Host Kevin Morrison once tried a case against Jerry Popovich. “I can tell you he is top-notch, among the best I've ever gone against,” Kevin says. But don’t take it only from Kevin. Jerry is also a member of three invitation-only trial lawyer organizations with more than 80 jury trials under his belt. Speaking with Kevin on today’s podcast – not in a courtroom – Jerry shares three key trial tips. Tune in for his insights about focus groups, jury selection, and witness examination.

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Great trial lawyers are made not

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Preserving trial wisdom for trial

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trial attorney in San Francisco as

he recreates those invaluable hallway

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That remote work has made rare

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Hey everybody. Welcome to another

episode of Verdict Academy today.

It's my great pleasure and an honor

to have my friend and outstanding

trial lawyer Jerry Popovich.

Jerry is the managing partner of

the Orange County Office of Hawkins,

Parnell and Young. He has decades,

I won't say how many decades Jerry,

decades of trial experience he

has tried in excess of 80 jury

trials,

not only to the highest degree

of competence and ability,

but the highest degree of

professionalism, civility, and integrity.

How do we know that?

We know that because his peers

say that and judges say that Jerry

is a member of three

incredibly coveted trial lawyer

organizations, a about of the American

Board of Trial Advocates, A CTL,

the American College of

Trial Lawyers, and ISOB,

the International Society of Barristers.

All three of those organizations

are invitation only.

You can't just apply and write a

check to get in. You cannot apply the

top 500 trial lawyers in the country.

One of those folks or more have to

nominate you when you go through a very

extensive vetting

process including judges.

So we know Jerry is admired

and held in esteem by his

peers and he's admired and held in esteem

by me because I had the great pleasure

of trying a case against him last year.

And I can tell you he is top notch,

best I've ever gone against. Honestly,

he's kind nice people in trial.

I don't think I did at that time and

professional the whole way through.

Jerry's also passionate

about the Seventh Amendment.

He loves jury trials and not only

doesn't he just talk the talk,

he walks the walk. How

does he do that? Well,

he always has lesser

experienced attorneys,

secondary cases with him to get them

trial experience and he teaches trial

tactics at his law firm,

the Law Firm Trial Academy,

which is a great way of passing down

this Art of Jury trial. Trial down.

Jerry Popovich. Welcome to

Verdict Academy. I have a friend.

Thank you Kevin. Wow. I couldn't

have written it any better. In fact,

it sounds like I did.

I'll take Zelle payments please.

Venmo after the show. Yeah, no,

every word's true. Yeah, you're

welcome. Thanks for coming on.

And I appreciate you using the term art

because that was my first boss who had

multiple hundreds of trials and said

they call it the practice of law because

it's an art, it's not a science.

Every case is different.

Every juror is different,

will be witness is different.

That's right. Unfortunately

it's going to be a lost art.

So one of the focuses of this podcast,

one of the reasons probably the primary

one you came on is because you are

passionate about making sure this arc

gets passed on our next generation because

someday we'll be gone Jerry,

but hopefully there'll be

another generation of trial

lawyers doing what we're

doing.

My boss said that he got his first

trial the first week he was a lawyer.

It took me a few years,

but I was a second year lawyer for a

court trial and a fourth year lawyer for a

jury trial.

And now we've got 10 year lawyers that

have never tried a case and don't have

the opportunity.

So I appreciate that you've created this

podcast and let me come on and we can

chat about some trial issues and have

some fun and let's maybe motivate the next

generation to want this because it's

worth wanting and it's worth doing. Right?

A hundred percent. Couldn't agree more.

And we're going to talk about the format

of the show is three discrete trial

tips and we'll talk

about those in a second.

But I do want to ask you

this general question,

how did you become a trial lawyer?

What do you love about the profession?

How did you get there initially?

How'd you get into this?

Well, it's rather funny because I

entered law school at the age of 20.

I wasn't Doogie Hauser or anything,

but it was early and I went into

law school thinking that I would be

the kind of lawyer that

sat in a small office,

probably a little dark and drafted

motions and drafted appeals

and worked on paper and

never saw a courtroom.

That literally was my mindset going in.

I was pulled out of my shell by

an evidence professor who was a

fairly well known at the time,

public defender who was high up.

