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Tetragrammaton Tetragrammaton Tetragrammaton Tetragrammaton In any case or any battle, there's just always a lot of ups and downs.
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It's like, you know, people say don't watch the stock price.
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It's hard to find a clear road all the time.
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It's not as if day one the truth comes out. It is a battle.
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It is a war and unless you keep going and going.
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But I think ultimately what I what I believed you know, as as I'm graduating law school, which is that the truth would come out in a courtroom, if ever. I think that's right. >> Does it? I think so.
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If the system works right and the people at battle are doing it the right way, it does.
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Now, there's parts of this country and the system that are plagued by maybe all of it, racism and all sorts of other issues that are endemic in the system, maybe in any society.
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So, I don't want to say that it works perfectly cuz of course it's it doesn't, but you know, if I'm handling a case, there's a there's enough attention on it and I'm I'm locked in, I think the truth's going to come out.
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When there's attention on a case, where would it come from? Natural forces at work.
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You know, some people and some issues are more interesting than others and so people gravitate towards them. Mhm.
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And then over time, you know, they'll pay more attention to my cases cuz they're my cases.
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If a case is uh highly publicized case, does it change anything?
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It changes a lot because everyone is a little bit more on edge, especially if they haven't been there before.
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So, you'll see, I mean, almost always early on in cases I have when there's attention on it.
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A judge makes a the wackiest ruling of the judge's career.
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And I don't think they're doing it on purpose.
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I tend to just describe stress to the situation.
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The stress, the the lights, the not knowing how to deal with it.
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Somebody who used to work with me used to say that anytime I would walk into some random courthouse, the judges would either be way too differential and nice to me or wanting to start a fight with me the moment I walked in for no apparent reason.
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And you would just see a little What if a dichotomy?
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What would cause one versus the other?
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You know, maybe respect and fear are at the same, you know, point and they they don't know how to interact or deal with it or you know, maybe the reputation even is one of respect and fear.
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I don't even mean that in a positive way.
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I just mean they don't know what to expect.
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They don't know how I'm going to interact with them and the system.
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Am I there to throw my weight around?
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Am I there to, you know, think that I'm just going to get away with whatever I'm going to get away with because I think I I should.
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And so that tension, you know, causes them to act in different ways. Makes it interesting.
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Is it adversarial in a friendly way in the courtroom or is it different than that?
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It's maybe about as friendly it is, you know, on a sports field.
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Not quite a an actual war where you're trying to make it so that somebody doesn't leave alive.
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But I think it's you know, it's a sport with higher stakes.
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So, there's going to be sharp elbows to some degree and people, you know, again, react to those situations in different ways.
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Some people don't know how to shake hands after a game. Yeah.
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Can you shake hands after a game?
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I can shake hands after a game, but I've had a lucky run, so I haven't had to Yeah.
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I haven't had to face, you know, I haven't sat in a courtroom with a friend and watch them be taken away.
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You say lucky, how much of it do you think is luck versus something else?
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I think you make your own luck. Okay. So.
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How much of the job is storytelling? A lot of it.
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You know, you're a communicator.
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You're trying to take information and facts, distill them into a way that makes sense. Marry them to the law.
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I don't get to decide the law. The law is the law. Right.
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And then package it in a way that you can convince a group of people that you're right.
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That the truth that you're telling is the correct is the answer to the puzzle.
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What's coming from the other side?
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How often does it feel disingenuous?
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I think it depends on the arc of the career.
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I mean, you know, when you're a prosecutor and you're all revved up about whatever the justice is you're seeking and the other side is trying to play trickster.
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That's how you view a trickster. Mhm.
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Not a test on the system. I see.
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That's how you see the world or at least I saw the world when I was 25.
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A little bit, a little bit.
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I think I grew past that phase very quickly because I think much of my leaning is that people are more complicated than the worst thing they've ever done.
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That people deserve second chances.
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That the system needs checks and balances.
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So, because I was leaning that way, that that notion at 25 disappeared quickly. Yeah.
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On the other side of it, you know, it has not dissipated as quick.
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The sort of prosecutor looking to, as I say amongst friends, you know, update their LinkedIn profile or whatnot by taking somebody out or by bringing a case that's on the margins of criminal law.
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You know, some lawyers are trying to get rich.
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Some lawyers are trying to get famous.
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Whatever that, you know, I'm still more jaded calmer than I would have been at 25 in some respects, but I'm still a little cynical about the whole thing. Mhm.
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You think calmer from experience or something else?
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Yeah, some of it's experience, some of it's just age. >> Mhm.
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I've said, you know, if I looked back at 25 cross-examining a witness, it was very breathless.
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I mean, I had so much energy, so high octane. Yeah.
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I used to be able to go 21 straight hours without without a beat.
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Now, no, I mean, and it's how much of that is hopefully developing some grace and wisdom or what >> What not?
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Some of it is just biological, I think, that that just >> Would you say you're better now than you were at 25, even though then you had a little more energy? For sure. So. For sure. It works out. Exactly. Yeah.
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How much research do you do before a case? Endless.
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As much as there is to possibly do. >> how that works. How do you start?
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So, if there's a subject matter, I have to learn everything about like the setting, the subject matter. And I do everything.
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I want to know whether it was hot or cold out.
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I want to know what the wind is like.
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I want to know if it's a movie set, how do people interact on a movie set?
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And if it's an old town, how do people interact in that town? Do people tip? Do they use cash?
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Do they use credit cards? How do they interact?
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Does everybody know each other?
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Would they be saying hi to each other?
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I'm trying to basically visualize like The whole world.
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The whole world in which the case exists.
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And it how it would have been if I had been there or myself. >> Mhm.
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I remember early when I was a prosecutor, you know, we used to go for for drinks after cases, and I used to sort of say, you know, unless you've been drinking in a bar and seen a bar fight, you would never be able to be as good at trying a bar fight case as if you had been watching a bar fight. >> Yeah.
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And from early on, I always thought that some real world experience and the ability for me to picture what actually happened was a special ability, if there was one. Mhm.
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And so, that's the setting and then in terms of everybody, I'm trying to figure out, you know, who they are and what makes them tick.
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And psychology is sort of where it begins for me and the main thrust of it.
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So, what kind of person is this? How are they built?
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What are they likely, you know, influenced by?
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And why would they do or say or think the things they were doing and saying?
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And then as they retell it, what's intentional, what's motivated, what's unintentional, and trying to sort of piece that together.
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And the more nuanced and I can get, the more gray in terms of the reflection of what I'm watching, Mhm.
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the more special the unraveling of what really happened is going to be and the harder it is to prepare for. Yeah.
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So, if I'm asking somebody questions and I'm getting at stuff inside of them that they have not fully grasped.
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>> Yeah, which is probably often.
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People don't know themselves very well.
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I think that it is and it's it's definitely played out that way, I think, in cases and you know, in some of the cases that never got that that far, frankly.
