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Great trial lawyers are made not
born. Welcome to Verdict Academy.
Speaker:Preserving trial wisdom for trial
lawyers. Join host Kevin Morrison,
Speaker:partner at Altair Law as he recreates
those invaluable hallway conversations.
Speaker:That remote work has made rare candid
insights and hard won lessons from
Speaker:America's most accomplished trial
lawyers produced and powered by law
Speaker:pods.
Speaker:Welcome everybody to Verdict Academy.
Speaker:Our guest this week is Daniel J. Kelly,
Speaker:one of my favorite people
and favorite attorneys.
Speaker:Dan needs no introduction,
but having said that,
Speaker:lemme say a few words about him.
Speaker:He is in the big four invitation
only organizations abo a
Speaker:International Society of Barristers
where he served as president,
Speaker:the American College, of course in IETL.
Speaker:He is a legend here in San Francisco.
Speaker:He has not only been the president
of a San Francisco chapter of ABO A,
Speaker:but he's received both our highest awards,
Speaker:the Don Bailey Civility
and Professionalism Award,
Speaker:as well as the Legends Award,
Speaker:which you have to be on this side
of the grass long enough to receive.
Speaker:Dan is a Bay Area native,
Speaker:I believe he's born and raised in the
North Bay and then went to school educated
Speaker:both undergrad and law
school in the South Bay,
Speaker:a big part of the Santa Clara community
down there in law school. And then he
Speaker:was only able to hold one legal job his
whole career at Walkup where he probably
Speaker:was a partner for, I don't
know, 30 years or something.
Speaker:One of the best firms in
the history of California.
Speaker:Dan is an excellent trial
attorney and not only that is an
Speaker:author in the field.
Speaker:There are many times when I
relied on his three volume rudder
Speaker:guide, personal injury guidebook,
Speaker:which probably got me through more than
one malpractice situations that didn't
Speaker:know what the statute was or that didn't
know which side of the V to send a
Speaker:discovery to. So Dan Kelly,
Speaker:thank you so much for being a guest
here in Vertical Academy today.
Speaker:Thank you, Kevin. I almost
believed everything you said
about my qualifications,
Speaker:but thank you.
Speaker:Absolutely. Do I have that right? You
spent your whole career at Walkup?
Speaker:Yes, that's correct. Over 50 years. Not
only that, it was the same building.
Speaker:I parked my car in the same
garage for 50 years. Fortunately,
Speaker:it was not the same car all
that 50 years. But yeah,
Speaker:there is something about stability,
I guess in my background.
Speaker:I didn't make many career moves.
Speaker:I think the biggest move was when we
moved from the 30th floor to the 26th
Speaker:floor in terms of the abating, asbestos,
Speaker:and so four floors, that's
my career move in 50 years.
Speaker:Love it. That says a lot. You're
obviously a thoughtful guy,
Speaker:you're a great writer.
Speaker:You wrote some great articles in Plaintiff
magazine about the practice of law.
Speaker:How did you decide or how
was it that you became a
Speaker:trial attorney?
Speaker:Well, I actually started
off in law school.
Speaker:There were a group of us who thought
we were going to be trial lawyers.
Speaker:I think I'm the only one on to do that,
Speaker:but we piled in a car and
came to San Francisco.
Speaker:We were in the second year of law school.
Speaker:We did it both the second year and third
year and went to the Nate Cone seminar
Speaker:and Nate had assembled
whether James Martin McGinnis,
Speaker:Mel Jake early, I mean the cream of
the crop in terms of trial lawyers.
Speaker:And it was a full day
and we did it again in
Speaker:my third year of law school. And I was
really impressed with these lawyers.
Speaker:I mean, they seemed to be
comfortable in their skin.
Speaker:They had great fun among each other.
Speaker:They put on constructive
programs and the like,
Speaker:and I thought I'd like to do that.
Then I had a tax
Speaker:professor who said that the highest
paid lawyers that he had worked
Speaker:with in terms of tax law were
plaintiff's personal injury lawyers.
Speaker:And so I thought, well, that sounds
pretty good as well. So anyway,
Speaker:it was a combination of those two
that led me in that direction.
Speaker:Plus my father over the years, he
and I would get in, not arguments,
Speaker:but we'd debate a little bit
and he'd always close by saying,
Speaker:I think you ought to be a lawyer. So yeah,
Speaker:it came to fruition with all
of those things combined.
Speaker:Yeah, and yeah, of course
you get to the walkup firm.