He tried the high profile cases in the

public defender's office and the way he

did evidence was he would introduce

an issue and he would have two of the

students stand up and you're to get this

evidence in and you're to try to keep

this evidence out and he would

then have oral arguments. Well,

I found that my competitive side

enjoyed this a lot. I wasn't very good,

but I played sports in high school

and into junior college and I liked

competition. Well,

all of a sudden that competition

Jones that had been missing for a

while came back.

So that really drove me

into the idea of being a

trial lawyer. My first firm I

went to a great place, small firm,

but both partners had in excess of a

hundred trials and it was kind of just

that's what you do. You work up a case

and if you can't agree, you try it.

So they help take some of the mystique

out of it and hopefully that's one of the

things we can talk about here is I tell

the lawyers in my office trial work,

it's not magic.

We are not magicians that just

go in and wave a wand and magic

comes out of our mouth. It's just hard,

hard work and long hours and

sweat and tears and lack of sleep.

If you're willing to pay

that price, you can do this.

It is all that, but

boy is it fun isn't it?

Can also be terrifying

and horrible at times too.

Yeah. But boy, every day I'm in

trial. Almost every day I'm in trial,

have a way better day than being

in the office responding to emails.

I just love it. It's just too much fun.

It's just too much fun

to have a try cases.

More than once. I've been picking a jury,

which is often one of the more challenging

parts of the case and we're going to

talk about that today because

you don't know what's coming.

You don't know what a jury's going to say

more than once I've been in the middle

of jury selection and literally the

thought crosses my mind as I'm trying to

think of the next question to ask

is I am exactly where I should be.

This is so much fun.

I'd rather do this than most

anything that would be work related.

Yeah, it walk out sometimes I can't

believe I got paid to do this.

It's just not fair. Alright, well

thanks for that. That's great.

And I do agree you got to get

in and there's a fear of trial,

which is totally legitimate.

I had it. Everybody has it.

It's normal to be afraid of trial,

but the longer you delay

the entry into trial,

the larger the fear is and

the more this, oh my god,

trial and this crazy

thought of what trial is.

So you got to get in there and just do it.

Well, and that's why I think taking

second chairs is so important.

I mean they see that I make mistakes.

I will sit down and go, wow,

I wish I hadn't asked that last question.

And they see that you

don't have to be perfect.

You can lose a ruling on emotion

and limine or you can lose a

ruling on an evidentiary issue

or an objection gets overruled.

That should have been sustained. It

doesn't mean you're losing the case.

You have to be able to

learn not to sweat those

every single little battles because

literally I used to sweat 'em all

and then found out that when I lost

the bunch but still won the case,

got to focus on winning the

war. Not every single battle.

100%. 100% my friend. Alright,

well let's get into it.

We do a tight podcast here and we're

doing three tips that you want to pass

on. Number one I believe

is informal focus groups.

How do you use them and

why do you use 'em Jerry?

Sure. Well first a formal focus

group is where you pay professionals.

They bring in members of the public

for a price and those people will

listen to witness testimony. They

will watch how witness testifies,

they will listen to issues

and provide feedback.

And you're getting

feedback from real people.

You're getting more importantly

reactions from real people. Well,

if you boil it down to

reactions from real people,

you don't necessarily have to pay

people to do that. You can use family,

use friends, use acquaintances

at a cocktail party.

And what I have found highly successfully,

strangely enough over the years

is that if I'm on the fence

of whether I should

argue a certain defense,

like comparative fault of a plaintiff

who is very sympathetic or how much is

this worth? When I had, and this

is actually one of the examples,

I can give four and a half

year old girl bitten by a dog,

big C shaped scar right around her eye.

What is that worth in non-economic damages

for the pain and suffering and living

with a scar?

So I have developed a group or

actually several groups that I will go

to when I have questions about how do you

react to this? If I say this this way,

I've literally gone to pool parties in

the summer with a couple photographs of

an injury and when the

conversation begins to drag or

now they know that I do

this to them sometime.

Do they still say Next

shit at the pool Jerry?

Or they start moving their chairs away?

Actually the funny part is if

the conversation starts to drag,

I literally now get, what did

you bring for us this time Jerry?

And they want to so run these ideas by

'em. I'll give you the prime example.

This is the best example I can

give you. That little girl,

four and a half year old bitten by a

dog, strict liability in California,

liability admitted. There was a lot of

other things going on in that trial,

but the big issue I had is how

much or how little as a defense

lawyer, which is my focus,

am I going to argue that

this is worth for the

non-economic pain and suffering?

