Trial Excellence and Effecting Change, with Shanin Specter

Welcome to Elawvate, the

podcast where trial lawyers,

Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravaputi talk

about the real issues that come with the

fight for justice. So let's

find inspiration in the wins.

Let's learn from the

losses. But most of all,

let's keep learning and getting better

and keep getting back in the ring.

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trial practice, law firm, and life?

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Hey, it's Ben.

Rahul l and I started this podcast because

we love hanging out with fellow trial

lawyers and sharing ideas

that can make us all better.

And both of our firms also regularly

collaborate with other lawyers across the

countries in cases where we can add value.

If you're interested in collaboration or

even if you just have a case or an idea

that you want to bounce

off us or brainstorm,

Rahul and I are going to be hosting

confidential case workshops the first

Wednesday of each month.

So here's how it works.

If you have a case or an idea that you

want to talk about or brainstorm with us,

just send me an email to ben@elawvate.net,

E-L-A-W-V-A-T-E. Net,

or go online to elawvate.net and

submit a case workshop request.

We will schedule you for a confidential

30-minute Zoom meeting where we can talk

about your case to see if we can help.

If you feel like there would be good

value in collaborating on the case

further, we can talk about that. If not,

that's okay too.

We enjoy helping other trial

lawyers because we know

someday you'd be willing to

do the same for us if we

needed your help. So again,

if you're interested in

workshopping your case with us,

just send an email to ben@elawvate.net

or fill out a case workshop request at

elawvate.net, and Rahul and I will

look forward to chatting with you soon.

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Welcome to the Elawvate

Podcast. I'm Ben Gideon.

Rahul is off today picking a jury in one

of the first social media trials in Los

Angeles. So we'll be looking forward

to hearing more about how that goes.

It's my great pleasure to welcome

Shanin Specter to the podcast today.

Shanin is somebody who we all know

in the trial lawyer community,

a founding partner of Kline & Specter,

a powerhouse trial firm

out of Philadelphia.

Shanin has tried every type of plaintiff's

case you can imagine, products,

liability, medical malpractice,

personal injury, and others.

He has over 300 verdicts and settlements

of greater than a million dollars,

more than 10 verdicts, over $10

million and several over $100 million.

In addition to that,

he teaches and is busy educating

the next generation of trial

lawyers.

He has also built one of

the top plaintiff's firms in

America. I understand you're also an

average squash player in your free time,

so I guess explains your apparent

fitness level. You seem very fit.

Are you still playing squash?

Yes, I played yesterday and

I'm playing later today.

I have to confess, that's

one sport I've never tried.

I grew up playing a little

bit of racquetball and I've

played some paddle tennis

and so forth. But what

draws you to squash?

Well,

really fitness and it's a

way to get and stay fit.

But part of that also for me is that I

like the competition of playing against

someone else and I like banging a ball

into the wall. It's more interesting,

I think, than being a gym rat. I

do some of the gym rat stuff too,

because the reality is that you can't

stay on the squash court unless you

are working on your fitness.

It requires too much flexibility

to just simply rely upon playing

squash just to stay playing squash.

You have to be in the gym and

have a significant routine on core

and strength and flexibility and the like.

So I work with a trainer two days a

week to help me on those things as well.

It strikes me that you're inherently

a fairly competitive individual.

I think that that's true,

but I hope that it's tempered

by perspective and maturity

and that it not consume me.

And I don't think I've ever been

consumed by competition. I think Ben,

some of our colleagues may find themselves

occasionally consumed by competition

and it's not healthy.

So that's a good segue to my

first topic for you, Shane.

And obviously you grew up as

the son of a very prominent

person. Your dad, Arlen Specter,

was a longtime Senator from Pennsylvania

back in the day when there were such

things as moderate Republicans, very

well respected across the aisle.

You chose a different path,

building a very successful business

that I'm sure employs lots of

people and has generated great economic

wealth for them and their families in

your community, trying

many cases, landmark cases,

having big impacts on

individuals through those cases,

but also societal impacts as

it's caused social change.

