Dirk Vandever asks jurors to say it themselves: "I'm just as rich as Jeff Bezos." It's how he gets conservative jurors to see that a low-income client's quality of life is worth just as much as anyone else's. A Kansas City trial lawyer with phenomenal verdicts in challenging venues, Dirk joins hosts Harry Plotkin and Dan Kramer to share what drives his success. Tune in for his secrets to framing equality-of-harm for vulnerable clients, asking jurors if they're skeptical before giving them reason to be, and approaching conservative jurisdictions by identifying community values first.

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All right. Welcome back to another episode of Picking Justice. Welcome. Excited. We're here in 2026. It's already been a couple months here, but Harry, what's going on, man? You hitting some trials already?

Yeah, no, I have one coming up next week and my 2025 with two med mal trials and I'm glutton for punishment. I'm starting another med mal jury on the 12th. So yeah, but hopefully go three for three on them.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

There you go, buddy. I love it. Yeah. I'm excited to get back in. I've been listening to some of our episodes. I'm teaching a jury selection class at Southwestern Law School, and I've learned so much just doing this podcast and how we're teaching the students. So it's a lot of fun. But was that-

You just run the podcast to your class? Sit down?

No, I should. But with that, I am really excited. I've been looking forward to having this guest on for a very, very long time. He is just an awesome guy. I'm very fortunate to have met him out of Missouri, has an amazing accent for a trial lawyer, Dirk Vandever out of Kansas City. Truly one of the greats out there. I've listened to his jury selection lectures years ago and I was like, "Man, this guy just really knows how to do it. I love his concepts." He's got phenomenal verdicts, really one of the top guys out there. Dirk, how you doing, buddy?

I'm doing excellent. Looking outside and in Kansas City, it's kind of a blustery, rainy day, but on the other hand, I get to talk about Voir Dire with the two of you, so I'm doing

Excellent. All right. Well, let's hop right in because we always like to. Dirk, I always struggle or I struggle a lot or I used to until I heard you talk about this. But when you represent someone who maybe makes minimum wage, maybe barely has anything, barely gets by, maybe who knows, whatever their situation is, they don't have much money, they're not wealthy, they're an immigrant. I don't know, whatever the case may be, maybe they have a checkered past. How do you frame it to the jurors in voir dire that their harm is worth just as much as if Bill Gates got hurt? I would love to hear how you do that. I've heard it before, but why don't you tell our listeners?

Sure. And one of the things that I think is always important is to empower the jurors. And one of the things that I think is crucial here is that when you are setting a civil dollar verdict, what you're really doing is you're talking about enforcing the rights that we all have as American, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We're also enforcing that concept that some people don't really believe in, which is all men are created equal. It's not all men, it's all people are created equal, which does not mean in any way that we're all going to be six foot two with a rocket arm making hundreds of millions of dollars in a football game. It doesn't mean that we're going to be valedictorian. It doesn't mean that we're going to have the type of mind that would be able to create an Amazon that would be able to create $250 billion of net worth.

And yet what we're really talking about is, is this person's rights? Is that just as valuable for a single mother of three? For example, if you had a situation in which you had a badly broken arm and Jeff Bezos failed his physical and he wasn't able to go up in the rocket ship with that peculiar shape, and that's a big deal to a lot of people. I've asked that to other people unless that's worth a hundred million dollars. That doesn't have anything at all to do with his ability to generate income, accumulate assets, run his business. But this is something that was important to him. And what I would say is, is a badly broken arm or a badly broken leg. Is that worth more for a Jeff Bezos? Because he thought something was important rather than the ability of somebody who's a stay-at-home mom to run with her kids or her dogs.

And I say it is not. I say that is the essence of all people are created.

Are you doing all that in jury selection?

Well, sometimes I have.

Okay.

It just depends on just how comfortable it is and how it just kind of swims into this. I do the Harry Plotkin thing, of course, is do you think that the value of a particular harm or quality of life should be tied to a bank account or to a stock portfolio or to the amount of things that you acquire? Is that something you think? But it's also, in my opinion, one of the things that you always have to do with regard to the dollar value is you have to confirm that it is difficult. We have an easy task, and that is if you have bookkeeping numbers, or somebody else is already before the case has begun, has already written down a number. You have an administrator of a hospital that's written down $100,000 in medical bill, or you have some boss that says the paycheck's all total up to this.

That, no matter how much we're talking about, is a fairly easy math question. If, for example, although let me ask everybody this, let's assume that somebody said, "I have an idea and I want to put up a small shopping center." So I go and I get a loan from a bank, big multi-billion dollar bank. And I say, "Give me $50 million to do this. " And then the person didn't pay back. I want to ask each one of you because of course you've already said it's pretty easy. I don't have any problem tallying up the medical bills, tallying up the paychecks. But what about when a bank, a multi-billion dollar bank is suing an individual for $50 million because they didn't pay back the loan? Anybody have a problem with that? Nobody has a problem with that. But now let's go to the other side of this, the most important side.

