Blog Posts

My wife and I own one of New England's oldest bookstores, Whitlock Farm Booksellers, or the Book Barns, in Bethany. The shop has been operating out of two barns in a rural area since 1949. Of course, neither my wife nor I had any business buying a bookstore. But we both love books and we love to...

I have a confession to make: I've had several verdicts in excess of one million dollars. In each case, I had no idea that the jury would make the awards. I still don't why the juries did. I've lost cases I thought I should have won, and won cases I thought I would lose. Juries seem unpredictable to...

I once stood on the courthouse steps with a man about to go to trial. It was many years ago. "You are confusing me," he told me. "You keep telling me I should settle, but you are willing to fight." When I tried to explain that being both counsellor and advocate was part of the job, be didn't get...

The most interesting drill I ever saw at Gerry Spence's trial lawyer's college was the so-called milling exercise. This was a form of group dynamics that taught an important lesson: Strength is not chest-thumping. Silent laws transform strangers into a pack with discernible roles. They are laws...

I've never been to Israel, and would love to spend a good, long time in Jerusalem. This was the city in which Jesus was crucified; the ancient stones bleed history. But when I mention this to my wife, she worries. Israel is a dangerous place. When I try to explain to her that the world is simply...

My office manager has been given clear instructions: Do whatever it takes to avoid doing any further business with Thompson-West. If a new book arrives, return it. If a contract needs renewal, cancel it. If we can get out of existing contracts, do so. If we must honor contracts in place, count the...

The New York Times reports that the Internet is making us stupid. Perhaps that is so. It certainly has undermined my productivity, and I am taking steps today to right that.
About two months ago, I finally succumbed and opened a Twitter account. I wanted to see what all the fuss was. When I...

The Internet and Democracy. Click here.

Trial is reconstruction of the past by means of the most reliable evidence and most compelling narrative tools available. But we never really know the past. Any trial lawyer will tell you that the proof of a fact is a thing of considerable difficulty. In that regard, trial work and historiography...

Scott over at Simple Justice and I have been in a pissing match of late. He calls me a self-indulgent whiner; I snipe that he is an anti-social network marketing social network marketer. On and on it goes, where is stops, who the fuck knows. Or cares. I've wearied of his "I am not worthy" cynicism...