"There's nothing nuclear about a verdict that's predictable." Sean Claggett, trial lawyer and co-author of “Jury Ball,” the groundbreaking book on big data, has made it his mission to help plaintiffs’ lawyers predict verdicts. In this episode, he visits hosts Alicia Campbell and Nick Schweitzer just days before picking a jury in Provo, Utah – a city where jurors don’t give big verdicts, according to conventional wisdom. Sean is unbowed: “Provided the right facts and the right story, I think all human beings are willing to return a big verdict.” Tune in for his case breakdown.

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Every trial lawyer knows that moment when you've built what feels like an airtight case, but you're still lying awake wondering, what will the jury actually think? Jury research was once a luxury, reserved for cases that could support a big data study built. Not anymore. Join trial lawyer and trial scientist, Alicia Campbell, an empirical legal scholar, Nick Schweitzer. As they break down the barriers between you and the minds of your jury, this is The Fred Files, produced and powered by LawPods.

Hello, hello. It is February and we are back with The Fred Files. And today ... Well, I mean, I guess I should say it, right? Nick, I should say. There's a little bit of a switch up. Yeah, let's see. A little bit of switch up. So from now on, it's Nick Schweitzer, who I love.

Oh, nice.

And me.

Who I

Love. I'm down. So no more Kevin. Kevin doesn't want to do the podcast anymore, which I don't know. It's always seemed interesting, but we're good. We're both jovial people who like to talk. And today we have a very special guest. I barely know him. I don't spend any time with him at all. Yeah, it's Sean Claggett. So we're very excited, very excited about this. And we get to talk about all things data, which is always nice. And so I mean, he's a dude that doesn't need an introduction, really, does he? Do you need an introduction, Sean?

I think we could probably go without it. I mean, if anybody that's listening to this podcast probably knows who I am. Yeah, so we can get into this. I'm actually looking forward to this. I've prepared for a long time for this moment.

Have you?

Yeah. I'm really excited.

Why don't you take the lead and host? What is the thing that you're dying to talk about, Sean?

Well, what I'm dying to talk about. Well, I'm very interested in this trial I'm about to do because it was tried and lost. And after it was lost, the attorney that had the case is the referring attorney got a new trial and then ran data and then came and saw me. And so we're very excited to go try this case and see if we can take a zero verdict into a record breaking verdict in Provo.

When is that scheduled?

I pick a jury Thursday. Two days.

48

Hours. Yeah.

How fun. How long is the trial?

It's kind of weird. We pick a jury Thursday, Friday, then we have a week off, and then we start the trial March 2nd. And jury selection's very interesting. It's one juror at a time. We only get two days to pick the jury. There's four attorneys that will be asking questions during voir dire.

Oh, I like it. That's fascinating. I

Don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like it too if we had a week to pick a jury. To try to pick a jury in two days, I think the most we can get through is about maybe 50 jurors. And so you have to qualify 20 of those 50, which I also think in Provo may be difficult.

I assume they don't do questionnaires there.

The court did their own questionnaire. They rejected every question I had. But their questionnaire is actually way more robust than the average stock questionnaire. So we did get some information, but it's like, do you have feelings that would make it difficult for you to return a verdict in a case? But it doesn't say why. And so you're like, okay, well, I got to follow up with that person in this very limited time that we have in live voir dire. So nothing about money. They had no questions about money, which is problematic because that's where the bias in these cases are going to come in. You may have some bias that comes in in a case like this because it's a child that was killed. So there may be something there, but most of it's going to be about the money and the ability to return a verdict.

That's kind of what I'm interested in. I mean, just the focus right now, and then it's nerve wracking, taking a case that was lost and then going to try it again and put it on the line again and see what happens. But the data came back very positive and we're rerunning another data study. The judge is making rulings on motion in limine on Friday. And then once we get those final rulings, we will then run another data study. So we'll have to have a part of this podcast about the outcome.

So why was it lost the first

Time?That's always the big question, right? The judge bifurcated the case where the only question in the first phase of the trial was whether or not the defendant driver was negligent in any degree. And the facts of this case are semi with a boom on it comes up and is making a right-hand turn. It's a red light as he approaches five and a half seconds before he gets there, the light turns to green giving the pedestrians the walk sign. There's three boys hanging out on that corner the whole time. Driver just never sees him and he doesn't see the walk symbol, so he doesn't stop. At this point, one of the three boys had crossed in front of his buddies and was about 14 feet out in the crosswalk when this guy makes the right hand turn and runs him over. He almost runs over all three boys because the other two boys were almost into the roadway and they almost got caught up in the back wheel.

The boys felt the wind of the truck go by their faces. It was almost a triple fatality, but it ended up being one. And the defense in the first case was like, sometimes accidents happen and it's nobody's fault. We're not blaming the little boy for running out into the crosswalk when there was an immediate hazard with a truck making a turn. We're not blaming him. We're just saying that sometimes accidents happen, but it doesn't make our driver at fault. Sometimes accidents just happen. And so that was the whole theory of the case. And they got this instruction that said that pedestrian forfeits the right of way when there's a hazard immediately in the area. And so they argued to the judge that, "Well, anytime a car's making a right-hand turn, that's a potential hazard to the pedestrian, they can't go. " And the judge was shocked at the outcome.

He's like, "There's no way the driver's not negligent." I mean, we're not even doing comparative negligence right now. We're just saying he has to be the slightest degree of negligence. And the jury said no negligence on the driver, zero. And the judge is like, "You couldn't have listened to this evidence and come to that conclusion." So it went up on appeal because the judge actually did grant a new judgment notwithstanding the verdict. He found the defendant driver negligent for all the reasons. And it's a great thing for this case is the judge lists out all the facts that made him negligence, made him negligent. So we got that starting out, the new case, and now the case is going to be about comparing that negligence to that of a child and that of a company that hired a driver who in this particular case had 10 moving violations, two reckless drivings, a suspended license, and they still hired him.

Oh.

Oh yeah, yeah. The facts are pretty egregious with the company that hired him. And it was total nepotism because it was his brother-in-law that did the hiring and also gave him the CDL test. And when he did the CDL test, he wasn't qualified and it was noted that he needs a lot of work. He's very nervous behind the wheel and they passed him anyways and got him a CDL and put him behind the road. And then while he was driving for him, believe it or not, they had written him up multiple times, but they still let him drive. And so yeah, I mean, the difference in this case versus the first case is going to be a lot because the first case focused on the defendant's conduct where now that's established. This case is going to be, how much blame, if any, do you put on a child for hitting the crosswalk button, waiting there, waiting to get the walk symbol, and then going in the crosswalk and having the right of way and not looking behind himself to see that there was a truck that was not going to follow the law and run him over.

How much blame does a child give for that and why? What do we teach our kids? If we teach our kids, wait for the walk symbol and make sure you look left and right. Well, when that walk symbol turned and he looks left, there's no cars coming because the truck's behind him. Nobody teaches their child to look behind him. That's not something we've ever taught our kids when you're walking. Hey, make sure you look behind you. It's just not something that we tell our kids. So I think it's going to be an interesting case from that standpoint. And then of course, the question that remains, and I think a big reason why this case is going to trial is the belief that Provo juries just don't give verdicts. I mean, we know how we all kind of feel about that. We don't really believe that.

