“Being a defendant,” says leading defense lawyer Chris Beeman, “one of the benefits of getting to trial is that the plaintiffs do go first, so it gives the defense time to continue getting organized.” And being organized is critical, Chris says as he reflects on lessons learned from his 65 jury trials. In this conversation with host Kevin Morrison, Chris also discusses transitioning from liability to damages arguments, using technology effectively, and advancing careers through mentorship. Tune in for more wisdom from this member of the “Big Four” invitation-only trial organizations: American Board of Trial Advocates, International Society of Barristers, International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and American College of Trial Lawyers.

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Hey everybody. Welcome to another

edition of Verdict Academy.

I am beyond thrilled, grateful,

and happy to have esteemed national

trial attorney Christopher J.

Beaman join us today. And not only is

he an esteemed national trial attorney,

he's also my very good friend.

So thanks for joining us, Chris.

Happy to be here. Can't

wait to get going here.

Well,

I need to tell the audience about all

your awesome accolades for just a minute

or two because there's so

many. It may take me a moment,

but Chris is a member of

what I call the Big Four,

which is the four invitation-only

elite trial organizations,

which consists of ABODA, ISOB,

the Inter Society of Barristers,

the International Academy

at Trial Lawyers, and of

course the American College.

And Chris, not only is he a

member of those organizations,

usually a leader of them. For example,

he led our San Francisco chapter

as president a few years back.

He was the National Aboda

Foundation president two years ago?

I think so. 2023, right?

There you go. Two years ago.

And raised a record amount

of money for the foundation,

which helps funds all of

his educational programs,

which is so important to

preserve the Seventh Amendment.

He has been awarded our

chapter's highest honor,

which is the Don Bailey Civility Award,

along with his best bud and our

mutual friend, Rich Schoenberger,

a couple years ago. He teaches in lectures

and tradvocacy across the Bay Area.

He's also an awesome person. He's

a great cyclist, great swimmer,

and has a terrific family.

And if you don't like Chris,

you're going to love his wife, Jill,

who's become my friend too. So welcome,

Chris Beaman.

Yes. Looking forward to catching

up with you, Kamo. Oops,

there goes your nickname.

Whoa. Oh, no. Catch out

of the bag. By the way,

I was looking at your CV

or your bio this morning,

and I thought I knew you pretty well,

and I was shocked to learn that you

were on the dean's list in law school.

Are you sure they got the right grades

and the right transcript matched up with

the right name?

So let the ripping begin at the

outset of our podcast. Yes, I did.

I went to Santa Clara, which I

really enjoyed going to school there.

It was an awesome place to go to law

school after I came out here from the

Midwest. And there must have been

lower standards then because yeah,

I was a pieceless guy.

So Chicago boy, born and raised Chicago,

Notre Dame, big fighting Irish fan.

And then you moved out to Santa

Clara to go to law school.

What brought you out to California?

Well, it was chasing a

woman, was short-lived,

but it's interesting how I rounded out

my education with a Jesuit law school.

And again, I just can't say

enough about Santa Clara.

I think I've hired about 30 or 40 lawyers

from Santa Clara since I graduated in

1985, but I went to a Dominican high

school in Chicago, Fenwick High School.

And then Notre Dame is a Brothers of

the Holy Cross College. And of course,

Santa Clara is a Jesuit institution.

So I have the trifecta

of Catholic education.

And if that counted for anything,

I might be able to get into heaven,

but I think I got an uphill battle there.

I think you missed the Franciscans,

but there's always a chance in the

future to get involved somewhere.

Let's get into the meat of the podcast.

And the podcast is designed basically

for younger trial attorneys to hear from

the veterans and what they need to

know for trial because as you know,

there are fewer, fewer trials these days

are more expensive, harder to get out.

And we've had the benefit and certainly

you have of how many cases have you

tried to vertic, Chris?

I think somebody just asked

me that yesterday, and I

think I've tried about 65.