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But, that's what I'm trying to do.
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And you just it's very hard for a witness to prepare for that or anybody to prepare the witness for that because, you know, the witness wouldn't even shared that with the lawyer trying to prepare them for a question that's never been asked in a courtroom since the beginning of time.
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Can you think of a time where you took an approach on a case that you're sure no other lawyer would have taken?
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In every case I've ever handled, I think that there are nuances of the psychological approach that I take that no lawyer ever would have done. Yeah.
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Now, I'm not saying that like the macro defense wouldn't have been whatever the same >> Understood.
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>> macro defense, but they would not have thought about the way it all fit together the same way.
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So, if you have two different people with very different psychological makeups and they both perform the same action, that would be different for you because one of them is doing it for one reason, one's doing it for another reason, so it's a different story. Is that right? Right.
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As long as there's a thread between the two.
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You know, a person can drop a a cup of water. Yes.
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And one person could be built one way. Yes.
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And and be very different in Freudian terms than the other person.
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But they both still just, you know, humans drop glasses of water.
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And you have to make sure that you also remember that that some things are not data points.
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Some things are just part of existence. It just happens.
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Do you think that your little bit of time as a prosecutor helped you as an advocate for your clients? For sure.
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And it's where I got the the training wheels off the bike.
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And so, you know, people always ask me, you know, well, what should I do?
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How do How do you become a trial lawyer? All these things.
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And one of the things is you got to learn the ABCs.
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And if you're really good at the ABCs, you can spend less time thinking about it, like anything else. Mhm.
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So, when a great basketball player dribbles a basketball, they're not thinking about it.
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They're not thinking about anything other than watching everything else. Being in the moment. Correct. Mhm.
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And do you feel like that when you're in the courtroom?
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Like nowhere else I'll ever be. In the moment.
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Like nothing else that nothing I could even describe to you. Yeah. Yeah.
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When it's less of a human situation, less about place, temperature, nature of the town, and if it's more like a corporate thing where it's on a technical issue, do you have to learn the technical issue? Yes.
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That's the playing field then. Right.
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But even if it's a technical issue with emails and everything's really emails, emails can come to life, too, if you understand that the personalities of the players is humans behind it all, you know. >> Yeah.
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Do you ever recommend not to go to court. Sure.
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What would be the situation that would recommend not going to court? There's no story here.
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And when I say story, there's no tone to that word story.
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There's no version of events here where I like the way that it packages for you.
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Yeah, well, you can tell the story in support of your client. >> Correct.
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And I won't go into court and I mean, people can scoff at this what they want, but I don't go into court and say things that aren't true. Yeah. It has to be true.
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It has to be my truth, but it has to be true.
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And so if the person comes in and wants to you know, spin up a story that is just you know, I wasn't in the town that night. Right.
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Then that's not going to work.
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And other people have all sorts of other reasons where there are collateral consequences for them going all the way that I just don't think makes sense.
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And people who come to sit with me and meet with me sometimes follow your advice and sometimes they don't. It's just that simple. Mhm.
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Are there any that you work with that don't follow your advice?
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I mean, most don't follow my advice all the time.
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And to be honest with you, arrogant or not, it surprises me. Yeah.
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Cuz I give them a speech and I say and I tell them Mhm.
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I'd say pretty much and there's 200 I can show you that a lot of people know about.
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There's another 2,000 nobody knows about other than me and the people very close to me. Yeah.
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And I can show you a data set of 2,200 and there should be nothing you follow other than what I'm about to tell you. Yeah.
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>> And I know how arrogant it sounds.
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But I'm like, how many times have I done this?
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How many times have you done this? >> Yeah.
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And I can be objective and I can play doctor. Yeah.
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And I'm not as close to it and I'm not emotive about it. Just trust me.
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And even then sometimes people are are friends, great relationships with brilliant people.
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Sometimes they still don't listen.
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So >> And if they don't listen, will they find someone else or will they ask you to do it even though you wouldn't suggest it?
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Some combination and sometimes they will use a straw man to try to get me to Mhm. Right?
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There's one person in particular, one entity in particular I should say, a company. Mhm.
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Whereas if I give them the correct, but not wanted advice, >> Yes.
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they will say, "Well, you know what?
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I'm just going to, you know, I'm sure, you know, Bob, Susan, and Tony will come in here and tell me exactly, you know, effectively what they're telling me."
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I'm saying, "Okay, go for it."
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Because you have to digest so much material for every case, have you found any helpful techniques that just make that easier?
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Well, everyone's memory works a little bit differently.
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And I'm effectively memorizing a bunch of stuff as I'm preparing. >> Mhm.
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And I know how to make myself memorize things.
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And I use a disorganized method and an organized method, and I think that disorganization can help memory and organization can help memory.
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So, I will have posted notes all over, if you walked into my room, just they're everywhere. >> Mhm.
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And then I can kind of piece them together, and people would say, "Well, that's disorganized.
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How do you make sure that you don't" But by having to keep track of them and seeing how they work together, >> for you? it works for me.
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And then I will then distill them into my yellow notepad and more coherent, organized structural thoughts. >> Mhm.
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But I have to kind of break things apart and play with them.
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I'm experimenting as I go. Mhm.
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Just sort of say, "Well, does this all fit together?
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And what if the witnesses go in a different order? Will it still work?
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Will the will the thing come to life the same way?"
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How much do you know in advance in terms of who will be the witnesses, what order they go in, how much of it can you control, how much of it is out of your control?
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I mean, a lot of it's out of your control, but but as time goes on, you kind of know certain certainties. Right?
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You know, of the 15 people that may come into the movie, you know seven of them almost certainly.
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And you know the order, you know, two-thirds of the order, more or less.
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You could make an educated guess. >> Mhm.
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And then of the other eight, half of them will come, half of them won't.
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So, you've got also make a a judgment on the return on your time of preparing for that which will not come.
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Or figuring it out and then if the movie plays out with these 11 characters versus these nine versus these 13 or in a different order, how is that going to appear? Yeah.
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And that changes things dramatically.
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Well, if they call three witnesses in a row that are very Eddie steady, very sort of buttoned-up people, >> Yeah.
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then for the first two or three days of the trial, no one's going to think of this was a wacky crew of misfits.
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They're going to think these are straight-up buttoned-up people. Yeah. Right?
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Whereas if the first witness they call is flakey or flighty, then it's like, well, maybe they did lose the paperwork. I see.
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You know, I mean, it and so the order of it will change the way that I'm constructing it.
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>> Does it always go prosecution goes first?
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Um yes, they have the burden of proof, they go, they lay out their case, then it's the defense case.
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And in civil trials, it's pretty much that way, too.
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Let's talk about that burden of proof because we've grown up with this idea of burden of proof, innocent until proven guilty, yet with the media today, it seems like that's not how things work.