What we say is by far the biggest element of damages here, and that's, I used to say human damages now because of Harry, I say quality of life type of damages. So in that particular case, what you're all thinking is, how do I do that? Is that easy? Of course, it's not easy. It's also the only reason or the reason that we only trust human jurors to do this because first of all, if you even have an average age of 40, the 12 jurors are going to have close to 500 years of life experiences. It's not easy because you never thought about doing something like this before. It's not easy because this requires you to determine the value in somebody else's persona, the value of going up in a spaceship, the value being able to run with your kids and your dog. Those are the three reasons that we really require humans to do all of this.

We don't allow robots or AI to do it.

So I want to go back to that. I like your analogy on the bank suing an individual because a lot of times I think the analogy is two big corporations suing each other or like too big real estate deals gone bad and it's $100 million on both sides. But that is interesting. So an individual takes out a loan. I mean, I'm just thinking about how you conceptualize it and then how it becomes a question, right? An individual takes out a loan for $50 million, they default on it, the bank sues them for $50 million. This is what the contract says. Would anyone have an issue if the bank proved it to award $50 million? I think that's a good question right there. And then it feeds into, well, what about their ability to pay? Would anyone be worried about that? Or could they sign their name to it?

Because it hits both. It

Absolutely is both. And what you'll find is in that situation, not only do they not say, "Oh no, he shouldn't have to pay it back." They say that they should pay it with interest. So for example, let me ask you this, would anybody be tempted to say, "Well, this poor person isn't going to be able to pay it back." So 50 million, tell you what, let's give 90% of that. I mean, $40 million, $45 million, that's more than enough for the bank to get. Anybody tempted to say that? We should cut it down because it's still a large amount of money, even though it is not the full amount that is owed.

So I mean, Harry, I'm curious, I've actually never really done that way before, but I like it. I'm curious, Harry, when you would start constructing your voir dire, you want to start the money talk, how would you weave that in, I guess is what I'm trying to ask.

How would I weave that in? I really love, remember when we had Randy McGinn on here and she talked about a kind of similar analogy about somebody what destroyed a building or something? Yeah,

It was different though. It was like suing a big ... But this one's a little different because it's like suing a big corporation who has the money.

Well, wasn't it her example I thought was, I thought it was a bank going after somebody who would squander a construction company or something, but I liked the idea that she would take it and say, and everyone would say, "Well, of course I could give that money because it's a sort of a commercial type financial thing." And then saying, "Would it be any different if it was $100 million to someone's quality of life?" And then you start to see the people who, I think for her who say, "Well, that's different." And some people who say, "Well, it's not different." And I mean, the way that I would probably throw it out there, and then I would probably would explore that, well, how is that different and can there be a huge value on quality of life? I mean, I think everybody's heard, I probably would say, "How many of you have heard the saying health is wealth?" And probably most of your jurors or all your jurors, anyone disagree with that?

Probably nobody. And then I might throw out ... I mean, I've done some things that kind of throw out the idea of like, do you have any feelings about who is sort of richer, a person, a paralyzed CEO, a multimillionaire who's paralyzed and can't walk and has quality of life issues versus, but has millions of many millions of dollars. Or let's say a healthy, happy father or mother who's got a family and makes minimum wage or makes an hourly paycheck. Just to get that idea, because where I would bring it to is to say, sometimes people tell me, if I ask for millions of dollars for someone's quality of life, and sometimes jurors say, "Well, that's more money they didn't ever make in their life." But what I'm asking you is, can somebody who is healthy and happy, do they have millions of dollars, just not on the form of money?

Because that's what health is wealth is all about. Yeah.

Yeah, because it's not even, we just have to use dollars, but it's really just the value. It's value. You're putting a number to a value and there's nothing more valuable.

Because I would disagree with the idea that somebody, healthy, happy person with a family and everything who gets killed, family member gets taken or quality of life gets taken. As a juror, I wouldn't say, well, they would never make 10 million. I would say they have $10 million, not in money, but they have it in something just as-

In value.

But see, who agrees with it, who disagrees with it and get that conversation going so you can really see the people who are going, "No, no, no, that's not the same." And they don't have 10 million and they never would make 10 million versus the people who say, "I think a healthy, happy person has $10 million." They just don't have it in a bank account.

So Dirk, I'm really trying to get just the sequencing of when do you put out that analogy? I imagine, do you talk about money towards the later part of your voir dire? Yeah, that's what everyone says to do. That's our advice as well, but I'm curious when you throw that in, do you throw it after you've already talked about quality of life being worth millions or do you start with that and then come back to quality of life?

I start with that and then have quality of life. For example, what Perry was talking about in terms of being richer, one of the things that I think is appropriate is to say life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means that we all get to choose what we want. Somebody else isn't able to say, "You really ought not like that. " This is really something that you ought to do that is more satisfying. We're asking about what is satisfying and meaningful to them. So for example, they have every right, a person has every right to say, "I'm going to focus on building my business. I'm going to focus on building the net worth of what I've got. I'm going to do it so that I have hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars." Somebody else might say, "I didn't put that type of attention to building my business, but I'm just as rich as Jeff Bezos." May not be in money, but I'm just as rich as he is in terms of my ability every night to come home and go out and kayak on this little lake that I have.

That to me has immense value and I'm just as rich as Jeff Bezos.