I've tried cases with multiple plaintiffs,

so I've tried cases brought by

more than a hundred plaintiffs,

but the actual lawsuits are

probably around 65 jury trials.

It's been a good run.

It's something that I know we're going

to get into that I think is worth saying

at the outset is that even

having tried that many cases,

there's still a great

deal of energy, anxiety,

and not fear,

but the preparation for trial and the

buildup to trial still brings a lot of

excitement after all those trials.

And that's kind of one thing that

keeps lawyers at our age and grade

going because it's still

a great competition and

still has a lot of thrill to

it, I would say, even

after all these trials.

You're definitely a competitor

and you're a national storyteller.

What drew you to trial law? What made

you think, you know what, this is for me?

Well, kind of going back to Chicago,

I first was introduced to

the practice of law one.

I worked at a big law firm in Chicago.

It's called Kirkland and Ellis.

And I worked there in the summer,

I was a runner, so I basically worked

in the mailroom and it was really cool.

I saw a little bit of behind the

scenes stuff. I delivered documents.

This was way before fax or email or

anything else and kind of got to at least

see the behind the curtain stuff

that was going on at that law firm.

And it was intriguing enough for me to

think, huh, that would be kind of cool.

And I went to undergraduate in Indiana

and decided that it would be good to

spread my wings a little bit and move

away from the Midwest to try law school.

So as I mentioned before,

I came out here in the early

80s to Santa Clara. I really,

really enjoyed the torts class.

I think that might've been the

first class I ever attended.

And the professor was Alan Sheflin,

who's a really interesting guy,

great storyteller, and

made it really interesting.

So I kind of immediately engaged and

tore it. I loved some other courses,

including, believe it or not,

I love civil procedure and evidence

were two other great courses.

So I started to see I didn't have a love

for trust in estates and didn't find it

interesting and thought

wills was really boring.

And I eventually got into

moot court and thought,

this is fun because now we're going at

it just like playing basketball against

my friends growing up and whatever

else we did to stay occupied.

But the competition part of it definitely

was what really drew me because I

always say life is a competition. I mean,

just about everything we do is a

competition. And this was a way to make a

living while also competing

and hopefully winning.

That's always more fun than losing.

So that's how I got drawn into

this trial work that we do.

And you've been with the same firm

your whole career, right, Clap Maroney?

I have. I'm not sure if that

makes me smart or stupid,

but it's been good to me. I've got some

great opportunities as a young lawyer.

And one of the things about our firm is

that we do trial a lot of cases and we

do have ... It's kind of a

great avenue to get into trial.

Started out doing insurance defense work

and still that practice really carried

me through 30 years or so until I

started to do other things that were

tangential to being hired

by our insurance companies.

But that's a really great way for young

lawyers when you're coming out of law

school.

The two places that you can almost be

guaranteed to try cases are the district

attorney's office, public defender,

insurance defense firms, they try cases.

And obviously plaintiff's

firms like yours like Alterra,

which is a great firm that

I have a lot of respect for.

Yeah, it is hard to get out to trial.

So we're focused on things that help

trial tips basically to help the younger

lawyers. I'm a big rule of three guy.

And so you've got three topics that

you picked out and the first is trial

preparation.

What do you want younger trial attorneys

to know about trial preparation

generally and how do

you prepare for trial?

Well, that's kind of a broad topic,

but I did think that that

was worth talking about

because one thing that you'll

hear over and over again from

a jury, from jurors afterwards,

because when you finish a trial,

usually the judge gives the lawyers an

opportunity to interact with the jurors

if the jurors are willing

to stick around and talk.

And something that jurors are usually

complimentary about is when the

lawyers that are in the courtroom are

prepared because it's really amazing how

some aren't. I guess that's one

of the things about competing.

You want to be ready for the game.

You want to be ready for the trial,

obviously, but it's a long process

and it really needs to start early.

So I thought if we spent

some time talking about that,

and I'd love you to chime in and tell

me what the plaintiff's side does,

because I think there's certainly some

distinction between the way we approach

these cases.