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As soon as somebody gets accused of anything, they're treated as guilty in the public.
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Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful that, you know, good advocacy and and watching some cases go the way that they went leaves some imprint in people's mind that maybe I don't have it the right way, but if the allegation coupled with a little bit of corroboration, boy, does the prosecution, and I'm using prosecution to mean basically prosecution and a plaintiff's lawyer, anyone trying to set out to prove something. Yeah.
16:49
Boy, are they are they 90% of the way there. Yeah, seems like that. It seems unfair, really. It is unfair. It seems unfair.
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Do you get to see all of the witnesses for the prosecution in deposition beforehand? >> No. Really? None of them.
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And this is I think a very interesting point that I don't know that everybody knows and something that I like.
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I think it works to my advantage, but no, In civil cases, you get to depose the witnesses.
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In criminal cases, in almost no state in the United States, do you get to depose the other side?
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So, the first time you're ever speaking to these people is on the stand.
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Right, which some people might think works to a good questioner's advantage. Yeah.
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They've never seen your pitch.
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They've never seen Now, they can study, they can try to prepare, but they can't prepare the same way as if they had spent 8 hours in a room with you before.
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com/tetra and get started today.
19:17
How much do people change when they're on the stand versus in a room or in deposition even?
19:26
Like in a podcast times three, because they know that people are paying attention.
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Again, higher profile case, higher stakes.
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Witnesses are over prepared, so they get more rigid.
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They start practicing their answers.
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People think that that doesn't look like it's practiced.
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It looks practiced to me. Yeah.
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And they're just going to get tighter.
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And when they get tighter, they look less natural.
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We arrived at the location at 9:05 a. m. Yeah. Okay? Yeah, how do you know? >> Okay. Okay.
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Would you say how do you know or not?
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No, I mean that's not an important enough >> ridiculous.
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>> You can't jump on everybody.
19:56
No, it sound it sounds like you read that in in your memo, not in your mind. Right. Right.
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And so, if I harped on every little thing that I saw with the witness, >> Yeah.
20:06
my cases would take years. >> Yeah, yeah, okay.
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>> So, you got to pick and choose a little bit.
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Not everything speaks to some higher, you know?
20:13
But if you wanted to make a point out of that, you know, if I needed to go backwards a little bit to go forward, you could go back and just sort of say, "You know, I just want to talk to you for a second about what leads you to give your very first answer when you got on the witness stand, right?
20:27
You're not sitting here sort of closing your eyes, remembering something, and just trying to to do your best for this jury."
20:32
I don't What do you mean? So, "No, no, no.
20:34
You reviewed paperwork, right?
20:36
And the paperwork told you 9:05 a. m. , right?
20:38
So, all you're doing is you're the guy reading your own paperwork. Isn't that right? You know?
20:45
And then if you think that that's going to either make a point that matters >> Yeah. or rattle them." Yeah.
20:51
How important is it that the jury likes you?
20:55
It's important they respect me.
20:55
I'm not I'm foolish enough to think, you know, everyone's going to like me and everyone's going to take to my personality, but they have to believe that I am credible.
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They can't hate me so much they can't believe I'm credible.
21:08
Is there ever a fear of going too hard on someone on the stand?
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Yes, you can't be aggressive with a kind of a witness where I'm going to look aggressive.
21:19
It could turn off the jury even if the person is being flaky.
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You have to be able to change your speed and your pitch and your whatever to the witness.
21:29
So if there's an 80-year-old grandma who's a lady who is, you know, cooking in the kitchen, you can't, you know, go in there and start screaming at them.
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Whereas there's there's some slick character that seems like he's trying to deceive everybody even when he's ordering coffee, you can go more aggressively at him.
21:46
It doesn't mean that the grandma isn't lying. But what why would she?
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And what what does she have to gain?
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And how do you unpeel that?
21:54
And we have to know the imprint of the psychology on the person viewing it, right?
21:58
Which is that we are making knee-jerk assessments of people every single day and every single way.
22:06
And so if that witness is is a hero, right?
22:09
I mean, I've crossed heroes.
22:12
You know, if they're a hero and you start going right at them, you're trying to beat up a hero. You can't do that.
22:17
How different are juries?
22:19
They're very different based on location just like, you know, 12 people in New York City are different from 12 people in Santa Fe with almost no overlap.
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I will say that when you have 12, the combination of viewpoints, that's why the diversity of viewpoints is so important, hopefully forms a reasonable person based on 12 experiences and 12 viewpoints.
22:40
In some way, are you also an advocate for the jury?
22:46
Yes, in so far as I again, I want them to know that I want them to know what really happened. Right?
22:53
So if they're there and I'm trying to say, "Listen, I've been living this movie for 9 months. Just come with me."
22:59
And you're going to learn what happened.
23:00
So yeah, I am trying to which is why I don't you know, I don't think I'm very I'm not objection heavy.
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I'm not blocking evidence heavy.
23:07
I'm not you know, I'm sort of like no, no, no, let it in.
23:10
That's educational in some way for them. Correct.
23:14
Tell me about when the aha moment comes.
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You're doing research and you come to okay, I know my approach.
23:23
Does that happen early in the process?
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Does it happen late in the process? Does it ever change? All of the above.
23:29
And and again, there was there was like, you know, 18 different ah-has that have to come together to make one of these sort of resounding >> I see. victories.
23:38
You know, the jury is not coming back in 40 minutes in a case you shouldn't have had any chance in unless you found like 18 aha moments. >> Yeah.
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Because the evidence would have been so strong that in order to separate yourself from that blinding evidence, you needed to have many different things.
23:55
It wasn't just simple enough that, you know, one you know, in the one witness case where there's no corroboration, where there's some it looks like the guy outside of the motel. Yeah.
24:04
Sure, you can have one moment where you just destroy that witness and the thing falls.
24:08
And I could look at the paperwork and say, wait a second. Right?
24:12
And there are these cases.
24:12
I mean, a lot of the cases of wrongful convictions in this country was one witness says the guy that they see, cross-racial identification outside of the motel in 11 seconds in the dark was the guy sitting there and they go away.
24:27
But if I see paperwork like that and I see a case like that, I don't I don't get so lucky with my cases to have a case that falls apart so so easily.
24:34
But then yeah, then you can have one moment where you say there's no chance that is going to survive. Mhm.
24:39
But those are the cases that to the degree I've had those kinds of cases, they never even get to the the verdict.
24:46
What's the most witnesses you've had in a case?
24:50
Witnesses as in people that have been spoken to well over a hundred.
24:53
Witnesses that end up coming into the court more like 30. 30 is a lot. Yeah, it's a lot.
24:58
You know, some of them break down into less important, less controversial.
25:02
All right, there could be five that are somewhat, you know, just to get in a piece of evidence and there could be five that, you know, I mean, there are many witnesses I won't have a single question for.
