The Med-Mal Master’s Playbook, with Jim Bostwick

Great trial lawyers are made not

born. Welcome to Verdict Academy.

Preserving trial wisdom for trial

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trial attorney in San Francisco as

he recreates those invaluable hallway

conversations.

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insights and hard won lessons from

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Hey everybody. Welcome to another

edition of Verdict Academy.

I am beyond thrilled, grateful,

and happy to have esteemed national

trial attorney Christopher j Beman

join us today. And not only is he

an esteemed national trial attorney,

he's also my very good friend,

so thanks for joining us, Chris.

Happy to be here. Can't

wait to get going here.

Well,

I need to tell the audience about all

your awesome accolades for just a minute

or two because there's so

many. It may take me a moment,

but Chris is a member of

what I call the big four,

which is the four invitation

only elite trial organizations,

which consists of a oda, ISOB, the

University Society of Barristers,

the International Academy

at Trial Lawyers, and of

course the American College.

And Chris, not only is he a

member of those organizations,

usually a leader of them. For example,

he led our San Francisco chapter

as president a few years back.

He was the National abo a

Foundation President two years ago.

You go. Two years ago and raised a record

amount of money for the foundation,

which helps funds all of

his educational programs,

which is so important to

preserve the Seventh Amendment.

He has been awarded our

chapter's highest honor,

which is Don Bailey Civility Award,

along with his best bud and our mutual

friend Rich Schoenberger a couple years

ago. He teaches in lectures and

advocacy across the Bay Area.

He's also an awesome person. He's

a great cyclist, great swimmer,

and has a terrific family.

And if you don't like Chris,

you're going to love his wife

Jill, who's become my friend too.

So welcome Chris Beaman.

Yes. Looking forward to

catching up with you, Kim. Oops,

there goes your nickname.

Whoa. Oh, no catch out

of the bag. By the way,

I was looking at your CV of your bio

this morning and I thought I knew you

pretty well and I was shocked to

learn that you are on the Dean's

list in law school.

Are you sure they got the right grades

and the right transcript matched up with

the right name.

So let the ripping begin at the

outset of our podcast. Yes, I did.

I went to Santa Clara, which I

really enjoyed going to school there.

It was an awesome place to go to law

school after I came out here from the

Midwest. And there must've been

lower standards then. Yeah,

I was a Gateless guy.

I mean, you're obviously a smart guy,

but I always consider you

a street smart savvy guy,

not a book smart guy like me.

We joke that neither one of us

knows the law very well, but you do.

But obviously you certainly knew

it in law school when it mattered.

You also went to Notre

Dame, grew up in Chicago,

you're still a Cubs fan

and good for you this year.

They're actually in the playoffs

Bears fan. Unfortunate for you,

but you have become a Warriors

fan, which we appreciate Mr. Beman.

Absolutely. I mean, I think it's

important to note a couple things.

First is that the Cubs play in the

Wild Card game starting in about

three hours today at Wrigley Field.

I will not be at Wrigley Field,

I'll be here with you. Hopefully

it won't take that long.

And the other thing is, this is a

fun fact. I'm actually a Packers fan,

which is not usual for somebody

growing up in Chicago unless you have

an older brother.

The story was that as when we

were kids growing up in Chicago,

seven kids, so a big family,

and my brother Tim was a

little bit older than I'm,

and my mom went to Sears

Roebuck and got pajamas for us

and she brought home two pajamas.

One was Gale Sayers, a number 40,

the Bears Pajamas,

and the other was a number 15

Bart Starr for the Packers.

So this was in the sixties and

my older brother got first pick,

so that made me a Packers fan

pretty much for a lifetime. So.

Anyway, so Chicago boy, born

and raised Chicago, Notre Dame,

big fighting Irish fan.

And then you moved out to Santa

Clara to go to law school.

What brought you out to California?

Well, it was chasing a

woman was short-lived,

but it's interesting how I rounded out

my education with a Jesuit law school.

And again, I just can't say

enough about Santa Clara.

I think I've hired about 30 or 40 lawyers

from Santa Clara since I graduated in

1985, but I went to a Dominican

high school in Chicago,

Fenwick High School,

and then Notre Dame is a brothers of the

Holy Cross College and of course Santa

Clara is a Jesuit institution.