And the other thing that I hear from jurors sometimes in focus groups and in trial is it is some bad jurors say, not only bad jurors say, but you have a client, he can never play golf, he can never go kayaking and they go, "Well, he could pivot and he could do something else." Just adjust to it. And what you're saying, Dirk, is that that violates everything that our freedoms. A defendant can't just come in here, hurt you, take away something that you love and say, "Find something else."

Exactly. We all have the right to choose ... I mean, self-determination is so important. We all have the right to say, "This is how I'm going to choose meaning in my life." And we have it all free from anybody else wrongfully coming in and taking that away. They don't have a right to do that. We have a right to find what is meaningful and significant and important in our lives.

But you're not saying that in voir dire.

Well, again, a lot, for example, on Jeff Bezos, that's a slide that I've got in closing argument that I have occasionally had people will they bring up something like that and it just morphs into it.

But what's the question? What's the setup then? Just like the simple question, like one sentence question that gets that conversation going.

I suppose that the single question, if there is a single question, is to talk about the fact that your obligation, your duty here, there are three different parties to this. One is the judge who's going to make sure that everything is fair and that the law is given to you. The others are the attorneys who are going to bring evidence and in closing argument, give you some ideas in terms of how you can arrive at what you think is right. You can take them or leave them. But then the final is you, the juror. You are going to deciding in this case, one of the largest and most important cases, civil cases that have been tried in this court in quite some time. This deals with a wrongful death of a 32-year-old, 32-year-old who died on streets not too far from here. And so what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to say, "I'm going to place a value and we only do it with dollars, dollar value on something like that.

" And of course, a lot of what we're going to be doing early is that's inappropriate, you shouldn't be doing that, priceless, all of that. But then after you come back down to it is, "All right, now let's talk about this. Let's talk about your thoughts in terms of the value of a human life, this human life, not yours, not your friends, not your families, this human life." That's why you need the evidence to be able to evaluate that.

And then your question will be what?

My question will be, I believe this. I believe that the best two questions that we all have are, what is your reaction to, what are your thoughts about whatever? Because there is no right or wrong answer. So I say my question is, I want to know about your thoughts, your reaction to the fact that there are going to be millions of dollars that we're going to be asking with regard to the loss of this particular life. Give me your reaction. Please tell me what you're thinking.

And you can also ask, if a judge isn't like yet talking about that, I think it cuts too close to prejudging me beyond some judges would do that. But you could certainly ask, what's your reaction? What are your thoughts about the idea that a person's quality of life could be worth millions? And you can say for this judge, "I'm not talking about this case. You haven't heard the evidence, but that idea." And they'll tell you and you'll see. I love those open-ended questions because you can see the ones, some of them will struggle with it and kind of ask you questions and kind of go back and forth, but you can tell the ones who just shut down right away and the ones who are open to it and the ones who can maybe get there if you frame it the right way.

And I would tell you that I think first of all, everything is dependent upon how the judge interprets the law for challenges. I mean, that sets the stage for an awful lot of things here. So if you know that a judge doesn't want you to talk about dollars at all, you could talk about the fact that what is your thought? What is your reaction? What is your belief when a juror who's never known this person before is going to be asked to place a very substantial amount of money on the value of this life? And then they'll tell you that.

How do you all feel, this is a little different. Something I was thinking is just getting up there and saying a statement that's like negative, just getting up and being like, "No amount of monies can ever bring back this person." So what are we doing? And just raise your hand and be like, "Who sort of feels that way already?" Just like kicking it off with whatever's kind of like that negative thing about this case, lawsuits, car crash case lawsuits are a drain on our system. Just saying it and then saying, who sort of feels that way? Because I think people will be like, "What the hell? Why is this guy saying this? " But then it's like, it gives them kind of a ... I don't know. I saw Hatham Farage do that very effectively one time. I was like, "That's pretty cool." He just goes right at the issue hard, just makes his statement.

It's not even an open-ended question until he gives a big pause and is like, "Who aligns with that? "

I would kind of leave it a little more open. "What's your reaction to it? What are your thoughts? And I think if you ask that, you got to be ready to deal with the potential snowball if it kind of starts a snowball on everybody.

I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. At

Some point, because I mean, ideally in a perfect world where you don't have to do anything about it, you have some jurors saying," I agree with that 100%. And then you have some jurors saying, I disagree with that. I mean, your first question about, well, money's not going to bring them back, but how else is it going to hold someone accountable? And gosh, they've lost whatever they say. But in a world where they start snowballing, they go, "Yeah, that kind of makes everyone, all the jurors are kind of nodding their heads." I think you got to be ready to push back and then kind of go, "Well, what about that? " And kind of show the other way. But on the other hand, if we don't give any money, then how would you hold a company accountable if they were careless? And then they go, "Huh." And that's when you get your best answers.

Yeah.

I guess it's like give the worst jurors response, just say it, and then who feels that way? A little bit even. And so you kind of put it out there so you're not fishing for it and you're ...

Sometimes they do. Yeah.

People will probably start talking. And I think you're right Harry. I think people will take the opposite approach too. So I don't know, maybe does that expose too many of the good jurors right away?