25:12
You can't, unless the the theory of the of your case is that it's all one big conspiracy, they can't all be lying unless they're all lying for a reason.
25:19
So, you can't also go at everybody the same speed. Right?
25:23
It has to be that a lot of these people are just good, normal, hard-working people and the jury can compare that's what a real witness looks like and that's what somebody trying to fool you looks like.
25:33
Do you look forward to going to court? Yes.
25:35
I mean, I I wish I didn't, but I do. I do love it. Well, that's great.
25:38
I think it's great that you do.
25:40
That you found the perfect job.
25:44
It seems like a high-stress situation.
25:48
And if you thrive going into that high-stress situation, that seems like a positive. It it is.
25:53
The having too many problems on one's shoulders at all times for too many decades, I don't know is a is a good thing.
25:59
But the actual moment as I'm walking into courtroom is one of relaxation, joy, intensity, all wrapped up together.
26:09
>> Relaxation is in there? Is in there, for sure. >> that.
26:12
I wouldn't have guessed that.
26:12
Yeah, it's just like go cuz you're finally there.
26:16
There's nothing left to do but to go. Right?
26:18
And so, it's like taking a test where you know that You've studied.
26:22
You know all the answers.
26:25
>> I know I it's it well enough thought through in my head that I I think I'm coming out ahead.
26:30
Yeah, and in some ways you get to get it over with.
26:32
You don't have to keep thinking about it.
26:33
Yeah, I think that's part of it, too.
26:35
And it's just a a lot of it's just adrenaline, honestly.
26:36
I am just as hopped up as I would be for like a sporting event. Yeah. Right?
26:41
It's just it's very adrenaline-based.
26:43
Can you let go of all the information after the case? Yes.
26:47
In fact, I I don't let go of the adrenaline, but I that takes a few weeks. But the facts, yes.
26:53
I mean, I always remember some stuff about each case, but I think I'm intentionally, frankly, washing my brain of it.
27:00
It seems like that would make sense.
27:02
There's so much volume of information that you're taking in all of the time that if you don't get rid of some, I don't know how there'd be room for new stuff to come in.
27:10
>> I'm not doing it brick by brick thinking it through, but I but I do let it wash wash away.
27:14
How different are judges from case to case?
27:19
They're they're pretty different.
27:19
Like I like I mentioned earlier, we I have or the people around me, I don't want to just put it on me, have noticed the pattern of some of the dichotomy I described.
27:27
So, I see some similar things where even other judges will say to me, "Oh, you know, so-and-so never gets like that, but you know, I think you're you're making them a little a little nervous or they don't know which way you're going ever."
27:41
And you know, some judges but until the third witness comes, they don't get into their own.
27:46
I mean, I've had trials that started with with a judge interrupting almost every question I asked because they basically they wanted to know where I was going before I got there. How How can that be? >> anxiousness.
27:56
And how do they know if I'm doing it in a different way and I'm doing it in a way where I'm not revealing my hand, how do they They would say, "How did they know I was going to get to something relevant?"
28:04
If I'm if I'm asking questions about 905 and the and the Mambo book, why is that relevant?
28:09
So, if they're very tight and anxious and they haven't seen my pitch before they start interrupting interrupting interrupting.
28:16
By the third witness when they go, "Whoa, I get it.
28:18
Something is about to happen here."
28:22
They will then go back to, you know, normal judge school and be closer to each other than they are different.
28:25
Are there any judges who are just like adversarial towards you? You'd have to ask them. Okay.
28:31
Do you believe there are any?
28:33
No, and I don't harbor such Great.
28:36
I I I hope that if any of them were ever asked about you know, when I'm done doing this, they would all say, you know, more positive things than negative.
28:48
How often is the trial about the actual case versus an excuse to target someone?
28:55
I mean, again, just in in in my view that everything is pretty gray out there.
29:01
They're not picking people off the street like a rendition and then coming up with a crime, but some combination of forces allows on the outskirts of criminal law, you know, a lot of people would come into the vacuum of it.
29:13
And certain circumstances and situations make somebody a shinier target than if they're a little shinier, then the crime can be a little less bad and still cause them to get caught up in the vacuum. Mhm.
29:25
And so, I think some of these things are combinations where it takes a bit of a perfect storm to cause it to happen and a perfect a a perfect unraveling for it to unravel.
29:36
Do business competitors ever go after their competitors who are extremely successful just to try to take out the competition? Every hour of every day.
29:49
Every minute of every day. >> Yeah.
29:50
So, that's not about the law, that's about trying to get this guy, finding a way to get this guy.
29:58
Listen, jealousy is a is one of these driving psychological motivations that we probably don't talk about enough. Yeah.
30:06
And just greed or whatever that is to take out the competitor, of course, that is Now, now, the competitor who is doing the action it would say, "Well, but he's a bad actor." Yeah.
30:15
And the answer then could be, well, maybe from your lens he's a bad actor, but you want him to be a bad actor.
30:21
Tell me about the positions.
30:24
I don't like them as much because I don't want to show my hand, but obviously I as I'm pouring through the history of the case and the history of the people, I read every word, but I almost wish that the deposition is not a good deposition.
30:38
Cuz then they won't know what's coming. Yeah.
30:39
If they knew perfectly what was coming, they you sit in a room with a bunch of lawyers and suits on and try to pivot around it. Right.
30:44
But that can work out, too, cuz then they they pivot themselves right into back into a wall.
30:50
Tell me about law school.
30:52
Feels like a very long time ago. Mhm. Um good experience. Loved it. Yeah, I did love it.
30:57
You know, I I was always curious, and I sort of showed up there a little out of the blue in my own mind.
31:04
But I didn't intend to go to law school, and it kind of happened quick.
31:07
You just go take a test, and you're there.
31:09
There, you're thinking Wow, I'm here, you know.
31:11
But it wasn't natural for me to go be a entry-level person on Wall Street or a whatever I could have done in an alternative world.
31:22
How did you pick law school if that was not the track you were on? People suggested it. Mhm. People suggested it.
31:28
I loved A Few Good Men and My Cousin Vinny. Right. Yeah.
31:30
So, I was going to ask you about your favorite courtroom movies. Are those two?
31:35
>> Well, there has been very I mean, no offense to those Yeah.
31:37
who have made them or been in them in the last 20 years, but I I actually think that they very much trailed off or I understood how it all worked. >> Yeah.
31:45
But A Few Good Men and My Cousin Vinny, I think about.
31:47
And so, I think that they predisposed me.
31:48
And I was always a little bit of a justice-seeker, underdog-rooter, or, you know, injustice-perceiver. Mhm.
31:56
And so, the combination of those tendencies, you know, I was working in the hospital at the time, and they were like, "I mean, you're no scientist, and you're very impatient.
32:04
Are you really going to go 7 years ago to medical school?" Yeah. Right.
