Latest / Coopers' Code / A Masterclass in Doing Plaintiff Law Right with John Feder

Transcript

A Masterclass in Doing Plaintiff Law Right with John Feder · Coopers' Code

• 0:00
  We get to interact with families, we see their
• 0:02
  resilience, we spend time with them and their courage is
• 0:06
  amazing. But we also get to through to we
• 0:09
  can fight the bullshit. We can get to the truth of the
• 0:11
  story because that's what a good litigator is, is a good
• 0:15
  storyteller that has the facts right.
• 0:17
  And you want to be that most credible person in the courtroom
• 0:21
  who's giving you the facts. You want it to be the plaintiff
• 0:24
  lawyer. You want it to be us, not the
• 0:26
  defense lawyer. Howdy and welcome to the show.
• 0:31
  Cooper's Code focuses on legal issues and notable
• 0:34
  practitioners, distilling wisdom so we all achieve the best
• 0:37
  results for our clients. I'm Miles Cooper and I'm
• 0:40
  thrilled to share this conversation with John Fader.
• 0:43
  John is a Titan of consumer advocacy with almost 50 years of
• 0:47
  experience fighting for injured people and grieving families.
• 0:50
  His combination of professional excellence and personal warmth
• 0:53
  make him one of the most respected voices in consumer
• 0:56
  advocacy today. Beyond his record 8 figure
• 0:59
  cases, he's committed to service in our profession as a past
• 1:03
  president of both the Consumer Attorneys of California and the
• 1:06
  San Francisco Trialers Association.
• 1:08
  When he's not championing justice, John is an outdoor
• 1:11
  enthusiast who loves water skiing by swimming with his
• 1:13
  family. He's also a passionate Giants
• 1:15
  and Cal Bears fan, though nothing makes him happier than
• 1:19
  hanging out with his extended family, including three old kids
• 1:23
  and his grandchildren. So please sit back and enjoy
• 1:26
  this wide-ranging and deeply heartfelt conversation with
• 1:29
  John. Welcome to the show, John.
• 1:34
  Thank you, Miles. Great to be here.
• 1:36
  It's really nice to have you always starting kind of the same
• 1:39
  place, which is a little bit about your background and and
• 1:42
  what brought you to the law in the 1st place.
• 1:43
  So where did you go up? Where'd you go to school and and
• 1:46
  why are you a lawyer? Great question.
• 1:49
  I I grew up in San Francisco, out in the avenues, never saw
• 1:52
  the sun. It was always foggy.
• 1:54
  We were kind of near the Golden Gate Bridge, where the foghorns
• 1:57
  at night, where our daily nightly melody went to
• 2:02
  Washington High School. And there I became radicalized
• 2:06
  by a history teacher named Effie Pandel, who studied the
• 2:10
  Industrial Revolution and the Haymarket Square Square Trial.
• 2:16
  And the civics class changed my life.
• 2:20
  And in high school I was protesting against the Vietnam
• 2:23
  War and in Golden Gate Park, and I was reading about all these
• 2:28
  young children terribly injured while trying to manufacture
• 2:31
  things in England. And so as a high schooler, a
• 2:36
  tall, skinny kid with a big, huge head of hair, I wanted to
• 2:40
  make a difference. I went to Cal in 1971 and worked
• 2:45
  a couple of school years at Consumer Action in San Francisco
• 2:50
  trying to help people and make a difference, and I admired the
• 2:54
  hell out of Ralph Nader. I read his book Unsafe at Any
• 2:58
  Speed about the Chevy Corvair and I just thought practicing
• 3:03
  law and being a consumer advocate would be perfect for
• 3:08
  what my desire was to reform the world.
• 3:14
  I worked in Washington DC for a summer working for a congressman
• 3:17
  named Jerry Walde who was a lame duck guy out of Antioch.
• 3:21
  He had run for governor in in 1974 and lost to Jerry Brown,
• 3:26
  but he was on the House Judiciary Committee that was
• 3:30
  debating the impeachment resolutions.