What career do you think in the

modern day can have a bigger impact?

Because I wonder about politics today.

I have some limited exposure to that.

Where can you have a bigger impact

today, politics or the private sector?

And how do you compare those kinds of

the impacts you and your dad have had in

the world?

Wow, that is such a great question

and so difficult to answer.

And I'm tempted to throw up

my hands and say that public

service is hopeless and

we should turn inward,

including trying to effectuate change

through the private practice of law

by insisting, for example,

on remediation by a defendant

as a condition of settlement,

which you referenced a moment ago,

in which our office does

in the appropriate cases.

And we've been very successful in getting

companies and governments and others

to change their behavior, which has made

the community and the country safer.

So that's a way to make a great

contribution to the public good,

and that's in the private

sector, isn't it, obviously?

And if you're able to be

successful financially in the

practice of law or otherwise,

it gives you the opportunity

to engage in philanthropy.

And that's something that my law

partner, Tom Klein, and I have worked on,

and we feel very good about what

we've been able to do, again,

to help our community through

philanthropy. So I am tempted to

say that the private sector,

private law practice and the like bears

more potential for making contributions.

But I do think that this very

frustrating time that we're in now,

and that of course is a euphemism,

but this very frustrating time that

we're in now will pass and this nation

will be rid of Trumpism

when Trump leaves the scene.

There's no political philosophy

behind the president.

There's no overarching

movement behind the president.

It's all matter of cult of

personality. That's all it amounts to.

And so when he leaves, and of course

he will leave, we're all human,

we all leave eventually.

I think that the vestiges of what

he is leaving behind will leave with

him.

And I think that we can expunge the worst

of what his administration is doing,

I hope quickly. And

that's not to say, Ben,

that everything that they're doing is

wrong. I agree with some of the things

that they're doing. But overall,

it's been very frustrating for me as

someone involved in politics and public

life for decades to see what's

happening in our country.

May I add one aspect, and that is that

I think all of us who practice law,

who have access to the

courts, who have resources,

who have people who will help us,

should be looking for opportunities to

litigate with the Trump administration or

about the Trump administration,

where it's suitable for our practice and

for our interests and for our clients.

And our office has done that and

we look for more opportunities.

We started a democracy practice last year.

We actually have a dropdown on our

website called Democracy Practice.

And we have a whole bunch of cases,

some of which have nothing

to do with President Trump,

but simply are about

advancing Democratic values,

such as a lawsuit we have in

Pennsylvania now to try to force the

Commonwealth to open

primary election voting to

unaffiliated so- called independent

voters. We're one of only nine states that

does not permit independence

to vote in party primaries,

which effectively disenfranchises them.

And so we have brought a constitutional

challenge under our state constitution

in that regard. We're trying

to win that. By the way,

if we don't win in the courts,

we're trying to win it first or later in

the legislature. And even beyond that,

the parties themselves can

decide to open themselves up.

And I've been talking to the state party

chairs, both Republican and Democrat,

both of whom I know well

and about opening up,

just resolving to open up their

primaries to independent voters.

So there are a lot of things that we

can do and I am optimistic and I think

that we're going to get beyond

this. Sorry for the long answer.

No, it's such an

important topic right now.

ICE has moved aggressively into Maine,

and so there's a lot of issues

that are coming to the surface,

and we've offered our services to people

who need help or just want to reach out

to lawyers or law firm,

and we're going to try to find a

way to be part of that as well.

I think it is really important.

Another topic kind of relating,

I know one of the things on your CV is

that you've gone to law schools and you

give a speech entitled How to

Find a Job You Really Love,

or something like that. What are

you telling law students about that?

Thanks for bringing that up. Yes,

the speech is called How to

Get a Job Your Really Like.

And there are a bunch of

versions of it on YouTube.

You could just put in my name

and that title and it comes up.

I have given it to many law schools,

giving it again in a couple of

weeks at UC Law San Francisco,

which used to be called Hastings.

What I'm doing there is I'm trying to

provide students with other options.

