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LEGAL DEPT.

Your Witness – Review

Mark Draughn

6 comments

This seems to be the right time for publishing reviews of Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life From Great Chicago Trial Lawyers, edited by Steven F. Molo and James R. Figliulo. Already Scott Greenfield has posted a review, and Mark Bennett posted his review just a little later. I guess it’s my turn.

Your Witness consists of 50 short chapters about different aspects of cross-examination, each written by a different lawyer. Most of the chapters include a story or two from the author’s career.

The book is a Chicago project. All of the lawyers practice in Chicago—although a number practice in other places as well—the editors are from Chicago, and the book is published by the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, which is located in Chicago.

Personally, I enjoyed the book a lot. I like stories about lawyers and the sneaky things they do, and cross-examination is where the sneakiest lawyers really shine. If you like tales of skillful legal combat, you might enjoy reading these stories.

(If you’re as fascinated by legal stuff as I am, editor Steven Molo also recommends reading One Man’s Freedom by Edward Bennett Williams. It’s long out of publication, but you can find a used copy at Amazon.com. I just got mine in the mail.)

The price is about twice the cost of a typical hardcover from Amazon, which is a little steep if you’re not buying it for your job, but you’ll probably be able to find a used copy in a few months.

But this book isn’t meant to be read for entertainment purposes alone. It’s intended to teach new lawyers and lawyer wannabes a few practical aspects of cross examination. Since I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have much to say about that—read Greenfield or Bennett for criminal trial lawyer’s view—but I suspect that trial lawyering is one type of work that really benefits from reading other people’s stories.

I know that when I was a computer systems manager back in the 80’s, one of the most useful aspects of users’ group meetings was hearing everyone else’s war stories and horror tails. It’s helpful to hear how other people solved problems, and it’s even helpful to learn that other people are having the same problems as you. If you’re a trial lawyer and that sounds right to you, then you should probably get yourself a copy of this book.

One of the things that impressed me about Your Witness is that the editors somehow got 50 busy trial lawyers to take the time to write a chapter. In an email interview, I asked Steven Molo how they did it:

Well, your question is probably best answered by the fact that it took over four years to complete this project.  Given the schedules of the authors and editors, it was not the sort of thing you just sat down and did.  There was a lot of picking it up and putting it down but in the end we believe it was worth it.

In the introductory matter, the editors said they chose only lawyers in private practice (with the exception of Federal Defender Terry MacCarthy) so I asked Molo to explain why:

First, there are very few, if any, government lawyers with the breadth of experience possessed by the authors of this book. Second, as far as prosecutors go, they simply do not have the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses as often as defense lawyers and given their usual advantages in a trial, their true abilities as trial lawyers generally are not tested until they are on the defense side.

Terry MacCarthy was included as an author because of his long and successful career, and because he is well known to members of the local and even national bar.

Since I read courtroom drama for entertainment, I’m used to reading about murder, rape, drug deals, and violent street crimes. Your Witness naturally had to have a much broader view of trial lawyering, including a lot of civil actions, but it seemed to me that most of the criminal trials tended to be for white-collar crime, including rather a lot of trials for corruption (especially corruption of Cook County judges).

I also asked Molo if white-collar crime was an intentional focus of the book. He responded by disputing my premise:

There are plenty of stories about “non-white collar crime” in the book.  Read the chapters of Bill Martin, Ray Smith, Sam Adam, Rick Halprin, Tom Breen, and mine for that matter.  We didn’t direct authors to write about any specific type of case.  Plenty of us have represented people charged with murder, rape, and robbery over the years. There are also stories about great moments in personal injury trials, patent disputes, and business cases.  We tried hard to have authors who represent a broad array of trial practices.  We believe great trial lawyers can try any type of case.

The subtitle claims the book has “Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life,” and I found a few life lessons in the book, but this is getting long enough, so I’ll be writing about those in upcoming posts.

Anyway, to finish out my review, I asked Molo which blawgs he reads. He responded that he’s too busy practicing law (or writing books with 50 authors) to read many blogs, but he likes to occasionally check in on these:

Judging by the blogs missing from that list, I suspect Molo doesn’t know which bloggers his publicist has been sending review copies to.

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6 responses

  1. shg

    He responded that he’s too busy practicing law (or writing books with 50 authors) to read many blogs…

    And to think that some of us spent our time reading and reviewing his book. I guess we’re just not as busy or important as Molo.

    Reply
  2. Mark Draughn

    I didn’t take it that way, but then I’m just happy I got free stuff.

    Molo’s exact words were: “I would not call myself an avid reader of blogs — I have been too busy practicing law and writing and editing the book — but from time to time I check in on Becker-Posner, wsj law blog, Above the Law, Anne Reed’s excellent blog Deliberations, and a few others. I need to get into it a bit more.”

    I suspect the publicists who sent us the book know a lot more about the blawgosphere than Molo does. It didn’t seem like a big deal.

    Reply
  3. shg

    I take it that way. I’m a bit more sensitive to the implications of such statements. We are all busy, yet we manage to get done what needs to get done, without excuses or rationalizations.

    Reply
  4. Mark Draughn

    I’m sorry, I’m too busy hunting down sofware bugs for a major client to give your comment proper consideration.

    Reply
  5. smolo

    Mark — thank you for the kind review of Your Witness. You obviously took some time with the book and your comments suggest that we pretty much achieved what we intended when we embarked on the project over four years ago. Like many things, it turned out to be a lot more work in practice than in concept but hopefully, we have created something that will have some enduring value to those who practice trial law or just like to read about it. 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. At the risk of offending some one else who may be reviewing the book for another blog, I will say that yours and the Greenfield and Bennett blogs (as well as others) are going to have to find their way onto my computer screen with some frequency going forward. 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. Best wishes, Steve Molo

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  6. smolo

    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 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. Steve Molo

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