I mean, I think that's okay. I

Don't know. I may try it in my next one because it's a police officer. I got a sheriff on the other side and I got to deal with that. I got to deal with it both ways, frankly, because I'm going to have a lot of, especially nowadays, anti-police, a lot of that sentiment, I think, and then also going to get a lot of the pro- police. So I got to ... If I was a defense, I would say, who here really thinks cops or a lot of police officers abuse their power. A lot of police officers abuse their power. Who feels that way? That's what I would do if I was a defense. And so I got to think about both sides on that.

I love questions that kind of give them a little bit of both sides first and make them think about it so you don't get any false reads one way or the other and just kind of go, "Some people feel this way, some people feel this way. What are your thoughts?" And then you really get probably the most accurate feelings about it. And hopefully you get people on both sides and they start sort of talking and almost semi deliberating with each other about it.

I believe this. I believe the open-ended question is undoubtedly going to get a number of responses that say it's priceless. It's inappropriate. You're not going to do anything here that's going to really make a difference. It's blood money. Here is a situation where a mom is profiting off of the death of her son. They're going to say all of those

Things. And what's your response? What's your response, Dirk, when they say that?

Thank you for saying that. Let me tell you, one of the things that I really like about what you guys do is how do you think we all evolve? I've evolved. I know probably the two of you have too, but I believe one of the biggest mistakes that we have is not merely which approach we take. And I wouldn't mind talking about that as well, but we are asking these people to give brutally honest reactions to some type of scenario. What I believe we ought to be doing is to say, "Here is what I'm going to do, and then I do it. " Because if there's any way in the world to gain credibility, it's what I'm going to do, and then they see that you are doing it. So for example, we're going to be asking you to do something very tough. We're going to be asking you to stand up.

Now guys, I have 80, 90 jury panels all the time. I know you don't. I'm not even sure I'd know what to do if I only had a dozen or 20 or so, but I'm going to ask you to stand up in front of a large group of people that you probably don't even know about, dig deep and then give your brutally honest reaction. What I can promise you is this, everything you say is going to be greeted with respect. You're not going to see me in any way trying to change your mind, push your arm, say you really ought to be thinking something else. You're going to be given appreciation. What I say is one of the biggest mistakes is we probably, if we looked at a transcript, would say, "Okay, they haven't done anything wrong." There are micro expressions that we have and we don't appreciate it when somebody says, "Well, that's ridiculous." And it's ridiculous because there's no way in the world that making some mother rich because her son died is right.

Now that's got to cut at our core, doesn't it? And so I say, truly, I do appreciate what you're doing. And I think that the expression that we have on our face almost more than the words that we say have a direct impact on that.

Yeah. So I guess what are some of the things that you said you've evolved? What did you used to do that you thought that you were like, "I can't believe I used to do that.

" Well, okay. So everybody knows about the two major philosophies and they know that, okay, number one, bit dick challenge for cause. Number two, Jerry Spence build a group that decides based on universally appropriate principles, not just safety principles, but the quality of life principle. And then by the way, I have given a number of talks over the years about two bites of the apple. I'm now my next time, if I do give a next thing about this, it's going to be three bites of the apple.

What are they?

It's going to be mythic, it's going to be Spence and it's going to be Plotkin because Plotkin has the prehab. And I think that is really crucial. And I will give a caveat to that. The prehab is something where you see somebody you know darn well is going to be good to you. You have to read the room. You have to make sure that you are not taking somebody who so clearly is going to be biased in your favor and say, "Hey, it's all okay because that is going to ruin your credibility. You're not going to be able to recover from this. " I was trying a case where I think it was a personal injury case. I don't think it was a death case, but I was trying to think of personal injury case. And one of the ladies on the panel raised her hand and said, "Mr.

Vandever, you represented me in the death of my son. It was an egregious case. So of course I knew she's gone. Tell me how that impacted you. Tell me how you viewed this legal system." So she's testifying now about all of the good parts of keeping people accountable because you better believe she said, "The only way that we're going to keep people accountable." In that case, it was the maintenance of a particular road. Only way that we keep people fully accountable for the actions is through this. So this is critically important. Now, I could have, I suppose, said, and she's almost crying and she not almost, I think she is crying and it's so obvious she's so devastated. And so of course I pivoted. I would have liked to have done the prehab, but there's no way anybody would have believed it. And so I said, "Sounds to me like what you're saying is your experiences are such that you probably would be erring on my side." And so if I'm the defense, I'd say, "Boy, maybe this isn't the right case for her." I mean, is that right?

Yes. And I mean, you could see everybody nodding and saying, "Yes, I really believe." So two bites of the apple. I remember this exact time I was having dinner at the Kansas City, Kansas City Steakhouse in Majestic. By the way, the two of you now are honorary Kansas Citians because of the barbecue that you-

Yeah, that was so nice of you. You sent us barbecue. It's

The best.

Get on Dirk's good side and he may send you some.

That's right. That's right. I'm having dinner with Keith Mitnik. And by the way, now this was a few years ago, but Keith came in on his own dime two or three years in a row and helped me put on a seminar for all of the Kansas City people and I gave them free barbecue. I'm just a barbecue type guy.

