We Will Help You Build
In a deposition, one lawyer gets to ask witnesses that are either neutral or for the other side questions about the subject matter of the case. I am going to focus on “fact witnesses” for this post and leave discussion of “expert witnesses” to a subsequent post. In...
In my last case with the State of Oregon, several counties sued the state for over a billion dollars. They alleged that the state had breached a contract with them for high timber harvests and therefore higher timber generated payments. The issues in the case went all...
This post assumes a typical large commercial or government lawsuit in federal court where the complaint or some version of it has survived motion practice. The next step in the litigation is discovery. Here, I will explore what discovery is and what it means to the...
Law firms come in many sizes and characteristics. Some are solo practitioners. And some are behemoths of hundreds of lawyers and 10s of offices. Today my plan is to tell you 6 things you should know about the behemoths. The lawyer you hire is not the one who does most...
When I started law school I was required to buy a lot of books. Two of them were books titled Civil Procedure and something like West’s Court Rules. The Civil Procedure book was a case book, and the Court Rules was a compendium of rules. I was also given a reading...
We have seen that litigation is best practiced as the art of telling stories. This post explores how that process begins, because the start of litigation can be very formal. The trick is to get the story of the plaintiff or defendant through the formality that begins...
People understand, remember, and take action based more on stories than abstract theories. A lawyer can argue the plaintiff’s case is res ipsa loquitur that the blade damaged the plaintiff. Or the lawyer can argue, the spinning blade in defendant’s machine suddenly...
Do not ever believe that litigation will be easy. This holds true no matter how good your case or just the cause. However good your case, the lawyers on the other side will find every blemish, every mistake and will develop a model of the facts and law in which you...
Law should maintain a certain amount of stability. “The people of this Nation rely upon stability in the law. Legal stability allows lawyers to give clients sound advice and allows ordinary citizens to plan their lives.” Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. __...
A. My Questions About Justice and the Practice of Law Justice. An important concept. “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” (J Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford Paperbacks, p. 3.) (Harvard University Press. Kindle...