Plaintiffs were going on and on about

how this will affect her going to the

prom, how it will affect her on her

wedding day live with this scar.

And they were putting on the big push

and asking for millions of dollars. I was

inclined to go into the low

six figures as far as a value,

but my wife had a lunch with

some girlfriends at a park and I

said, Hey,

take these pictures of

the little girl's scar

and ask your friends

what do they think about?

I'm really interested in a female

perspective in particular. And she did.

And I get a call from my wife

while she's at lunch going,

they need more details. How old is

she? What does it look like now?

And ultimately that group

of eight women thought that

my number in the low six

figures was too high.

I was surprised I was reticent

about using it at trial

but ultimately embraced it and

they gave a number of $75,000. Wow.

And I argued $75,000 verdict came

back 75,000 bucks.

Wow.

That's a prime example of how just

getting reactions now obviously

not giving away attorney-client

privilege stuff,

but all we did is show some pictures

of this little girl told him that she's

doing wonderfully at school. She's

riding horses and getting ribbons.

She's living a fabulous life.

My theme for the trial was she was a

rock star before, she's a rock star now.

And I actually took that from one

of her plastic surgeons who said,

this little girl's a rock

star. So I wasn't making it up.

And the theme working with

the informal focus group

saved us a bunch of money on the

defense side and the jury walked away

very pleased. And that

was a very fair result.

Wow, that's a great story and a great

illustration of how to use informal focus

groups. Do you ever use

formal focus groups?

Absolutely.

Under what circumstances do you decide

to do that big exposure cases I'm

assuming or how do you

decide to use a regular one?

Different ways I use them.

I've come in where there is a client

that will be repeatedly before the

quotes because it's a very

large high exposure type client.

And I've worked with jury

consultants to do formal focus groups

where certain defenses are being tested.

Focus groups tend to be discreet. You

want to take two or three discrete issues,

put it in front of them, see how they

react, say was the evidence enough,

what else would you have

liked to have heard?

And that helps you focus on

what evidence to bring in.

And then what we've done is ultimately

after we've tested and focus groups,

these discrete issues,

we put it all together into an

opening statement and do a mock trial

and then see if we have moved the needle

as far as how the jury is reacting

to my product manufacturer firms.

So that's one way to use the formal.

Another one that I've been turned onto in

the last couple of years saw it actually

at an event and this person was a

presenter in mock trials.

I'm told by the jury consultants

that they are highly predictive for

liability, for comparative fault, for

things like that, apportionment of fault.

But because the numbers are

usually in the 30 to 36 range,

not highly predictive for

damages need a bigger sample.

Well there is now companies out

there doing online focus groups

and although you got to keep

this to show at least PG 13

rated, I assume I had a question

of how much is a loss testicle.

A gentleman was riding his

motorcycle, we cut him off,

he rams his motorcycle right into

us, slides forward on the motorcycle,

ruptures a testicle and has to

have it removed within a month.

He's back to sexual activity.

He is claiming it doesn't look

well when he is intimate with his

partner, but he was highly

distressed about it. And to be frank,

there's not a lot of jury results out

there for a loss testicle to go and do

research on.

So what these online

systems do is they can get

250, 350 people to hear

literally like a one page

basic outline of what the case is about

and then just ask them how much does it

worth?

You give them a low number and you give

'em a high number to kind of put 'em in

a bracket and there's going to be some

people at the high number and there's

going to be some at the low.

But when you have 200 people kind

of at the top of the bell curve,

it gives you a pretty good

idea of what that's worth.

And I have found that to be very

effective for damage related,

very specific damage questions,

especially on an issue like that.

Or you can't do research in the past

verdicts to see what juries have been

doing.

Yeah, great point. I use 'em too.

I think they're very valuable.

I was skeptical initially.

I'm a nerd on this stuff.

I think you are probably too. I love

getting, this is the sciencey part, right?

We're talking about there's the

art of trial, which 100% is an art,

but the extent that you can

incorporate more science into it,

I am a fan of that. The extent

that you can get science into it,

I think that helps as opposed to

some plan. I'm the plaintiffs lawyer,

I'm just picking some number out

of the air. I've got a reason.

I know I feel comfortable with a number

because 300 people said this is the

range where you're fine with

and if you go north of that,

you're really turning people

off. If you go south of that,

you're going to get a lower verdict,

right? I can ask for too little,

I'm hurting my client because

I'm leaving money on the table.