And I said, "Keith, I really believe in what you are doing in terms of the cause as King." I believe that. I think there are people who just absolutely are out there to submarine us, but I got to tell you, I just tried a case up in a very conservative venue. I think I got like a $10 million verdict. They offered me one million. I never understood why they lowbowed me like that, but they did primarily because it was a venue where they'd never had even a six figure verdict. And of course you've always heard those.

Oh no, we're going to talk about that today, conservative jurisdiction, because we have too many LA lawyers on here and they think Van Nuys is conservative. You're at Missouri. We're going to talk about real conservative jurisdictions in a second, but I want you to finish this story.

All right. So in any event, I said, "I fear that I have fled from your teachings." I said, "What are you talking about? " Well, this gal's on a motorcycle. I always have a two part question for motorcycle. First is, you're going to hear in this case that my gal was on a motorcycle. She's on a motorcycle on a highway. She's on a motorcycle on a highway with trucks and cars and all of those much heavier, bigger type vehicles around. And I got to ask you, how many people say, I don't care what the rest of the evidence is. This is a matter to me, a personal responsibility. She made a choice to get on that motorcycle in traffic. You have to have some responsibility for that. There has to be some degree of fault no matter what. Okay, that's one part of the question that I ask.

But then the next part of the question, and maybe you guys do this part, but I also add this. I say, "Okay, you're also going to hear that my dad lost a leg and I know what every single human being here being a human would be, losing a leg is terrible." That's one of the worst things that I can even imagine for a person. But again, this person chose to get on a vehicle with no metal protection at all. And so if you have a lost leg, if you have somebody, for example, that's seatbelted in one of those big, sturdy trucks and they lose a leg, and then you compare it to somebody who was on a motorcycle with no protection at all and they lose a leg and it's the same injury, I got to tell you, I'm going to put more value on the person that was in that seatbelt and in that heavy truck.

So there's two ways here. So in any event, I say that to Keith and I said, "Okay, so what's the problem?" I said, "Well, then after that, what I did is something that I hadn't heard you do before, which is I said, I'm going to guess that I got maybe eight people for cause, and they were big. I mean, I don't think there was any way they were going to give me full justice. So eight of them are gone. I still have 72 left. Now folks, what we did is we talked in depth about this. Eight people of you raised your hand and said, brutal honesty for me is, no matter what the evidence is, this is going to impact either the decision that there was fault or the amount of money that I think is appropriate." And they were honest about that, but that leaves 82 of you who didn't do this.

Ms. Johnston, let me ask you, did I miss that? Did you raise your hand? I didn't. No, I didn't see that. So what I really want to find out is Do you have, and be brutally honest with me, maybe it's something you just think about and you're now going to say, "I changed my mind." Brutally honest, do you believe that you would have any hesitation at all in saying that I'm going to give full and complete verdict and I am not going to diminish it one iota because the person happened to be on a motorcycle or the person happened to be in a motorcycle losing the leg as opposed to somebody else with the same injury. Do you have any hesitation about saying, "I can tell you. I can tell you and I pledged to the judge. I'm not going to do that. " Now, that took me about, with the rest of the eight people, that took me about five minutes, maybe, maybe a little bit more.

If I did that with everybody here, that's going to take me an hour and a half for one question. I can't do that to you. Can't do it to me. I know the judge isn't going to be happy either. I got to ask everybody. The rest of you, the 81 of you, will everybody raise your hand if you say yes. I'm not going to hesitate at all in saying, "If the evidence shows it, I'm not going to reduce the amount in one bit because the person happened to be on a motorcycle." Yes, thank you. So I say that the key. And he says, "What's the problem?" I said, "Well, but that's not what you do. " And he said, "Yes, it is. I do do that. " Here's the thing, we hear different things when we hear these big national speakers and when somebody says, "I'm a challenge for cause," I think that they think that's what they do.

You guys, I think, primarily go for the universal principles, and then in the course of discussing that, you're going to find some people that just aren't right. And so you're going to use both techniques. I don't think that happens. It's my experience, and Harry, you're the one that has all the reps. I don't think that happens when people say, "I'm going to follow the Mitnick challenge for cause." I think they get all of the people off and then they stop. They don't go on.

Yeah. And Harry, I want to hear your long explanation, but I think the fear is they go too quick on cause and then they kick off people who are potentially good because they didn't listen to other answers later down the line. But Harry, go ahead.

Yeah. I mean, there's kind of two things. One is that kind of bother me and one is the ... I agree with, you have to have cause challenges. And depending on the case and depending on the venue, there's some types of cases and some types of venues where if someone were to tell me, "Hey, the jury was great, no cause." I would say, "Ooh, you missed something, for sure." But I think the one thing that bothers me is when some people try to want to get as much cause as they can and they take little shortcuts where they're just getting rid of, where they're doing things that probably Keith wouldn't do and you wouldn't do and Dan wouldn't do, but they kind of make their case seem worse than it is. And then they go, "Hey, 40 people raised their hand and I got them all off for cause." And you're going, "Were those all 40 people really bad?

