Case Management

Trials are stressful. They can be made less stressful by having someone at your side who is going to make it easier for you. A good second chair is an invaluable asset. Being second chair at trial is like being a relief pitcher. You’re not going to get credit for the win or the loss, but you can absolutely affect the outcome. Here are some ways that you, in your role as second chair, can best serve your trial partner and ease her burden. Be Supportive Second chair is a support role. You need to anticipate the needs of your...

About a year into practice, I was being sent to my first solo district court trial. For those of you not practicing in Alabama, district court trials are bench trials with damages capped at $10,000.00. There is no discovery permitted. The Rules of Evidence usually get a little loosy-goosy. It’s basically the wild West. Well, I was excited about my first district court trial. It was a small truck wreck case where the Plaintiff alleged that our tractor-trailer backed into his parked vehicle at a truck stop. The driver of the tractor-trailer had a different account of events. He was...

Westlaw, Lexis, FastCase – in many legal circles these are the only acceptable avenues of legal research. Anything else is not only pedestrian but sometimes even villified. There are plenty of good lawyers who (secretly, for risk of being shamed) start many legal research projects with a simple Google search. There are several good reasons for it, too. Google searches are free. It’s usually the most practical place to start for complex topics or subjects with which the attorney has only limited familiarity. You can user broader search terms and still pull up useful information, because the algorithms are smarter...

We were recently interviewing a pool of candidates for an associate position at our firm. After all the interviews, we discussed the various interviewees. For one of them, one of the first concerns was this: “I’m not sure they’d know when to stop arguing in front of the judge.”((While I do not endorse they use of “they” to refer to a singular person (even though I recognize that it is gaining increasing acceptance), I found it to be the best way to conceal the gender of the individual being referred to.)) And you know what, that can be a real problem!...

On Monday mornings at the outset of trial, there are many things that the lawyers and judge need to accomplish outside the hearing of the jury panel. Usually, much of this happens before the panel is seated in the courtroom. But often times, each potential juror is stuck with significant downtime while the lawyers and court handle procedural issues. During one of such session, in which the lawyers for both sides were conferring with the judge in a rural county in central Alabama, a potential juror popped up and began walking toward the back doors of the courtroom. The judge...

I wait in the courtroom along with fifty other lawyers for the judge to call my case. I hear him say, “Plaintiff v. Big Box Store,” and make my way to the bench. Plaintiff’s lawyer isn’t here, so I inform the court I represent Big Box Store. Then the wheels came off. Judge: “Mr. Richter, let me tell you [I begin to sweat because his tone and demeanor are not friendly and he clearly intends to make a scene] what happened to me the last time I was in Big Box Store.” JWR: “Yes, sir?” [As if I had any...