So I have the trifecta of Catholic

education and if that counted for

anything, I might be

able to get into heaven.

But I think I got an uphill battle there.

I think you missed the Franciscans,

but there's always a chance in the

future to get involved somewhere.

Let's get into the meat of the podcast.

And the podcast is designed basically

for younger trial attorneys to hear from

the veterans and what they need to

know for trial because as you know,

there are fewer, fewer paralyses

days are more expensive,

harder to get out and we've had the

benefit and certainly you have of how many

cases have you tried to verdict Chris?

I think somebody just asked me that

yesterday and I think I've tried about 65.

I've tried cases with multiple plaintiffs,

so I've tried cases brought by

more than a hundred plaintiffs,

but the actual lawsuits are

probably around 65 jury trials.

It's been a good run.

It's something that I know we're going

to get into that I think is worth saying

at the outset is that even

having tried that many cases,

there's still a great deal

of energy anxiety and not

fear,

but the preparation for trial and the

buildup to trial still brings a lot

of excitement after all those trials.

And that's one thing that keeps

lawyers at our agent grade

going because it's still

a great competition and

still has a lot of thrill to

it. I would say even

after all these trials.

You're definitely a competitor

and you're a national storyteller.

What drew you to trial law? What made

you think, you know what this is for me?

Well, kind of going back to Chicago,

I first was introduced to

the practice of law One,

I worked at a big law firm in Chicago,

it's called Kirkland and

Ellis, it's still around.

And then they had a building right off

of Grant Park in Chicago and I worked

there in the summer. I was a runner,

so I basically worked in the

mail room and it was really cool.

I saw a little bit of behind the

scenes stuff. I delivered documents,

this was way before fax or email or

anything else and kind of got to at least

see the behind the curtain stuff

that was going on at that law firm.

And it was intriguing enough for me to

think, huh, that would be kind of cool.

And I went to undergraduate in Indiana

and decided that it would be good

to spread my wings a little bit and

move away from the Midwest to try law

school.

So as I mentioned before,

I came out here in the early

eighties to Santa Clara. I really,

really enjoyed the torts class.

I think that might've been the first class

I ever attended and the professor was

Allen Chelan who was a

really interesting guy,

great storyteller and made

it really interesting.

So I kind of immediately

engaged and taught it.

I loved some other courses

including believe it or not,

I love Civil Procedure and Evidence

were two other great courses.

So I started to see I didn't have a love

for trust in estates and didn't find it

interesting and thought wills was

really boring and I eventually got into

mood court and thought this is fun

because now we're going at it just like

playing basketball against my friends

growing up and whatever else we did to

stay occupied.

But the competition part of it definitely

was what really drew me because I

always say life is a competition.

I mean just about everything we do is a

competition and this was a way to make a

living while also competing and hopefully

winning that's always more fun than

losing. So that's how I got drawn

into this trial work that we do.

And you've been with the same firm

your whole career, right? Clap maroni.

I have. I'm not sure if that

makes me smart or stupid,

but it's been good to me.

I've got some great opportunities as a

young lawyer and one of the things about

our firm is that we do trial

a lot of cases and we do have,

it's kind of a great

avenue to get into trial,

started out doing insurance defense work

and still that practice really carried

me through 30 years or so until I

started to do other things that were

tangential to being hired

by insurance companies.

But that's a really great way for young

lawyers when you're coming out of law

school,

the two places that you can almost be

guaranteed to try cases are the district

attorney's office, public

defender, insurance defense firms.

They try cases and obviously plaintiff's

firms like yours, like Altair,

which is a great firm that

I have a lot of respect for.

Yeah, it is hard to get out to trial,

so we're focused on things that help

trial tips basically to help the younger

lawyers. And I like to do the

rule. I'm a big rule of three guy.

And so you've got three topics that

you picked out and the first is trial

preparation.

What do you want younger trial attorneys

to know about trial preparation

generally and how do

you prepare for trial?

Well, it's kind of a broad topic,

but I did think that that

was worth talking about

because one thing that you'll

hear over and over again from

a jury, from jurors afterwards,

because when you finish a trial,

usually the judge gives the lawyers an

opportunity to interact with the jurors

if the jurors are willing

to stick around to talk.

