Small Law Firms

Get Out Of Your Bubble To Know Your Story

You can’t get the best results for your clients if you stay in a bubble.

By  
on

(Photo via Getty)

No one can or will live with the stories in your cases as much as you and your colleagues.  But you have to get beyond your tribe to win for your clients.

When I was a young assistant district attorney ten thousand years ago, I once had a trial where my jury was “out” (that is, they had the case for deliberations) when I was about to start a nearly full day bench trial.  I thought the jury trial was tough; frankly, I did not think that I would obtain a conviction, but I could not find a way to resolve it prior to trial so I put it to the jury.  The bench trial, was different: there, especially as I had only police witnesses in a very straightforward case, I figured I’d get an easy conviction.

I was wrong.  Both times.  Almost immediately after finishing the bench trial in the late afternoon, I was alerted that the jury had a verdict.  I hustled down the long hall of the courthouse and arrived pretty much as the (impatient) judge was bringing the jury into the courtroom. Guilty.  Then I hustled back down the hall to the court where I had the bench trial and the judge gave her decision from the bench.  Not guilty.

Looking back, I’m not terribly surprised.  It’s not because I’m applying the wisdom and judgment I hope I’ve developed in the two decades since I tried those cases (indeed, I simply don’t remember all the details of each of these cases to engage in such assessment). I’m not surprised because, as an assistant district attorney — especially in the 1990s when we were just finally bringing down crime in New York, and the state courts were awash in criminal cases — I was basically a busy solo and couldn’t get any detailed thought from an outsider on my cases. All of us lawyers then had little support, and each of us were so busy we could barely even discuss our cases with our colleagues. We did, but, of course — late at night, or at the now unfortunately gone Baxter’s Pub (there’s a much hipper place there now). But those colleagues were clones of me: other busy ADAs with the same perspective on a lot of things.

You can’t get the best results for your clients if you stay in a bubble like that. You need to bring in outside perspective. My colleagues and I do that in two ways that we incorporate into our practice: cultivating a network of lawyers outside our firm and using mock juries.

I often hear that one of the benefits of working at a big firm is that you have all these colleagues to talk to. But my response essentially is, “Yes, but don’t they all work in the same place and think the same thing?” I get it — I know a commercial litigator doesn’t look at something the way a real estate deal lawyer would, or the way a bankruptcy lawyer does. Yet, all institutions have their own culture and I always worry about cultural bias in assessing cases.

Sponsored

I have a string of lawyers I will call to bounce ideas off of, and they will do the same with me. We maintain confidentiality — you don’t need to waive privilege to ask about hypotheticals — and force one another to challenge our assessments of our own cases. It takes work, more than anything else to maintain a full network when, in most cases, we are all busy mothers and fathers besides being lawyers of all stripes. But it is essential.

At our firm we broaden this perspective even more by using mock juries (or, where appropriate, mock arbitration panels). It does not take a lot of effort — you don’t need a big fancy service with an oak paneled fake courtroom. Any conference room of even a moderate size can be turned into a mini-courtroom for a lawyer to do a four minute opening, call one witness or two, have a colleague cross examine them, and then have a conversation with the jurors. And they talk: those jurors will give you their opinion (at least New Yorkers do, and most of my jury trials are still here — I do a mock wherever the jury is). It does take a few solid hours out of our busy schedules, but it pays back enormously: you may find out your great case is not so great; or you may get ideas to make that weak case into a great one.

Former President Obama warned us in our own lives not to stay in our bubbles, though addressing that is a bit beyond the scope of this piece. We as trial lawyers, however, must get out of our own bubbles in our work to test our case ideas and opinions. That’s how we can create great cases and win for our 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 john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

Sponsored

Topics

,