Legal Grounds | Conversations on Life, Leadership & Law

Whenever a trial is notable enough to make the headlines, the initial verdict is often the only one that sticks in the public-consciousness.  But when it comes to appeals, unless it’s a particularly heinous criminal case, the process is rarely deemed newsworthy.  I suspect there’s a litany of reasons for this lack of coverage, though at the end of the day I think it comes down to the appeals proce...

I think it’s fair to say that oftentimes when we hear the word ‘Belief’, we immediately associate it with something either Spiritual or Political – two of the three things my mother told me to never bring up in polite conversation.  And yet, whether we recognize it or not, all of us are navigating through life by operating on a set of beliefs. Some of them are constant but many evolve, and some ev...

Addiction is one of those words that - whether consciously or unconsciously – causes most people to instantly conjure up a stock-image of a person at rock bottom due to drugs and alcohol.  Now, as we’ve discussed in previous episodes with both experts & those who’ve experienced it first-hand, addiction is nearly always a symptom of something deeper.  But one of the things that struck me in thi...

Creating legitimate points of access to justice is a cornerstone of our legal system. But when it comes to modern forms of abuse such as digital bullying or image-based sexual abuse, or even with children in the foster-care system, the path to justice is often retraumatizing, ill-equiped, or simply non-existent.  My guest today is Allison Mahoney , the Founder and Managing Attorney of ALM Law , wh...

Even if they know the exact field of law they want to dive into after graduation, my guest today is a testament to why good mentors make sure young attorneys are forced to slow down and consider the larger picture.  John Trimble has more than four decades of experience trying and mediating catastrophic, complex, and class action litigation in state and federal court, rightfully earning him a reput...

There are plenty of things about being an attorney that make it seem less than desirable as a potential career choice. The long hours are pretty much a given and there's a reason that most portrayals of lawyers include some allusion to titanic amounts of stress. But one thing that I would venture a guess most law students don’t consider is how genuinely uncomfortable and awkward our professio...

If you've ever dabbled in the world of self-help, then you've probably heard something along the lines of,"saying Yes means saying No to something else". And while this is absolutely true, It also means the equation works in reverse.  By saying No you leave room to say Yes to something else, or maybe even Find out what it is you want to say yes to in the first place. My guest t...

Even though most of us no longer ride horses or mend our own clothes, the analogy of a task being, "like trying to find a needle in a haystack" has cemented itself as a timeless way to convey both difficulty and monotony.  But as my guest today argues, if it's your efforts at Self-Improvement that have begun to feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, there's a good chance...

This week we take a break from our normal conversations for the annual Christmas Light-Roast edition of the show.  It seems like every year when I sit down to write these episodes I have the same thought: “ What new is there possibly left to say about Christmas? ” So instead of meditating on the day itself, for 2024 I decided to focus my thoughts towards the future -well, a very short distance int...

When discussing any task that was accomplishable but time-consuming, one of my old man’s goto phrases was, “Hell, you can stand on your head and gargle peanut butter for (insert amount of time), so you better get to it.” It’s a phrase my son’s and I still use today, and while there is more jest than earnestness in its use, there are times in life - be they professional or personal - when we all ha...

Walking away from this week’s conversation I have a new theory: If time-machines existed, a lot of attorneys would still be trying their first case.  We’ve talked before about how perfectionism runs deep in the legal profession, but the concept of Anxious Advocacy as a root cause for this trait is something I hadn’t run across until preparing for this latest episode.  It’s also the reason for my t...

The line between zealous representation and being an obstinate ass is often said to be a fine-line to walk as attorneys.  After all, if the OTHER side is playing hardball, the temptation to fight fire with MORE fire can almost seem like a responsibility.  But as my guest today so eloquently puts it, “lawyers that fight over every issue do it because they don’t know the issues that actually matter....