If there's any venue or jurisdiction that has jurors that just won't give a verdict, that's just not true. Provided the right facts and the right story, I think all human beings are willing to return a big verdict. And I mean, this is a really sad case.

Is this new trial bifurcated as well or? No,

Because it's already been determined. We're starting this trial out with a jury instruction from the judge that the defendant has been found to be negligent.

Okay.

What we're waiting for is to have the judge say, "Yeah, all those reasons you put in the order that were affirmed by the Court of Appeals and then assert was denied by the Supreme Court." So those facts, those are the facts that need to be in the instruction because we don't need to go re-litigate those. Those have been litigated and determined. It's the law of the case. And so we're hopeful the judge will go with this. And I mean, I don't know why he wouldn't. It's his words. The judge is a very great temperament, but clearly has made rulings that are very defense friendly, but it's not like coming from a bad place because you saw that he fixed it when it went wrong. I think he's actually a good judge, but he's also one of those judges that I think wants to kind of meet in the middle all the time.

And so he's going to give the other side some stuff that doesn't make any sense. The defense is still trying to get that instruction that our client gave up the right of way and the judge did clear up in his most recent order. He was like, "No, the child had the right of way. The driver did not. If you still want to blame the child who had the right of way, go ahead, but that's a two-way sword." That's what the judge said. Two-edged sword there. You want to go after a child for who had the right of way in the crosswalk, go ahead. I mean, it's a weird argument to make, I think.

Sounds like it's their only argument really, from what you said. Well,

I mean, obviously what you always worry about is that they're going to turn around and become reasonable all of a sudden and say, "Oh, we accept full responsibility. There's no comparative. This is just an issue about money. We just don't think it's worth this much." Because you have the Mormon faith that's in play and it's real. They really believe that when people die, while it's sad, it's a good thing because they're in heaven and they're waiting for you. And when you die, you'll be with them again. And so the loss is not a big loss with death. And so we actually have a voir dire question that we've worked out on that where we basically talk about, well, we're not asking for any damages for the afterlife. We're only asking for damages in this life. And in this life, we all know that the pain can be significant, but that's what we're focused on.

And I have a question to get rid of some jurors who basically says, some of us have very strong feelings about what happens in the afterlife. And so in a case like this, when a child dies, it's hard for us to award damages or significant damages because the child went to heaven. And we know that when we die as their parents, we'll be with them again. And so some people have a hard time doing that. Other people don't have an issue with awarding money for this life because of the pain and suffering that goes with the death of a child, but are you a little closer to? So just trying to ferret that out a little bit.

Is it the same defense attorney defending it?

No, of course not. When I get brought in to cases now, it's very common that they're going to bring in a national counsel and they brought in an awesome attorney. He's a very good attorney. His name's Jim Gordon out of Ohio. I've seen him in trial once before beat the snot out of Don Keenan here in Las Vegas on a UPS case. I mean, he was better in voir dire. He was better on cross. I was blown away. I was like, holy, I'd never seen a defense attorney really good in voir dire. This guy's really good. So I'm kind of excited to actually try the case against him.

Got it. And what happened to the old defense attorney?

She's still there. Instead of representing the driver and the company, she just represents the driver. Jim Gordon represents the company. And then we represent the child who was killed and then the referring attorney represents the two kids who almost got hit.

And watched their brother die.

Yeah. We'll watch their best friend die.

Best friend die.

Yeah. And it was a gruesome death. I mean, it was what these kids saw was just unimaginable. And the data tells us very clearly that the jury's going to value those cases a lot. The jury gets that those are not fake damages. Those are real damages.

No, that seems right to me, more so than the wrongful death claim. A lot of the times what we see is that pre-death pain and suffering often gets valued higher than the actual loss because that's easy to imagine or at least say, "I don't ever want to deal with that. " Or what a terrible thing to know, death's impending. The loss is a little bit harder with some jurors.

Yeah, for sure.

Interesting. So you start that Thursday and then you have a week break and then how long will the trial be once you get going?

So we have Wednesday is dark. If Wednesday wasn't dark, I think it's a five-day trial, but we're probably have to go into the next week. I would love to be done, but I don't think it's possible to be done on Friday. I think we'll get done on Monday.

How many jurors are you seating?

So there's a hundred jurors, 72 have filled out the questionnaire so far.

Oh, that's pretty good.

The court does an awesome thing there. They actually, they put the questionnaire into an Excel spreadsheet with all the answers.

Oh, that's nice.

They give it to you like all 100 jurors, all their answers in 80 pages. It's pretty slick. Yeah. And so we went through and we picked out like 13 questions, I think it was, that I thought were of value as far as figuring out who's who based on the data we have. And then we'll figure that all out and see how it goes. I mean, the kind of surprising thing that I'm quite surprised about is how many of the panel is divorced. It wasn't a demographic that in my head I thought would exist in Provo, but there's a high percentage of people that are divorced.

So when was the questionnaire given to the jurors? And do you get this data in real time as they're filling it out or?

They sent it to it. We just got it back Friday or Saturday, just a couple days ago. The judge was really good. He gave us argument on the questionnaire, let us brief it. And then he said that he would, as it relates to the questions about money damages that I wanted to ask, he said that he would have a secondary questionnaire when they show up that morning on this Thursday, have them all fill it out so then our team can start going through it as we get it.

Wow. And you're seating how many? Are you seeing 12? Are you sitting nine? Are you seeing 10? 10.

10. Eight

Plus two?

Eight

Plus two. Oh, that's too

Good. So we have to qualify 20 jurors before we use our peremptories and each side gets five peremptories. And we can only refer to the jurors by their seat number. They have a badge number and then they have a seat number one to a hundred. And so it can only be juror number one. You can't even say their last name, which is kind of a unique thing, but I will just simply, when I first see them, I'll be like, "Look, I don't want you to think that I'm being rude. We have rules that the judges set out and we have to follow them just as you'll have some rules you got to follow if you're a juror." And so one of those rules the judge gave us is we can only refer to you by your seat number. So we're not being rude when we say juror number two, it's just that's the rule.

And so-

When you get the questionnaire, I'm thinking, circling around with data stuff, when you get a questionnaire and you have these responses and they're not necessarily things you think are valuable, do you ever run data using all of the questions to see if there are hidden things that might actually make a difference that maybe you wouldn't think they would, but ...

Yeah, ideally we would have had this questionnaire sooner because the judge just kind of like waited to rule on what the questionnaire would be. I mean, theoretically, we could have run another data study with everything. In hindsight, probably a better idea than waiting to see what the judge did. But yeah, oftentimes it's very valuable because you end up finding, "Oh, these four questions are what ... " And you wouldn't even put them together sometimes, right? It's kind of an odd sequence where you're like, "Gosh, this is really weird. If jurors answer these four questions this way, they're your best juror every time." "Oh, okay. Well, we need to look for those jurors. "What makes it hard in this particular case is that the number one thing that will make a juror bad for me is the one question I'm not allowed to ask on the questionnaire, which is question about money.

You're going to have some jurors that just simply don't like plaintiffs, so that's one thing, but the tort reform and money for damages. I mean, you're talking about a culture where, and I know this because I've spent a ton of time with my Mormon partners coming up with jury questions to address all these things, but the idea of showing mercy is a really important value that all Mormons share, where even the worst of people are worthy of mercy and that mercy sometimes is confused and it robs justice. So there's an actual phrase in the book of Mormon that talks about mercy cannot rob justice. So while you can feel mercy and give mercy, you still must ensure that justice, complete justice and full justice is done. And those two things, they can coexist, but to allow mercy to rob justice is to do another wrong.