And something that jurors are

usually complimentary about is when

the lawyers that are in the courtroom

are prepared because it's really amazing

how some aren't. I guess that's

one of the things about competing.

You want to be ready for the game, you

want to be ready for the trial obviously,

but it's a long process and it

really needs to start early.

So I thought if we spent

some time talking about that,

and I'd love you to chime in and tell me

what the plaintiff's side does because

I think there's certainly some distinction

between the way we approach these

cases, but being a defendant,

one of the benefits of getting to

trials that the plaintiffs do go first,

so it gives the defense time to continue

getting organized. I think we were

joking around about this recently

where when it's a defense case,

the plaintiff has to worry about all the

witnesses and all the stuff upfront and

the defense lawyer gets to watch it

unfold and obviously there's a lot to do

with cross-examination

and such, but it's still,

you get to lie and wait a little

bit for your side to come.

But going back to the Prep four trial,

I think people all have heard by now

many times that the first thing or

one of the very first

things you need to do,

which is both practical and also

helps guide what you're going to do

with the defense of the case,

is to look at the jury instructions

and it's really workup cases now with

partners and associates.

So usually there's a collaboration

in the team approach to this.

I still always do the jury instructions,

even though my partners

could do a great job on 'em,

I really like to do them

so that I'm thinking about

what's going to be important

to develop in the case. So that's pretty

simple, but if you go right to Casey,

if it's a premises case,

you remind yourself what the elements

are and what potential defenses you have

about notice,

and it's really a good way to kind

of engage early as looking at the

law and thinking about how you're

going to prove your affirmative

defenses or defeat the effort by the

plaintiff's lawyer to submit evidence

that's going to support their case.

That's a really basic principle,

but I think it's really

important to do that.

I don't open a case as

soon as a case comes in,

especially because some of the cases have

common themes or at least common fact

patterns that you can rely on your

historical knowledge to get going on,

but eventually you crack

that Casey and say, okay,

which of these instructions is

going to be important in this case?

And the use notes too. I tell my younger

the use notes are huge, so important.

Right, totally.

It's funny because that always comes

up when we're arguing whether the

instructions are applicable or

whether the judge is going to give the

instructions. So I have to admit,

even though as you noted earlier,

I was on dean's list,

I don't always read the use notes

until we get right into the chambers

conferences about giving

instructions, but that's one,

I think the instructions are a great way

to get the roadmap for what you need to

get going on in the

case. The other things,

these are I think fairly basic ways

to approach getting ready for trial,

but putting your team together is

really important and I do try to have

consistency in the people that

are helping me with discovery,

and I'm very fortunate. I've

worked with my friend Kevin Desler,

who's paralegal in our office

for almost my entire career,

in fact for my entire career.

So we have a very good system

about getting organized.

What's his email address?

I could use somebody.

He is not available I hope

if he ever listens to this,

but he's always been a great support. I

think we've tried every case together.

I can't think of a single one,

and that's really helpful from a comfort

standpoint and from a

just routine standpoint,

just like getting a jury consultant,

you and I were talking to one of the

jury consultants that you used just a few

weeks ago at the Altair party,

and she was actually highly complimentary

of Kevin Morrison's ability to pick a

jury, which was I

thought, impressive event.

I have paid her a fair amount of

money with the year. But yeah.

That's to me, and not everybody

sees this the same way,

but I really try to engage

a jury consultant early if

depending on the exposure

and the expenses and the

client's authority to do that,

which is something the defense has to

deal with probably a little bit more than

the plaintiff side of things because we

have to ask for permission for a lot of

stuff and get our client

to commit to paying it.

That's another important

cog for me because jury

consultants obviously have seen

lots of different kind of cases and can

help with themes and certainly with the

selection of the actual jury, which

I think we're going to talk about,

but putting together a team and

hopefully having a cohesive team that

communicates regularly about what

needs to be done to get the case

ready, that's a very useful tool

to have and getting the cases ready

themselves. Once you have

your team lined up and get you

understand the law, then you

have to conduct the discovery,

which I think is probably a whole other

chapter that we don't need to go in

today. But how you start

with the discovery,

whether you take the plaintiff's

deposition early or later,

depending on if it's a TBI case where

maybe the plaintiff will get better over

time and you want to wait or when

the IMEs are done and you have

plaintiffs examined by different

kind of medical professionals.