Well, in this day of I believe high risk,

particularly since COVID for the defense

side of what the dollars of some of

these verdicts are,

sometimes a corporate or

an insurance client from my

side has to have some comfort level

before they'll take a case to trial.

And this kind of scientific approach

may give them that comfort level or may

loosen the purse strings depending on the

results that will get the case settled

and don't get rid of any risks.

So they're useful in both

ways and I'm finding,

although the professional ones not

the online one I'm talking about,

that's usually under 10

grand is my experience.

But the professional ones where you're

setting up a full blown mock trial and

you're bringing in jurors and got jury

consultants vetting the jurors to make

sure that the males to females

educated versus less educated

compares to the venue you're in.

I mean you're talking six figures.

That's a very expensive process.

Yeah. Alright, second topic. Talk to me

about your thoughts on jury selection.

So a jury selection is

something that you really

can't practice for.

You can practice your opening in front

of a mirror in front of family friends

and get feedback. You

can practice closing,

you can practice witness exams

in deposition for instance.

And I strongly encourage not the

whole deposition, but take segments.

If you're deposing a party or you're

deposing an expert practice across,

or even if it's a client and

you're asking some questions,

practice direct how to ask

proper open-ended questions

to get the information

wrong. Those things can be

practiced a room full of strangers,

some of which may want to make game of

you. They might think that will be fun.

It's hard to recreate the dynamic

of a courtroom for jury selection.

So it comes down to what can you do? Well,

don't even know if this will

show up. I've read books,

mastering voir dire.

I will tell you,

I read this probably after I tried 20

cases. I didn't agree with a lot of it,

but some of it I picked up some points.

But for somebody new maybe it's helpful.

I also have pattern voir dire questions,

which has just suggestions of

topics to hit in certain kinds of

cases. And even at my

vast age and experience,

it is good to be reminded of things

that we should be looking for.

I am not technological,

so asking about social media type things,

I'm not all that keyed into,

but these books can help.

And what that does is it creates a plan.

And that's my point is even

if you have never seen a

jury picked and you have

to go pick your first jury,

there are things out there you can read.

There are books, there are treatises.

Spend some time and look,

come up with a plan that will help give

you confidence that even if you stumble

over your questions,

you're going to get the right

topics brought out. Read the law,

it's not very much California

Code of Civil Procedure,

section two 20 to 2 34

essentially encapsulates

everything you'll need to know for

picking a jury and picking alternates.

Some of those things judges don't know.

They think the alternates are going

to go on the order. 1, 2, 3, 4, no,

the code says it's random, it's a draw.

Understand the law and it will help give

you guidelines In there it talks about

what the standards are. You're entitled

to 12 entirely impartial jurors.

And I think Kevin actually was the first

plaintiff lawyer that actually ever

used that phrase.

I use that phrase A lot of lawyers

talk about for cause challenges.

Is this a race and who's starting ahead?

And I've had judges deny my

cause challenges because of that.

So I just went straight to the law

when the law says I'm entitled to 12,

entirely impartial.

When Kevin gets somebody close, he says,

can you be entirely impartial in this

case or is this not the case for you?

And that's what I find to be one of

the best ways to get a cause challenge.

Again, I come back to, I

focus my effort in training,

although I do teach in other

places, second chairing one-on-one,

sit a lawyer down, let them watch

somebody experience and do it.

How you ask the questions,

how you react when somebody's on the

attack because they don't like you,

they don't like lawyers in general.

How you maintain your cool and your

patience and create an impression of

professionalism that the jurors

that you keep are going to remember.

All those things are important. So

plan, prepare, will help. Confidence.

One thing I will tell you is you've got

to have the right attitude going into

jury selection. You got to be

curious, find out about 'em,

act like you're interested in them.

Am liking people may be an important part.

That doesn't hurt.

Be willing to take a joke directed at you,

laugh with them and roll with

it. Got to have a thicker skin.

I once asked a juror who had been

a defendant in multiple cases,

he was a contractor. I got the

impression he wasn't loving lawyers.

So I asked him, I said, what

do you think about lawyers?

And he exploded with fire.

The other jurors in the room thought

it was hilarious, but he was furious.

His face was ready,

he was visibly angry and you just

got to stand there and take it

and then ask the follow up

question. So your feelings lawyers,

does that transfer to me?

Is that going to transfer to my client

because they're represented by me?

How do you feel about that?

And ultimately maybe this person could

still be a great juror for your side,

a juror that you're willing to

accept once you get past that anger.