You don't have to go to the

on- campus interviewing.

You don't have to get swallowed up by

BigLaw, which I think many of us know,

big law has become even more

aggressive in capturing law students.

They're now hiring first semester,

first year law students

for their projected 2L

summer. So you come into

law school in late August,

and one of the first things that happens

is you start getting contacted by large

law firms saying,

"Come join us for your 2L summer." They're

not even asking you to come for their

1L summer.

They want you to come for the 2L summer,

and then they'll pay you

a bonus for working there,

for agreeing to work

there for the 2L summer,

such that you don't have to

work in your 1L summer. In fact,

they encourage you not to work in your

1L summer because they don't want to have

any competition to capture you permanently

as an associate in the firm. I mean,

it is so venal and craven of

what they are doing and nobody is

stopping them, which is also a disgrace.

And I'm saying to law students, you

don't have to put up with that bullshit.

Get a job on your own. Figure

out what areas of law you like.

Figure out where you want to live.

Figure out who are the best legal

employers in that area of law,

in that geographical area of

the country. That, by the way,

is very easy to do. If you want to

do trust and estates work in Spokane,

Washington,

all you got to do is go into your

iPhone and type in trust in the state's

lawyer, Spokane, Washington. Once

your names are going to come up,

it's easy to research them online. And

law students are very good at that,

aren't they?

And so then you should contact those

law firms or those legal employers

directly, send them letters and emails.

And I say letters because we lawyers,

Ben, we don't get any letters anymore,

do we? My God, if we get a letter,

it's like a cause for celebration in

the office. Oh my God, I got a letter.

I read every letter I get

carefully because I get so few.

So I urge law students to send

letters to potential legal

employers. I say send it by

both US mail and by email.

And of course, part of our

problem as lawyers as well,

we have all of these barriers to getting

emails through to us because our IT

people tell us that our

systems can be corrupted. So

counterintuitively,

it may be easier to reach Ben Gideon or

Shanin Specter by sending us a letter

than it is by sending us an

email. The emails may get blocked,

a letter will get through

and will get read.

So I urge students to use both modalities

and then reach out for the firms and

ask for interviews, either informational

interviews or job interviews.

And I tell them, "This will work.

You will get a job this

way." And for the half of law

students who are in the

bottom half of the class,

if they reach out to law firms

that aren't on the beaten path

for law school recruiting,

not the big law firm who do demand

transcripts. But if you're just, again,

giving the apocryphal example of the

trust and estates firm in Spokane,

if you're running the trust

and estates firms in Spokane,

they're not likely to ask you for your

transcript. They want to see your resume

and they're very impressed to see your

letter and they'll want to read its

content and they're going to talk to you,

but they may not demand your transcript.

So that's another way through it for

that half of law students who are in the

bottom half of their class.

And so this formula that I

have articulated has worked for

hundreds of law students,

and it's a much more sensible path to

finding a job than to think that on campus

interviewing is going to be a

panacea for your job interests.

Did some of this come out of Kline &

Specter having difficulty finding highly

qualified candidates?

No, it came out of my own

experience as a law student.

I was counseled not to get a job through

the career office and instead to get a

job on my own and to write to

good lawyers and to ask for summer

employment.

And I thought that was a deceptively

elegant and sensible way to approach

getting a job. I mean, think

about it this way, Ben.

Every law school has a career office.

None of them need career offices.

They could all be disposed of. We don't

need a career office in a law school.

In fact, if you think about

how Americans get jobs,

less than 1% of Americans get jobs

through career offices supplied to them by

money they're paying to an

educational institution or otherwise.

People get jobs on their own. You

get a job by scouring websites,

by going on LinkedIn, by

looking at classified ads,

by talking to your friends and your

family. And there's a million ways of

getting a job, but a career office is

not the way people get jobs for the vast,

vast majority of Americans. We don't

need career offices in law schools.

I know that's sacrilege, at least for

the career office people, it's sacrilege,

but we don't need them and it's really

not benefiting the law students.