And so they talk about that. You cannot allow that to happen. So the concept there is to have mercy, but then also hold people fully accountable for their actions, which gets into another theory of agency and accountability, which agency is we all have free will. We can do whatever we want. However, we must be accountable for whatever we do. These are really important concepts. And I'm very thankful to David Creasy and Micah Eccles who are devout Mormons and my partners in my office, and they have done an amazing job helping me understand the nuances of how to talk to a jury in an area that we know that a large population will be faith-based Mormons.

Are you asking about tithing?

I don't have a question about tithing right now.

And the duty, responsibility, being accountable to your church and paying what's owed and what to do.

I do that through the agency and accountability, so we kind of fell on that as a better way than the tithing because some of the people may not fully tithe.

Yeah. It's such an element of Mormonism.

Yeah, it is.

Hot tiding, what it means.

I also don't want them to think that they can give me a 10th of what zoed and think that they did right.

I mean, that's true, but I think it brings up that there are a lot of Mormons in the military. So I actually went to school with a lot of Mormons, so it's interesting how they talk about all of that. So it's really great you're doing that research.

I've actually had more fun doing this Fort Eyre, writing this Fort Eyre than any case I've ever done before, because it's really required me to spend meaningful time talking to my partners who are so devout. I mean, my Book of Mormon here, and it's been tabbed by Micah Eccles for me, and so he's very kind to do this for me. So yeah, it's one of those things that I think what's really important is you're going to go pick a jury in a community, you should probably know that community, so you can at least understand what they're thinking and talking about. Well,

Because Provo, where is Brigham Young? Where's BYU?

It's in Provo.

It's in Provo, right?

It's right next to the court. Yeah. And by the way, if you haven't been to Provo, it may be one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is so beautiful there. Nick, have you ever been to that campus?

No.

It is unbelievable. You're sitting down in a valley and these huge mountains just come up over the top of you. And I mean, it is so ... Every time I go there, I'm like, how is any place this pretty? And if it wasn't for the pollution, because they have this inversion that comes in and the smog gets stuck in the valley, sucks. If it wasn't for that, I would be like, I would think about having a place in Provo. I mean, it is that beautiful. I mean, it is Salt Lake, Provo, all those areas are just so pretty. We're opening an office in Salt Lake.

Oh, wow. That's exciting.

Yeah. We've gotten so busy in Utah that we've just ... David Creasy is going to be our partner running that office. And our longtime paralegal, Jackie, is moving to Utah with him.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow, that's exciting.

Yeah.

So where are your offices now?

Vegas, Reno, Connecticut, New York, Salt Lake.

That's pretty great.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Lou's really happy that I've slowed down.

I'm sure. Where are you going to be next week? Huh? Where are you going to be?

Yeah. She's so excited that the pace of my practice has slowed down.

Yeah, because I don't think ... I mean, I don't know. It's probably changed a little bit, at least the way I view what you do now. It's changed a little bit. It's more dropping into cases, which is kind of nice and you get picked quite a bit, but I wouldn't say that you're not busy.

No. Lou would agree that I'm horrifically not busy.

Yeah. I think that's pretty fair.

Yeah. Lou is slowing down, focusing more on the philanthropy of the firm and our family, which is cool. I mean, it's really neat that she's with this women's group that they all put in a chunk of money each year and they give these big grants, like half a million dollar grants to these nonprofits. So she's at the committee meeting where they're narrowing it down to ... It's a lot of work, but it's cool to see what they do. And she learns about a lot of different charities that maybe don't get the grant, but she's interested in. So it's a good way for her to get to know different organizations in town.

This is all in and around Vegas?

Yeah.

That's really great.

Vegas and Reno for the most part. We do get involved in ... We just made a donation to an organization in Nebraska with Ross. So he does something where he helps minorities get college education, so we made a donation there. So sometimes we do out of state issues with people who are doing the right thing and we want to help.

So after this trial, you have a break? You have a vacation or something?

Not really. I come to Jury Ball, Madrid, and then I have to leave on the 25th because I have a trial starting on the 27th.

Where? What case is this?

This is Padilla. This is the DUI drug that got reset for the 27th of April.

Oh, wow. That's another one.

But for the listeners out there, this was a trial that was supposed to start January 27th and the defendant filed a fraudulent bankruptcy on January 26th, the day before trial. So not ideal. But the judge was great. She called us in that day that they filed the notice of bankruptcy. They filed the notice at 11:30. She said, "Be in court at 3:30." And at 3:30, she reset the trial for 90 days because she's like, "I want the stay lift. Get the stay lifted." And I told her, I go, "I need a firm date in order to get the stay lifted. They need a firm date." She goes, "I'll give you a firm date right now, April 27th. There you go.

" We studying this, right?

Yeah, we are studying, Padilla.

I think as of right now, as this is the exact second, there are 53 people currently looking at that case and giving their thoughts about it.

I foresee this being a very large nine figure verdict. And I'm saying the initial data that we did and it had it in the low nine figures, I think with the updated information of the ... We now have the full day of driving the day of, which we didn't have in the original study. And we have two prior days that show the excessive marijuana and alcohol use while the people are working and driving. And then we have this bankruptcy issue that will come up in the punitive phase. I think that the jury will feel like they could give whatever number the evidence warrants. And in this case, if you were to rate this on a one to nine scale of nine being the worst thing you've ever fucking seen, this would be a nine because it is the most egregious thing you've ever seen on video.

I mean, it's all on video. These guys are smoking weed all day long, drinking all day long, and then get into a fistfight, and as they're fist fighting, they're driving the truck ... Listeners are going to be like, "This ain't a real case." I'm like, "Yeah, that's a real case." And a real case that we get to try because the defendant didn't settle the case for a million dollars. There was a million dollar policy limit and the referring attorney tried for a year to settle it and the defense was like, "We're not going to pay you that million dollars until the statute of limitations runs in two years." Okay, welcome to litigation in bad faith. That was crazy.

It's terrible.

How we get to try this case blows my mind, but we're going to try it. I will probably get a whole lot of love nationally for this verdict and it's going to be unwarranted because I think that I could send my first year associate and he could bang out a nine figure verdict in this one. So not all nine figure verdicts are created equally. There's some really, really good ... On trial we did at Denver was a really good verdict. There was more complexity because of the laws in Colorado and how you had to get damages allocated and done the right way. And everything else that went into that case, there was a lot more, I think, high level lawyering that we did and out lawyered the other side by a wide margin on that. This particular case, I don't need to outlawyer anybody. I just need to show the video.

Well, and I mean, the defense is helping out with their defense of the case too, right? I mean, you have to be thankful that the defendants have taken a zero responsibility position, just shocking. No, it doesn't, but you have to be thankful, right? I mean-

It's true. You have to. You got to be. And so then what do you have after that? Then your vacation?

No, no, no. Then we have that. I told you I'm taking it easy. I'm taking it easy. We will finish that trial and then I will have, I believe, a few weeks, two or three weeks off, and then go into the Gibbs trial, which is the drowning at the South Point case, which we've studied as well, which that should be a high eight figure case. No, this one's here in Vegas. Oh,

They get to ... I got too many drowning cases these days.