That all depends on where the case

is, who the plaintiff's lawyer is,

where it's venued,

all those factors that really kind of

impact how you're going to prepare the

case. And let's face

it, most cases settle,

so you're preparing the case for trial

with the likelihood that it's going to

resolve.

But I think it almost goes without saying

that if you don't prepare a case for

trial, then it will go to trial.

100%. 100%, yeah. On trial prep,

we're going to get to jury selection in

a second. I'm glad you made that segue,

but you parachute in a lot of cases,

which means the case is worked up by

their firm and the defendant says,

you know what? We want an actual trial

attorney to this case. You get the case,

so it's in the box, a lot

of the depths are done,

maybe expert discovery is done.

How do you deal with that?

Is there a go-to document you want to

see, you got the jury instructions,

do you want to see the plaintiff's step

first? Do you want to see the expert?

What do you want to see first

when you're parachuting a case?

Well, chewing somebody else's

gum is usually uncomfortable,

but it is something that we do often

and sometimes you get a case that's in

great shape and you go,

these are all the questions I

need in this expert deposition.

And sometimes you get a case where the

expert depositions aren't even taken yet

or it's too late to take them.

So there's all a great variety

of what kind of shape the file

is in. We take, it's funny,

and I want to say the plaintiff's

lawyers are able to be a little bit more

selective typically in which client

they're going to accept than defense

lawyers. I mean, that's not always

true, but I think as a rule of thumb,

it does seem to work that way. So

if we're parachuting into a case,

usually it's because there's

some desperation or some

lack of confidence or some

problem. So that can be a

little unsettling, but you

go in blind, so you say,

yeah, sure, we'll jump in. And then you

get the file and you look at it, you go,

holy shit, what have I

done? Why did we do this?

But what we're looking for there,

I mean you always have to start with

the plaintiff. That's you really want,

especially hopefully it's videotaped

deposition and you can get a real feel for

how that person is going to come

across to the jury. Because I mean,

I think the most important things when

you're evaluating or trying a case are

easy to recognize. One is

who's the plaintiff's lawyer?

When I always look at the pleadings

immediately to see if I recognize the

plaintiff's lawyer and if so,

whether he or she is a trial lawyer or

somebody who maybe doesn't try cases

affect certainly the settlement value

and also how you approach the case. The

other thing that I've mentioned already

is eyeballing the plaintiff is critical

to understanding what you're going to do.

Is it somebody the

jury's not going to like?

Is it somebody the jury will

think is embellishing or not being

accurate with the facts?

And you can get a little bit of a

sense for that just by watching a video

deposition, body language, their demeanor.

So that's I think a real

critical place to start.

The other thing that's obviously important

in terms of what's going to happen in

trial is who's your judge? Have you

been in front of the judge before?

Is it a judge that

you're comfortable with?

Is it too late to challenge

the judge? Which usually it is,

but those are the things

that we're looking at when

we first put our toe into a

case that we're parachuting in to try.

Got it. So let's move to jury selection.

We talked a little about

it a little bit already.

Is this the most important single

part of trial to you picking the jury?

I think it is because what you're doing

is you're creating the audience for your

narrative.

So you're looking for an audience that

is receptive to your story or at least

that will be fair. So it's a

process that, and I know you both,

you really like this too.

I think this is probably,

I guess lawyers like

different things. I love,

I really love closing arguments, but

my favorite part is jury selection,

and I think we both have said

getting to know jurors is an

enjoyable process. It doesn't

always go the way you want it to.

You mentioned Rich, somebody

that we both admire and a lot,

and I'll talk about him for a second,

watched him pick a jury and

he has a remarkable memory.

He's very, very good with the names of

the jurors. Without looking at notes,

he's just got the ability to

capture that and his style,

which I think this is the style that

works for most of us. I think you and me

and Rich for sure is to have a

conversation with the jury and to

feel what they're feeling that is

really to get to understand how

they're seeing general

concepts of the law.