No, I agree with that. I

think I communicated with you,

but I was invited to go speak to the

National Plaintiff's Law Association at

Yale Law School about two months ago.

And I went there and there were about

50 students in the room and very

interested and engaged. And in

my experience, when I was there,

the career office had set up the on-

campus interview process at a local hotel.

You were going room to room with all

the white shoe big law firms and they

were aggressively recruiting

and signing people up.

And it does seem somewhat ... I

hadn't thought of it this way,

but it does seem somewhat inappropriate

because the law school is really serving

as a feeder system for

that one niche of practice,

which one could say is not necessarily

the highest and best use of new lawyers

in America. I mean,

Provath probably has plenty of competent

lawyers and doesn't need the next one.

I was asking about Kline & Specter

because we currently have an opening for a

trial lawyer at our firm and

we're having a really ... I mean,

we're in a small state, a

little bit out of the way,

but it's a great opportunity.

I think it would be a great

job for the right person,

but just finding that right person

with the right mix of qualities for

that in a small out of the

way state is very difficult.

So if I got a letter

from somebody interested,

I would certainly read it and

be very excited to receive it.

So I think that's great, great advice.

And can I ask you about

the opening that you have?

Are you limiting yourself to lawyers

that have a license to practice law in

Maine?

No, we'll take a lawyer. I mean, we

want somebody on the ground here,

so they'd have to move to Maine,

but we'd be happy to have somebody

who wanted to move here and eventually

matriculate into the main bar.

We did initially try to mine

the local market for everybody

we knew that might be a good candidate,

but it's just the slim pickings

in our home state for people.

But your example about Spokane,

Washington is so correct because

every small to mid-size market has,

I think, a deficit of quality

lawyers that are available for

hire and every firm in those markets

needs people. That's my experience,

especially in a state like Maine. I mean,

you can go out of any of the somewhat

larger cities to any of the small towns

and they're all underserved by lawyers.

And there are great opportunities

in all of those places,

but nobody really knows about them.

With a little diligence,

you could be making mid six

figures in a small community,

be a big wig in that community and have

a really nice quality of life rather

than slaving away 80 hours

at a big firm in Manhattan,

which is where I started my

practice, just in full disclosure.

Yeah. Man,

mention to you and to the other folks

who are listening to our podcast that the

National Plaintiff's Law

Association has a job board,

and at this point that

organization is becoming mature.

Not only are there a lot of law students

who check their site and the like,

but now they have graduates who

are out in the practice of law.

And maybe those graduates didn't end

up going to a firm with which they're

happy.

It could have been a defense

firm or public interest or

a prosecutor's office or

what have you.

And that's a good place for we law

firms to be looking for recruits.

And of course,

anybody that is on that NPLA site has

some idea about what we do and thinks

it's good. So it's a very useful

place to go to get resources.

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and learn from the best.

So I want to switch gears a little bit

and talk to you about trial practice.

I mean, you recently had a great verdict

in a trial, I think it was in Chicago,

right? In a Boeing case.

Yes.

So you're still actively trying cases.

You probably don't need to be at this

point in your career because other people

in your firm are very highly

competent at trying cases,

but are you still enjoying doing trials?

Yes. It's interesting you say you

don't need to be trying cases.

Maybe I don't need to be trying cases

economically or maybe I need to be trying

cases from the standpoint

of my role in the law firm,

but I think that for myself,

I think that it is

enjoyable, though stressful.

It's healthy stress.

I think it's a healthy amount

of stress to be trying a case,

and it's interesting

and productive. So yes,

I'm still trying cases and I'm

still enjoying trying cases.

The case I tried in Chicago was

against Boeing in relation to

the Ethiopian airways crash

that occurred in March of 2019.

That was the second of

the two MAX8 crashes.

It's the one that caused the FAA

to ground the MAX eight fleet of

aircraft across the United States.

And I'm sure everybody listening

remembers that terrible tragedy.

Here's what folks don't know. There

were 157 people that died on that plane.

There were 157 lawsuits.

By November of last year,

2025, so we're talking about six

and a half years after the accident,

146 of the 157 cases had been resolved.

