Elawvate: The Trial Lawyer Podcast

Every trial training promises the answer. Sharif Gray spent four years attending them all — and discovered the real lesson is that there is no one answer, only the toolkit you build for yourself. A Virginia Military Institute valedictorian and UVA Law graduate, Sharif joined forces with partner Gray Broughton to build a seven-lawyer firm — five former JAG officers, six former prosecutors. He share...

Trial strategist and consultant Jessica Brylo built her career by shadowing jury selection pioneer David Ball throughout law school and watching videos of a rare 1996 study in which cameras were placed inside actual jury deliberation rooms. “Give us all the advice and philosophy that you can,” co-host Rahul Ravipudi asks to launch the episode alongside co-host Ben Gideon . “That's a big open quest...

Host Ben Gideon invites co-counsel Meryl Poulin to break down their $6.5 million med-mal verdict on behalf of a client who was paralyzed after a 20-hour delay in surgical care for cauda equina syndrome. With host Rahul Ravipudi moderating the conversation, Ben and Meryl explain why cauda equina syndrome cases are notoriously difficult to win and why they put their client, who has developmental dis...

Washington, D.C.-based Gupta Wessler holds the highest win rate among the top five most active firms practicing before the 6-3 conservative U.S. Supreme Court firms. And they’re large, corporate firms “representing corporations that have done bad stuff,” says founder Deepak Gupta . “How do we do that? We do it by appealing – sometimes it's methodologically – to conservative commitments.” In this c...

"Bad is stronger than good" is a widely cited principle in social psychology – and one that trial consultant Bo Fraser has built his jury strategy around. “You're not going to win them with, ‘We're the good guy and here's why’ story,” Bo explains to host Ben Gideon . Bo considered a career in marketing before earning a PhD in social psychology and joining his mother at the consultancy firm she fou...

Live from Portland, Maine, it’s Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright , the team from Gideon Asen taping a special edition of “Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm.” Ben and Jeff walk through 10 proven strategies for building a financially successful law firm, covering everything from dominating a niche and making data-driven decisions to scaling without losing your culture and building systems designed fo...

A jury once told Todd Schafer that they had decided the case in his favor before he stood up for opening statement. Why? Todd pulls back the curtain on his success with picking juries in this conversation with hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi . A second-generation trial lawyer and partner at Schafer & Schafer in Indiana, Todd reflects on that case – at the time, he was a young lawyer who “r...

Shanin Specter ’s $25 million verdict against Boeing last November is just one example of his approach to tort: It’s not just about compensation and deterrence. It’s also about sharing important public information. The son of former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, Shanin weighs the different avenues for effecting change – whether it’s in public service, like his father, or in the private secto...

A former JAG officer and federal prosecutor, Margaret Donovan is now an associate at Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder and proud to promote her firm’s work suing the administration – including in this conversation with hosts Rahul Ravipudi and Taylor Asen . Leaning on her JAG experience, she dismantles the administration’s shaky legal argument for its strikes on alleged drug boats and explains why the a...

From running a radio station in undergraduate school to running an “IP litigation ambulance” as a young lawyer to running a platform that fights the Trump administration’s attacks on law firms, Neel Chatterjee has had a remarkable journey. In this wide-ranging conversation with host Rahul Ravipudi , Neel shares insights about developing his nationally recognized IP practice, litigating in Big Law,...

The list of wins is long: $363 million on a toxics exposure case; $148 million on a paralysis case, $79 million on a police pursuit case; $75 on a brain injury case. But the philosophy at Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard is short: “We want to try good cases and be great team members,” says Managing Partner Pat Salvi II as he visits with hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi . Tune in as Pat reflects...

In med-mal cases, the defense often argues that a defendant couldn’t have anticipated a patient’s unusual problem. When a 15-year-old girl died from complications of undiagnosed lymphoma, the plaintiff’s team turned that argument on its head. “I think people think, ‘Well, if someone comes in with a really unusual set of circumstances, you ought to look into it pretty carefully, especially if it ca...

Earlier this year, hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi welcomed a “force of nature” to “Elawvate.” She’s also known as Charla Aldous , founder of Aldous Law . The episode remains one of the podcast’s most popular conversations. Tune in as Charla reflects on her legendary career, offers advice to younger lawyers, and revisits the victories that have placed her firmly in the upper echelon of trial l...