• 3:33
  Interesting. Hated Nixon with a passion.
• 3:35
  I hated Nixon, Walde was very fair, but it was a beautiful
• 3:39
  thing. On August 8th, 1974, when Nixon
• 3:42
  resigned, I we were like dancing at Lafayette Park outside of DC,
• 3:46
  celebrating. And little did I know that the
• 3:52
  4050 years later we'd have somebody like our current
• 3:58
  president in the White House. But I wanted to fight for the
• 4:02
  little guy and couldn't, couldn't land a job with a great
• 4:08
  plaintiff firm right out of law school.
• 4:10
  I'm going to back up to because we, we bounced over law school.
• 4:13
  So where'd you end up deciding to go for that?
• 4:17
  I went right after Cal. I went to Hastings Law School
• 4:21
  and I thought about postponing it because I had had a job offer
• 4:24
  to work in DC in the Office of Policy Development, which is
• 4:28
  where I was working after my senior year in during the summer
• 4:32
  and glad I started Hastings. I met a lot of great people, had
• 4:37
  some great professors. Ironically, it was the over 65
• 4:41
  club that they were famous for. Did you have Prosser?
• 4:44
  No, I didn't have Prosser had Larry Eldridge, but we used the
• 4:47
  Prosser book as our Bible. We've touched on the Over 65
• 4:51
  club in a previous episode, but just so people don't have to
• 4:54
  yes, what is the Over 65 club for?
• 4:56
  For yes. And now that I'm over 65, it
• 4:58
  seems ironic, But these were thought to be the venerated old
• 5:03
  wise professors who had come out of retirement to teach law
• 5:08
  school. And so Hastings attracted a
• 5:10
  whole group of professors, typically men at that time, but
• 5:14
  there were a few women in their 70s and 80s generally who were
• 5:19
  willing to teach 1st and 2nd year law students.
• 5:22
  And so I, I thought it was great.
• 5:25
  I met my wife there my third year in law school, my wife Sue,
• 5:30
  And that was wonderful. I only had five more months left
• 5:33
  of law school. And so I'm so glad I met her
• 5:36
  while I was still in school. And I knew I didn't want to work
• 5:40
  for a big corporation. I did not want to do business
• 5:43
  law. And the day that I got sworn in
• 5:48
  as a lawyer, my dad took me to lunch.
• 5:51
  And right after lunch, I'm dressed in a suit and tie with
• 5:54
  my resume in hand. I just walked the streets in San
• 5:57
  Francisco after consulting the Hastings placement office,
• 6:00
  looking for jobs where I could be a trial lawyer.
• 6:05
  And so I had nothing lined up that day.
• 6:08
  I went into the offices of Winningham, Roberts and Roji,
• 6:12
  which was house counsel for Liberty Mutual.
• 6:15
  So this is 1978 and the guy that interviewed me was a huge Giants
• 6:20
  fan. So I think what appealed to him
• 6:22
  about me was my knowledge of Giants trivia.
• 6:25
  So that's how and why I think I got hired.
• 6:28
  I started at the princely salary of about 7 or 8 bucks an hour.
• 6:33
  They didn't have a full time attorney position open, but they
• 6:36
  said they would shortly. But they were offering me to
• 6:39
  jury trial three weeks down the road.
• 6:43
  So I tried a case 8 day jury trial in front of Gerald O'Gara,
• 6:48
  who was probably, I don't know, 90 at the time and had a great
• 6:51
  time and won a defense verdict for my client.
• 6:55
  But when I when I interviewed, I said I really want to be a
• 6:58
  plaintiff lawyer. I had sent a resume to Ron
• 7:01
  Rouda, ironically never heard back from him in 1978.