But being a defendant,

one of the benefits of getting to trial

is that the plaintiffs do go first.

So it gives the defense time

to continue getting organized.

I think we were joking around about

this recently where when it's a defense

case,

the plaintiff has to worry about all

the witnesses and all the stuff upfront,

and the defense lawyer gets

to kind of watch it unfold.

And obviously there's a lot to do

with cross-examination and such,

but it's still,

you get to kind of lie and wait a

little bit for your side to come.

But going back to the prep for trial,

I think people all have heard by now

many times that the first thing or one

of the very first things you need to do,

which is both practical and also helps

guide what you're going to do with

the defense of the case is to look at

the jury instructions. And it's really,

I work up cases now with

partners and associates.

So usually there's a collaboration

and the team approach to this.

I still always do the jury instructions.

Even though my partners

could do a great job on them,

I really like to do them

so that I'm thinking about

what's going to be important

to develop in the case. So that's pretty

simple, but if you go right to Casey,

if it's a premises case,

you remind yourself what the elements

are and what potential defenses you have

about notice.

And it's really a good way to kind

of engage early as looking at the law

and thinking about how you're going to

prove your affirmative defenses or defeat

the effort by the plaintiff's lawyer to

submit evidence that's going to support

their case. So that's a

really basic principle,

but I think it's really important to do

that. And I don't open a casey as soon

as a case comes in,

especially because some of the cases have

common themes or at least common fact

patterns that you can rely on your

historical knowledge to get going on,

but eventually you crack

that casey and say, okay,

which of these instructions is

going to be important in this case?

And the use notes too, I tell my

younger that the use notes are huge,

so important.

Right, totally.

It's funny because that always comes

up when we're arguing whether the

instructions are applicable or

whether the judge is going to give the

instructions. So I have to admit,

even though, as you noted earlier,

I was on dean's list,

I don't always read the use notes

until we get right into the chambers

conferences about giving

instructions. But that's one,

I think the instructions are a great way

to get the roadmap for what you need to

get going on in the case. The

other things, these are, I think,

fairly basic ways to approach

getting ready for trial,

but putting your team

together is really important.

And I do try to have consistency

in the people that are helping me

with discovery. And I'm very

fortunate. I've worked with my friend,

Kevin Dessler, who's paralegal in our

office for almost my entire career,

in fact,

for my entire career. So we have a very

good system about getting organized.

What's his email address?

I could use somebody.

Yeah. He is not available, I

hope, if he ever listens to this,

but he's always been a great support. I

think we've tried every case together.

I can't think of a single one.

And that's really helpful

from a comfort standpoint

and from a just routine standpoint.

Just like getting a jury consultant,

you and I were talking to one of the

jury consultants that you used just a few

weeks ago at the Altair party,

and she was actually highly complimentary

of Kevin Morrison's ability to pick a

jury, which was, I

thought, impressive event.

I have paid her a fair amount

of money with you, but yeah.

I try to engage a jury

consultant early if,

depending on the exposure and the

expenses and the client's authority to do

that,

which is something the defense has to

deal with probably a little bit more than

the plaintiff's side of things because

we have to ask for permission for a lot

of stuff and get our client

to commit to paying it.

That's another important

cog for me because jury

consultants obviously have seen

lots of different kind of cases and can

help with themes and certainly with the

selection of the actual jury, which

I think we're going to talk about.

But putting together a team and

hopefully having a cohesive team that

communicates regularly about what

needs to be done to get the case ready,

that's a very useful tool to have. And

getting the cases ready themselves,

once you have your team lined

up and you understand the law,

then you have to conduct the discovery,

which I think is probably a whole other

chapter that we don't need to go in

today.

But how you start with the discovery,

whether you take the plaintiff's

deposition early or later,

depending on if it's a TBI case where

maybe the plaintiff will get better over

time and you want to wait.