And it is a little bit

of a delicate balance.

We're kind of toing the line on explaining

some of the facts because we can't

get them indoctrinated

too much to the facts,

but we do want to talk about those.

So that's a process that I don't know if

it comes naturally. Oh, I meant to say,

this is what I was

going to say about Rich.

He actually practices his jury selection,

which I think is really

interesting and has people,

when he is working with a jury consultant,

they have a panel and he actually

goes through different responses

or reactions to what people tell them,

which I think is a really interesting

and kind of novel for me at least way to

do that. That's not something

that I do. Do you do that, Kim?

I do actually. If I'm rusty, meaning

if I haven't tried a case in a year,

I like to do a mock pick

and an opening with 12 to 15

people in a focus group type situation.

It just gets the rest out and yeah,

I think it's really helpful.

Yeah, that's it. I'm learning something

from this podcast by listening,

because I've heard of that as certainly

we're practicing our opening and closing

and mini openings, et

cetera, and examinations.

It's a little bit harder to

practice a jury selection, I think,

but I am intrigued by that.

So maybe next time around.

I've never not learned something. I mean,

just the phrase of something or I've

always learned something that's always,

it's a pain in the butt because it's

the weekend or two before trial,

you're busy as hell. You got all

these motions and the garbage,

as I like to say, the

minutia, the distractions.

But it is so critical and I think

it's the most important part of trial,

and I always learn something

and improve our chances.

Success might do it, so

I would recommend. Yeah,

I think it's a great way to do it.

I know you've got budget issues

and you got to run it by people,

but I think it's super important when

you're talking to a jury, picking a jury,

do you just want to figure out if they're

a leader or if they're open to the

defense case, of course the plant drink,

let's go first and maybe you spend an

hour with him and let's assume that

plaintiff's attorney is a good guy

or a good person has made a decent

impression. So you get up and now you

get to go, which is a challenge, right?

So what are you looking

for? Are you going off?

What the bad answers

from your perspective,

are you just trying to make sure

they're open to hear two sides?

What are your goals and jury selection?

Well, first I want to plug my jury

consultant Andrew Walker from Cogent,

and I've worked with him for

about 10 years or maybe more.

And we have a good system with, I think

he's extremely organized, very helpful.

They do great background and

social media searches and such on

the veneer, and I think I said

the right word. Sounds good.

To me. Jury panel, I call it jury panel.

Last certainly since the

pandemic, every case,

every case I've tried is

head of jury questionnaire.

Do you like those by the way?

Do you like jury questioners?

I do.

I mean it's more information and

I think it does make our voir

dire more pointed because you can

learn the general stuff without

having everybody tell

you and you can read it.

My theory this real quick is people are

always going to be honest when they're

by themselves writing something down,

but those that when you have to

speak in front of a big group,

a lot of people just don't like doing

that and they'll shade their comments

because they'll think, well, I better

not say this because he'll think this.

So that's my view on it. But go ahead.

I agree and I think that

it is, you can find stuff,

and this is what it's really helpful

to have a trial team because what we

typically do is the last case I tried,

I tried with my partner Ashley Myers,

and she's got her own unique perspective.

She's younger than I am and than obviously

comes from a little bit of different

background. So we had our jury consultant,

Andrew Paralegal, Kevin Desler,

and then my partner Ashley and I each

reviewing the jury questionnaires and

everybody finds kind of different

things in the jury questionnaires.

So that's a huge organizational

task. I was just in Marin County,

we were going to have two panels

which would've ended up resolving,

so we didn't do that.

But staying organized in jury selections

is hugely important and critically

important.

And so what we're looking for is

obviously that's really one of your only

opportunities to make a first impression

depending on whether you've done a mini

opening,

that would be your very first. But if

it's a statement of the case that's read,

then really jury selection is your

first chance to make an impression.

So being organized is super important

because juries do not want to

sit around watching a lawyer fumble for

a note card to figure out what he meant

to ask juror number 12. So

that's really important.