There are few things more stressful as a trial attorney than the jury selection process.  Even if you’re confident in your case, your arguments have been tested and refined, and every piece of evidence is on your side, picking jurors is a stark reminder that so much is out of your control.  And because the ways in which all of us receive and retain information is changing, it’s up to attorneys to...

For as ever present as it is, the Billable-Hour is still one of those topics on the Defense side of the Bar that is deemed somewhat taboo.  Some of this, I believe, comes from a natural - though not at all helpful - competitive mentality. After all, the number of hours we bill is frequently worn as a ‘Badge of Honor’, and so why would we want to “share our secrets”? But as my conversation today ho...

Of the many many books I used to read to my sons, there are only a few that I could confidently recall, but a family favorite was (and remains) “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” No matter what age, it’s good to be reminded that some days are just going to suck, and in a lot of cases - just like Alexander - these reasons are completely out of control.  At the end of the...

Jokes about lawyers and technology are one of those things that tend to write themselves, but in my conversation this week with Karl Seelbach I walked away thinking about how the days of being a tech-averse profession may very well be coming to an end.  A seasoned litigator , Karl is also the founder of SKRIBE AI , a software platform for capturing and analyzing legal testimony as an alternative t...

When it comes to watching any sort of legal drama, be it television or film, most - if not all - of the scenes that take place inside the courtroom focus on either the lawyers, the judge, or the witness.  But when it comes to the jury, we tend to only see them during opening or closing remarks, and even then they almost always act more as a set-piece than a character.  Now occasionally you get the...

While I know there isn’t any science to back it up, somewhere in my 30’s I remember hearing the “Fact” that if you could do something for 30 days straight then - BOOM - it’s a habit.  A sort of accelerated version of ‘practice makes perfect’.  In reality, it’s often the spaces, people, and organizations we find ourselves immersed in that slowly but inevitably shape how we interact with the world....

One of the questions we ask every potential new hire at our firm is when your laundry comes out of the dryer, how long does it take you to put it away? There is no right or wrong answer to the question, but the responses - I hope - give me a sense of how someone will process new work when it comes their way. This gives not just me, but the whole team the benefit of knowing how to train and integra...

This week's episode is a conversation about what it takes to keep having tough conversations.  What was once the poster-child for corporate and social responsibility, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts are now either underfunded, swept away quietly, or, in some corners, vilified.   We've talked at length on this podcast about the power of diverse teams, but they don't happen b...

Fear of flying is one of the most common phobias in the U.S., but my guest today knew he wanted to spend his life in the air the moment his dad let him climb into a cockpit.  But, a fear of heights and claustrophobia are probably the last two things you’d want if your dream was to become a fighter-pilot. And yet my guest today endured both while doing what he loved and teaching others to do the sa...

One of, if not THE most insidious aspects of depression is how it convinces you that reaching out for help is a fool's errand. The stories we tell ourselves in those moments are often as dark as they are wrong, but thankfully very few of us will have to wrestle with these kinds of demons in full view of the public. My guest today, however, did not have that luxury. Susan Hawk has spent her ca...

If I had to boil down this week’s episode to one word it would be Control.  Like we talked about in last week’s episode, when it comes to mediators, too often the job is perceived as “controlling” two diametrically opposed parties; the idea being that in choosing what information to share and how to share it, mediators hold all the cards.  And while I think we debunked this notion fairly thoroughl...

The obligation that attorneys have to zealously represent their clients is, as my guest today puts it, “like walking a razor’s edge between perfection and disaster.” For the first 15 years of his career it was a job that Jeff Kichaven excelled at, but as he himself admits in our conversation today, it is incredibly taxing. After discovering his passion lay in the negotiations of his own cases, Jef...

While both are unavoidable, when it comes to Death and Taxes a majority of us never have to navigate bureaucracies when it comes to the former.  For me, Capital Punishment has always been an interesting choice of language in that it implies that the act of dying is a punishment in & of itself; “capital” simply acts as a modifier for how and by whom this “punishment” is dispensed.  Now, when th...