32:08
And again, the entry-level job isn't because, you know, too proud to do an entry-level job.
32:11
Those are some of the most important jobs at the hospital, for sure, and then in many fields.
32:15
It's just impatience, probably.
32:18
I don't know that that would have been the perfect role for me, frankly.
32:19
So, I mean, it's easy to say now, but if you go from law school to 24, 25, and you're a prosecutor, when you're a prosecutor, sure, you have bosses, but you're very much in charge of your own cases.
32:31
It is extreme autonomy, extreme.
32:35
You're always then pushing the curve of what you're doing from the beginning.
32:39
And if that excites you and the more important but some could say mundane roles of an entry-level person in any profession would not have excited you.
32:47
It allows you to push the gas further.
32:51
Do you think law school now is the same as it was when you went? I really have no idea.
32:54
At the time, you know, it was very Socratic, at least Harvard was. And so, I liked that. I liked the debating. I enjoyed class.
33:02
I enjoyed, you know, super smart fellow students and professors you know, batting around and thinking through ideas and you know, I liked it and it was fun.
33:11
I mean, we were all together living in the dorm room and life was great.
33:28
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34:47
LMNT How do you think doing this job has changed you as a person?
35:00
That's a complicated question.
35:00
The parts of the sort of justice seeking, the time in the courtroom have made me, you know, evolve and deeper and given me something important to do and principle to do that I'm happy that I am doing, I think is important.
35:18
I think is somewhat unique. Maybe fully unique.
35:21
And that's given me purpose and purpose is one of the most important things.
35:27
And I've been thinking about this a lot because, you know, you get older.
35:28
And so, you know, it causes you to reflect a little bit.
35:33
And I just think there's a cost to everything.
35:36
Yeah, there's just a cost to everything. >> Time, really.
35:38
It's time, it's stress, it's battle scars, it's you know, if you want to fly high your wings will constantly be shot at or singed or whatever.
35:47
And it And you're less on the ground smelling the roses if you're always up up there in the mountains.
35:52
And I think there's been a cost to that with with me and for me.
35:56
How would you say the stress affects you?
36:01
You know, it doesn't it as I described walking into a courtroom, it doesn't affect me in the sort of the moment.
36:05
I just think that it is it just can wear you down over time. Yeah.
36:11
And it sounds corny, but I don't know if it's corny.
36:13
It's just I don't like separate my problems from their problems.
36:17
I'm not going to say that I am quite at the level of trying to find a way to solve something as the person whose life or business is on the line but it is too close for comfort. Yeah.
36:30
And so, I have basically been through, right?
36:33
If you watch somebody on trial, I actually tried a case of a very close friend, and I got to watch him and his extended family, his grandmother, and everybody come to court every single day.
36:41
And I watched for 6 weeks as they got older, the way a president would. Yeah.
36:48
And if I am that tied to their fate, physically, psychologically, I mean, even just I am waiting in the waiting room as if it was Yeah. my family member. I understand.
36:58
And and I would say one trial changes somebody's DNA and complexion forever. And I've had a hundred.
37:06
And so, yeah, I just think it's it's scar tissue.
37:13
Does the story change in the courtroom?
37:17
You mean from what I expected to be going in?
37:18
Yeah, you go in with a a plan. >> a a lot.
37:21
I mean, you know, we don't go from the the halls of a hospital to outer space, but when something turns differently or witness appears differently, I mean, I will have a plan to go after witness and watch them appear and appear differently.
37:38
Or watch the other side, and I don't know what they're planning.
37:39
Watch the other side pull or change a door or whatever.
37:42
And being able to adjust on the fly is one of the most important >> an example of an extreme unexpected something that happened on the stand that led you to change direction?
37:52
Well, I mean, I remember one trial was a corporate dispute where they intentionally called the first witness who was a 70-year-old female, small in personality, small in frame, you know, who was just there, who was the they called first intentionally so that I would skip over them.
38:16
So, they would get their story out without having to deal with me for the first day, okay? Very interesting.
38:19
But they coached the witness too much.
38:21
And I picked up on patterns an hour in.
38:26
So, what would have been, in this particular case, what they expected to be a 30-minute cross-examination, which I would have frankly expected to be 30 minutes, went on for 3 days.
38:36
To the point that by the end of the second day, a trial that we should have never been able to even have a chance of winning was already won.
38:43
Because the amount of coaching and it just unraveled.
38:47
They were vulnerable to that very cross, because they were never prepared for that cross.
38:51
And because they were such a nice person, they were able to feed information through them. Yeah.
38:57
>> And so, it just kind of exploded on them.
38:59
Because the person was overly scripted, when you went off script, they didn't know what to do.
39:06
Not only did they not know what to do, they were readily available to me to tell the jury that they had been told exactly what to say. Yeah.
39:12
That Not none of it was true, but that they were putting their finger on the scale.
39:16
That basically And that then by the time that was done, you start looking over at the table of lawyers that put this witness up to this. Case was over.
39:26
You start with an opening statement? Yep. How scripted is it?
39:31
Is it an outline or a script?
39:34
It's closer to a script than an outline because an outline suggests like I'm trying to hit these eight points and be done. >> Yeah.
39:43
And it's it's a very short script because the jury can't follow too much. Okay?
39:50
And I don't want to show too much.
39:52
>> Is the shorter the better, would you say? All things equal. Yeah. Do you memorize it?
39:59
If I didn't have my notebook, it's memorized, but I'm glancing down. Okay. It's not full memorized.
40:03
It's It's memorized to the extent that I could do it without without notes, but it wouldn't come out the same way.
40:08
Is there ever improvisation added? Definitely.
40:14
In the opening, there hasn't been that much action. Splashes here and there. >> Right.
40:17
>> And I'm also, if I'm playing defense in this, I'm hearing a few new things as they give their opening. Mhm.
40:21
So, there'll be splashes, tweaks, read-the-room kind of stuff.
40:24
Not wholesale going to change.
40:26
Uh unlikely to wholesale change at that time. And closing statements.
40:30
I think about that as soon as I figure out what happened. Really? From the beginning? >> and work backwards. >> Before the trial?
40:36
Way before the trial and way before the opening. Wow.
40:39
Everything else is a pawn leading towards the submission.
40:41
That's really interesting. Yeah.
40:43
So, I'm thinking this is how it's going to end because this is what really happened. >> Yes.
40:47
>> How do I get myself there? Yeah, yeah.
40:50
That's the first thing I'm thinking about once I figure out what happened.
40:52
Do they teach that in law school? No.
40:56
Tell me about the element of surprise.
40:59
The greatest gift against a competitor.
41:03
What are your thoughts on free speech? I'm a proponent of it.
41:06
It means different things to different people.
41:09
But, you know, the founders of the United States made it the very first part of the Constitution because it was so important to them.
