Boutique Law Firms

Get To The Point

It may take a while to spend all the time you want to in order to win your argument. But even a smart listener or reader is busy and pressed for time. Argue accordingly.

I was recently editing a brief we were going to submit in a case with highly complex legal issues, in a court that deals with complex cases (indeed “complex” is in the name of the court), where the adversary listed on her Top 10 Firm website bio that she handles “complex commercial litigation,” and where the history of the 10-year-old dispute in question was, well, complicated.

The problem with our work was that the brief was complicated, too. I’d been on this case for years, literally, and I knew everywhere my colleague was going with his clearly well-thought-out and detailed eight-page preliminary statement. I liked it a lot and thought it was persuasive, and it certainly hit on all the key issues. But then I edited the statement to be four paragraphs on one-and-a-half pages.

This is how we have to be. As noted, many of us, including my colleagues and I, swim daily in these complicated disputes, dealing with other complicated professionals, and we even like to call it complex. But if we want to win, we must keep it simple.

Why? Not because our audiences are dumb. I hate the view, expressed in more than one hallway outside the courtroom, or Irish pub within a stone’s throw of the courthouse steps, that judges — or, I hear even more, jurors — are not smart or don’t get it. I don’t think that’s true. When a judge or her clerks has the time to delve into the issues, I find that they do, and most get it (if the lawyers have done their jobs). And I definitely find juries to be infinitely attentive and interested, burdened by a sense of obligation that they have to do this job — the one affirmative obligation, as a judge I was picking a jury with put it, outside of paying taxes — that our government puts on us (since, I suppose I should be happy, my children and young men and women do not need to register for the Selective Service anymore as I did).

The reason we have to keep it simple is because everyone is simply busy. They need us to get to the point.

That bright judge sitting up there appearing to listen to what you have to say probably is doing that — listening to what you have to say. But if you take too much of her time, can you blame her if her mind wanders and she thinks of the other work she has to do that day? Or sees the other lawyers sitting in the well and that they’ve been waiting past the time she told them to come?

Can you blame jurors if, as attentive as I’ve noted they are, at some point they wonder why you’re going back and forth for 10 minutes with the opposing expert on page 43 of his report (especially if you haven’t provided them, at that moment, with a copy of the report to follow along)? There may be something there. But can you get to the point already?

The deciders in our system often are doing their best, and usually do a great job. But they are busy. They may be smart enough to get what you’re saying or writing. But they probably don’t have the time to spend on it that you think they do. Keep it simple and get to the point to win for your clients.


john-balestriereJohn Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at [email protected].