The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog

Informing Yourself about Your Adversary: Google Is Your Friend

Here's an interesting post from David Swanner of the South Carolina Trial Law Blog: "How to Ace a Job Interview with Me"--

One of the first questions I ask is “What do you know about me?” It amazes me the number of people of people that don’t even take the time and effort to type my name in Google and see what pops up. I have a reasonable internet presence and to not even look at my website or weblog, before coming to the interview is slack. I don’t expect someone to know everything about me, but to not even look at the website and the areas of practice shows a profound lack of interest, that I find unattractive in a job candidate.

It's excellent advice, but it doesn't apply only to job interviews. Why not get in the habit of using Google to get some intelligence on the lawyers you come across in your day-to-day practice? You don't have to limit yourself to your adversaries, as the title of this post suggests. Use the strategy on others as well--your co-counsel, lawyers with whom you are negotiating a deal, judges and mediators, etc.

I've found Google to be a great help during those first ten minutes of every meeting where the parties engage in small talk to tease out things they have in common. You'll get a head start if you know where the others went to school, how long they've practiced, what they've published. And if they turn out to be webloggers like David Swanner, then you've hit the jackpot: as Dave points out, it's likely you'll  find out just about everything that's important to know, including, when applicable, that you're meeting with anything but a "high falutin’ person."

New Free Resource for Lawyers

Mentor CLE offers free online video CLE courses on a number of topics, some tailored specifically to Illinois lawyers, some not. Examples:

• Building Your Law Practice
• Suing Securities Professionals
• Zoning and the First Amendment
• Landlord and Tenant Law
• Small Law Office Management

You'll undoubtedly find something of interest on the site. You can view the presentations for free or pay $19.95/hour to receive IL MCLE credit.

I'll have a future post about Helen Gunnarsson's lecture, "Persuasive Writing for Lawyers," another one of the free offerings.

Streamline Your Plaintiffs Practice

I liked this post from Dave Swanner at the South Carolina Trial Law Blog: "My Goals for the Firm for 2008."

Swanner's post has some good ideas for streamlining a plaintiffs practice. If you happen to be of the plaintiffs-practice persuasion, be sure to take a look.

Tip for New Lawyers: Learn by Example

As I've written before, one of the best ways to learn deposition techniques is to pay attention to lawyers who are more experienced that you -- most particularly, your opponents.

After all, it's one thing to read how to do a thing, or have it explained to you, but it's quite another to learn from the example of someone who actually knows how to do it better than you do.

This trick of learning by example applies not only to depositions, but to any area of legal practice. Here are some other skills a litigation lawyer can learn from a more-experienced opponent--

• How to strategize during discovery;
• How to write effective interrogatories and requests for admissions;
• How to object to improper discovery;
• How to write letters about discovery disputes;
• How to write an effective brief;
• How to argue a motion in front of the court;
• How to move a case forward by taking an effective deposition;
• How to keep an opponent on the offensive;
• How to make a compelling case for your client at the beginning of a mediation;
• How to present direct testimony during trial;
• How to cross-examine during trial;
• How to persuade a jury at trial during voir dire, opening, and closing.

To take advantage of this learning-from-your-opponents idea, all you have to do is make a file, which will get larger and larger over the months and years, and then resolve to pay attention during your normal day to what other lawyers are doing and how they are doing it.

Use your file to collect all the best form-worthy materials you come across in your practice, as well as all the notes you take about new tricks and techniques you've learned from your opponents.

Finally, remember to be humble enough to acknowledge that it's possible to learn something from an opponent. For many lawyers, this is probably the largest impediment to an ability to learn by example.

Med Mal: What Determines the Size of Settlements?

In its latest newsletter, the Cambridge Economics Group is featuring an article by its Chief Economist, David M. Frankel, titled, "What Determines Malpractice Payments?" (pdf). This free article is the first part of a series and examines how certain patient-related factors like age and gender influence the size of malpractice settlements and judgments. Later articles will address "case venue, allegations, practitioner age" and other factors.

Frankel's analysis is based on information from the National Practitioners Data Bank, which includes (by law) data from all malpractice settlements and judgments.

For malpractice junkies, the article is worth a look.