I haven't tried a case in Vegas in three years, and I get to do back-to-back trials in Vegas. I sleep in my own bed for a trial. You know how great that is?

That's pretty awesome.

All my trials have been out of state for the last three years.

Yeah. A lot of time at home then.

Yeah. I mean, it's not that the family will see you when you're in trial, but ...

Okay. And so then you have the rest of the year off or you have more?

Well, I do not have any trials currently. I haven't committed to any trials because my goal in the back half of the year is for you and I and John to get our second draft of Jury Ball Evolution book done, because there's a lot we have to talk about in the updated book that will kind of take the first book, I think, and really go more maybe in depth and talk about some more nuanced issues. I really want to talk about the fallacy of anchoring and this misconception. In the case that I'm trying in Utah right now, the defense lawyer made a big point to tell the judge that he can't ask about numbers because it's going to anchor, it's going to anchor, it's going to anchor. And he goes, "There's a book called Think Fast, Think Slow." And it proves it. And he talks about Gandhi, the example of Gandhi's age.

And I told the judge, I go, "Judge, I go, I appreciate the fact that he's read a book." I go, "That book has nothing to do with jury behavior because what we know, and Judge, candidly, you know this, you've presided over a whole lot of trials where the plaintiff says a number and the jury doesn't give it. And if anchoring worked, the jury would always give it. In fact, the jury can give any number they want because they listen to the evidence. More so we know that anchoring simply doesn't work. It's not a thing that actually is what he's telling you when it comes to jury behavior." And I said, "I know that there are professors at Cornell right now that are working on an article on this very topic."

At this exact moment, this is what I was doing all morning.

Yeah. And so the defense lawyer questioned my integrity with the court saying that if there was really something out there, he would provide it to the court. I'm like, "Well, I go, I'm happy to provide it to the court."

We are writing literally as fast as we can collecting it. We ran studies on this and Jess Salerno and I, along with some of our colleagues, we have the data. We talked about it at Jury Ball l in Las Vegas a little bit and are now putting it together to at least a white paper to get out. And we're trying to get that out this week, so can look for that.

Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, so things like that that I think we need to really educate because I got a message from Tom Dickerson just this morning saying that in Kansas they're passing today, the Anchors Away Act. No argument can be made for any amount of non-economic damages. You can't say any number and can't argue analogies. So in Kansas, you will never be able to suggest a number ever again, and the jury will be left to guess as to what the value should be.

I see it as basically just undermining the jury's role.That's the jury's call, and they can listen to what arguments are made. I mean, this is what everybody knows. They'll weigh it, they'll make a fair determination, and that's that. You don't have to shield them from numbers.

Right. And I mean, like what we talked about in Vegas is that the number the lawyers suggest has to be tied to the evidence. And if it's not, there's a boomerang effect where the lawyer's suggesting a number that is inconsistent or not congruent with the evidence will hurt the plaintiff lawyer. It's going to go the other way. And so what they're talking about is, "Oh, when you suggest a big number and there's really egregious bad facts, jurors will give big numbers." And That's based on the evidence though. And look, you also can go to Pennsylvania and see some insane jury verdicts, huge numbers that none of us could have ever fathomed because none of us would've said the number, but the jurors left to guess as to what the value is, come up with these numbers on really egregious based facts that are sometimes in the billions, in hundreds and hundreds of millions on cases that we would be like, "I don't know, the value is maybe 80 million." And what's weird is the defense can say the case is worth zero, but the plaintiff can't give a number to counteract that.

I mean, I find that to be insulting. You would think that they would not be able to argue for a defense verdict. I can't tell you to award zero. If we can't say X amount, they can't say zero. When it comes to damages, they have to just simply say ... And it's also dangerous for them to ... I think we know that overall, when you're not allowed to suggest a number to a jury, it makes the jury angry because they want guidance, they want something. You're asking them to engage in a behavior, a job they've never done. And then you're going to say, "And by the way, we're not even going to give you parameters." It'd be like hiring somebody at your office to come to work and be like, "Okay, I need you to order supplies for the company and I'm not going to tell you what we've ordered in the past." Just guess.

And they're going to be pissed. They'll be like, "Well, you want me just to freaking ... I don't even get to ... I have no foundation at all. You didn't tell me. I don't even know how many employees we have. " It is a crazy thing, but that's what's going on. And look, I will say, if you're not paying real attention right now to what's going on in the country with tort reform, it's coming for every state, it's coming heavy, and these corporations are spending hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to get their tort reform done, and they're going to keep doing it. No,

You're going to be very sad with not letting people give a number. I mean, Pennsylvania is the perfect anecdote, right? You can only get a billion dollar verdict out of Philly because you can't give a number. I mean, it has a variable effect on tort reform. It doesn't do anything to make verdicts or damage award consistent. It's absolutely the opposite because you're not giving people any guidance. And jurors get pissed because it's part of your credibility really as a lawyer. So you can present all your evidence and they can be with you. And if you asked for too much, they could be pissed. If you asked for too little, they can be pissed. And what you should tell this defense attorney is like, "Hey, I think Kahneman put out a redaction on that chapter because the idea with anchoring is that they were given no parameters, but they were giving no context.

You're spinning a wheel and you're told-

Irrelevant. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that's nothing like a jury trial. They're given complete context. They're giving evidence, arguments, everything, both sides. It's nothing like anchoring because the anchoring effect in Kahneman's book is just when you have no concept whatsoever. What they're doing in Kansas is saying, "Yeah, go ahead and find a number. We're going to give you none. We'll give you context, but what's an arm off case worth? Oops, sorry, can't tell you. " I mean, they're going more towards this absurdity than away from it. It's just so dumb.

Another paper posted right now on SSRN, I'll shout out Samantha Bean, who's now a trial consultant, one of our graduates from our PhD program, her dissertation was on what happens when you don't let there be an ask. And it's exactly, Sean, what you said. I mean, the awards get much more variable. They're more arbitrary. They're based on extra legal factors. It's what you don't want. I mean, there's no good reason. It doesn't get better. It gets worse when you take away the ability to give any guidance whatsoever.

Well, and think about how many times the defense, the plaintiff will be at a ... I mean, we just saw this in a case in Vegas with a good friend of mine who's a phenomenal trial lawyer where he came in and asked for 90 million and the defense said, "Well, we think it's closer to three." And the defense lawyer gave explanations and the jury came back and awarded three. If the defense lawyer was unable to suggest a number, my buddy was unable to suggest a number. I bet you anything, that verdict ends up way more than three because the jury wouldn't have context for what the defense wanted. So when they're doing this, they're not just taking it away from the plaintiff. In a case where there's clear liability and the defense can't be a zero verdict and now they can't say a number, that's going to work against the defense.

I mean, but there's also times when it's going to work against the plaintiff. But like you said, I mean, the randomness of the verdict becomes the absurdity because it's not based on anything. And how would a court ever take away a verdict based upon passion and prejudice when you never gave them anything to start with?

I mean, they'll still do it.

Yeah.

I mean, how? It's a great question. The judge will still do it. But yeah, that's how you got Wes Ball's billion dollar verdict out of Philly because you had tort reform. Yep. Thank you tort reform. Appreciate it. I mean, what are you talking about? It's nuts.