• 7:04
  And so I started working as a defense lawyer and I loved being
• 7:08
  in trial. And I just found it really
• 7:12
  fascinating and exciting and. Was Ron with Marvin Lewis then
• 7:16
  or was he on his own? He was with Marvin Lewis then in
• 7:18
  1978, and I've had like 8 or 9 trials and a friend of his named
• 7:27
  Conrad Donner was friendly with my mom.
• 7:29
  And Ron said he was told Conrad he was looking for somebody.
• 7:33
  And then I had a case where I was deposing his client.
• 7:36
  Ron Ruta was the plaintiff lawyer.
• 7:38
  He'd got a fair amount of money from this other law firm, this
• 7:41
  other defendant. And I took a real hard nosed
• 7:44
  position. I took a really good depo.
• 7:47
  I was very well prepared. John somebody versus Sulay
• 7:52
  Steele. This is now in 1981 and after
• 7:56
  that case got resolved, he offered me a full time position.
• 8:00
  I said yes and June 1st of 1981 was my first day.
• 8:04
  I was shocked when I showed up, he was in a pink shirt and not
• 8:09
  in a suit and tie. It was very different from the
• 8:12
  insurance defense types that I spent time hanging out with.
• 8:17
  And he was just a really brilliant lawyer, creative,
• 8:22
  tenacious, fun loving guy. And you know, we, we practiced
• 8:28
  together for 3540 years. And I brought in Tim Teejan, who
• 8:32
  had been a law clerk for me at Liberty Mutual.
• 8:35
  And yeah, it was fortuitous because I feel now that doing
• 8:44
  this was what I was meant to do. And it wasn't like I was law
• 8:49
  review. It wasn't like, you know, I had
• 8:51
  a million job offers coming out of school.
• 8:53
  I didn't know what I wanted to do except I wanted to fight for
• 8:56
  the little guy. And Liberty Mutual gave me, I
• 9:00
  thought, great training. They had a bunch of good trial
• 9:02
  lawyers there. John Winningham was really quite
• 9:05
  a good trial lawyer. And the one thing that he said
• 9:08
  that I remember before I went to trial for the first time, he
• 9:12
  said, now, John, evaluate your performance.
• 9:15
  Think about all the things you did right and could be improved
• 9:19
  upon before the jury comes back. Because of course, as a defense
• 9:23
  attorney, you're not going to win every case and you might get
• 9:26
  hammered with some big verdicts. But I thought that was good
• 9:29
  advice. I'm reflecting upon that because
• 9:32
  that is not something that I have thought of doing and and
• 9:35
  that is a perfect time to really do that reflection.
• 9:38
  It's a good piece of advice because it's.
• 9:40
  Easy to take it personal if the result is not what you expected,
• 9:44
  not what you were hoping for, especially on the plaintiff side
• 9:47
  when we've lived and breathed what our clients been going
• 9:50
  through for all those years and we've seen their resilience and
• 9:54
  we're we know we need to win for their sake.
• 9:58
  And if you get a disappointing verdict, it's crushing.
• 10:02
  But I thought Mr. Winningham John had a good advice and I
• 10:08
  thought it was great training because I there was a lot of
• 10:11
  unevenness in the plaintiff bar back then.
• 10:14
  When you say unevenness, what do you mean?
• 10:16
  Lawyers that didn't seem to give a shit about their clients and
• 10:20
  weren't well prepared. And so I was meticulous about my
• 10:25
  approach even back then as a young lawyer.
• 10:27
  And I would go through every single page of my clients of,
• 10:30
  of, of the plaintiff's medical records.
• 10:33
  And so I knew a lot more about the plaintiff than the plaintiff
• 10:36
  could ever recall. And most of the plaintiff
• 10:38
  attorneys had not been careful to prepare their client.
• 10:43
  So I remember I had one case against a gentleman who was the
• 10:48
  president of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers.
• 10:51
  He's kind of a tough, hard nosed guy, and he just hadn't prepared
• 10:56
  his client for deposition. And I had all these letters
• 11:00
  she'd written her doctor about prior back pain, prior neck
• 11:03
  pain, prior leg pain, and he had no idea of it.