Most people once they vent,

calm down and they might even appreciate

the fact that how you took it,

you might've created a relationship

there. Do you have that experience, Kevin?

Oh, a hundred percent. I mean

people want to be polite.

Jury selection is an interesting,

they're hauling these

people out of their lives,

putting 'em in this artificial atmosphere.

They've gone through metal detectors,

they're missing work, they're

missing Chuck or they're not happy.

They shouldn't be happy. I totally get it.

And so then you've got these guys that

show up in the suits and this and that

and this weird and you

stand for the judge.

It's such a weird thing and

people are reading things.

You're taking an oath and what

the hell is going on here?

And you're go in front of people and

you're going to ask me what in front of

these people. Most people don't want to.

They want to shut up and be polite

basically and try to get out of it.

That's generally what

the default position is.

And you got to be prepared to be a real

human being and connect with that person

actually like that person to get that

person to open up about what they really

feel and understand that when the

person tells you something bad,

they have permission to do that and let

everybody else don't have permission to

do that. And then you get people talking

and then you get their real thoughts

out.

I mean let's face it, we

don't get to pick the jurors,

we get to pick the jurors we get rid of.

And so our focus is more on

who's not the right juror for our

case.

You want those people expressing

their animosity towards your

One last thing on this topic that I want

to mention because it's a great way for

a young lawyer to get information before

they even stand up and ask questions,

which is juror questionnaire.

Some judges don't like them because they

build in more time to the process and

they just want to go, go, go.

But the judicial counsel has a very

basic juror questionnaire and you can

tack onto it if it's a

personal injury case,

which is what Kevin and I both

do on different sides of the bar.

But the questionnaire has an

attachment for personal injury cases

and it will give you basic information.

It's a place for them to write things

down. And what I find

is out of a group of 18,

say you may get five or six

people that talk quite a bit,

what you're not getting is all the volume

you might want from the other 12 or

13.

And with questionnaires you're getting

individualized information when they have

a chance to ponder and think and write

things down. I'm a fan of questionnaires.

I try some fairly complex, a

lot of cases involving cancer,

which is always a tough issue.

Everybody's been touched by cancer and

as somebody who may have a product that

is claimed to have caused cancer, that's

touchy. Questionnaires are wonderful,

they can really, really

just tell us what they feel.

And so you walk in armed with these

questionnaires and you can go right to it,

Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones, in your

questionnaire you told me this,

what experience do you base that

on? Where is that coming from?

How is that going to make you feel when

I represent a client that makes these

products?

I can't agree with you more so I'm

sitting here nodding the whole time.

I agree with you a hundred

percent. Alright, last topic.

No shortcuts to a good witness

exam including AI because

we've got to talk about

ai. Everybody's talking

about AI, right? Jerry,

what are the no shortcuts to a good

witness exam? Talk to me about that.

Well, I got to start with the war

story because it sets it all up.

This was fairly recently within

the last year tried a case,

personal injury case,

and the plaintiff attorney has tried

cases for 40 years, a lot of experience,

well over 50 trials and he was quite good.

Built rapport with jurors,

very good in jury selection.

And I expected him when my witnesses

were called in the plaintiff's case under

evidence code section 7, 7, 6,

that he was going to pound

me and my witnesses had

weaknesses that I expected him to exploit.

That's what you guys do and do

it very well. And each witness,

I thought it wasn't as good as I thought

it was going to be and we skated out of

there with only a little bit of

damage instead of a lot of damage.

Please tell me, this wasn't me, Jerry.

No, no, no, not the guy.

Definitely not the guy.

And this happened witness after

witness, percipient witnesses,

expert witnesses.

I felt like if a hundred percent is what

could be obtained and let's say a good

cross by any of us maybe is getting 80

or 90%, and that's a really good one.

This person was hitting

40%, so I was surprised.

Closing arguments are done, shaking hands,

thanking them for a civil trial.

Appreciate the trial like we hopefully

can do with our opponents as Kevin and I

did. He said with a big grin, he goes,

I discovered something fantastic.

It saves me so much time.

He says, I put the depo

transcripts of the witnesses,

it's chat GPT Pro.

He said,

all of my exam outlines came from ai.

And so basically he told a story

that made me think that each night he

went back after court when I was

slaving away, reading transcripts,

pouring over transcripts.

He was running it through chat GPT,

getting his outline for the next day,

going out to dinner, going to bed early,

getting a good night's sleep when

I was not. And it just clicked.