That's why that's one of the huge values

of having a jury consultant that can

keep you on track just with the way

they organize their charts and the color

coded system of you go into

the selection with some rating

system of the jurors that are out there

based on their questionnaire is whether

they seem like they're your kind of

a juror. And then what you're doing,

you hit one of them,

is you're trying to determine leaders

and the strength of the juror and

which tendency the juror might be

showing during the questioning process.

And there are defense profiles

that we look for. Typically,

it depends on the facts of the case

and who the plaintiff is of course,

but we're usually trying to find

jurors that fit into the slots that

we like based on their background,

their education level, their income,

their leadership. So I don't

think I've told any secrets yet,

but that's kind of the way we approach it.

And when you're picking a jury,

are you yourself taking notes or

you relying on your team to do that?

A little bit of both.

I try not to take too many notes because

you can get distracted by doing that,

but I take a lot of notes when the

judge is doing voir dire and when the

plaintiff's lawyer is, I mean,

I'm listening and watching,

that's when you get the follow-up

questions if you get to that point.

And generally speaking, I always, and I

had be curious to know how you do this,

Kevin, but I always talk to the

entire, usually it's a six pack method,

although that changes from

department to department,

but whoever's in the

box or we're talking to,

I try to talk to everybody

first as a collective global

audience.

And then depending on the patients

of the judge and the type of

cases,

I do try to at least introduce myself

and ask a question of each juror if that

works. It doesn't

always. And in that case,

then you just apologize that you're

not going to talk to them and hope they

don't mind not being on the spot

when you're asking 'em questions.

Yeah, same. I do think it's

important to talk to every juror,

even if it's like Mr. Last person

and judges give me 30 seconds.

Is there anything you heard that leads

you to conclude that you might not be?

Just to give 'em maybe that they know

an uncle or something happened that's

dramatic and every once in a while it's

like, oh yeah, I was a claims adjuster,

my father was killed. Or

you learn something about

somebody who's not talking,

which is huge, right? It

can be a game changer.

No doubt.

Alright, last topic then is

closing argument. There's

kind of two views on this.

I think one is closing is first of all,

it's super fun to do as lawyers because

we like to get up there and start our

stuff, but the jury's kind of fried at

this point, right? It's kind of baked.

And so when you're giving a closing,

do you think you can swing

the entire verdict that point?

Are you trying to throw out some

tidbits to your jurors to use?

What is your strategy in closing argument?

Well, again, being organized

is really important.

So I hope I'm not overemphasizing

that, but particularly in closing,

when typically the cases that

you and I try are long cases,

they're complicated. They have a lot

of issues in your case, a lot of times,

a lot of plaintiffs.

So the energy that you have at the end

of trial does begin to wane depending on

how long you've been going at it and what

the schedule has been with the judge.

But I do think that that's the adrenaline

kicks in, at least it does for me.

And then the late nights to

get the PowerPoint together

and how to organize the

evidence and the jury

instructions because critical,

I think it's not a big trick,

but I've never given a closing argument

without having a special verdict that I

completed for and with the jury

because that's something new to them.

I always try to get something new

going during closing because they've

seen the evidence, they've heard

usually a lot of testimony.

So if you can just refine the

important evidence to your case

and present it in a way that might

be a little different, even if it's,

they might've heard some

important testimony,

but if you can either replay

their deposition if that

was how the evidence came

in or display on a screen, the

actual text of their testimony,

so that kind of comes to life

in a different way for them.

Do you get dailies so you can throw the

trial transcript up there or what do you

do with that?

It depends on the case, honestly. I mean,

it kind of depends on the exposure and

whether we have the ability to do that.

I do sometimes do that. One thing I

wanted to say is that with technology,

obviously people love to learn by

looking and seeing things. And I'm a big,

that's how I learn myself. I'm a

visual learner, but in closing,

I try to not get overly tech.

Low tech can just be just

as good as high tech,

including I use whiteboard,

I use overhead projectors,

I use Elmos,

and you don't want to do too many

because that gets a little confusing.

It's like juggling balls.

But I do think that the tendency of people

to be married to their PowerPoint in

closing is not a good trend.

And I try to avoid that myself just

because as much as people like to look at

stuff, I think it becomes a little rote

if it's all, everything's on a slide.

So I try to change it up and.