But this is their big thing, right? I mean, they do not ... The big tort reform we're going to see coming to every state is going to be, you can't talk about numbers ever again. Oh, by the way, lawyers, we need to stop the plaintiff lawyers from being able to do their contingency work. So let's reduce their contingency fee down to eight to 10% to where it's not feasible to operate under those parameters. As we all know, you'd go bankrupt even in the best run office at 10%. If you're not getting a third on average, it's probably pretty tight because you're going to lose cases and you got to factor that all into everything. And then the cash outlay that lawyers have to put out on cases. And by the way, in my entire history of having my firm, I've never had a client of mine complain about their fee, ever.

This isn't an issue about clients complaining about fees, but this is an issue of Uber and the Chamber of Commerce knowing that the best way to stop these lawsuits is to get rid of the lawyers. How do we get rid of the lawyers? Make it to where they have to do a different type of law because they can no longer afford to take personal injury. The only people that could afford to do eight to 10% fee would be the mills and it would be really tight for them too. They could turn around and be like, "Oh, whatever. We're not going to do any work on it anyways. We're just going to ... " I mean, I had a conversation with an advertising lawyer at an event recently that blew my mind and he was so excited to tell me about AI and how AI was going to replace most of his staff and how he could simply just have AI request the records, have the records come in, analyze the records and spit out a demand, and he doesn't need any employees to do it.

And I said to him, I go, "Well, Jeez, if that's all you're doing, why does anybody need you? Why wouldn't the insurance company just offer the same exact platform?" It's not like you're getting any more money for the people than the insurance would give. The insurance could actually give them less and they'd net more just by cutting you out.

Was he happy? Thought that was a great idea.

Oh yeah. He thinks it's great.

He's like, "Great idea, Sean. I should pitch that to Allstate." Well,

He wasn't crazy about that idea, but he loves the idea of reducing his overhead and having no intent. I was kind of excited to talk to this guy because I hadn't met him before and I'm like, "Oh, maybe I can do work for him. Maybe he has some good cases that he'd want me to try." There is no desire at all from him to work a case up that would have real value. So if you're unfortunate enough, you end up at a firm like that, the goal isn't to work your case up and get the maximum value. The goal is to put you through a AI-based system where it works out really well. I guess for being fast and getting done, but God, if there's anything really wrong with the client, you just feel terrible for them. And so it's kind of interesting dialogue that I had.

I was really taken back because I was thinking to myself, I'm like, God, the biggest fear I have is that the human touch that we have and how important that is to closure for our clients, that we're there to listen, we're there to feel compassion and empathy for what they're going through and be there to help them through maybe the toughest time of their life. I can't separate that from what we do. That is a real thing that we give to our clients is help with the closure, the worst thing that probably ever happened to them. And if you're going to start putting that through AI, you're leaving this gaping wound that just ... I can't do that. I'm not saying we don't utilize AI. We certainly utilize AI in the ways we should in going through documents and helping us analyze them and stuff like that.

But to replace the actual human interaction that's so critical in what we do, I think you would have to have a serious self-reflection moment because that's kind of at a moment where you've got to make a decision what type of lawyer you are.

Well, and I think it ... Yeah. I mean, I totally agree because I think it actually makes the Uber argument that we shouldn't get ... The fees need to be lower because a little bit of credence if all you're doing is running a practice where-

If you're doing all AI, you could charge 10% all day and that's wonderful.

Yeah, exactly. It kind of feeds into this idea that that can be done. But I don't know, between all the cases I see over and over again where I look at John and I'm like, "Dude, didn't I just work on a case like this? Didn't this just happen somewhere else?" Why am I seeing the same thing over and over? I mean, the idea of letting companies, corporations, hospitals off the hook because somehow it would get better, that's absurdity, just the same as running at a firm without any ... I mean, because the things that we deal with are so awful, so awful that no amount of AI could ever help with, number one.

AI doesn't give hugs.

No, no. And sometimes it hallucinates and says really terrible things. You would hate to be on the receiving end of that. It is a bad day for Claude.

Yeah. And I mean, I can just say that there's those hugs you always have with the clients, those long, meaningful hugs where they're just crying on your shoulder and they just need to cry. You can't give that. I mean, you start giving that away, then I feel like you're no better than Uber.

Well, my mortgage fraud case from 2015, when I go back to the Lou, I still have dinner with my client at the same place that we always go to because it's the best part really. You meet some really interesting people and you see their strength. It's just really amazing thing because a lot of times I don't know how I would deal with some of the things that have had happened to them. So it is very, really revealing and edifying to watch people go through horrible stuff. And I end up usually admiring my clients very much because I don't know how I would deal with a lot of things they deal with.

I agree. It's amazing to see what our clients go through. Just even this case that I'm doing in Utah, I'm going through the exhibits and I get to this poem that she wrote for her son on the one-year anniversary of his death and I just have tears just coming down my face because I cannot imagine that loss of my child. It is just ... And then how do you go on just that whole ... Just all of it. And this poem that she wrote just really just encapsulates all those emotions and the hope at the end that they'll be reunited. It's not even hope. I mean, it's a firm belief, but for me, I'm like, that's the pain that I'm talking about, that lady needs a hug. She needs us to be there for her fighting this fight. And hopefully the jury's at the end, it's always a really nice thing when the jury gives your client a hug after the verdict because they want to help be part of the healing.

Well, and that probably should be some of the infusion to the anti-tort. I've been thinking more and more this tort reform crap. The antidote to that is that you can see, and we have lots of examples of, well, well, first of all, jurors doing the right thing, but second of all, the unifying effect that it has. So in one of Shannon Kennedy's cases, they wore red, all of them coordinated and were read in support of the plaintiff because once they heard all the facts and they were like, "Oh no, this is absolutely not what happens in America." I mean, it's just a very important time right now, I feel like, that people want to make differences and want to make change and the jury box right now is where to do it and I just can't help it that the companies don't like

It. It's the only place left. It's the only place left because the government has completely failed the country. The court system has been ... And it's not just ... I'm saying this based upon a lot of questionnaires I've seen recently, and you guys have seen more than me, across the board, and this is not a Republican or a Democratic viewpoint. It is across all political affiliations. The one thing that's consistent is the judicial system is badly broken, right? The court system is broken in this country. And the reason for that is because they've been told, if you're a Trump supporter, you've been told that the judicial system is rigged, and that's why he keeps losing all these cases. If you're a anti-Trump or even moderate person in the middle, you're looking at it and saying, "Well, the system's rigged because Trump has all these judges that he's put in place that allow him to act like a knucklehead." And so irrespective of from which angle you're looking at it, the one thing that Trump has done, I think it's part of his goal, right, undermine the other branches of government so that the executive branch can take over and he's completely undermined the judicial branch.

At this point in time, I think that the judicial branch in America has never had less respect or trust from American citizens ever before. And I think it's a sad thing. I mean, I remember as a young lawyer, I absolutely was believed in the United States Supreme Court. Now, as a young lawyer, we are all about the same age. I mean, we were pretty lucky when you look back at the balance of that court where it was kind of a four, four, one and every decision there was it was going to be close and it was going to be thought out and which way was Kennedy going to go? You didn't know and you felt like there was some real, I felt honest intellectual discussions going on. Those days, sadly, you're gone with a six-three court where you can kind of see Roberts, I think, wanted to take on the Kennedy role, but it does no good because if Obama would've gotten the appointment with Mayor Garland, if he would've got Garland, then the court Roberts, you may have seen Roberts morph into a Kennedy-esque type, although leaning to the right type of judge.

