Archive

Once a month, I send out an email to the folks who subscribe to my email list. A few months ago, I noticed a particular auto-responder that I got from one of the lawyers who subscribes to the list: I only check my email twice each day.  My goal is to reply to yours within one business day of receipt.  If you need a quicker reply, please contact my office manager at [email address].     If you are a client please log into MyCase using your login credentials and send me a message there, and please remember to copy...

In recent years, civil discourse has gone the way of the dodo bird. We seem societally incapable of contending with anyone who does not share our analysis or opinion. Rather than dealing with the merits of our opponent's argument, we are more likely to demean them and cast aspersions. Politics and social media serve up prime examples of these behaviors. But they don't end there. It has migrated into the manner in which we handle our cases. By its very nature, the law is a contentious business. But that doesn't mean we can't deal with each other in a civil...

A few years ago in a small county in eastern Alabama where there lies a notorious stock car superspeedway, we were trying a case. Our truck driver had been traveling behind a school bus, when the bus stopped at a set of railroad tracks. Our driver also stopped. The bus started forward again, then immediately stopped at a second set of railroad tracks. The truck driver did not stop this time. He had forgotten about the second set of tracks. Several years later, some of the children riding the bus filed suit against the driver and trucking company. We did...

Once upon a time, if you needed to get from Houston to Chattanooga, you'd get out your trusty Rand McNally roadmap and plot your course. Using various waypoints, you'd figure out how to get from your launch point to your destination. An opening statement should be used in just the same way. Your opening statement should be a roadmap for the jury that gets them from the launch point (i.e., they've been seated on the jury panel and know almost nothing about the case) to the destination (i.e., entering a favorable verdict for your client). The waypoints are the evidence...

Your opening statement should set the tone for what the jury can expect from you for the rest of trial. Tone has several dimensions. Disposition - whether your presentation of the case will be aggressive or agreeable. Demeanor - are your affable and charming or all business? Delivery - whether you're engaging or monotonous. How I present my case and myself to the jury changes with each trial and is dependent upon the facts and my arguments. In January, we tried a case in which the parties agreed about how the car-motorcycle wreck had happened. We agreed what the plaintiff's injuries...

"I still think it would be pretty awesome if we, someday, did a writing blog thingy by posting either paragraphs, or a short legal writing prompt, and saw the various different things that people did with them, and maybe descriptions of why." This suggestion by one of the guys on LawyerSmack sparked a discussion about doing a writing exercise where we would take a fact pattern or a pre-existing document, create our own (better) variations on it, and share it with one another. So I appropriated the idea and sat down one night to punch out a fact pattern for us. For...

If voir dire is important because it's the first opportunity the jury has to get to know you, opening statements are important because they are your first opportunity to tell the jury what your case is about. If you do it effectively, you can clue the jury in on the important facts and evidence while capturing their attention. But if you're ineffective? Well, you will set the tone for a boring experience and lose a valuable chance to enable the jury to connect with your client. Today, we are going to look at three practical considerations as you are working...