Speaker:And what year did you start there, Dan?
Speaker:I started 1969. I came on board.
Speaker:I actually wrote a brief to the California
Supreme Court when I hadn't been yet.
Speaker:I was awaiting bar results
and I wrote this thing and it
Speaker:just so happened it was an AC brief.
Speaker:I couldn't even sign the thing
because I wasn't a lawyer
Speaker:and Dave Harney was involved
in the case and Bill Camusi and
Speaker:a lot of big name lawyers
were involved in this thing.
Speaker:And I guess the word got
back to Bruce Walkup.
Speaker:This brief was really well
written. I won't mention names,
Speaker:but the guy that signed it took
all the credit for the brief.
Speaker:And I guess at lunch one time,
Speaker:one of my contemporaries said to
Bruce Wup, no, he didn't write it,
Speaker:the new kid did.
Speaker:And so I was called in and Bruce Wup said,
Speaker:did you write the brief in Margo?
Speaker:And I didn't know my whole career I
thought was shot right there. And I said,
Speaker:yes, I did.
Speaker:And the next day there
was a memo and I was to be
Speaker:his associate and not the associate
of the guy that signed the brief.
Speaker:So it all kind of came together that
way and that's how I really started
Speaker:work with Bruce Walker.
Speaker:You basically, you worked with him
until he retired? Do I have that right?
Speaker:Actually first three or four years,
Speaker:we tried a lot of cases together and then
it kind of one of these things, well,
Speaker:you're on your own.
Speaker:And that first happened
in a case in Utah where we
Speaker:had the wonderful experience of suing
the Mormon church that owned the
Speaker:hospital,
Speaker:and we drew a Mormon judge and so on.
Speaker:And so I think Bruce said, why don't
you handle this from here on out?
Speaker:So I tried that case and it resolved
in terms of a settlement in the second
Speaker:week. And then it was kind of like, okay,
Speaker:well you've been in the water long
enough and you know how to swim,
Speaker:so you're going to be swim on your
own. So off I went. That's the.
Speaker:Way to do it, build up
that scar tissue. Daniel,
Speaker:the purpose of the podcast basically is
a couple of things since the pandemic,
Speaker:maybe before that,
Speaker:but the pandemic certainly accelerated
folks working from home and less
Speaker:interaction in the office. So we want to
kind of reinstall a little bit of you,
Speaker:water cooler talk. And so
believing in the rule of threes,
Speaker:I understand there's three things we
want to talk about in today's podcast for
Speaker:our busy trial attorneys out
there. One is case selection,
Speaker:one is losing and how
do you get past losing?
Speaker:The third is the use of expert witnesses.
Speaker:Let's talk about those one
at a time. Case selection.
Speaker:Tell me about your views on
how to select a case and the
Speaker:importance of that for a young
trial attorney out there.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:of interest to me recently I read an
article where somebody was talking about
Speaker:it. They have an algorithm in their
firm and that tells 'em whether to
Speaker:take the case or not.
Speaker:And it's all done through
paralegals interviewing
Speaker:clients. And to me that's
completely foreign.
Speaker:I wanted to sit down and meet
with the client firsthand. I mean,
Speaker:this is somebody, plaintiff's world,
Speaker:you're going to be trying to sell a
jury on the quality of this person.
Speaker:And it's a world of first impressions.
Speaker:So if your first impression
is this is not a saleable
Speaker:commodity,
Speaker:you can get used to them over the
long haul and working with them.
Speaker:But the first impression
is still very important.
Speaker:And that's something I think
the lawyer has to get ahold of.
Speaker:The other thing is you cannot
have any client control,
Speaker:as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker:not ever meeting the client.
And as you know, Kevin,
Speaker:tail end of my career, I was doing
a lot of mediations and sadly,
Speaker:sometimes the first thing I had to
do was introduce the plaintiff to
Speaker:their attorney at the mediation.
Speaker:And that doesn't bode well. I mean,
Speaker:I always said that I think a plumber
gets more respect than a lawyer.
Speaker:If the plumber came in and said, Hey,
Speaker:you got a U joint underneath the sink
and it's this, that, and the other thing,
Speaker:you'd say, okay, fine, fix it so on.
Well, a lawyer, they're skeptics,
Speaker:and if they don't meet you
until the tail end of the
Speaker:case, it's a little tough to
establish appropriate client control.
Speaker:You really have to instruct
the client along the way in
Speaker:terms of appearance at trial,
all kinds of things like that.
