I’ve just returned from Wyoming where I taught at the Spence Trial College as I have every year since it began over a decade ago. This year my schedule only allowed me to spend a few days there, but it is still inspiring to see fifty five lawyers from around the country sacrificing weeks of their time to become better lawyers. My friend Josh Karton was at his finest as usual, teaching communication skills. It is impossible not to learn…
I’m leaving on Sunday for Wyoming where, each year since it’s founding, I have participated as a speaker and helper. Gerry Spence and I have been friends for almost thirty years and of all his accomplishments this College is one of the best. Even though I go there as some kind of expert, I always leave more humble then when I arrived with the realization I have benefited far more by my being there then the students did from me….
"Just the facts, Ma’am" – Sergeant Joe Friday in Dragnet, a popular television program in the nineteen fifties Examining witnesses looks easy on television and in the movies. Whether direct or cross examination, it is always very brief, entertaining and successful. It looks so easy, until you do it in a court room with a real live witness. Your own client can become your worst witness or your expert lose all credibility. Your carefully prepared cross examination can become an…