Or when the IMEs are done and you have

plaintiffs examined by different kind of

medical professionals, that all

depends on where the case is,

who the plaintiff's lawyer

is, where it's venued,

all those factors that really kind of

impact how you're going to prepare the

case. And let's face

it, most cases settle.

So you're preparing the case for trial

with the likelihood that it's going to

resolve.

But I think it almost goes without saying

that if you don't prepare a case for

trial, then it will go to trial.

100%. 100%. Yeah. On trial prep,

I'm going to get to jury selection in

a second. I'm glad you made that segue,

but you parachute in a lot of cases,

which means the case is worked up on

their firm and the defendant says,

"You know what?

We want an actual trial attorney

to this case." You get the case,

so it's in the box, right? A

lot of the depths are done,

maybe expert discovery's done.

What do you want to see first

when you're parachuting in a case?

Well, chewing somebody else's

gum is usually uncomfortable,

but it is something that we do often.

And sometimes you get a case

that's in great shape and you go,

"These are all the questions I need in

this expert deposition." And sometimes

you get a case where the

expert depositions aren't

even taken yet or it's too

late to take them.

So there's all a great variety

of what kind of shape the file is

in. It's funny,

and I want to say the plaintiff's

lawyers are able to be a little bit more

selective typically in which client

they're going to accept than defense

lawyers. I mean, that's not always

true, but I think as a rule of thumb,

it does seem to work that way. So

if we're parachuting into a case,

usually it's because there's

some desperation or some

lack of confidence or some

problem. So that can be a

little unsettling, but you

go in blind. So you say,

"Sure, we'll jump in.

" And then you get into file and you

look at it and you go, "Holy shit,

what have I done? Why did we do this?

" But what we're looking

for there, I mean,

you always have to start with

the plaintiff. You really want,

especially hopefully it's

videotaped deposition,

and you can get a real feel for how that

person is going to come across to the

jury because I mean,

I think the most important things when

you're evaluating or trying a case are

easy to recognize. One is

who's the plaintiff's lawyer?

And I always look at the pleadings

immediately to see if I recognize the

plaintiff's lawyer. And if so,

whether he or she is a trial lawyer or

somebody who maybe doesn't try cases,

because that'll affect certainly the

settlement value and also how you approach

the case. The other thing that I've

mentioned already is eyeballing the

plaintiff is critical to

understanding what you're going to do.

Is it somebody the

jury's not going to like?

Is it somebody the jury will think

is embellishing or not being accurate

with the facts?

And you can get a little bit of a sense

for that just by watching the video

deposition, body language, their

demeanor. So that's, I think,

a real critical place to start.

The other thing that's obviously important

in terms of what's going to happen in

trial is who's your judge? Have you

been in front of the judge before?

Is it a judge that

you're comfortable with?

Is it too late to challenge

the judge, which usually it is.

But those are the things

that we're looking at when

we first put our toe into a

case that we're parachuting in to try.

Got it. So let's move to jury selection.

We talked a little bit a little already.

Is this the most important single part

of trial to you picking the jury? I.

Think it is because what you're doing

is you're creating the audience for your

narrative.

So you're looking for an audience that

is receptive to your story or at least

that will be fair. So it's a

process that, and I know you both,

you really like this too.

I think this is probably,

I guess lawyers like different

things. I love cross-examination.

I really love closing arguments, but

my favorite part is jury selection.

And I think we both have said

getting to know jurors is an

enjoyable process. It doesn't

always go the way you want it to.

You mentioned Rich Schoenberger,

who's somebody that we

both admire and like a lot.

And I'll talk about him

for a second because I've

watched him pick a jury and he

has a remarkable memory. He's very,

very good with the names of the

jurors without looking at notes.

He's just got the ability to kind

of capture that. And his style,

which I think this is the style

that works for most of us,

I think you and me and Rich for sure,

is to have a conversation

with the jury and to feel what

they're feeling.

That is really to get to understand

how they're seeing general

concepts of the law. And it is a

little bit of a delicate balance.