How to Be More Productive as a Lawyer

From the American Bar Association: "Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more productive, less stressed-out lawyer." Some examples:

21 Do the thing you dread the most first thing each day.

22 Break big tasks up into small chunks. Writer Gina Trapani of San Diego wrote her book of productivity tips, Lifehacker, in 60-minute chunks. “I’d set a kitch­en timer and write like hell till the bell rang, and then I got up and took a break —no matter where I was,” she says. “It’s amazing how a ticking clock can keep you on task and focused.”

23 Calculate filing deadlines and keep track of multiple court schedules with shareware like DateCalc 1.2 or CSC Date Calculator 2.1. The software counts days between dates or measures days from dates. They can save both time and embarrassment.

24 Stop wasting so much time read­ing blogs and watching YouTube.

I suppose it's okay to violate #24, at least for today. Meanwhile, the ABA has opened up its ABA Journal for free access--be sure to take a look. 

A Christmas Gift for Litigators

You'll excuse me if I plug my book every now and then. So here's the plug, disguised as a Christmas-gift idea for litigators:

That's Deposition Checklists & Strategies, by T. Evan Schaeffer. To learn more, see the James Publishing website or read a comprehensive brochure (pdf).

No more commercials for a least a week--I promise!

A Tip for Associates Who Want to Get Ahead: Volunteer for Difficult Assignments

Associates who want to get ahead should be ready to volunteer for difficult assignments. It's the only way around the catch-22 that prevents lawyers from moving up: to get experience, you need good assignments, but you can't get good assignments unless you have experience. The exception is when the assigning lawyer is in a pinch and there is no one else available. That's when you can step in and get to take your first deposition, get to argue your first appeal, or get to try your first case. You just have to be willing to volunteer.

Perhaps this much is obvious. What's difficult is putting yourself in the frame of mind where you're willing to make your life more difficult by taking on something you don't feel entirely comfortable with. But once the task is behind you, you'll be glad you accepted the challenge. Meanwhile, you'll set yourself apart from the others at the firm who never volunteer because it just seems too risky. Those are the lawyers who will never move ahead.

Related posts:

1. A Tip for Young Litigators: Choose an Aspect of Litigation and Become an Expert

2. Young Associates: How to Set Yourself Apart

3. Tip for Young Associates Who Want to Get Ahead: Know When to Say “I Don’t Know”

What Defense Lawyers Can Learn from the Lawyers on the Other Side

In "Think Like a Plaintiffs Attorney to Lower Litigation Costs," Stewart Weltman argues that defense lawyers can learn from the lawyers working on the other side of the "v."

How do plaintiffs' lawyers think? Weltman, who's a plaintiffs' lawyer himself, draws these fairly safe conclusions:

• Plaintiffs' lawyers have smaller teams working on cases, with even the most experienced lawyers working on the case day to day;
• Plaintiffs' lawyers assume that every case will go to trial, which helps their settlement posture;
• Plaintiffs' lawyers don't waste resources trying to persuade a judge to adopt weak arguments, which helps them maintain their credibility;
• Plaintiffs' lawyers try to keep the cases simple, rather than obfuscating them.

According to Weltman, each of these plaintiff-lawyer traits can be used to strengthen the defense of a case. Weltman also suggests hiring a plaintiffs' lawyer to be part of the defense team. "[H]aving an experienced plaintiffs counsel incorporated into the defense team gives your team insights into how the other side thinks."

It's a creative article that's worth reading.

Lawyer Tools: MedMal Reports

Lawyers with medical malpractice cases might want to take a look at the customized MedMal Reports offered by the Cambridge Economics Group. On its website, MedMal Reports are described like this--

Over 10,000 malpractice payments are made in the U.S. every year. By law, every such payment must be recorded in the National Practitioner's Data Bank. CEG's analysis of these data shows that malpractice payments are to a large extent predictable. MedMal Reports are based on this insight.

MedMal Reports rely on methods that were developed by an academic economist with substantial malpractice experience and degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and MIT. A MedMal Report presents expected settlement and judgments, as well as a detailed percentile distribution. All results are clearly presented using charts and plain English.

Sample reports are available on the website. The price is $325, which includes a "custom statistical analysis of your case" and "summary information on all malpractice payments that have been made in cases with the same medical outcome and trial state since 2004."

I haven't tried the service. Anyone who has is welcome to comment.