Speaker:If you've never met them,
Speaker:how can you instill confidence in
them at the last minute? So to me,
Speaker:it's extremely important to meet with,
Speaker:talk to and get some idea of what this
Speaker:person's all about.
Speaker:And the other thing is
people think lawyers are, oh,
Speaker:we're advocates and we're this,
that, and the other thing,
Speaker:when I first started practicing,
I said, attorney counselor,
Speaker:there's a big component
of counseling people.
Speaker:They've never experienced things with
lawyers. This is the first thing for them.
Speaker:And there is counseling and particularly
plaintiff's cases of people that have
Speaker:suffered a loss,
Speaker:either be it a family member
or a tragic injury or whatever.
Speaker:And so counseling to me
starts right from the get go.
Speaker:It's really the most
rewarding thing of what we do,
Speaker:isn't it Meeting these folks who've
gone through some of the worst,
Speaker:probably the worst time of their life,
or one of the worst times of their life,
Speaker:and getting to know them and working
with them and getting through that time
Speaker:together.
Speaker:Yes, and I must say, I think
you have to be honest with them.
Speaker:I told people that if your
heart went out to everybody,
Speaker:and it does when you see these
people and what they've been through,
Speaker:but you can only put so much out there.
Speaker:And they have to understand
that I would talk to them and
Speaker:understand their grief, their sorrow,
their loss, whatever, but also tell 'em,
Speaker:I'm not here just to mouth platitudes.
Speaker:I'm here to represent you
and do the best job we can
Speaker:and we can only do that
working together. So again,
Speaker:I go back to the human experience
of sitting down talking to
Speaker:people.
Speaker:Yeah, there's so much
pressure on our time.
Speaker:We're all so busy and it sounds
so inconvenient to leave the
Speaker:office and get in your car or whatever
and go visit your client at his home.
Speaker:But every time I've done that,
Speaker:I've come away from that meeting a way
better lawyer, a way better person,
Speaker:a way better advocate for that client.
Speaker:Exactly. And I think it
works the other way too.
Speaker:They come out of this
appreciating the lawyer,
Speaker:appreciating the counseling
and being able to rely on that
Speaker:lawyer and what they say on down
the line as the case progresses.
Speaker:Great point. Let's talk about everybody's
favorite topic, certainly for plan's,
Speaker:lawyers, and that's losing because
we always like to tout our losses.
Speaker:Tell me about losing Dan and
how do you get through a loss?
Speaker:Well, the first case I really
tried was against Dick Siggins,
Speaker:like Goodmanson, Siggins
and Stone, great guy.
Speaker:And I lost.
Speaker:And so I got that out of my
system pretty early in my career.
Speaker:I think I shared with you, Kevin,
Speaker:that I think the next
case was Dan McNamara.
Speaker:Then there was another name partner, oh,
Speaker:Francis from Carol Burdick and McDonough.
Speaker:And suddenly I realized I'm not
trying cases against my peers.
Speaker:I'm trying cases against
these name partners.
Speaker:So I lost the first one. I've lost others.
Speaker:And quite frankly, it's
not easy to lose. I mean,
Speaker:nobody likes to lose,
Speaker:and are you going to have a
psychological trauma because you
Speaker:lost a case? I mean,
Speaker:there are so many things that happen in
trial that you and I both know you have
Speaker:no control over.
Speaker:I always said try to
get help from within and
Speaker:not from without.
And by that I mean to me it was like
Speaker:exercise.
Speaker:I could go work out and
kind of get through things.
Speaker:And I think when you talk about
working from within, sweat
Speaker:comes from within.
Speaker:Other people try to get
over that by drinking
Speaker:or the use of drugs, in other
words, things from without.
Speaker:And it doesn't work. I mean,
Speaker:those things may have
a temporary solution,
Speaker:but they have no future nor will
anybody that relies on those things.
Speaker:You have to forgive yourself.
And somebody once said,
Speaker:the person that's most difficult
to forgive is yourself.
Speaker:So you can't sit there and you must
learn from what you've done and
Speaker:maybe a reason you lost. You have to
analyze it and then move on. I mean,
Speaker:you have to get back
on the horse basically.
Speaker:And I do know some lawyers that fell
off the horse and never got back on.
Speaker:Because of a loss.
Speaker:And also fell off the horse
and fell off the wagon.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:there's so much pressure and especially
I started practicing the early
Speaker:nineties, so I saw maybe
towards the end of your career,
Speaker:now that we're in the mid
twenties 30 years later,
Speaker:there's so much media and
so much publicity about
Speaker:these big 7, 8,
Speaker:9 figure verdicts and everybody
touts on the billboards or
Speaker:TV ads or on the internet
how successful everybody is.