We're kind of towing the

line on explaining some of

the facts because we can't

get them indoctrinated

too much to the facts,

but we do want to talk about those.

So that's a process that I don't

know if it comes naturally. Oh,

I meant to say this is what I

was going to say about Rich.

He actually practices his jury selection,

which I think is really interesting and

has people when he's working with a jury

consultant,

they have a panel and he actually

goes through different responses or

reactions to what people tell them,

which I think is a really interesting

and kind of novel for me at least way to

do that. That's not something

that I do. Do you do that, Kamal?

I do actually. If I'm rusty, meaning

if I haven't tried a case in a year,

I like to do a mock pick and

an opening with 12 to 15 people

in a focus group type situation. It

just gets the rest out. And yeah,

I think it's really helpful.

Yeah, that's it. I'm learning something

from this podcast by listening.

I am intrigued by that,

so maybe next time around.

I've never not learned something. I

mean, just the phrase of something,

or I've always learned

something that's always ...

It's a pain in the butt because it's

the weekend or two before trial.

You're busy as hell. You got all

these motions and other, the garbage,

as I like to say, the

minutia, the distractions,

but it is so critical and I think it

is the most important part of trial.

And I always learn something

and improve our chances.

Second to jury,

do you just want to figure out if they're

a leader where if they're open to the

defense case?

Because the plaintiff's attorney gets

to go first and maybe you spend an hour

with them and let's assume

that plaintiff's attorney's

a good guy or a good

person has made a decent impression.

So you get up and now you get to go,

which is a challenge.

So what are you looking for?

Are you kind of going off what the

bad answers from your perspective are?

Are you just trying to make sure

they're open to hear two sides?

What are your goals in jury selection?

Well, first I want to plug my jury

consultant, Andrew Walker from Cogent.

And I've worked with them for

about 10 years or maybe more.

And we have a good system with, I think

he's extremely organized, very helpful.

They do great background and

social media searches and such on

the veneer. And I think I said

the right word. Sounds good to.

Me. Jury panel? I call it jury panel.

Certainly since the pandemic,

every case I've tried has

had a jury questionnaire.

Do you like those, by the way?

I do. I mean,

it's more information and I

think it does make our voir dire

more pointed because you can learn the

general stuff without having everybody

tell you and you can read it.

My figure on this real quick is people

are always going to be honest when

they're by themselves

writing something down.

But when you have to speak

in front of a big group,

a lot of people just don't like doing

that and they'll shade their comments

because they'll think, "Well, I better

not say this because he'll think this. ".

I agree. And I think that

it is, you can find stuff.

And this is when it's really helpful

to have a trial team because what we

typically do is, the last case I tried,

I tried with my partner, Ashley Myers,

and she's got her own unique perspective.

She's younger than I am and obviously

comes from a little bit of different

background. So we had our jury consultant,

Andrew, paralegal Kevin Dussler,

and then my partner, Ashley and I,

each reviewing the jury questionnaires

and everybody finds different things in

the jury questionnaire. So that's

a huge organizational task.

I was just in Marin County and

we were going to have two panels,

which would've ended up

resolving, so we didn't do that.

But staying organized in jury selections

is hugely important and critically

important.

And so what we're looking for is

obviously that's really one of your only

opportunities to make a first impression.

Depending on whether you've done a

mini opening, that would

be your very first.

But if it's a statement

of the case that's read,

then really jury selection's your

first chance to make an impression.

So being organized is super important

because juries do not want to

sit around watching a lawyer fumble for

a note card to figure out what he meant

to ask juror number 12. So

that's really important.

And that's why that's one of the huge

values of having a jury consultant that

can keep you on track just with the way

they organize their charts and the color

coded system of you go into

the selection with some rating

system of the jurors that are out

based on their questionnaires,

whether they seem like they're your kind

of a juror. And then what you're doing,

you hit one of them as you're trying to

determine leaders and the strength of

the juror and which tendency the juror

might be showing during the questioning

process. And there are defense

profiles that we look for. Typically,

it depends on the facts of the case

and who the plaintiff is, of course,

but we're usually trying to find

jurors that fit into the slots that we

like based on their background,

their education level, their income,

their leadership. So I don't

think I've told any secrets yet,

but that's kind of the way we approach it.