• 11:06
  It's a good opportunity to go into one of the things that I
• 11:09
  think is, is a, a hallmark of kind of your approach to the
• 11:14
  practice, at least from from an outsider's perspective, which is
• 11:17
  meticulous preparation. And I'd love for you to unpack a
• 11:21
  little bit for our listeners a little bit about how you
• 11:25
  approach, whether it's a case or a deposition or mediation or
• 11:30
  trial prep. How do you approach that with
• 11:34
  that meticulousness and do some of that learned behavior from
• 11:38
  your time on the defense? Some of it probably is just my
• 11:41
  natural curiosity. I always ask a lot of questions
• 11:46
  and one of the things that as a defense lawyer, I don't know
• 11:49
  that we hired an investigator. So I would do a lot of the the
• 11:53
  legwork and and talk to people that knew the plaintiff before
• 11:57
  and after. I remembered as a young
• 11:59
  plaintiff lawyer had one case where a guy that ran an antique
• 12:02
  shop froze the tip of his finger using a can of spray paint.
• 12:07
  And so I went into like a hardware store and found like 15
• 12:12
  different models of paint cans that had a safer nozzle design.
• 12:17
  And I used that information that I had gathered just go into, I
• 12:21
  don't know the the hardware store to show this.
• 12:23
  This is a defective design because it allows people to, it
• 12:27
  comes out super cold and allows people to suffer serious injury.
• 12:31
  So I think I've always been curious.
• 12:34
  I love learning my clients story and I think easy for me to want
• 12:40
  to dig in. I think a key to that is being
• 12:43
  able to say no to cases. You can't do a great job if you
• 12:47
  have a whole desk full of files that are begging for attention.
• 12:52
  And one of the things that Tim Teejan I think taught me is just
• 12:55
  say no. Send it out to somebody who's
• 12:58
  maybe a little bit younger, maybe a little bit more
• 13:00
  desperate for cases because you can't do a wonderful job for
• 13:04
  everybody. And what I always wanted my
• 13:06
  clients to feel is that their problem is my problem.
• 13:10
  And then I get it. I used to have a size 5 pair of
• 13:14
  Indian moccasins in my office to remind me that like, walk a mile
• 13:18
  in my client's shoes, 'cause I think lawyers are busy and it's
• 13:24
  very tempting to cut somebody off to get the information
• 13:29
  you're thinking of. OK, what's the liability
• 13:31
  picture? What's the insurance coverage?
• 13:33
  But I've learned people need to tell their story to somebody
• 13:37
  who's really listening and can be a human being and and a bit
• 13:43
  empathetic when they hear that story because you want your
• 13:46
  clients to feel like you've got their back.
• 13:48
  In terms of describing some of that listening, I, I know in one
• 13:52
  particular case the the family was in Canada, a Runkle death
• 13:56
  case and I know that that some of that listening involved lots
• 13:59
  of travel to Canada to be with the family to hear and
• 14:03
  understand who they they were. First of all, I have to say what
• 14:07
  a fantastic job you did working on that case with me.
• 14:10
  I know Brian and Pat, I know you got their story, you understood
• 14:17
  it and you were right alongside with me down to Riverside two
• 14:21
  days before the trial when we got that case settled.
• 14:24
  I very much enjoyed the opportunity to to work on that
• 14:27
  case with you. I, I, I do feel like I came in
• 14:31
  towards the end and had the benefit of, of seeing all the,
• 14:36
  again, the meticulous work that you had done in terms of
• 14:38
  understanding their loss and, and saw that in the, in the, the
• 14:42
  mock trial and, and, and other places.
• 14:44
  I believe you were nominated for CAOC trial lawyer, the consumer
• 14:48
  Lawyer of the year along with me on that case because it was a
• 14:52
  remarkable result and I spent a lot of time up in Canada.