Speaker:And so now if you try
a case and lose or get
Speaker:a bad result,
Speaker:you feel less than because
you're not measuring up to all
Speaker:what the media or what social media
is saying about what successful
Speaker:clamps are doing.
Speaker:And that's a whole new world,
Speaker:at least from where I was to what
you're talking about now. I mean,
Speaker:I see on TV somebody's examining
a witness and takes a water glass
Speaker:and breaks it in his hand. I mean,
Speaker:I guess people at home think
that's what lawyers do.
Speaker:And it's tough. It's tough to overcome
that. And as you say, have the pressure.
Speaker:Also, you have the pressure now of costs.
Speaker:I mean the cost burden of these
cases is not what it was way
Speaker:back when.
Speaker:And I wrote an article where I talked
about packing up my briefcase after a
Speaker:trial and I put a footnote, yes,
Speaker:it was possible to try a case using a
Speaker:briefcase, not 47 boxes,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:But nowadays it's a whole new
world and electronic world.
Speaker:Let me just tell you one thing.
Speaker:I never was comfortable using all this
state of the art stuff. State-of-the-art
Speaker:for me was an overhead projector.
Speaker:I plugged one in San Jose and the
power went out on a sixth floor
Speaker:courthouse. The power went out.
Speaker:The next time I thought I was being
such a genius with high tech stuff,
Speaker:was something as sophisticated
as a slide projector.
Speaker:And I put the slide in and it caught
on fire. After those two incidents,
Speaker:I thought maybe I shouldn't fool
around with stuff that I have no
Speaker:understanding of and resort to posters,
Speaker:diagrams and that type of
thing sounds primitive,
Speaker:but for me it worked. And if I
got beyond my level of competence,
Speaker:I was in trouble.
Speaker:Back to losses real quick.
Speaker:So you were trying cases in the seventies
and eighties and back then people were
Speaker:trying cases with much more frequency.
So let's say you lost a trial,
Speaker:you go down to the local watering hole,
Speaker:whatever it is or whichever
one it is around here,
Speaker:would you talk about the loss?
And we loss is more viewed as hey,
Speaker:that's what happens when you go
to trial. You lose sometimes.
Speaker:I guess what I'm asking is were people
more willing to talk about the losses
Speaker:then because they were trying more cases
and of course you're going to lose if
Speaker:you tried cases.
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker:And you mentioned there were
like 12 or 14 of us in the
Speaker:office when I started in terms of
lawyers and we were tight knit group.
Speaker:And so before trial you'd be
talking about things and how do I do
Speaker:this, how do I do that?
And then after trial,
Speaker:we'd exchange info back
and forth. There was no,
Speaker:I mean you knew you
lost, they knew you lost.
Speaker:They knew that you didn't feel good
about it, but you have to get over it.
Speaker:And I had,
Speaker:I would say a counseling group of about
12 other lawyers that you can say have
Speaker:been there, done that, great lawyers
and they've all taken a flop. I mean,
Speaker:it just happens and you
have to get over it.
Speaker:Yeah, not going to help a lot of clients.
Speaker:If you stop practicing a law after a
loss, right, future clients that need us,
Speaker:you're not going to help.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Sometimes it's just, this
sounds kind of corny,
Speaker:but sometimes it's just
the fight that matters.
Speaker:Sometimes you just need to in and try
a case and if you lose it, you lose it.
Speaker:But it's just kind of helpful
your client just to fight for him.
Speaker:Oh yeah. You see all these ads now on tv,
Speaker:I won't mention names,
Speaker:but one of these guys I did a
mediation for and he was touting
Speaker:about this great trial record. I
said, if you've got that many trials,
Speaker:send me your list of trials and
I'll see if I can propose you for
Speaker:membership in a ota. I'm still
waiting. And that's been 10 years ago.
Speaker:So I'm still waiting. And quite frankly,
Speaker:I had one lawyer come in and tell me
I wanted to hit him, quite frankly.
Speaker:He said, you know what this case
is all about Dan. I said, no,
Speaker:I mean tell me I've read the facts
and so on. But he said, well,
Speaker:this is a pump it and dump it.
I said, what? And he said, yeah,
Speaker:you know what it is? It's in the trade.