And when you're picking a jury,

are you yourself taking notes or

you relying on your team to do that?

A little bit of both.

I try not to take too many notes because

you can get distracted by doing that,

but I take a lot of notes when the

judge is doing voir dire and when the

plaintiff's lawyer is. I mean,

I'm listening and watching.

That's when you get the follow-up

questions if you get to that point.

And generally speaking, I always, and

I'd be curious to know how you do this,

Kevin, but I always talk to the entire

... Usually it's a six-pack method,

although that changes from

department to department.

But whoever's in the

box or we're talking to,

I try to talk to everybody

first as a collective global

audience,

and then depending on the patience

of the judge and the type of

cases,

I do try to at least introduce myself

and ask a question of each juror if that

works. It doesn't always.

And in that case,

then you just apologize that you're

not going to talk to them and hope they

don't mind not being on the spot

when you're asking them questions.

Yeah, same. I do think it's

important to talk to every juror,

even if it's like Mr. Last person,

and judge just give me 30 seconds,

is there anything you heard that leads

you to conclude that you might not be ...

Just to give them ...

Maybe that they know an uncle or

something happened that's dramatic,

and every once in a while

it's like, "Oh yeah,

I was a claims adjuster or my father was

killed." Or you learn something about

somebody who's not talking, which

is huge. It can be a game changer.

No doubt. All right.

Last topic then is closing

argument. There's kind of

two views on this, I think.

One is closing is, first of all,

it's super fun to do as lawyers because

we like to get up there and start our

stuff. But the jury's kind

of fried at this point.

And so when you're giving a closing,

do you think you can swing the

entire verdict at that point?

Are you trying to throw out some

tidbits to your jurors to use?

What is your strategy in closing argument?

Well, again, being organized

is really important.

So I hope I'm not overemphasizing

that, but particularly in closing,

when typically the cases that you and I

try are long cases, they're complicated,

they have a lot of issues. In your case,

a lot of times, a lot of plaintiffs.

So the energy that you have at the end

of trial does begin to wane depending on

how long you've been going at it and what

the schedule has been with the judge.

But I do think that that's when

the adrenaline kind of kicks in,

at least it does for me.

And then the late nights to

get the PowerPoint together

and how to organize the

evidence and the jury instructions,

because that's critical, I think.

It's not a big trick,

but I've never given a closing argument

without having a special verdict that I

completed for and with the jury

because that's something new to them. I

always try to get something new

going during closing because they've

seen the evidence, they've heard

usually a lot of testimony.

So if you can just refine the

important evidence to your case and

present it in a way that

might be a little different,

even if they might've heard

some important testimony,

but if you can either replay

their deposition if that

was how the evidence came

in or display on a screen the

actual text of their testimony

so that that kind of comes to

life in a different way for them.

Do you get dailies so you can throw the

trial transcript up there or what do you

do with.

That? It depends on the

case, honestly. I mean,

it kind of depends on the exposure and

whether we have the ability to do that.

I do sometimes do that. One thing I

wanted to say is that with technology,

obviously people love to learn

by looking and seeing things.

And that's how I learn myself. I'm

a visual learner, but in closing,

I try to not get overtly tech.

Low tech can just be just

as good as high tech,

including I use whiteboard,

I use overhead projectors,

I use Elmos.

And you don't want to do too many

because that gets a little confusing.

It's like juggling balls.

But I do think that the tendency of people

to be married to their PowerPoint and

closing is not a good trend.

And I try to avoid that myself just

because as much as people like to look at

stuff, I think it becomes

a little rote if it's all,

everything's on a slide. So I try

to change it up into some of those.

Mix it up, make them pass a

photograph around that kind of stuff,

throw something up on a whiteboard.