• 14:56
  They lived in Alberta and, you know, sitting around the kitchen
• 15:02
  table where Patricia had been kind of the leader of the family
• 15:07
  and, and some would say just instrumental in the building of
• 15:10
  that business. And, you know, I, I use these
• 15:15
  wonderful storytellers, Rob and Keiko Feldman with Jurors
• 15:20
  Productions to film a video up there with us.
• 15:23
  And they, they really helped, I think, us tell the story.
• 15:28
  The defense attorney allowed me to do the deposition of the
• 15:32
  plaintiffs, his deposition in my client's home.
• 15:35
  And that was helpful. So I thought even the defense
• 15:38
  lawyer understood how terrible the loss was to this family.
• 15:43
  If you're enjoying what we're doing here with Cooper's code,
• 15:45
  please help us extend our reach by giving us a five star review
• 15:48
  on Apple Podcasts and consider sharing an episode with a
• 15:50
  friend. Additionally, we want to know
• 15:52
  who you want to hear on the show.
• 15:53
  Have an interview suggestion? E-mail us at podcast at
• 15:56
  Cooperstown Law. It sounds like you need to have
• 16:00
  a pretty good relationship with your opposing counsel and and
• 16:04
  establish somewhere apart to be able to how you manage in your
• 16:08
  career to maintain that civility with the other side.
• 16:12
  I think it's pretty easy because especially in the Bay Area, that
• 16:16
  legal community is fairly small. And I think you have to treat
• 16:21
  people with respect, even if they're on the other side.
• 16:25
  And So what I try to do is, is forge a a working relationship.
• 16:29
  These aren't my best buddies, but I'll take them to lunch or
• 16:32
  go out after a deposition and grab a beard to talk with the
• 16:36
  men and women that are representing the other side.
• 16:39
  And we'll talk about personal things and and I'll give them
• 16:41
  advice on maybe other cases they're handling.
• 16:44
  And they've been a good source of referrals over the years.
• 16:47
  Like during the depot, it can get pretty darn heated.
• 16:50
  But I try not to make it personal.
• 16:54
  I focus on the witness and say, you know, from time to time,
• 16:57
  attorneys will make objections. Remember I told you there would
• 17:01
  be some hard questions and you still have to answer truthfully,
• 17:04
  even those really hard questions.
• 17:07
  So can you agree with me, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:09
  I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for the defense
• 17:12
  attorney not to be a jerk. Ruda taught me that Ron was very
• 17:20
  friendly to a lot of his adversaries and a lot of, as you
• 17:26
  know, Miles, a lot of our adversaries, they're listening
• 17:31
  to their clients who are controlling the purse strings
• 17:33
  about how much money they might be able to offer.
• 17:36
  And so I want to food, I want to spoon feed them information to
• 17:40
  make it easy for them to get the dough that they need to settle
• 17:44
  the case. I think a lot of times, you
• 17:46
  know, I'll ask what do you need? Like I'll send the mediation
• 17:51
  brief. Is there something you need
• 17:53
  that's not in the brief that you'd like in order to get
• 17:56
  enough dough to get this case resolved short at trial?
• 17:59
  And most of the time the defense attorneys appreciate that pre
• 18:04
  let I try to treat the adjusters whenever they call me with
• 18:07
  respect and patients. And I often don't take that cold
• 18:11
  call, you know, whether it's a client or the adversary call in.
• 18:15
  I'll typically look at the file, make sure I know what's happened
• 18:19
  recently in terms of my client's medical care or treatment so
• 18:22
  that when I'm returning that call, I know exactly what's been
• 18:25
  going on. Because I think as you've done
• 18:28
  for so many years, you want the other side to think this is the
• 18:31
  only case that this guy's working on.