We call it pump it and dump it. I said,
Speaker:what are you talking about? He said,
well, but you pump up the damages,
Speaker:you do this, that pump it up, pump it up,
and they know you're going to dump it.
Speaker:Well, yeah, that word gets around
the dump, part of it gets around,
Speaker:believe me. And you have no
credibility with insurance companies,
Speaker:defense counsel, so on if
that's your mo. And sadly,
Speaker:I think a lot of these people that
tout themselves as trial lawyers,
Speaker:it would be like me saying I am
an expert in jet propulsion or
Speaker:something ever having done that, so.
Speaker:Fair enough. So moving on to
our third topic here today,
Speaker:expert witnesses.
Speaker:I know you tried a lot of medical
negligence cases as I understand it,
Speaker:where experts, it can be
important sometimes for a
jury to make a determination.
Speaker:Talk to me about your philosophy
on expert witnesses, Dan.
Speaker:Well, it started out doing
medical negligence cases.
Speaker:Most times you were so happy
you even had an expert and
Speaker:who was willing to testify
against a fellow physician.
Speaker:Sometimes they had to travel
quite a ways to get there.
Speaker:I once had a neurologist
testify who flew in from Miami,
Speaker:and I remember defense counsel asking
him How many neurologists you teach?
Speaker:You think you flew over to get
to California to testify here?
Speaker:But you had these experts and
I think the key was I soon
Speaker:learned that you have to sometimes
confront those experts with the tough
Speaker:questions that they're going to
face either in deposition or trial.
Speaker:And as a young lawyer, you say, boy,
I'm just happy I have this expert.
Speaker:I don't want to upset 'em,
Speaker:but you really have to probe and make
sure they're ready and kind of locked
Speaker:and loaded. I think I told
you, Kevin, back then,
Speaker:I used the phonetics of what an expert is.
I said,
Speaker:X is A has been and a spurt
as a drip under pressure.
Speaker:That seemed to kind of explain
some of the people I saw as
Speaker:experts. So times have changed,
Speaker:but a lot of these people
are still phonies and have
Speaker:credentials or testify a lot.
Speaker:I sat as a judge pro tem many times
and you'd see experts come in.
Speaker:One guy, for example,
Speaker:I knew had testified probably a
hundred times for the defense and
Speaker:maybe twice,
Speaker:and it was mid-January and he was asked
how many times he testified for each.
Speaker:He said, well take this year
for example. And he said,
Speaker:it's been even, I've testified once for
the plaintiff and once for the defense,
Speaker:and the lawyer accepted that and I
thought it's January and he is already
Speaker:testified twice. But anyway,
Speaker:you see people like that and
they're out there and they crumble
Speaker:if handled appropriately by good
lawyers in cross-examination.
Speaker:Was your philosophy then when
you'd retain an expert witness,
Speaker:would you go meet with that expert
and make sure they understood, intend,
Speaker:do a mock cross with them to see how they
withstood or how would you handle that
Speaker:to make sure they could
hopefully withstand the
cross-examination at trial when
Speaker:there's an inevitably bad
facts that are exposed?
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:ideally you would do
just that is meet with
Speaker:them, go over things. Initially,
Speaker:I can give you an example of what I was
going through as a plaintiff's lawyer.
Speaker:I retained an expert that was used by
Dave Horney and this was a Southern
Speaker:California expert, and he
had reviewed everything,
Speaker:his secretary or phone
me and said that he was
Speaker:ready and so on. We
scheduled his deposition.
Speaker:I flew down to la. He said,
Speaker:we just meet over lunch and
the depositions at two o'clock.
Speaker:He opened the packet of
records when I arrived at his
Speaker:office and I thought, oh my God,
he hasn't even reviewed this stuff.
Speaker:And somehow in a candlelit restaurant,
Speaker:he was reading the records as I
was almost choking over lunch,
Speaker:but he was my expert. What are
you going to do? I think to me,
Speaker:the two things that
bothered me most logistics,
Speaker:one of trying a case is not easy.
Speaker:Making sure everything comes
together and people show up on time.
Speaker:And the other thing was
experts because they can go
Speaker:sideways and often do,
Speaker:and hopefully you can get a hold of
things from the get-go and not experienced
Speaker:what I experienced an hour and
a half before the deposition.
Speaker:How about defense experts? What's
your philosophy on defense experts?
Speaker:How would you handle those at trial?
Would you go after bias issues?
Speaker:Would you try to get all
the good stuff from 'em?
Speaker:Did you have a general philosophy as
what you do with the defense experts?