No case had gone to trial.

Why is that?

So we were down to 11 cases because Boeing

admitted liability, which

on their part was smart,

and they were paying significant

sums to settle the cases,

and lawyers and clients working together

decided to not have any of the cases go

to trial, and no case was going to trial.

In my situation for

that particular client,

he was interested not just

in an economic recovery,

but interested as well in

public information value

to not only the United States,

but to the world of having

one of these cases be tried.

And the family who I

represented was Indian.

The decedent was a young woman

working for the United Nations.

Her husband was also a

United Nations staffer.

There was a UN conference in Kenya

that the decedent and others on that

plane were going to.

There were several conferences

in Kenya that outstanding

young citizens of the world were going to.

The terrible,

terrible plane crash took the lives

of so many talented and aspiring young

people. This young woman was one of them,

and the family recognized the

limitations of financial compensation,

and they recognized the benefits of

having a public erring of their loss.

I felt particularly good about trying

that case more than the verdict,

more than the amount of the verdict.

I felt that it was important that

we bring the public's attention,

one of these stories, and

that there be a trial,

and not every single one of these

cases just simply gets settled.

How much were you able to get into

any of the liability or defect issues

in the trial, or was it

solely a damages trial?

We were not able to get into

the defect issues at all,

which of course is regrettable.

But when Boeing elected

to admit liability,

that takes the issues about the problems

with the airplane off the table.

But of course, we were able to talk

about what occurred during the flight,

during the six minutes.

The plane was in the air while it was

gyrating up and down because of the

problems with the plane. We couldn't

explain what the reasons were.

The plane was gyrating up and down,

but it was obviously a defect issue.

And the fact that the judge did

tell the jury that Boeing admitted

responsibility for the

death of our decedent

and the others on the airplane tells the

jury squarely that there was a problem

with the airplane,

but we couldn't get into the exactly with

what the problems were. And of course,

I think that does affect the jury's

consideration of the case in some ways,

but even just Ben, limiting the

discussion to what one family lost,

to the grief of the husband,

to the loss of the marriage,

to the loss of the earning capacity

of the decedent, which permits you,

of course,

to get into what she was doing and the

importance of her work and her career

path and the like.

And in her case,

she was an environmentalist

working for the United Nations.

Those are important things

to say. And of course,

the jury was also asked to award

a fair sum for the pre-impact

fright of the decedent.

And that plane crashed essentially

nose-first into the ground.

And there was some period of time, a

minute, two minutes, three minutes.

It's hard to know for sure that everybody

on that plane knew that they were

about to die. That's also an

important thing to discuss. I mean,

it's a horrible thing

to discuss, of course,

but it's an important

thing to discuss publicly,

at least in one case and have a jury

decide what's the appropriate financial

valuation to place on that experience.

And I think that all of us,

when we're looking at our cases,

some number of the cases that

you're working on have a greater

public impact potentially than others.

And you know what they are.

Maybe the intersectional collision

between grandma and teenager

doesn't have any societal ramification

beyond the two families involved,

but an airplane crash caused by a

defect in a Boeing airplane that has a

potential impact literally on

every human being in the world

because all of us are dependent on Boeing.

Every single one of us,

you can't fly in this world without

getting on a Boeing plane. Well,

I suppose you could if you

were extraordinarily diligent.

It only flew on Airbus,

but there's a lot of places

that aren't served by Airbus.

So you're stuck with Boeing and you need

to know that Boeing is safe and Boeing

needs to be safe. Boeing is an

essential company for the world,

not just the United States,

and Boeing needs to be run correctly

and they need to be accountable. Well,

if every case involving their

plane crashes get settled,

that is a limitation on

their accountability,

isn't it? So I think all of us need

to be looking at our cases and say to

ourselves,

which of these cases really ought to

be tried in relation to the public

information function of tort? In

law school, then I was taught,

wonder whether you were taught this,

that the purposes of tort

are to compensate and deter.

And I was never taught that there is

a public information function of tort.