Or were you just doing things to get more cause and convincing yourself that that was a good day? Oh, those are all terrible jurors." So that happens. And then the other thing that happens too is what you said, Dirk, I agree with 100%. If you sit down, you're wrongly assuming that, hey, if anyone didn't raise their hand to my cause questions, those jurors are all great and that's not the case. And I've seen it so many times where some of the worst jurors are just sitting there, they probably hate your guts and they're too angry to say anything or they just don't feel like they owe you any explanation. And sometimes you call on them because every time that I pick a jury, I'm always, I never like to sit down without every juror saying something to being asked a question. And I'll go, "Talk to that guy." And every time you think you've gone past cause and someone just has a horrible thing to say and you go, "Whoa, if we had just sat down, that guy would be on the jury and he's the worst." So I agree with you.

It can't just be cause and you can't just do everything you can in your power.Like I said, when we taught this so many times, you push back a little bit and see what happens because some people will come back to you. Some people you'll say, "Well, it sounds like you don't like lawsuits or big verdicts, but what about holding someone accountable? How would you hold them accountable if there's no big..." And then they go, "Yeah, God, you're right. Yeah, I would. I get it. I would now give a lot of money." And those people, gosh, I'm glad we didn't get them for cause and quit there. But when you push back, then you really know they're the ones who are still arguing with you.

Yeah. I mean, we're so tribal, right? I mean, lawyers love to think that you're either this or you're that, and then that's dangerous because what are you really achieving if you just put yourself in a box at the end of the day? And again, my biggest fear, and I've learned this from you Harry, is getting rid of people who end up being really good. If you cause and you just in five of those eight were great on damages and they were going to see past it because they never thought about this concept and then you just let them walk out the door.

That's why I think when you're getting cause, you kind of got to give them a little bit of both sides of it so that it's not just, you're not asking them in a vacuum. Because in a vacuum, most jurors will probably tell you, "I don't really love lawsuits." That's a

Scary thing that we just will never know. Huge

Verdicts do sound a little ridiculous sometimes, but that's in a vacuum. But then those same people would probably tell you, I mean, yeah, you ask them more questions, you push back, they would say, "No, no, no. I also have strong feelings the other way too. So if you're getting too much cause, too easy, you might be making it easy on yourself a little too much." But I agree with Dirk, I mean, your question is a great question. That's exactly how I'd ask it in the motorcycle case. I mean, the way that I ask it is very similar. I like to ask, I tell them, some people feel, I'm sure every, if I raised my hand and said, "How many of you feel that riding a motorcycle is kind of dangerous, maybe a little bit foolish?" You get a lot of hands. But what I want to know is, is there anyone who feels, how many of you feel like if you choose to ride a motorcycle and you get hurt, the way I ask it is, even if it's not the fault, even the motorcyclist did nothing wrong, how many of you feel like, "I think that motorcyclist should still blame themself for their injuries because you chose a road a motorcycle, you're going to get hurt." And I get a lot, there are a lot of jurors who say, "Yeah." And when they say that, it's an easy cause because they're saying, even if they did nothing wrong and they tell you, "Yeah, motorcycling." I mean, I had one lady one time say, every time a motorcyclist goes by our house, we always say, "There goes another organ donor." And they just think if you had been in a car, you wouldn't have gotten hurt.

So it's a matter of if, not if, but when. Yeah. Well,

You phrased that interesting. You said, should they still blame themselves? Yeah, which is interesting because you don't ... Well, it's not would you blame them, but you're putting it on the motorcyclists themselves.

For their injuries. Yeah, because you're going to get hurt. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven't heard that before. That's pretty interesting.

I mean, I will tell you that there are a number of people out there that say if you're in a wreck, you're 10% fault. Period. That's it. If you are in a wreck, you're 10% at fault. Let me tell you one of the most amazing questions I've ever asked in my entire life, and it was trying a case with a really good friend of mine. Think about what I'm about to ask here. I represent a lady who's in a car and she's at a stop sign, and a pickup truck comes behind her and hits her in the rear. After that, she has complaints of neck and after that she has a neck surgery. Anybody hearing that feel a little skeptical, skeptical? Now, I haven't asked anything that could possibly promote skepticism, and you have a lot of people that raise their hands because they don't like the type of lawsuit that you got.

I don't like these rear enders. It's fraud alert, neck whipping. I didn't say anything about ... I didn't say, for example, which was true that it was a year between the time of the wreck and the surgery, all I said was she was hit. I don't think you're going to find any dispute about this. She was hit, she has neck pain, and then there was a surgery to the neck. I mean, if you just go ahead and say things and say, "Skeptical." I'm skeptical. I wonder about whether this really is legit. And by the way, folks, I will tell you, I don't have my client here. I've asked my client to stay back there in the waiting room. She'll be there the entire trial. That's not me. That's my call. And the reason is I do not want in any way, shape or form for my request to you to be brutally honest in any way tamped down.

I want you to be completely open about it.

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Absolutely. The last topic I want to go over with you, Dirk, because I think you do have a very unique perspective on this and you've obviously been very successful is conservative jurisdictions, trying cases in front of truly, truly conservative jurors. Joe Freed talked about it a little bit in Georgia, but I imagine some areas ... I mean, you try cases throughout Missouri and there's some very conservative counties, I imagine.