• 18:34
  He's all over it. And you want your clients to
• 18:37
  know that, that you have their back and you remember it's their
• 18:41
  left leg that's broken badly, not the right leg, because a lot
• 18:44
  of times the doctors don't remember they'll, they'll go,
• 18:48
  oh, let's see, which was it? Was it your left or right leg
• 18:51
  that I operated on? And that's the last thing you
• 18:54
  want, I think in terms of how the other side approaches the
• 18:57
  case. You want to, you want to come
• 18:59
  across like you're on top of it. I want to go back over that
• 19:01
  because I, I, I think that's a really important point and, and
• 19:06
  not one that has come up in, in any of the previous
• 19:08
  conversations I've had on the podcast, which is when, say an
• 19:12
  adjuster or opposing counsel calls, you may not pick up the
• 19:16
  phone in the moment. You will then go to voicemail,
• 19:20
  for example, review the file and then return the call.
• 19:23
  So when when you're in a position of making sure you that
• 19:26
  you have notice you, you, you know it all.
• 19:28
  Right, because I want them, I want them to get their question
• 19:32
  answered, but I also want them to know I'm on top of this case
• 19:36
  and I and I'm ready to, to deal with whatever they've got to
• 19:39
  say. But I do prepare for that call,
• 19:42
  which is one reason I think it's important to be able to say no
• 19:45
  to some cases. I think, you know, after, after
• 19:49
  you've been doing this for a few years, the kinds of cases that
• 19:52
  you're going to want to work on, the kind of clients you're going
• 19:55
  to want to work on. And Karen, Joe Coonan, I know
• 19:59
  the jury consultant that that you and I have used over the
• 20:02
  years who recently passed due to cancer, she taught me as part of
• 20:09
  my conversations with my client to find out the five things
• 20:13
  they're most proud of. Because even the most thorny,
• 20:18
  difficult client has five things they're proud of.
• 20:21
  And you want to make sure you understand that.
• 20:23
  And just the fact that they feel like you know them well I think
• 20:26
  helps. Give you more credibility when
• 20:30
  you might be pointing things out that they had not fully
• 20:32
  understood. So I think you have to look for
• 20:34
  the good with the clients. But if the client seems
• 20:38
  impossible, there's plenty of other hungry lawyers that can
• 20:41
  help that person. Because you want to be able to
• 20:44
  have quality of life and sleep at night and be with your family
• 20:47
  when it's time for that. So I've learned that working on
• 20:51
  a shitty case, a shitty case will always be a shitty case.
• 20:54
  The other thing I have to say about that is that taking that
• 20:57
  extra deposition has truly paid off for my clients.
• 21:01
  I have learned lots of things that I wasn't expecting to
• 21:05
  learn. Gotten great ammunition for my
• 21:07
  client's case based on taking the extra deposition.
• 21:11
  What do you mean when you say taking that extra deposition?
• 21:13
  Well, for example, we had a driver of a it was a Lockheed
• 21:19
  Air Terminal tanker truck that fuels the aircraft, he
• 21:22
  testified. At the time of the accident, he
• 21:24
  was given a finger and looking to his left at a unit rig driver
• 21:28
  for Pan American who was towing another plane out.
• 21:31
  Why? He thought he'd been cut off by
• 21:33
  the unit rig driver so he wasn't looking when he ran over and
• 21:37
  ground into pulverize. My client who was a 56 year old
• 21:43
  aircraft mechanic for Pan Am. This was in 1981 and there was a
• 21:48
  witness, honest as the day is long, that said, I saw your
• 21:53
  client, this is in Depo, jump up on the tanker truck and hold on
• 21:57
  to it as if he was going for a ride and then he fell off and
• 22:01
  got run over. That's not a good.
• 22:02
  Fact. It's a terrible fact.
• 22:04
  She was completely dead wrong. My guy was straight as an arrow
• 22:08
  and never would have done that. And he was trying to save his
• 22:11
  life when he grabbed onto the tanker right before going
• 22:14
  through these wheels that were like 6 feet tall and they were
• 22:17
  two sets right on the right side.
• 22:19
  So she was just wrong. And I know you've read the books
• 22:22
  that I have about eyewitness memories.
• 22:25
  They can be as honest as possible, but not right.