"Anybody who tells you that leaving a law firm is an easy process is lying to you," says Ben Gideon . To lay out the unvarnished truth, Ben shares his experience leaving a 17-year partnership to launch Gideon Asen . In a conversation guided by Jeff Wright , the firm’s COO, Ben explains why departing from one firm to start your own can feel like a divorce. The duo discusses critical decisions aroun...

“We had to say, ‘Hey, we're going to be honest with you here. For a long time, we had this wrong, and our experts had it wrong.’” That’s the theme that Chuck Hehmeyer and Elizabeth Kayatta emphasized in their med-mal case on behalf of a 4-year-old boy who was brain-injured after a routine surgery. As the boy recovered, experts initially diagnosed him with autism. That changed to a diagnosis of cor...

Jeremy D'Amico describes how his authentic trial voice transformed difficult facts into compelling narratives that yielded major verdicts: $45 million for a speeding Marine who wasn't wearing his motorcycle helmet and $23 million for an autistic boy injured in a school bus accident. In this conversation with hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi , he also reveals how he developed his voice while wor...

“Occasionally, we will introduce our listeners to a new product that's designed to help trial lawyers do a better job for their clients and their practices,” host Ben Gideon explains as he kicks off this episode about Supio , legal AI for personal injury firms. To make the introduction, he and co-host Rahul Ravipudi turn to Ed Kirk , who is Supio’s head of partnerships, and Will Davis , who has be...

“It is not easy to get substantial damage awards from Montana jurors,” says John Heenan of Billings-based Heenan & Cook . Yet conservative Montana jurors awarded $27.7 million in his negligence case against a private prison company. As he tells host Ben Gideon : “I love being in front of Montana juries, but I have developed a way…” Tune in for John’s “magic formula” that turns good verdicts in...

Medical records meticulously documented the routine endoscopy that went wrong, ending tragically in the patient’s death. But when Chris Nace and Samantha Peters took the case to trial, they were confronted with the defense’s slick, well-produced timeline of events – vastly different from what the record showed. With hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi , the team from Nace Law Group unpacks what ha...

The jiu-jitsu club had a $1 million insurance policy, but when an instructor accidentally rendered a new student an incomplete quadriplegic, the carrier put its interest above their own insured’s – and paid the price. Rahul Ravipudi , who represented the victim, updates co-host Ben Gideon on the groundbreaking case. After the defendants refused to pay the policy limit, the case went to trial, and...

Elawvate’s “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast devotes its third episode to EOS, or “entrepreneurial operating system.” Your guide is Megan Piper , a certified EOS implementer who coaches clients along their journey from “chaos to cohesion.” In this conversation with hosts Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright , she describes how law firms can leverage EOS to clarify their vision, drive accountability,...

Ken Suggs recalls the time when he “chickened out” rather than go ahead with his experiment that involved dropping a box of typewriting paper on a steel box to show the crash worthiness of a car. He lost that case. “I've got a phrase that I like to repeat to myself when I'm trying to make one of those decisions,” he says, “which is, ‘Drop the box. Go ahead and do it.’” Ken and trial partner Tara E...

Building a law firm and building a law firm designed for growth: Often mistaken. Very different. Tune in to the second episode of Elawvate’s “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast to understand the difference. Your guides are Ben Gideon , founder of Gideon Asen , and the firm’s COO, Jeff Wright . They share their insights about leveraging existing problem-solving skills, understanding establishe...

Described by host Ben Gideon as “the Brazilian jujitsu of trial lawyers,” Dennis Donnelly shares his insights from 44 years in practice. “I don't know about all of you, but I try a lot of cases, and usually somewhere in the trial, I tell myself, ‘This is why this happened,’” Dennis says, adding, “But it takes a while to get there.” In this conversation with Ben and Rahul Ravipudi , Dennis describe...

For four years, you’ve tuned in to Elawvate, the podcast where “personal growth meets the practice of trial law.” Now, host Ben Gideon invites you to a special preview of Elawvate’s new “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast, where you’ll learn the business of practicing law. Ben and co-host Jeff Wright , the COO of Gideon Asen, reflect on building the firm from startup to profitable powerhouse...