Now what we have is the evidence that came out that the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas and the likes are taking massive gifts and then sitting on the very cases that they're corrupted on. It's like that was the most disappointing thing I've ever seen as a lawyer. It was really a sad day when all that evidence came out. I was like, I clearly was ignorant to this. I'm sure it's been going on for a long time, but under Trump, it's like really, really egregious behaviors become normalized. And so it's like, yeah, of course I'm taking private flights and vacations and this person's going to appear in front of me next week and I've got to make an important decision based on that. Of course, I'll be fair and impartial. Well,

The only hope with all that is that I think jurors think that about the judicial system and they think of judges.

Well, that is what we have to focus on. This is the one place, the one place, the American jury where it's people from this community, not some politician in Washington, not some Richmond north of Richmond, none of that, right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people right here making decisions that are right and wrong for this community.

Yeah. I mean, because that's the thing is jurors report high levels of satisfaction after jury duty. And so the one thing that we have to make the difference here is like, look, you're right. You're probably right that your view of the judicial system is bent by how you see new stories and how judges are behaving. But I mean, there's some clarifying way that we can talk about this where it's like, but that's not jury duty. You are not the runaround, but you are the other part where the judge only gets to do so much under the law. And so that part is very meaningful and that part jurors are really happy about really. They have really high levels of ... I mean, even in voir dire, when I've helped, people say, "It was a really good experience." Being a juror was a really good experience, which is why I'm hopeful that between Jedi and Nick's center at Cornell, we can turn out the data that says, "Okay, well, how long are you guys going to be frauds about this?

" Because we have the data. We know how we need to run this. This stupid shit that you're doing with voir dire shouldn't happen. You guys are trying to bend it a little bit and the citizenry has a right to come and say what they want to, whether you like it or not. That's the only thing I ... I mean, because jurors get a right. They work really hard to get it right. We make their jobs really hard.

It's really amazing when you see the history. I mean, now we're in about year 10, at least with us all working together. It's been about 10 years already, which is kind of crazy. But when you look at the number of cases we've studied and then the results we've received in trial, how accurate it is, Well, it's accurate because it's right. You know what I mean? I was telling people this the other day that, "Hey, this concept of a nuclear verdict," I'm like, "There's nothing nuclear about a verdict that's predictable." That's just a just verdict. What needs to happen is the defense absolutely needs to get ... They need to start running data so that they can better evaluate the value of cases so that they stop making these catastrophic errors and taking cases to trial that they should not do. I mean, what's happening now is you're seeing this paradigm shift and everybody's like, "Oh, all these verdicts are huge." Yeah, you know why?

Because there is a ... We've sold thousands of books at this point. There's a lot of lawyers that are using data now as a normal tool in their tool chest. And what's happening is they're taking their good cases to trial, they're settling their cases that aren't so good. And so now the defense has got these ... They're sitting there, there's nothing defense lawyer can do. There's nothing they can do. It's going to be a banger and they're just sitting on the railroad tracks waiting for the train to come, which is the verdict. And we're seeing that. I mean, even at our own office, you guys did a study for us. We thought the case was a lot bigger than it was. It came back with a whole host of problems and I'm like, holy cow. Twice, actually, this has happened this year, just this calendar year already, and we had to settle both those cases.

And we explained to the client like, "Hey, look, we were wrong and here's the risk and here's what we need to do. " And so it's a fascinating thing when you're catching a bad result early that you missed. And what else has been fascinating to me is seeing the juror behaviors start to shift a little bit I see in the data. At least it seems like the data reports I'm getting back today are different than what they look like just in responses than for four years ago. And I think it's just what you're starting to see, and I think this is a normal thing. We're going to see waxing and weighing in different directions. When events occur, major events occur, we see maybe a little bit more drastic change, but every time I get a new data study, I'm just fascinated. And then the one thing that is I think a constant is when I get involved in cases and then John, Alicia and I will be doing contingency work.

So they'll be doing the data, I'll be doing the workdays and people come in for workdays, I'll look at what they wrote for the data statement. I'm like, "Well, that's not accurate." And we see this all the time where I've got to call John and Alicia and I'm like, "Hey, FYI, that case that you all thought was amazing because the data study came back really good." Well, guess what? They forgot a whole bunch of bad stuff. Let's see what it looks like now. So that's something that I think if you're a listener, test all of the bad stuff in your case. You'll want to know how you can lose and maybe there's some bad stuff that you're really, really worried about that's not that big a deal, but you won't know until you test it all and be brutally honest because defense lawyers are better than you give them credit for, believe it or not.

And they're going to do their best to make sure you don't get the verdict that you want. And so you may as well give them their best day in the data and see what it looks like. And then you'll be pleasantly surprised that some of them maybe weren't as good as you thought they were and they didn't raise the one or two big issues they should have. We see that all the time too, but you'd want to know what it is so you're prepared for it.

Yeah, for sure. It's really the most critical part. It's the most uncomfortable for lawyers.

We have attorneys in our office that specialize in writing the defense statement and they're so good. I read them, I'm like, "Well, who is going to ever give the plaintiff a verdict with a statement like this? " This is bullshit, man. There's no way they're going to be able to argue this, but we run it. What's really good is when we run it and I've read the defense statement, we come back and we're like 87% win rate. I'm like, "Oh, the defense is screwed."

Yep, they are screwed.

Yeah. But that's the thing is I would tell the folks listening to this podcast, really work really, really hard on writing a vicious defense statement. We'll go a long ways to getting accurate data.

Yes. Don't be so annoyed when I send you comments.

Yeah, for sure. Because

There's a reason why I'm sending them. It's crazy because we've studied over, I think we're at 1,300, I want to say probably 50 cases now. The only thing I don't say anymore is there's probably not a case I haven't seen or John hasn't seen. I won't say that shit anymore. I had a very interesting last year where I was like, "I have never seen anything like this. What is happening?" But it's fascinating stuff for sure. Fascinating stuff. It's good.

What do we have on tap for Jury Ball Madrid? What can people be planning to see at Jury Ball Madrid this year?

Like speaker wise or like ... So Nick's coming, Nick's talking. So is Jess. So is Valerie Hans. So Sherry Diamond. Tom Dickerson's talking. Jessica Brilo's talking. Omar Qureshi and Max are talking. Wes Boll's coming and talking. Oh, hell, I hope I haven't left anybody out. But yeah, we have a good lineup. We have a good lineup of all kinds of things. So Max and Omar, I helped them pick a jury in a case that they had in Monroe, Louisiana with a Trump judge on a case that we ran many, many times and they got a $42.75 million verdict. So it was really great. Jessica Brilow and I are going to talk about the case that we worked on together down in San Antonio where we got $25 million. And so we're going to kind of explain how a jury consultant and a data person can work together.

Nick is going to be talking ... Yeah, because Max shown an Omar Qureshi. West Ball is going to talk ... Oh, and Charla. Charla is coming. Yeah. So Tom's going to talk about his very big settlement with O'Reilly's. Wes is going to be talking about how he uses data because he's the one that got the billion dollar verdict in Philly and he's a joy to work with. So is Tom, so is Charla. So we've kind of got a gamut of thing which we're going to run with, how to use data when you're settling cases and getting big value on cases. Wes is going to do ... He does a lot of the tire auto products litigation, and so he's going to talk about that. Charla, I mean, I don't know what she and John are probably going to be into. I mean, we'll have some panels, things like that, but yeah, we got a full lineup, academics and some new different attorneys to hear from who used data.