41:19
And as you watch society evolve and even, you know, think about all the things that we once thought were true, that then debate taught us were not true.
41:29
I think you it's very dangerous for governments to begin to police it because where does that end and how does that work and it becomes untenable.
41:38
And so, you know, I it's a bit cliché to say I'm a believer in free speech, but I think this is a topic unto itself, something I'm going to write about at some point because you know, misinformation, my views on what happened on college campuses.
41:53
I have a lot of views on a lot of these topics that I I would like to, like a trial lawyer, lay out.
41:58
And people can, hopefully, think about them differently and maybe think about them in a better way.
42:05
I would love to read that book. I'll send it to you. Great, please.
42:09
Tell me about criminal justice reform.
42:14
It's never been successful anywhere.
42:16
You know, since the dawn of time, and you can go back, you know, forget hundreds of years, thousands of years.
42:22
Every society, pretty much, has a minority population that has been incarcerated at a larger extent.
42:32
And if that's the case, you got to ask yourself, isn't the society using the weapon of the justice system in a negative way?
42:41
Next thing you have to realize is that the law works backwards.
42:44
So, you don't get to go, "Okay, what do we want the law to be?"
42:46
The law is an imprint, like a geological imprint of what happened before.
42:52
So, a case comes down and says XYZ.
42:52
The next case can't say something too different.
42:56
It has to say, "Well, we're interpreting XYZ to be XYZQ."
43:02
And so, it can't evolve that quickly.
43:04
And because so much of the population has been incarcerated or disenfranchised, the people that are in charge of the legislature, the judiciary, the people on the mountaintop, are not from the population being as most harmed.
43:19
So, they're not as likely to be speaking to that constituency.
43:23
They may want to emotively, they may see what I'm describing, but it doesn't it can't possibly, you know, I say I can get almost so close to the person who's going to be incarcerated as their own mother, but I can't get as close. Yeah. I'm not their mother.
43:38
And so, you know, unless the legislature and the judiciary all had someone who had gone through the system falsely accused, how can they ever get to that same point of reflection? Yeah.
43:47
And so, you know, there have been things done around the edges, but it's still historically based.
43:53
And so, if you want to use America as an example and the original sin of the Constitution and the incarceration of black and brown people in the country, even if we change the laws, a lot of these folks, their great, great, great grandparents were slaves.
44:08
And their great, great grandparents finally got the chance to even go to a school.
44:11
And their great grandparents got to go to a school that looked at least a little bit like the schools I got to go to, you know?
44:19
And so that obviously ebbs through the entire lineage and affects everything.
44:27
And their dads may or may not have been around.
44:29
Their moms may have had to work two jobs.
44:30
They weren't buying extra flash cards.
44:32
And so we just the kid has a harder time getting a job, he's going to be more likely to steal a loaf of bread.
44:38
And so what to say other than it's a it's a messed up world and until until unless you gave somebody the same opportunity at the start, you could never even it out, you know?
44:50
And that is I'm not a socialist.
44:53
I just that is the truth.
44:55
And so okay, so then what do you do about that?
44:57
I mean we have made some reforms, you know, bail reform was something that I I fought for.
45:03
Very, very large prison sentences, other than in the worst crimes, don't make a lot of sense.
45:07
People are different at 30 than they are at 13.
45:11
And in most societies, you don't have 40, 50, 60-year sentences for drugs or, you know, childhood burglaries and things like this.
45:21
If a kid is picked up in the suburbs in in some state in the United States, they get a ticket and they go home.
45:25
They call that a burglary in other parts of the country.
45:28
And depending on the color of your skin, you go away for 10 years.
45:30
So another long and complicated topic that has gone on for hundreds and thousands of years.
45:38
How is the system different in different parts of the world? Do you know?
45:42
I mean I know I'm not an expert per se.
45:45
In some ways they're similar, in some ways not every country has jury trials. Mhm. Right?
45:49
Most westernized or civilized societies have shorter jail sentences.
45:54
The United States incarcerates a higher proportion of people basically by any metric than any country in the history of the universe.
46:03
And then there are parts that are the same. The facts are the facts.
46:04
The laws, frankly, tend to be somewhat uniform. Right?
46:09
You're not allowed to do things to other people you wouldn't want them to do to you.
46:13
And again, they're similar from the way I started, which is that we often pick on the minority. Right?
46:18
And we pick on the person that can't defend themselves.
46:21
So, when you say that even watching at some level the cases I've handled or whatnot, the system doesn't seem fair.
46:28
Imagine the person that doesn't even have a legal team, effectively.
46:32
So, it's a complicated, messed-up part of our world and a sad part of our world.
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48:15
Tell me about the first time you met Elon. First meeting.
48:20
I was told he had considered calling me into a meeting on a couple of cases that they had that he had been told that there was a kid in New York that you know, like to try cases and was was okay at it.
48:30
And I would hear oh, he was going to call me in and then he didn't or who the hell knows what happens.
48:34
And eventually he called me to San Francisco.
48:38
I went, checked into my hotel, went to the Tesla factory, kept me waiting for 9 hours or some ridiculous amount of time.
48:43
I mean, it was it was not 4 hours. I'll tell you that much.
48:46
And eventually he came out and he sort of said, I have got to go to LA.
48:48
Just get in the car basically.
48:51
And we flew from San Francisco to LA.
48:54
And the punchline of the story I guess is not that he kept me waiting for so long or that I was such a kid, but that my stuff was in the San Francisco hotel. Great. How's it happen?
49:06
And what did you make of the meeting? Was it interesting? It's very interesting. Yeah.
49:12
>> I find meeting pretty much all people that are very unique interesting. Yeah.
49:17
You know, and there are only so many people that are effectively one of one. Yeah.
49:23
And if you if you have a chance to meet those people, like them, love them.
49:27
I know people are polarizing especially when they're one of one.
49:31
But you know, whether it's listening to Paul Simon in a concert or it's watching somebody that that you know, you say to yourself, is there ever going to be another?
49:39
And that makes it interesting in its own right.
49:45
Does every case come down to a simple principle everyone can understand?
49:52
I think so, but in order to pull off the ultimate ability to see that you have to get a lot of other things done along the way.
50:03
To get to that point of clarity is a lot of work.
50:06
Yeah, and it and it could be two or three points of clarity that you need to layer upon oneself to reach the ultimate conclusion.
50:14
Not every accident is a horrific criminal accident.
50:18
Not every bad person did something bad in that moment.
50:20
And the truth ultimately is X.
50:24
But if you don't get past one and two Yeah.
50:27
the blinders and the fog is so great no one can ever see the third point.
50:32
That's interesting the idea that this guy has maybe done bad things in their lives, but he didn't do this.
50:39
That's a lot of the people I've represented go into a trial very unpopular. Wild.
50:46
Is the law static or does it change?
50:49
It changes, but it moves slow. It's glacial.