The person who educated me on that was

Ralph Nader. He was right about that.

And I teach torts now and I teach my

law students that while it's not a

traditional purpose of the tort

system, at least not in the textbooks,

as a practical matter,

a third function of the tort system is

to provide important public information.

Yeah, that certainly rings

true. And I was not taught that.

It was not in the bullet point

list of purposes of tort.

And even the deterrence purpose is

often dismissed away these days by

many judges as sort of quasi-punitive

and not appropriate to be talking about.

There's a fine line there of trying

to reference that purpose as I'm

dealing with post-trial motions

now on certain issues. But I mean,

I'm going to jump into a different place

than I was going to go because what you

just said kind of raises

this to the forefront.

But as a firm owner and as an individual

lawyer, I think a lot about risk,

managing risk.

There's sometimes referred to as the

first order consequence of a decision.

So if you settle the case, you get

the money, your client gets the money,

you try the case and get a verdict,

you get the verdict.

And then there's downstream consequences,

some of which are reputational

for yourself or for your firm.

That's where your next case comes.

That's how you build a career.

There's also societal

impacts, things like that.

All of that has to be evaluated

in a context of uncertainty,

which is what we deal with that

every day. How do you guys,

both as firm owners and individual lawyers

counseling your clients and then even

speaking to law students, how do

you talk about the concept of risk,

managing risk and what kind of

a matrix for how you go about

processing that in

individual decision making?

Are you referring to how How do you handle

the issue of risk when you're looking

at a particular case?

Or are you talking about making decisions

with regard to the broad scope of

running a law practice?

So to me,

the two kind of go hand in hand because

you're talking about a portfolio of

cases, so you're not making

it on an individual basis,

but then you do have an

individual client. More,

I just wanted to let you run with it.

Well, we take it in two categories.

Let's take it first in the category

of case selection. On that,

I think a lot of us are presented with

potential opportunities to get involved

in mass tort litigation.

We have been very conservative over

the years in selecting those mass torts

with which we involve ourselves.

And we probably, as they say,

left a lot of money and success on

the table by being conservative.

I think we've been late to

a lot of mass tort matters,

and I think some we've passed

on that ended up working out.

But I want to be able

to sleep easy at night.

And I could only apocryphally

water ski behind one yacht

at a time, take a concept from,

I think it was a bonfire of the vanities

where it was discussed that you can

only water ski behind one yacht at a time.

I don't water ski,

but you get my point. You get my point.

This is not a contest of who

can be the richest lawyer.

That's not what this is about. In

my opinion, this is an experience,

not an enterprise,

an experience where we

should be balancing our work

with our personal life,

raising children and staying

married and being happy and playing

squash or doing whatever it is you do to

stay fit and focusing on interests and

the likes so that you're not

just simply a work grind.

And I think it's fine to take a pass

on lots of potential opportunities.

Don't be afraid to say no. Don't

let seller's remorse drive you.

Make the best decision you can every day

about what projects you decide to get

involved with. And we just

say no to nearly everything,

whether it's a big project like a

mass tort or even individual cases. My

goodness, been on medical

malpractice cases, we're saying yes,

less than one out of 200 times

because the cases are so hard to win.

So I'm just not afraid to say no.

And have I seen other lawyers put

together a case that I've turned down?

Yeah, I have.

Does it annoy me a bit inside of me

that I took a pass on the matter?

For just a moment. But then I think

about the fact that you know what?

The facts as I knew them at the time

did demand the conclusion to say no.

That lawyer developed facts in a

way that was really not foreseeable,

good for him. And by the

way, not keeping score, but

I've probably taken more cases that

other lawyers have turned down and

worked them out successfully for the

client than I have had other lawyers

work out successfully for their clients

that I turned down. I think if we're

looking at a scoreboard in that way,

I have nothing to be ashamed of.

I'm not going to torture myself

about things that I said no to.

On the issue of individual clients

and judgments about whether to accept

a settlement versus try a case,

I try to include in that conversation

more than simply the issues of money.