There are.

Okay. So what's your approach? Do you approach it differently than if you're trying a case in urban Kansas City or versus conservative parts of Missouri? Do you approach voir dire different? Do you slow play things? I just want to hear your take.

I believe that before you ever start down the path of voir dire, you've got to think in your mind, what are the values of this particular community? And the values of this particular community absolutely positively are going to be family. They're going to be flag. They're going to be being able to be with friends and being outdoors and camping and hunting and all of those types of things. So when you do that and you have that deliberately in your mind, some of this is just going to bleed out. It's going to come out in how you talk about it. I do think that one of the things that I do now that I didn't do before, because I say the three bites of the apple now, is I talk about experiences, expectations. Do you envision a system? What are the excuses and why do you do this?

I put all of that together. So any of those, as an example, experience, how many people have experience with somebody who's lost a leg? How many people have an experience where not through a congenital problem or some disease, but some type of trauma, somebody has become paralyzed. And one of the things that they'll do is they will talk about that. But then what I do is, and I've heard some other people talk about this as well, which is when we were talking earlier about what do we value and the Jeff Bezos or some of the other people value growing the business. And some people say, "I'm just as rich as him." Tell me how, tell me how you're as rich as Jeff Bezos. Anybody agree with that? Yes. And they will talk about being outside and they will talk about some of the values that you know are important to people that are conservative.

I was in a venue, I don't remember where it was. I was in a venue and we were talking about the money and the person said, "Mr. Vandever, you're talking about an amount of money or amounts of money." I don't think I gave the exact dollar number. You're talking about amounts of money that's greater than the total value of all of the businesses in this county. And I said what I said before, thank you. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you saying this. And you can imagine that maybe that's not what I'd want to hear, but the fact is it is. I'd rather hear it now than at the end of the case when somebody perhaps states something than we have to retry the entire case again. So thank you for doing that. So I try as best I can to be as open and honest and appreciative of everything that they have.

And I ask them to identify what are the important values to you because whatever they say, you're going to put in opening statement, you're going to put in the evidence and you're going to put in closing argument and it's almost always family. I mean, it's always family.

I think that's good. It probably is almost more important to ask those questions in conservative jurisdictions than downtown Kansas City, downtown Los Angeles.

But I can tell you that if you can get a bunch of jurors talking about how they feel like they're as rich as wealthy as Jeff Bezos, if you're the defense attorney, how terrified are you? You're in a good spot. If you can get them sort of adopting anywhere close to that, that's huge because now you're going, now you have license in closing to ask for a lot of money and say ...

So Dirk, I mean, a lot of defense attorneys do do that now in closing. They're saying, "Well, a house here is $100,000. He's asking for $10 million. This plaintiff does not ... " I mean, give her two houses. Most people don't even have two houses. What are you then doing?

Would you rather have two houses or

The ability to- Yeah, to not wake up in pain. Who would you

Rather have two houses or your daughter? So there's an amount. Well, I guess what I want to ask you, Dirk, is when you have jurors who say, "Gosh, I don't know. It's priceless." What do you say to them? Do you push back a little? Because I always like to say, "Well, it sounds like you're saying, I know it can't be worth a little bit." Are you willing to consider that it could have to put some value on priceless? But how do you handle it when defense attorneys say, "Gosh,

I'm sure that I've heard this somewhere before." What we do is we, and again, this is a tough task. We're not in any way diminishing it. That's why we need you. That's why we need human beings to do this because you've got 500 years of creating understanding and insight into what's really important to American and then you go ahead and feedback everything that you have heard in the jury selection. But the fact is it isn't priceless because virtually every single thing does have some value of some kind. If you said that there was a painting that was priceless, we know that that painting went for $150 million. We know that that vase was maybe Jeff Bezos ran into what's valued at $25 million. There is a value and we're not talking about valuing houses. This has nothing to do with this. When you hear that type of response, which is try to put the amount of money for a house or two houses or a vacation or something like this, think about what you're being asked to do.

One of the things, by the way, that I always do is I always define a bunch of things that are in the law. And one of the things I've never heard anybody else do is to say no outside influence. Every single instruction that I've ever seen in any jurisdiction says no outside influences. So when we talk about what your job is, your job isn't to value a house, it's not to value the ... We're not even here asking for paycheck. We're not even here asking for medical bills. What we are asking for is quality of life, and that's what you have been charged with. And I say it has immense value.

And Dan, when you're talking about defense lawyers who say 100,000 is a house, two houses, I mean, you could in voir dire, especially if defense lawyer is going to ask that or has been asked that question. I mean, anyone think the value of a house is priceless? I mean, use that if jurors are saying priceless against them, but I like that idea of saying, can you at least figure out how much is too little and say, "Gosh, if there's no way somebody would take that much for their health or their loved one or whatever," you can say, "It's not enough until you start to get in a range where you're going, maybe..." And once you get in a place where you're like, "I don't know if I would say that's too little that someone would give that much." So I think you can do that a little bit in voir dire and talk to them about that if they struggle with it.

And I think most judges would let you sort of talk to the jurors in a way to get them to understand that they can do the job. Judges love it when you kind of rehab people a little bit.