I saw you guys just did Charla's podcast.

Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah.

Believe it or not, that came up on my YouTube feed.

Oh, really?

It's the first time I've ever had a podcast. A legal podcast come on my YouTube feed because I normally am watching bullies get owned and stuff like that. Karen's destroyed.

Yeah, I

Know. My YouTube bully. There's nothing more satisfying than me seeing the bully get punched in the face. And so that's normally what it is, but all of a sudden what popped up was you and John and Charla. I'm like, "Oh, look at that.

" Yeah, we did. What's that? I forget what her podcast is called. It was like, it's law pods. And this is what Rob tells me because my preference is never to be on YouTube, but apparently that's where people get their podcasts, whereas I'm still just listening it to and on my phone when I want my dog. I don't care about seeing anybody. In fact, I like that I don't, but yeah, it means I have to be relatively clean by the time I'm like, "Hey, Nick, what's going on? " Well,

Listen, if anybody's listening to this podcast, they should watch it because I'm geared up in my jury ball hat and sure, I've got sponsorship money for wearing this today.

Oh, most of the time I'm just like, I barely combed my hair. Oh shit, I have a podcast today, but it's fine. It's life. Nick says he doesn't mind. So he always looks dapper and nice and I'm like, usually. So because usually for me it's late. So I'm coming off a day of working, practice, call. So by the time I get to my end of my day, I'm not really-

Was it like 6:20 at night there, 7:20? 7:20 PM. Your day's almost done. My day is just beginning. I've got to finish my voir dire questions and narrowing them down. So I'm like, today's final cut day for trial. I'm getting anxious about what I'm going to ask and not ask. The butterflies of trial always come back a little bit. For

Sure. Yeah, for sure.

So the big question is, do I leave the facial hair or do I shave it off? I've settled on staying authentic and-

I think you should leave it.

Yeah.

Mountainy people like that.

Well, I mean, yeah, there's a split in that when it comes ... A lot of the Mormon gentlemen are clean shaven because back in the day at BYU, you couldn't have facial hair, but I'm going to go with it. And the other big question is, do I go brown boots or black boots?

What color are your suits?

Well, I'm only going to wear two suits and they're both navy blue and I'm going to have three ties that will be a yellow, a blue, and probably another blue.

Nothing red, no red ties?

No red. The problem with red ties is that unless you have an all Trump jury, it is so weird in my live focus groups. Every time I wear a nice red tie with a blue suit, the comment is, "Oh, is he a Trumper?" And they can't, it's automatic. It's automatic.

The whole group that dresses like him only wear red ties.

Right. So I just don't wear red ties anymore. I can wear purple, pink, blue, orange, gold, yellow. Any color other than red. And I have some beautiful red ties that I love and I used to be able to wear them, but now for trial purposes ... So when I go to events though, I'll make sure, like UNLV events, I always wear my nice red tie because it's only

Appropriate to

Wear led at a UNLV event.

That's true.

We call it Scarlet.

That's true.

Scarlet and gray is our colors.

Scarlet. Oh.

Yeah. And for those football fans out there, UNLV has the number one recruiting class of any of the not major conferences. So there's like six conferences and we had the top recruiting class out of those six conferences, which is very exciting for football. If anybody wants to take a runner on a team to make the playoffs next year and get some good Vegas odds, I'd put money on UNLV.

And God knows there's got to be a gambling item for that.

Oh, for sure.

Unbelievable. I don't gamble. And I'm a girl. Okay. So I don't know about the fact that you can bet on Will Stefan Diggs during green Gatorade at the halftime break. I had no idea this was happening.

Well, better bet would have been, will Stephan Diggs get somebody else pregnant at the halftime event? Oh

My God. Yeah.

Stephan Diggs has got quite a few issues out

There. I mean, there's quite a few, but I mean, yes. How about my

Seahawks, by the way? Yes,

Yes.

I can't believe we didn't talk about that on this podcast. I got to give a shout out to my dear friend, Nick Ralley, who took my son and I to the Super Bowl.

Did you go to the Super Bowl? I didn't

Know. I went to all playoff games in Seattle, both playoff games. I took my daughter to both. My wife went to the first one. I took my little brother and his son and a buddy to the NFC Championship game and my nephew. And then to the Super Bowl, Nick rallies like, "Hey, I got two extra tickets. Do you want to go? " And I'm like, "Yeah." And so we went and flew up on one of Nick's Jets with some really nice guys that he's plays Dungeon and Dragons with. What a great experience. And then for Seattle to have one of the most dominating performance in Super Bowl history was joyous.

Oh, Sean, that's sweet. I mean, they were playing the Patriots. I mean, come on.

Well, I mean, look, that's the best the AFC could muster up. It's not my fault. And by the way, when you want to talk about just the most satisfying win of all time, my disdain for the 49ers to have our Seahawks logo put on their field, to redeem the worst loss in maybe sporting history against the Patriots by not running the stupid ball, and it's been haunting me for 12 years to get it all worked out in one game, I left there feeling like this is going to I think it all

Worked out. That's good.

Give me a great year. Go Hawks.

Yeah.

How about that?

We only went to one NFL game and it was in Bernabeo. So we saw the dolphins and the commanders. It

Was very exciting. I saw that on TV. Well, I didn't actually watch the game because it was at a weird time.

It's the first and only time I've ever been to Bernabeo. We're not a soccer watching.

Well, we're going to take care of that in a few months.

Yeah. There are tickets.

Are you going to the game?

I don't think so. I think I'm on museum duty.

Oh, that's too bad. I have fully cleared you. I'm going to go see

Paso. It's okay with me.

I actually have a Real Madrid shirt that I'm going to bring.

Do you? It's better than Barcelona. No one should show up here in Barcelona gear.

No, no. What about Martin?

Martin. From Barca? From

Denver. Barka.

That's from Marsalgaro trial, Nick. Sorry. The defense attorney, I opened testimony with our client talking about soccer because he was fascinated that I lived in Madrid and lived near Bernabel. And so that was our warmup question so he would feel comfortable. And then the defense attorneys came up and got him and said, "Are you not a Barca fan?" And our client was like, "A what? A Barca fan?" So finally I leaned over and was like, "It's Bartha. Bartha. He has no idea you're saying Barcelona." And then at that point, our client was like, "No, no." So I was like, "What a way to step in it. He's a Madrid fan. That's what I asked him. I mean, what do you think? " He Snickers about Barthelona and the paid for Arbitros and it's hilarious, but Barca. Barca.

Martin was

Great. Barca.That was a gft that kept giving that job. It's happening, but no. He meant Barcelona, which I mean, no, no one here church from Barcelona. I mean, only in Barcelona. But yeah, we'll have tickets to ya Madrid during jury ball. They just released the schedule and it just happened to land on it.

The 22nd, I believe.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were setting up the tour and they've done a bunch of work to Bernabeo. So there's a Bernabeo marketplace underneath now. And of course you can get all the Mao you want to drink, which I highly recommend. But then they released the schedule and Jesus was like, "Have you guys seen this? " And we're like, "No, because we don't pay attention to soccer." He was like, "There's a game." And we were like, "Oh my God." So yeah, now there are tickets to the game, which is great.