50:51
It relies upon what happened yesterday and very rarely are there pronouncements that change it in wholesale ways.
50:58
If a case is controversial, is it negative to you or it doesn't matter?
51:03
That is a question that people would have different views on. For you?
51:07
>> well it doesn't become negative for me.
51:11
Meaning if I didn't feel principled and comfortable doing what I was doing, I wouldn't do it.
51:15
But boy is it complicated because if everybody goes in thinking wow, what a horrible thing and if if the person's even accused of that, they're a horrible person and what kind of monster would be their lawyer?
51:28
You know, you're talking in in terms of a complicated deck to start things with.
51:32
But I like to think that because I believe that I I've had a principled career if I do take on a case that is extra controversial I'm hoping that the reasonable person at least the sophisticated reasonable person sees it and says there's a reason he's taking this on. Yeah.
51:45
He sees something in this case that makes him think that he has to get this truth out or he has to fight against whatever's wrong with the system. Mhm.
51:56
And if as long as I have a breath, you know, I just need a little bit of space to operate.
52:00
But listen, a lot of these cases can start between the anxious judiciary, the opponent who has unlimited resources and has spent 6 months working up to the moment of trying to kill you and the client, complicated clients, complicated subject matter.
52:15
You can start, you know, six touchdowns behind in the first, you know, two quarters of the game, you know, wear your pads and you wouldn't want to watch it live. Wow.
52:26
Has a client ever let you down? Not unforgivably.
52:33
You know, I try to get them to listen.
52:35
You try to get them to not repeat mistakes.
52:39
Try to get them to do the right thing.
52:41
But, you know, some have tried to put me in positions I wasn't comfortable in. Yeah.
52:44
I mean, and I'm not let down because I didn't do it.
52:50
And I don't I don't sit in judgment of people like that.
52:51
I mean, I I see them for what they are, which is complicated and flawed, and they made mistake in that moment, and they shouldn't have done that.
53:01
But, I'm not stewing or unforgiving of any of them.
53:03
Have you ever let a client down? You'd have to ask them.
53:06
I mean, I'm taking very few cases.
53:08
I have been for quite some time taking a very small percentage of cases that one could take if you had unlimited time. Yeah.
53:18
So, 25 people call in a 3-day period, which is not an unusual situation, you know, and I'm talking real substantive, Mhm.
53:25
person knows one person in common with me, Mhm.
53:29
I take one out of 25, 24.
53:29
And then there's other people who they may not see it the way I see it, but wanted to push an envelope in a way or present in a way that I just don't have enough time.
53:39
I don't have enough I don't have enough will.
53:41
I don't have enough fight in me to take on every fight on the earth.
53:44
>> Would you ever recommend something specific based on something you see that you don't want to do, but you feel like this other guy would be the right person to do this?
53:51
>> Yeah, I refer Yeah, I send cases all the time to people. Right?
53:54
The way I go at these situations is is so intense that you can't do it.
54:01
It's like some glow that every time I use it, it burns off.
54:03
>> Yeah, it's limited resources.
54:03
There's only so much time.
54:05
It's only so much time, but it's also like I don't know how that zone that I'm talking about.
54:13
I don't know how many times I can get there in my lifetime. >> I understand. What is a plea deal?
54:20
It's a negotiated less than what they were going to get if they lost the trial and worse than they would get if they never if this situation ever came about.
54:28
So, you know, you were going to get 5 months after trial, you can have 1 month.
54:34
It's a risk-adjusted bargain. How did it come about?
54:39
I mean, in some levels, it's natural to bargain in this way.
54:40
In some ways, it creates the wrong incentives on the system because the truth will come out at a trial.
54:46
The truth doesn't come out in a plea agreement. >> Yeah.
54:48
So, if if there's too many cases on the docket, they start playing them out playing them out.
54:52
And and a lawyer who has too many cases or not enough inclination to fight is going to tell their client to take a lot of pleas.
54:59
And you know, that then becomes complicated because sometimes clients should take deals.
55:04
But it's hard to hear that.
55:04
It's hard to hear that cuz it's hard to to admit to wrongdoing in the first place.
55:08
It's hard to hear that because you know that we live in a system where if you take a deal, that other person has more time back because they don't have to have the trial. Mhm.
55:16
So, it's a necessary part of the system, but it has become too ever-present and if it monopolizes the system, it's not a real justice system. It's a system of pleas.
55:31
Do you have any opinions on high-profile trials that you weren't part of?
55:32
Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Sam Bankman Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Harvey Weinstein, OJ.
55:40
What's it like watching a public trial knowing what you know?
55:46
Well, I mean, I try to not have opinions on the ultimate reality of what happened because I don't know enough.
55:53
And I'm trying to tell everybody my entire life.
55:55
In fact, it's the one time somebody will hear me pipe up a little bit at a dinner party about anything substantive is when I want to remind everybody you don't know what happened.
56:04
Yeah, don't jump to conclusions. >> Yeah.
56:06
So, since I'm I that's the the one time you see me pipe up, I don't really want to be in the position where I'm sitting around going, "You know what? That person was guilty. That person was not."
56:13
Not to be an arrogant prick, but it's usually pretty painful to watch other than F. Lee Bailey.
56:18
And the only one of those cases you're talking about that I actually saw any part of of any substance was OJ, and that was 20 years before you know, I was a full-grown lawyer.
56:27
So, I don't have, you know, much in the way of opinions on them.
56:33
Tell me about Tiger King.
56:38
I don't know if you know Eric Goode. Do you know Eric? >> I do. Yeah.
56:40
I just remember when he was an animal lover first. Yeah.
56:42
And, you know, he'd have the Turtle Ball, and he would talk about animals.
56:47
And so, he went at this with a different lens.
56:48
But I was this prosecutor who had prosecuted murder cases that he knew.
56:52
And so, you know, I might ask him questions about turtle conservancies that I don't know anything about.
56:58
He would ask me questions about the criminal justice system.
57:01
So, eventually they and Netflix asked me would I look into it, and the family wanted me to look into it, and so they reached out to me, and you know, I reinvestigated and put it together my way.
57:15
I'm not going to remember every detail. >> No.
57:17
I do remember, though, one of the first things that I did was there was one anecdote or part of it, which was that she was outside, she meaning Carole Baskin, in the middle of the night, the night he went missing. Effectively, okay?
57:31
This is as I recall the allegation.
57:36
And it occurred to me that that's interesting cuz there there was no debate about it, right?
57:40
That What are the facts that I know for sure?
57:41
She was out in the middle of the night the night that he went missing.
57:44
And so I said I just remember specifically this was the first instinct I had was I called somebody that knew her for you know, a decade plus and sort of said, "Is this the kind of person who went out past midnight?"
57:57
And the response was, "Never. Ever. Ever."
58:03
And you know, make of that what you will. Yeah.
58:06
You worked with mental illness before becoming a lawyer.
