Steven Molo Comments

Lawyer Steven Molo has posted a couple of comments to my review of his book, Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life From Great Chicago Trial Lawyers, and I thought they were interesting enough that I’m excerpting them here:

I apologize if my comment about not being an avid reader of blogs was off-putting or had any ring of arrogance. I meant it more as an admission of my own deficiency. As you correctly note, my complete response wasn’t limited to the four blogs mentioned and did state, “I need to get into it a bit more” — and I do.

The whole experience of promoting this book on the internet has taught me a lot. Successful trial lawyers, as the book notes, need to stay connected to the world around them and I certainly need to do a better job of that when it comes to what is going on in the blogosphere.

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Finally—I just want to note that the author royalties from Your Witness are being donated to the Chicago Bar Foundation, which supports @ 40 not-for-profits that help bring equal access to justice to the Chicago area’s less fortunate.

One of the questions I asked Molo in my e-mail interview was if he knew any good books for legal spectators like me. His second comment to my review expanded greatly on this subject:

On an additional point raised in your review—you note that you like to read “about legal stuff” and that I recommended One Man’s Freedom by Edward Bennett Williams. That is a great book and but is not completely focused on trials. For those whose interest is primarily in books about trials, I have a few more recommendations from my own bookshelf.

The late Louis Nizer, a NY trial lawyer of the mid-20th Century, wrote at least three books about his cases: My Life In Court, Reflections Without Mirrors, and The Jury Returns. I haven’t turned to these in a while but I found them all good reading as I was growing up in the business and know their appeal extends to those who are not lawyers.

Francis Wellmen wrote the bible on cross-examination, The Art of Cross-Examination. He was a NY trial lawyer of the early 20th Century. His autobiography, Luck and Opportunity, is I think, in many ways as good a read as The The Art of Cross-Examination, although it is less technically focused.

Earl Rogers was maybe the best trial lawyer of the early 20th Century in California. His daughter Adele Rogers St. John — who Rogers, a drunk, would often take to court with him — wrote a wonderful account of her father’s life and trials in Final Verdict.

When I was a very young lawyer I had the good fortune to have a case against one of the most colorful members of the Chicago trial bar of the time, Julius Echeles. Echeles used to claim he was the last lawyer to have read for the bar (not graduated law school) who was admitted in Illinois. While a lawyer, he was also prosecuted, convicted, and had his conviction overturned on appeal — but that’s another story. I asked Echeles what it took to become a great trial lawyer and he said — not surprisingly — try cases.

He also said to read about trials and he gave me a handwritten reading list that included the names of Henry Cecil, an English Barrister, and Arthur Train. Cecil’s works are fine and worth reading. But, Train’s turned out to be a terrifically wonderful surprise. He was a a NY trial lawyer in the early 20th Century — roughly a contemporary of Wellman. He was sort of the Scott Turow of his day in that he was a real trial lawyer who was also a novelist. His protagonist was a wonderful trial lawyer named Ephraim Tutt. There are a whole series of Tutt books, recounting his victories and defeats in a variety of cases.

The best Tutt book, however, is Yankee Lawyer, the fictional autobiography of Ephraim Tutt. It is a wonderful literary vehicle — the autobiography of a fictional character. In reading it, lawyers today would be struck that notwithstanding the passage of almost a century, a lot of the good and the bad of the profession remains the same.

I believe all of these — with the exception of The Art of Cross-Examination—have been out of print for some time.

One thing I truly enjoyed in my late 20’s was hunting for Tutt books in used bookstores across the country. They were easiest to find in NY but you could run across them in odd places — I found my first copy of Yankee Lawyer in an antique store in Saugatuck, Michigan. Amazon, for all of its positives, has pretty much taken the joy — or at least the necessity — of that away.

There are many other books about great trial lawyers of the past and their cases—Percy Foreman, Joseph Auerbach, Max Steuer, Lloyd Paul Stryker—the list goes on and on. There is, of course, great fiction and non-fiction being written about the courtroom today. Scott Turow, John Grisham, Gerry Spence, and John Mortimer all tell great courtroom tales and “know from whence they speak”. It is a great profession and I guess its enduring interest to writers and readers is testament to that.

(I have reformatted Steven Molo’s remarks for readability and added links to Amazon where appropriate.)

I haven’t heard of most of the older books, except Wellman’s The Art of Cross-Examination, which I suspect isn’t as entertaining to a non-lawyer as some of the other books.

Scott Turow’s writing is terrific. He handles the characters and setting of the law very well, and it was his Presumed Innocent that got me interested in reading about what lawyers do. In his recent World War II novel, Ordinary Heroes, he demonstrates his talents by reaching beyond his grasp, and grabbing on anyway. I hope someone’s making it into a movie.

I’m not such a big fan of John Grisham. All his main characters seem to hate being lawyers. Maybe that’s changed recently, but I stopped reading after Pelican Brief. (I make money if you follow my links and buy the book, and I’m still not linking to Pelican Brief.)

I’m mad at Gerry Spence because he ripped me off with How to Argue & Win Every Time. When one of the most famous trial lawyers of our time writes a book with a title like that, I expected it to be about kicking ass and taking names. Instead, Spence talks about using a larger definition of winning that involves getting what you want through communication and cooperation. (At least that’s what it was about up to the point where I stopped reading.) There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s my preferred approach—but that’s not what I wanted from the book.

I’d also add Sheldon Siegel and William Lashner to the list of novelists.

Siegel’s not a criminal lawyer, but he obviously admires them, and he does enough research to write well about the trial process.

Most courtroom fiction derives some of its tension from the fact that no matter how high the stakes, the lawyers are supposed to stay within strict legal and ethical boundaries. Lashner’s stories focus less on the trial than on the underlying mystery, and his protagonist, Victor Carl, has a shaky relationship with ethics. Lashner himself is a former federal prosecutor, and his stories read like a prosecutor’s wild fantasy about the crazy stuff defense lawyers get to do. The characters, situations, and dialogue are hilarious.

(Lashner’s Bitter Truth has one of the best opening lines of any novel I’ve read: “I suppose every hundred million dollars has its own sordid story and the hundred million I am chasing is no exception.”)

Thanks, Steven, for the recommendations.