We're defense lawyers,

I don't think I've ever tried a case

that doesn't have a timeline in it.

We're very big on timelines,

especially when there's medicine involved

or some gap of treatment or something.

And the jurors I think really like

when you illustrate that as opposed to

talking about it, when

you show like, okay,

here's 2022 and here are the 10 months

where there were no complaints of any

residual brain injury symptoms.

And here's when you went to see Topher

Stevenson after that and all of a sudden

had a brain injury. I think

those can be very helpful.

Timelines are critical. We're

almost done. Believe it or not,

I could talk to you all day

long and would love to do so,

but let me ask you this question.

You got a tough liability case.

Let's say it's a tossup.

You could defense it,

but it's a huge damage case and the

plaintiff's attorney's got a big ask out

there, $50 million suggestion

or whatever it is in closing.

When you get up to close, you think

you've got a decent chance to defense it,

but it is high exposure.

Is it your general philosophy to float

a defense number as well after you argue

the hell out of the liability

or do you just leave that alone?

What's your general philosophy there?

There's a sliding scale to my

answer for that. And that is,

I think if you're ... First, I want to

back up and address one other thing.

If there's a case of liability and

you're not going to win the liability,

the decision you have to make is,

should we concede that we're negligent

and just argue no causation or

minimal damages?

And that's a decision that we don't

take that very lightly because if you do

concede it, obviously you can't argue

against it, but at the same time,

you can really establish your

credibility by lying down on negligence

if you're not going to win.

If you guaranteed not to win,

then you can get the jury to see

how reasonable you are by not

arguing it. In a tough liability case,

you don't want to lose your credibility

on the liability piece of the case

because that could impact whether they

believe what you're going to say about

damages. So that transition is

always really difficult. I mean,

almost every time I will go through

the special verdict and tell them

why they should be answering no to all

these questions about negligence and

causation and damages. And

then basically at some point,

usually about three quarters

of the way through, say,

"You might see the evidence entirely

different than the way we perceive it,

and we will respect what your decision is.

If you believe that damages

have been established,

that there is negligence and causation,

then let us give you another

perspective about what the damage is,

what reasonable damages would be. "

So I pretty much always give a number.

I mean,

I don't think there's been too many cases

that I've said that the only thing you

could do is give a defense verdict

because I think that's really risky.

And then there's nothing in the juror's

mind about what does that guy think it's

worth? And so you want to have an anchor

and you want it to be realistic at that

point because you're going

up against somebody like you,

you want to make the jury believe that

there are two sides to that story and

they should hear them both.

I'm glad I haven't had to try

a case against you because

those Pearly Whites are

awfully dangerous with juries, as we

all know. Chris has a phenomenal career.

Any parting words to our audience, Chris,

of wisdom for young trial attorneys,

what they shouldn't do or what should

they focus on as they build their careers?

Sure. Thanks for having me first.

But also I would say the takeaways for

me are if you're on the defense side and

you want to try cases, it's

really important you set

the cases up to get tried.

And In other words, when you get close

to trial, don't change your evaluation.

Don't say, "Oh, I need

more money," or, "Oh,

my kids have a basketball game this

weekend and I don't want to work." You

really do need to set the cases up and

tell your claims rep if it's an insurance

case that what the exposure

is and don't waffle on that.

I think you have to do

your part to get to trial.

It's not going to be handed

to you. The other thing,

and I'd highly recommend

this to all young lawyers,

is make sure that you have a mentor

that is going to help you along in your

career.

Go watch trials,

beg people to get into chairs a second

trial or to take a witness or to do a

mini opening. Because once you

stick your toe in the water,

it's much easier to get in

and swim with the sharks.

So you just got to get there by

setting the cases up for trial,

participating in other people's trials

so you get the taste of it and you're off

and running.

Awesome. Wise words. Chris Beaman.

Thank you so much for being on.

You're a great trial attorney.

Even better than that,

you're a great human being

and a great friend of mine.

Thank you for listening

to Verdict Academy.

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