58:09
How I work with mental illness as well I am a lawyer.
58:11
How thin is the line between what we label normal and what we label mentally ill? There is no line. There is no line. Yeah.
58:21
We're all psychological beings.
58:23
We are all very complicated.
58:26
Some of the most successful people that you know are the most tortured.
58:30
Some of the most stable looking are the most unstable.
58:35
I think the DSM would say that the way that you can figure out if somebody's personality issues are a disorder or not is whether it has a profound impact on their everyday life. Mhm.
58:44
Does everybody that work with them quit?
58:46
Does everybody that spends a night alone with them leave?
58:49
Are they unable to function?
58:49
Can they not hold down a job?
58:51
Unable to function would be the disorder of the DSM.
58:57
But ultimately, it's far far more complicated than that and people's psychology is a continuum far more profound that goes up and down far more than a person's growth and height and weight and physical traits. Far more complicated.
59:15
Describe the home you grew up in.
59:19
I grew up in a small house in a suburb of Boston on a cul-de-sac. Brothers and sisters? Yeah. three siblings. Older or younger? All younger.
59:29
You know, at one point we shared rooms, then you know, we we kind of made made me as I got it became a teenager my own little, you know, small room. >> Mhm.
59:40
And you know, we ran around riding bikes and playing with football and causing trouble.
59:48
Do you guys still get along? Yeah, we're very close. Great.
59:52
What do you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young?
59:57
Depends what young means, but I remember thinking the world wasn't a just place when I was 16.
1:00:05
Right, and thinking in believing in second chances and thinking people had to fight for other people and everybody deserved a shot.
1:00:12
So, a lot of that core stuff that I think led to you know, this chapter of my career Mhm.
1:00:18
has been very constant throughout.
1:00:22
I was more achievement-oriented when I was a younger adult than I am now. Mhm.
1:00:27
At some level I just don't give a [ __ ] Mhm.
1:00:29
And at some level I realize there's a cost.
1:00:31
And that is definitely a change because I'm not looking I don't look at things and it's a recent change as a scoreboard. Yeah.
1:00:40
You still want to win though. You damn right I do. Yeah.
1:00:44
Was there something that happened at 16 that allowed that revelation of fighting for the underdog, let's say?
1:00:53
I don't know that there was one revelation.
1:00:55
I grew up in a liberal home.
1:00:58
I grew up in a home with a single mom at that point.
1:01:03
I myself uh would cause trouble and think it's no big deal. Yeah. You know, Kids. You were a kid.
1:01:09
That well, you sure easy for you and I to say.
1:01:13
Not everybody looks at it that way. >> Yeah.
1:01:16
I remember my mom taking me to the hospital where she worked.
1:01:18
I remember seeing kids at every possible disadvantage you could say.
1:01:24
I remember thinking that it wasn't really fair the way that so-and-so got X, Y, and Z, and this person got nothing.
1:01:31
And how could you ever expect that person to end up in the same place? >> Yeah.
1:01:35
And I just felt that you got to even out the score a little bit.
1:01:40
>> That sounds like the answer.
1:01:40
The fact that your mom worked where she did and you got to have that experience played a big role.
1:01:46
It definitely played a big role.
1:01:48
It's hard to know right, which of these things was like an imprint then? Right.
1:01:52
And my own, like listen, I wish I wish people would stand up for me more. Yeah. Right.
1:01:58
And so as I'm growing up and nobody wants to stand up for me, I'm harboring some of that inside going, you know, if somebody ever tried to do that to somebody I'm watching over, good luck. Yeah.
1:02:11
>> You know, I still always remark when I'm alone that how much harder I fight for other people than any of these people would ever fight for me.
1:02:20
You know, maybe that sounds like pity party.
1:02:22
I just No, it's just your nature. It's just my nature. It's just my nature.
1:02:26
Other people be like, well, we'll put up a little resistance, but you know, they come and take them.
1:02:31
You know, was it was fun while it lasted.
1:02:32
Would you say you have good days and bad days or you pretty even-keeled? Good days and bad days.
1:02:37
How does that impact things or does it?
1:02:43
It's also, you know, a question of when and and in continuums in terms of when that question is reflected.
1:02:50
I've definitely gone through periods where the intensity of what I do has weighed on me.
1:02:56
The loneliness of what I do has weighed on me.
1:03:00
To the degree that you know, one day people will think I was good at this.
1:03:05
Creating loneliness at the top weighs on me.
1:03:08
And you know, whatever little bit of success I have now you know, too many people asking for too many things weighs on you. Creates loneliness. Yeah. And so, yeah. I mean, that stuff.
1:03:19
But, you know, you you you pop back out of it, you know?
1:03:24
And you pop back out of it quickly. And you just remember.
1:03:27
I mean, and I think this is something that comes from age.
1:03:31
There's a Kipling poem, if, you know, that nothing is as good or as bad as it may seem in the moment. >> Yeah.
1:03:37
And boy, is that true about life. Yeah. Right?
1:03:38
That they What is the point of sweating the small stuff? Mhm. And so, yeah.
1:03:42
You remind yourself of those things.
1:03:44
You might find your purpose. Resettle yourself.
1:03:48
Realize that the whole [ __ ] thing is probably stupid.
1:03:52
And you pop back up and you go fight. You mentioned F. Lee Bailey earlier.
1:03:56
What was it about him that was impressive?
1:04:00
There's only a couple of lawyers that I've seen that had the ability to really trap a witness on cross-examination. Right?
1:04:06
I mean, I don't want to say that anybody, but a good trial lawyer, which is like nothing that nothing to write home about, can take a witness and look at an index card and say, "Well, you were 18 ft away, and the lighting wasn't good, and there was something obstructing your view."
1:04:21
Or, you know, it's a My Cousin Vinny cross-examination about that, right?
1:04:25
You know, you know, "What's that on the window? Is it Is it silt?"
1:04:28
You know, whatever that I haven't seen I love that movie.
1:04:30
Yeah, I haven't seen it in a long time, but that's not sort of higher-level trial work.
1:04:37
And I thought at least a couple of things that I saw Bailey do were at another point of complexity.
1:04:45
And also, like, listen, being a trial lawyer, you have to have a personality. He had a personality.
1:04:48
I hear I hear good, bad, and ugly, but he had a personality.
1:04:50
So, it makes it makes it a little bit more interesting. Yeah.
1:04:55
What do you think about most outside of work?
1:04:59
What I'm going to do next.
1:05:00
>> Meaning work-wise or in general?
1:05:03
I think it's a little bit of both. Are all cases different?
1:05:08
Or are there common themes or archetypes that you've come to realize over time that they fit into certain categories.
1:05:15
All cases are definitely different, but all cases have have some of the same threads, which is it's it's always about people, people doing things that upset other people, people fallible, people suffering from their own psychologies and their own mistakes.
1:05:30
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