We all went to a game last time we were in Madrid.

Yeah, you guys did. We didn't go.

No, we pre-partied at your house though.

Yeah. Yeah. You came over beforehand and then walked over. Yeah.

Which for those of you listening or watching this, their house is walking distance from-

I drive by Bernabeo every day. Yes.

Yeah. It's like walking distance. So are we going to pre-party at your house again? Is that the deal?

Yeah, for sure. Well, and actually in my building lives a Rial Madrid player. Danny Savalos lives in my building. He's my neighbor. He's very nice. Real Madrid, the training too, isn't very far. So he always gets in his car. So we'll see him sometimes in the morning. He's very nice dude. And he gets in his car and he puts his hoodie up so that he can kind of like, because people here will see him and his car be like ... Whereas we met him, we came home from the summer and he was in the lobby when we basically rolled in with all of our luggage coming back from the summer. And he was like, "Oh, Ola." We're like, "Ola, Bezos and everything." And he kind of just stood there and I was like. And John's like. And he's like, "Ah." And he kind of dawned on him.

He was like, "They have no idea who I am." And actually no one in our building did. So we wonder if he actually moved into the building because really none of us, we have a bunch of Venezuelan neighbors and all kinds of stuff anyway, but our portero, our door guy was like, "Yeah, he's told me he's met everybody in the building and no one seems to recognize him." Well, maybe that's why he's here because we definitely don't go down there and knock on his door or ask for autographs because I'm like, I don't even know what position he plays, but he's a midfielder.

It's good living if you can get it.

Yeah, not bad. Right? At the Stone's throw, I mean, you can basically walk over to the game. I think he drives, but yeah, it's kind of crazy. He's a very nice person. I've seen multiple ... Actually, it's something that they very much value in Riya Madrid. We were at Parquet Warner, Warner Park here, and of course we are us. So Jack and I are sitting on a bench while John and Wyatt went to a haunted house and a guy walks by and people lose it and he stopped and he took a picture and a picture and a picture and a picture with everybody who walked up to him. Then he walked maybe 10 feet and stopped and took a picture and smiled and was very nice and rubbed people's heads and everything. And a woman walking by us, I was like, "Who is this person?" And she turned around and told me, she was like, "It's Raal Madrid player," and gave his name.

I mean, it must have taken him 45 minutes to walk 75 feet. And he was kind to everyone, which was what we've heard is that Real Madrid kind of ... I mean, not that people aren't nice, but it is one of their core values that you will stop and you will be kind to fans and you will take pictures with fans and be kind. And man, oh man, I can't imagine what it's like to go because I was like, "He'll never make it around this theme park." He won't ride a roller coaster. He won't make it to a rollercoaster. And then what happens when he's in a line? What a day, but he did every single moment with a smile, every single one. So it was quite a thing to see, the patience, because it can't be pleasant.

I can't wait to go roof for Rial Madrid.

Well, I'm glad. That makes me happy. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. It will be lots and lots of fun for sure.

Can't wait. The second Jury Ball Madrid conference. It really is the best conference that I've been to from the standpoint of the cultural inclusion that you guys have with the conference. And then something that you just can't recreate in America is the fact that when the conference is going, we're on different time zones. So nobody in the conference is working because nobody in America is up at that time. And so it's this amazing four hours of where everybody's fully engaged.You could really feel it. When you're presenting, you can see when you're at certain conferences, people are on their laptops and you know they're not paying attention at all to what you're saying. And then other times like this, the only other time I felt like that level of engagement was an outer realm when everybody was fully engaged. So it's kind of like those two conferences, they're the best conferences just for engagement purposes.

Wait, are you coming early to Drupal or no?

I can't because I've got all these hearings and everything on this trial now. So I'm literally, I think I'm flying in on the 20 ... I know I'm flying out of Vegas on the 21st, flying out on Madrid on the 25th. That's the life of being a

Trial. Yeah, it's tight.

Oh, dude, it's going to be awesome for my sleep.

Look,

The good news is I'm already ready for that trial because I was fully trial ready. Every question's been written, openings dialed in, voir hires locked, we're ready to go. I could try this case in my sleep and I may need to because I will be freaking tired.

Yeah. I mean, because for me, you're going the wrong way. It's part of living in Madrid is that I come and get screwed on time, but going home, I kind of ... Yeah, it's nice.

I always seem to be able to make the adjustment to Madrid time just fine. It's coming home. I'm like screwed.

Oh, see, for me, and what I mean when I say I get screwed coming back, is when I come to the United States, I get the day, right? So I'm up and then usually what it means is I'm up at 5:00 AM because my clock is all off. So that doesn't always feel good, but it's a much better than when I come back and then all this time has passed that I've flown through so that now my Saturday disappeared because now I'm landing in Madrid on Sunday. But for me, that's much better because I don't have to do any trials here. So I can handle that a little bit better, what you're going to do. No,

The next one, we should play on a part two of this after this trial in Utah's done and we can talk about this and talk about out around a little bit.

Yeah, that'd be great. We can definitely do that.

And then hopefully we'll be talking about a record verdict in Provo, Utah County. Yeah,

That'd be awesome. And I'm curious what your veneer looks like in actuality.

We'll talk about that next time with ... I'll go through my actual questions I ask.

One, I wonder how young ... Is there a chance you're going to get a young veneer?

I know the ages, there are some young kids, mostly middle age to older age. And like I said, the one shocker is the number of people that have been divorced. It's really a surprising number. Obviously, I don't understand how that works. In my head, I just thought everybody stated married all the time, but that's not the case. They're like everybody else. And I think a lot of it too, right? They get married so young. You can imagine how that doesn't work out a lot of the time as people ate.

Oh, and don't you have to marry within Mormonism?

Yeah. I mean, you get sealed in the temple, which is a big deal. It's all interesting to me. I've learned so much and I'm just fascinated. Curiosity is a good trait to have as a trial lawyer.

It is. It's an important one. I think it's one of the most important ones, actually. Me personally. Yeah. All right.

Man, time flies when you're talking to friends.

Yeah, for sure.

I forgot we were on a podcast.

Well, I mean, we covered the gamut. I mean, we talked about everything, I think.

Yeah. The people, it's not quite as off base as Ed Seramboli and I did once on a podcast, a podcast about nothing, but this was pretty good.

Yeah, we did. We talked about a bunch and now plenty of people will be wanting to hear how all of this goes. So it is a perfect- I know.

It's like a teaser.

Yeah, it is. It's like a teaser.

Yeah. So now I'm fully committed by the way. Everybody knows I'm doing this. So it's like when you tell everybody you're going streaking, everybody knows it's happening. Yeah. This trial will be on CV and also. So it's kind of a perfect thing so you guys, everybody can see them. I've got Shannon Wise in my office taking witnesses and Jordan Logan taking witnesses. So we split up the witnesses. I know there's two schools of thought on that. So oh, only one person has witnesses. I like splitting them up. It makes the trial more enjoyable as we did in Denver and the results seem to be just fine. And

It's good to switch up mail. I think that's all

Good. Yep. All right. Well, we'll see how it goes.

Yeah, good luck. It's good to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah. Let's go Fred Files.

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