Mix it up, make them pass a

photograph around that kind of stuff,

throw something up on a whiteboard.

We're defense lawyers.

I don't think I've ever tried a case

that doesn't have a timeline in it.

We're very big on timelines,

especially when there's medicine involved

or some gap of treatment or something.

And the jurors, I think really

when you illustrate that,

as opposed to talking about

it when you show like, okay,

where there were no complaints of any

residual brain injury symptoms,

and here's when he went to see Topher

Stevenson after that and all of a sudden

had a brain injury. I think

those can be very helpful.

Timelines are critical.

They're so critical. I a

hundred percent agree with you.

So let me, we're almost

done, believe it or not.

I could talk to you all day

long and would love to do so,

but let me ask you this question.

You got a tough liability case.

Let's say it's a toss

up. You could defense it,

but it's a huge damage case

and the plant's attorney's

got a big ask out there,

50 million suggestion or

whatever it is in closing,

you get up to close, you think you've

got a decent chance of defensive,

but it is high exposure.

Is it your general philosophy to float

a defense number as well after you argue

the hell out of the liability?

Or do you just leave that?

What's your general philosophy there?

There's a sliding scale

to my answer for that,

and that is I think if you're, first,

I want to back up and

address one other thing.

If there's a case of liability and

you're not going to win the liability,

the decision you have to make is should

we concede that we're negligent and just

argue no causation or minimal damages?

And that's a decision that we don't

take that very lightly because if you do

concede it, obviously you can't argue

against it, but at the same time,

you can really establish your

credibility by lying down on

negligence. If you're not going to

win, if you're guaranteed not to win,

then you can get the jury to see

how reasonable you are by not

arguing it in a tough liability case,

what you don't want to lose

your credibility on the

liability piece of the case

because that could impact whether they

believe what you're going to say about

damages. So that transition is

always really difficult. I mean,

almost every time I will go through

the special verdict and tell them

why they should be answering no to all

these questions about negligence and

causation and damages. And

then basically at some point,

usually about three quarters

of the way through say,

you might see the evidence entirely

different than the way we perceive it,

and we will respect what your decision is.

If you believe that damages have been

established that there is negligence and

causation,

then let us give you another perspective

about what the damages reasonable

damages would be. So I pretty

much always give a number. I mean,

I don't think there's been too many cases

that I've said that the only thing you

can do is give a defense verdict.

I think that's really risky.

And then there's nothing in the juror's

mind about what does that guy think it's

worth?

And so you want to have an anchor and

you want it to be realistic at that point

because you're going up somebody against

somebody like you want to make the jury

believe that there are two sides to that

story and they should hear 'em both.

I'm glad I haven't had to try a case

against Shivi because those pearl whites

are awfully dangerous with juries as we

all know. Chris is a phenomenal career.

Any parting words to our audience, Chris,

of wisdom for young trial attorneys,

what they shouldn't do or what should

they focus on as they build their careers?

Sure. Thanks for having

me first, but I also,

I would say the takeaways for me are if

you're on the defense side and you want

to try cases, it's really important

you set the cases up to get tried.

In other words, when you get close to

trial, don't change your evaluation.

Don't say, oh, I need more money, or, oh,

my kids have a basketball game this

weekend and I don't want it work.

You really do need to set the cases

up and tell your claims rep if it's an

insurance case that what the exposure

is, and don't waffle on that.

I think it's you have to do

your part to get to trial.

It's not going to be handed

to you. The other thing,

and I'd highly recommend

this to all young lawyers,

is make sure that you have a mentor

that is going to help you along in your

career. Go watch trials,

beg people to get into chairs a second

trial or to take a witness or to do a

mini opening because once you

stick your toe in the water,

it's much easier to get in

and swim with the sharks.

So you just got to get there by

setting the cases up for trial,

participating in other people's trials

so you get the taste of it and you're off

and running.

Awesome wise words. Chris Beaman,

thank you so much for being on.

You're a great trial attorney.

Even better than that,

you're a great human being and a great

friend of mine. And let's go dub.

Let's see if we can make a little

run this year. What do you think.

Nuggets? October 23rd opening night.

I'll be there. Awesome. Thanks Chris.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for listening

to Verdict Academy.

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