• 22:29
  They just they glimpsed at something and and made-up a
• 22:32
  whole story. So, you know, taking the
• 22:35
  depositions of everybody else uncovered a lot more facts,
• 22:39
  including, you know, deposing his Co workers.
• 22:41
  He was the last guy that would have hitched a ride on a huge
• 22:44
  truck. And first of all, he didn't have
• 22:46
  to go anywhere. There was no reason he'd do
• 22:49
  that. But I, I think one of the great
• 22:52
  things about what you and I do is we get to interact with
• 22:56
  families. We see their resilience, we
• 22:58
  spend time with them and their courage is amazing.
• 23:02
  But we also get to through to we can fight the bullshit.
• 23:04
  We can get to the truth of the story because that's what a good
• 23:08
  litigator is, is a good storyteller that has the facts
• 23:11
  right. And you want to be that most
• 23:13
  credible person in the courtroom who's giving you the facts.
• 23:17
  You want it to be the plaintiff lawyer.
• 23:19
  You want it to be us, not the defense lawyer.
• 23:23
  Yeah. That's why it's so important to
• 23:24
  listen. You know, how does the juror
• 23:27
  pronounce their name? Don't.
• 23:28
  Don't write it on your sheet based on how they spell it.
• 23:32
  That doesn't matter. You need to be able to pronounce
• 23:34
  it and remember it. I have one trial where the
• 23:38
  defense attorney was talking to a woman and she just mentioned
• 23:42
  that her husband had died recently of cancer.
• 23:45
  And he, he wasn't a human being. He didn't say, oh, I'm so sorry.
• 23:48
  He didn't take a pause. He said, oh, and what did he do
• 23:51
  for a living? I mean, it was just like he had
• 23:54
  not heard anything important about that conversation.
• 23:57
  So I think being a good listener is part of being well prepared
• 24:03
  cause, you know, you need to distill the facts that are out
• 24:06
  there, but you have to be listening at all times, both
• 24:09
  during the deposition, during trial and in, in every context
• 24:14
  where you're, you know, getting information.
• 24:16
  When and I think that that reinforces you mentioned that
• 24:20
  that you're curious you you're interested in things and one of
• 24:25
  the challenges I think with lawyers is, you know, if you
• 24:28
  have an outline, you stick your outline, you don't hear that the
• 24:32
  my husband died of cancer. You you it's next question.
• 24:36
  Yeah, yeah. What about your #8?
• 24:38
  Yeah, yeah. So I, I mean, that's something
• 24:42
  that I think you know, you and I have gone to 1,000,000 lectures
• 24:48
  on what works and what doesn't work in voidir, but I think
• 24:51
  that's one of the very toughest parts of the trial because you
• 24:54
  haven't built up credibility yet.
• 24:56
  They don't know you at all. They don't know your client.
• 24:59
  I think Nick rally talks about, you know, brutal honesty,
• 25:02
  getting them to say how they truly feel and embracing the bad
• 25:06
  answer. Oh, I, I think all plaintiff
• 25:08
  lawyers are ambulance chasers and scum.
• 25:11
  And I think any plaintiff that's asking for money, for loss of
• 25:14
  consortium, I think that's evil for better and for worse is what
• 25:17
  the marriage vows were. I think the more you encourage
• 25:20
  them and you say thank you, thank you so much, even though
• 25:23
  they're, it's like in the old days, it would feel like they
• 25:26
  were stabbing you in the heart and you would avoid the
• 25:29
  controversy. But now I think you definitely
• 25:32
  need to find out what they're thinking, even if even if it's
• 25:36
  not helpful, because then you know you can make your cause
• 25:40
  challenge or your peremptory. Yeah.
• 25:43
  Thank you for listening and please join us next week as we
• 25:45
  continue this conversation. Like what you heard?
• 25:48
  Show us with a colleague and leave us a five star review on
• 25:50
  your podcast platform of choice. To all of you doing justice out
• 25:53
  there. Happy hunting.