That explains it.

That's why this very experienced well

thought of lawyer wasn't killing my

witnesses like I expected it to and

it's because he took the easy way

out and he was relying on AI to

do his work for him. So that's

why this topic is no shortcut.

There is no shortcut for pouring

over depo transcripts and really

focusing on the words.

Witnesses tell you things,

but also in how they answer questions.

They often hide things.

You ask a broad question, they answer

narrow hoping you don't ask the rest.

And look,

we've all taken depos where we didn't

ask the rest because we moved on to the

next topic.

But you can even see from the way

they're phrasing answers and you

only get that when you pour

time and focus into it.

Another quick example,

this literally happened at 11 o'clock

at night on a day that I started at 4:00

AM had a full day of trial and I

had a general contracting expert

for the plaintiff on the stand

the next day talking about damage

cause and cost of repairs and this was

their big dollar guy cost of repairs is

where they were going to

put a lot of stuff in.

This was a property issue that

went into a bad faith case.

So I was trying the bad faith defense

and I thought at 11 o'clock at night,

this guy's deposition was taken twice.

The lawyer I was associating in with to

try the case with specifically

asked, are you a general contractor?

And in both transcripts he said,

I've been doing general

contracting work for over 30 years.

That attorney did not ask the

question. He did not see the sidestep.

And fortunately with a

computer at our fingertips,

I went onto the state contractor's

license board and determined that he

had been an employee working

under other licensed general

contractors working under

their licenses for years.

Obviously this was a complete surprise

at trial because the attorney working the

case up had given no hint that they

knew what was going on and I didn't know

until not even 12 hours before

the person was on the stand.

And this is where the hard work pays

off and this is why it's worthless.

This is a couple times in a career moment,

plaintiff puts on qualifications and

asks the first question that goes into a

substantive issue. I stand up and asked

to voir the witness on qualifications

and the judge gave me a look

like, you've got to be kidding,

but I had built up enough credibility.

He goes, okay, Mr. Popovich,

I'll give you a few minutes.

My first question was is you've

never been an actual licensed general

contractor. Correct? And he goes, that's

true. Now I have the judge's attention,

now we have the jury's detention and I

got to take him through the fact that

he had this job, but that

was somebody else's license.

This is where the work and the sweat

and the lack of sleep pays off.

At the conclusion of my voir dire in

front of the jury in a very grand way,

I moved to strike all of his testimony

and asked that he be prevented from

giving any opinions.

And the judge dismissed the jury and

the jurors had all this going down.

They knew drama when they saw it.

He sent 'em out in the hall and the

judge said, do you have another witness?

Plaintiff said, yes. He goes, we're

not completing this person. He goes,

I'm going to think about

this person overnight.

I'll let you know and he's going to be

back here tomorrow morning in case I let

him go home. He goes, but I'm

seriously thinking about not.

That's where it pays off. That's when

you go home and go, man, that was fun.

Oh, a hundred percent. And look, even

if the judge allowed him to testify,

what is the jury going to do

with his testimony anyway?

You've wiped him out before. He gives

his opinions. It doesn't matter.

It's almost at that point

just let him whatever.

Let him talk what he wants to talk

about. They don't care anymore.

No, they adopted the defense numbers.

So a couple of things I would say

on direct, read all the testimony,

know what exhibits you want, use,

meet with the witness ahead of time.

I am not a fan of practicing.

I'm not a fan of taking them literally

question by question. First of all,

I don't write out questions. I

write topics or points of interest.

And so that I don't even phrase my

questions the same two times in a row.

I want to talk about and remind them of

the topics that they will hear from the

plaintiff's side, from my

side, and we go through it.

It's hard to do during trial.

Yes, it sometimes has to be done,

but I like it in person. I can

do it by zoom if I have to.

But you got to do the work. Cross exams.

I'm a firm believer in start strong,

finish strong.

And you have to be able,

and this is a phrase I'm stealing

from an old timer, hall of famer,

plaintiff lawyer, you

have to sit down graceful.

Don't use a topic as your last

topic. That is in dispute,

that's going to be a prop.

There's nothing worse than getting an

objection sustained and saying, well,

your Honor, I have no further questions.

It's a horrible way to sit down.

You feel like you've just been taken to

the woodshed and be, but for cross exam,

you got to know your topic.

