting rooms away from mine, an inmate was ranting and raving at his lawyer, a kindly-spoken public...

Being a judge is a privilege with awesome responsibility and power. Once a judge stops seeing judging as a privilege, it is time for the judge to hang up the judicial robes. Judging can be exhausting work. The criminal and civil lawsuits do not stop...

Soldiers and street fighters battle without referees nor the expectation of referees' presence. They fight in the law of the jungle. As we approach four years of the buffoon-elect in chief's White House tenure, I have low overall expectations of Trump's upcoming nominees to...

At the Trial Lawyers College, I learned that its founder Gerry Spence is at once an incredibly powerful persuader, very in touch with his strengths and weaknesses, and ready to reveal his vulnerabilities. This started out as simply with Gerry's voicing his disappointment that "Nobody...

The battle lines are drawn. Prosecutors and police are not the friends of the criminal defense. Judges are at best the referees. A criminal defendant needs an able lawyer at all stages of the prosecution.

Nobody ever said that trial lawyering would be an easy profession. As I have said time and time again, this work is filled with proverbial projectile vomiting, projectile diarrhea, underhandedness by too many prosecutors and police, unfairness by too many judges, and shoveling sh*t.

Remember importance of keeping proverbial physical contact with opponents, because maintaining physical contact with an opponent gives us the best chance not only to listen to and anticipate where they are coming from now and next, but also to neutralize and overcome their attacks much...

One day I was speaking with a taijiquan teacher about yelling people. He replied: “Why try to figure them out? It is just wind.” That advice is great for staying powerfully calm and unrattled in the face of someone exploding in an unjustified tirade. However,...

Law school is not for everyone. I found law school in large part to be a necessary, time-consuming and money-consuming pain in the ass — and sometimes worse — for finding a way to use the law to help make the world a better place....