Speaker:Well, the first thing I would do is a
lot of research before getting there,
Speaker:and I always thought if Line
Enemy had written something,
Speaker:you can get your hands on stuff.
Speaker:I watched Bruce walkup one time
cross-examine a radiologist,
Speaker:and the guy had turned the lights off to
look at the films, the defense expert,
Speaker:and he spoke a rather loud voice. In
fact, the more you confronted him,
Speaker:the louder he got on and on and on. Well,
Speaker:he had written an article
in a radiology journal,
Speaker:and one of the things he concluded
was that the average juror doesn't
Speaker:understand the difference between a
radiologist and a radio repairman,
Speaker:and you don't need to turn the
lights off to look at an x-ray,
Speaker:but it really impresses the
jurors if you do so on and
Speaker:on and on. And if you get
really confronted, raise
your voice, be more firm,
Speaker:that type of thing. So yeah,
Speaker:I watched these really good lawyers
and the first thing they did is
Speaker:they found out everything
they could about the expert
Speaker:and be that talking to other lawyers,
finding out where they testified,
Speaker:so on,
Speaker:and doing your best armed with
that type of stuff to cross
Speaker:examinee them.
Speaker:Yeah, it's incredible sometimes how folks
forget the articles they wrote and the
Speaker:positions they took when it was
just a pure academic exercise.
Speaker:And then when the money gets paid
to advocate a certain position,
Speaker:that seems to go out the window sometimes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I must say having co-authored the
Rudder Group Practice Guide and
Speaker:serving as an expert
witness maybe a dozen times,
Speaker:I can tell you that it works the other
way where you're sitting there trying to
Speaker:explain that. I just wrote
chapters 1, 3, 5 and seven,
Speaker:and you're talking about chapter four,
Speaker:and I had nothing to do with
chapter four, that type of thing.
Speaker:Well, that's great, Dan. Honestly,
we're basically out of time,
Speaker:but is there any parting
words you want to use or
Speaker:convey to some of our younger trial
attorneys who are out there trying to make
Speaker:their way in this world?
Speaker:I'd say taking advantage of
things like this. I mean,
Speaker:education is the key.
Speaker:I told you at the get go that
I wanted to be a trialer after
Speaker:watching top trial lawyers.
Speaker:And I also served as a juror on a
case when I was in law school and
Speaker:I saw great, there was fellow Paul Dana,
Speaker:the old Furman San
Francisco was Dana Bledsoe,
Speaker:and he had defended
against, I can't tell you,
Speaker:and he had a personal problem, alcoholism,
Speaker:so on and recovered. And here he was
in San Jose and defending a case.
Speaker:And I got to watch him firsthand
and I thought, holy Toledo,
Speaker:this is a trial lawyer. Talked to him
afterwards and he said, I was working,
Speaker:had worked in city government before
and didn't know what I was going to do
Speaker:afterwards. And he said, Hey, trial
lawyer, be a trial lawyer. And I thought,
Speaker:here's a trial lawyer telling
me, be a trial lawyer.
Speaker:Then Bob Pelke in San Jose.
Speaker:I somehow was invited to their office,
Speaker:Christmas party by a young
secretary as I recall,
Speaker:and there were like four men standing
at the end of the cocktail party.
Speaker:And Pelke said to me, what are
you doing here? Who are you?
Speaker:And I explained, and Bob said, be
a trial lawyer. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker:I had nice people around me all
the time telling me those things,
Speaker:but I'll never forget when
Bob Papaka was diagnosed with
Speaker:cancer, he would go to mass every day.
Speaker:He did that after World War
II and was a man of his word,
Speaker:but we showed up trial lawyers,
Speaker:members of the A ODA
chapter went to San Jose,
Speaker:and we went to Mass about
50 of us with Bob Pekin.
Speaker:There's just kind of this down
deep. I think we're good people.
Speaker:We're carrying people.
Speaker:We're trying to do the best we can
for clients that have sustained major
Speaker:losses. So I think a good part
of what I would call lawyering,
Speaker:where you feel good
afterwards, and as you say,
Speaker:it's not nice to lose, but that's another
feeling and you have to cope with it.
Speaker:Well, Daniel J. Kelly, you're a prince
of a man and a giant in our profession,
Speaker:and I really appreciate
the time you spent it.
Speaker:I think you got those reversed, the
smallest French you've ever seen, pal.
Speaker:Thank you. Thanks for your time.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
to Verdict Academy.
Speaker:If today's insights resonated with you,
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