If it's a technical expert,

you may not have to know

everything they know, but boy,

you need to know what

they're talking about,

what your expert is going to talk about.

And you need to know the science

and you to know the medicine,

whatever we're talking about.

And if you have impeachment,

it has to be at your fingertips.

Great impeachment loses its power.

If it takes you a minute and a half to

find the depo testimony or the separate

exhibit, you need to have that

ready. And how does that all happen?

No paralegal, they can help,

but they can't put you so together that

you know exactly where everything is.

You're going to have to

do time in the materials.

You're going to have to do

time in your trial notebook.

You're going to have to

do time in your outline.

I still write my own outline and even

if it's an expert I've seen before,

I will create a new outline. I may

get some help from an old outline,

but I do not want to rely on the old

thing because things have changed.

Hey, in medicine, medicine

changes almost every day.

Things that I used to get from

medical doctors on a cross exam

I can't get now because now the

understanding of the science is a little

different. Hopefully I've given

enough examples and Kevin,

you can sure you've got examples is

there's no shortcut. It's just hard.

It's just hard. It's just hard work.

Now let me just say this and

we got to run pretty soon.

I could talk to you for two days about

trial and that wouldn't be enough.

But on the AI issue,

I a hundred percent agree with you

that you can't rely on that completely.

I would say that it can be a tool to

help you get information on this topic.

Exactly. You can run, let's say

it's a medical doctor or professor,

you can run this person through AI and

you'll find the syllabi that he tors,

he taught slides that the

doctor presented at conferences.

If those are contradictory to the

positions he's taking at trial,

there's nothing better than

confronting an expert saying,

I never do back surgery in this situation

when he authored a slide that has the

opposite thing. I mean,

impeachment is so critical,

but it's got to be important. You

see people impeach people on, oh,

you graduated from college

I mean now the jury thinks that you're

the picky jerk, but if you get a guy on,

I've never mentioned a medical school

or I've never been a joint contractor,

the impeachment has got to

be important, not picky.

Yeah.

And my negative impression from AI was

that one experience I told you about.

There's no question that it is becoming

a more and more valuable tool in

extracting useful information

from volumes of information.

And you're talking about

coming up with things.

And I will tell the listening audience

that Kevin Filet a couple of my witnesses

with old out of date website

pages that I had never

seen until I got an exhibit book and

then tried to figure out where did

these come from? And they go, oh yeah,

that was our stuff from five

years ago that you remember seen.

But Kevin had when.

The accident happened to

be fair. But okay, yes.

Happened.

I did not the archived website pages

to know what Kevin was going to

find when he found some

kind of data mining company.

I'm assuming that dug down found those

pages. But what is it? It's work.

Hard work. It's hard work. Alright, Jerry,

any last final parting words to young

or less experienced trial attorneys?

You want to words of wisdom

before we close the episode?

Come in with your eyes open that this

will be hard and for your first trial or

second, third and fourth, scary.

But it is a profession and a

task worth doing and worth doing

well, clients are going

to need it. The fact is,

the fewer and fewer trials there are,

the more and more need there is going

to be for lawyers who are willing to try

cases. If you came to my firm,

one of the things I ask is,

there's no wrong answer here,

but tell me if you want to try a

case and be honest if you don't,

because Jerry is not happy when he

is told that you want to try a case.

I'm relying on you being my second

chair and then you bag out a week before

which has happened because you just

think it's what you want to hear.

If this is what you want, there

are ways to get you there.

There are people you can talk to and yes,

it's worth doing and it can be the

most fun thing you do in your career.

Yeah, Jerry, this is awesome. Like

I said, I could talk to you forever.

Thanks for being a guest

and more importantly,

thank you for being a beacon of civility

and integrity in this profession.

I mean that you're the best I've ever

come across in terms of your comments

level is off the charts,

but your civility is too.

And you're kind of guy that we can have

lunch in the middle of the trial and

look, you're my opponent,

not my enemy man.

And I know you feel the same way

and that's just how it should be.

And I appreciate everything you've done

to teach trial and get the art of trial

out there, including this

episode and what you do.

Well, let me respond by saying, Kevin,

this is a great thing you're doing with

this podcast and hopeful we will inspire

one, two, or 20 future

trial lawyers. And if so,

then it's worth our time and in

getting into a great part of a great

profession. And I thank you for

inviting me. It was a pleasure.

It was a pleasure.

Alright, see you everybody.

Thank you for listening

to Verdict Academy.

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