Yeah, they absolutely do. Anything else you do, they're different. And maybe you don't really treat conservative jurisdictions that different.

Well, the way, and I appreciate you asking. In other words, is there something that I do that I actually changed the verbiage of what I'm doing? So you look at a transcript and is there a different way that I do here and here? One of the things that I do that's probably not voir dire, but I do say that look around you. Every single expert that you have heard from comes from a big city. Every lawyer that you have seen comes from a big city. And really what the defense is trying to suggest is the value of health here is not the same as the value of health in Kansas City or in Los Angeles or in Chicago. And that's just flat out not the case. That's not what we're based on when we say all people are created equal that has no place in this proceeding.

Do you think that the value of someone's quality of life is different in Kansas City compared to here?

I've thought about that a lot though, and I worry that if you ask them that, they would probably tell you, "I don't think it's any different. I just think the folks in Kansas City are crazy about how much money they give." And then you go, "Oh, what do I say?" I've toyed with saying that-

Or they'd say, "Well, things are just more expensive in cities." Do you really want to then play in that field because I don't know.

But then you identified bad jurors.

Yeah. No, I know. Yeah.

And you talk to them about that. Tell me about that. I mean, we all know what the questions are. Tell me more, say more. Why do you say that? All of that. And they're going to say because things cost more in the city.

Yeah.

Okay. Things cost more in the city. I'm talking about the quality of life. I'm not talking about the price of a car or a house. I'm talking about the ability to go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do as long as you don't hurt somebody else's right. And my thought is it doesn't make any difference that the quality of life happens to be in Linn County, Missouri as opposed to Jackson County, Missouri. I say it's worth the same. Maybe difference of opinions as to what you would do and how you find meaning, but they are equally important. I

Think it is because they may get a prideful of their county and say, "We're worth just as much as the big city folk. I mean, our quality of life's worth."

And they do sometimes. I've had

That. And then you become part of them and one of them, and you're fighting against these big city experts, assuming your treaters are local. I don't know. There's a lot you could do with that, I think.

I've had cases where the plaintiff moved somewhere else and the defense medical experts are saying, "Well, that cuts down on their damages because the cost of medical care is less in wherever they are than they are here." It's always interesting when they try to reduce the damages based on where someone's living and you can totally piss them on. I know, Dan, you're great at getting jurors angry about when the defense tries to do stuff like that in terms of, oh, they should only have to pay Medicare rates for, or the cheapest rate for good medical care. Yeah.

Well, it's really that your client's only good enough for average doctors or Medicare doctors.

Big city don't deserve these big city doctors.

Yeah, they don't deserve them because they're not good enough. It's a total class argument. I'm going to use that in my next trial. And

That's exactly the difference between a quote conservative and a liberal. It's the difference between big city and somebody else. You don't deserve to say that the quality of life, which is primarily outdoors and enjoying things, that's not as important as playing golf. I mean, everybody has the choice. That's the reason that we have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We get to choose.

Well, it's the freedom. I mean, freedom is a huge theme in those jurisdictions is that, I mean, anyone taking away your freedom is a big no-no. I don't care. That's why Harry and I have talked about this a lot. You can never choose a juror based on who they voted for at all. I mean, some Trump jurors can be great for us. Kamala Harris voters can be terrible for us. I mean, there's really no ... I'm sure you see that in Missouri.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, they're rule followers. I mean, that's one of the things that you see when you talk about conservative jurisdictions. What are the rules? You didn't follow the rule. You hurt somebody as a result of that.

And politically conservative jurors are much more likely to want to punish and not care and destroy, really. I mean, I say destroy, that's maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. But no, I mean, I found that the really liberal jurors are actually the ones more

Likely

To say, "Yeah, I'm really disgusted by how the school district handled this sex abuse and everything, but I don't want to destroy the ... What about the employees? What about the other students?" Politically conservative jurors, when they get angry, they're like, "I want to put them. This company needs to be punished. And I really don't care if it harms them. I want to harm them." Whereas liberals worry about, "Oh, is it going to screw up the system? We got to do it in a way that sort of makes them whole, but also doesn't harm everybody else." And so yeah, give me conservative jurors in a lot of cases for sure. And if conservative jurors were awful, then why are there big verdicts in Missouri and Texas and Florida and everywhere else?

Well, not everyone's Dirk Vandever either though. Not everyone's Dirk. But with that, this is great. This has been awesome, Dirk. I always love hearing you speak, especially about jury selection. I can't wait to see you. I owe you a drink for this great barbecue you got us on me next time. And thanks everyone. Thank you to LawPods. Next week we have a little known Midwest lawyer. Our next episode, we have a little known Midwest lawyer, another Midwest lawyer named Nick Riley on. So two great lawyers back to back. Really looking forward to-

Missouri and Iowa. Yeah.

Do you consider him a fellow Midwesterner, Dirk? Sure. Yeah. You claim him. You'll claim him.

He's gone rogue out to the West Coast.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's everywhere now. Yeah. Anyway, Dirk, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. It's always great talking to you. Harry, I'll see you on the next one, buddy.

Absolutely, man. All right, guys.

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