And I tell people, "Look,

you may be anticipating a negative

experience in going into a courtroom,

but please do consider the value to you,

to what extent there is value of having

public accountability for the conduct

that gave rise to this claim,

to the value that you will find by

having the jury entone a verdict.

You will never forget the foreperson

in toning the verdict, never.

But if you settle the case,

there will be no intoning and there will

be no memory of the jury rendering that

verdict. You will lose forever

the opportunity to have the jury

of your peers tell you who was

right and who was wrong." I had that

conversation. And a lot of people,

of course, most people say, "Well,

what do you think we should do?

" I do try to not make the decision

for them because it's not my case,

it's their case,

but a lot of people don't understand

these aspects of the value of taking

their case to trial unless you sit

down and patiently explain it to them.

And in a lot of cases, Ben,

there's no one who's really financially

dependent upon the outcome of

the case.

If you end up getting less than your

offered or you end up trying a case and

getting a defense verdict

when there was an offer,

that could be a very different

thing from person to person.

If the case involves

a brain injured child,

let's say it's a medical malpractice

case and there's been a fair offer made,

there's a tremendous pressure on you

as the lawyer to accept the settlement

because we have to take

care of that child,

don't we?

But if it's a wrongful death case,

like in the Boeing case I just

described to you where you had two

professional employees

of the United Nations,

one of whom died and one of whom

survived and was the surviving widower,

he wasn't dependent upon his wife's

earnings and they didn't have children.

So there wasn't anybody that

needed to be supported financially.

So he could afford to, let's say,

turn down an offer that was more

than what the eventual verdict was.

And he saw the value in

having the case be tried

and the whole family did,

and not just the widower,

but also the administrator of

the estate. As it worked out,

the verdict exceeded the offer. So

seemed like it would've. It was like a.

$25 Million verdict.

I didn't put an egg on my face,

but I would not have felt there was egg

on my face had the verdict been less

than the offer because I've

been through this a bunch of

times and I know that different juries

will do different things and money isn't

the only issue. Of course, the

other part about that has been,

I'm sure you said this to a jury,

money is such an inadequate

substitute for life or for health.

So the fact that we even

have this system where we use

money to compensate for a

wrongful death or a wrongful

injury is itself phenomenally

inadequate. Of course,

it's the best we can do, isn't it?

Because we can't turn back the clock.

We can't make the incident never occur.

So we're stuck with

money being all we have.

But I think if we look at it fuller way,

we think about the benefit of the

public erring of the matter at trial,

the public information function of tort.

There is a greater deterrent function

of tort by having cases be

tried. That's obvious, isn't it?

And then the memory for our clients

of the experience of the trial and the

jury's verdict, I think

that needs to be weighed.

So let me ask you about, I mean,

I've seen you present a number of times

on some of your verdicts and cases.

I can kind of project what you'd be

like in a courtroom based on your

presentations,

but I'm curious how you would describe

your courtroom style and what makes it

effective. And then your partner,

Tom Klein, I've seen him present.

He seems like he has a very different

style from you. My impression,

I could be wrong, is that you tend to

be a little bit more detail focused,

a little bit more surgical, maybe

a little bit more analytical.

Tom seems to be a little

bit more intuitive,

but I'm curious about that.

And also the fact that although you guys

seem to have somewhat different styles,

you're both highly effective in

what your impression is seeing many

trial lawyers over the years as to what

makes someone effective in a courtroom.

Thank you for all of that. Yes, I think

Tom and I have been effective and yes,

I think Tom and I have been and are

different and I think we have different

styles and different approaches.

But here's the thing that we

do that's exactly the same,

and that is that we are ourselves

in a courtroom. Ben, I'm not you.

I can never be you. And if

I try to pretend to be you,

I would be a flop in a courtroom.

And I think that's true of all of us.

We should learn from each other,

take the good, leave the bad aside,

know how to distinguish one from

the other, but do it in our own way.

And yeah, I think I'm more,

maybe I'll say sort of business-like

and my hair's short and

I wear a dark blue suit every day and I

wear a white shirt every day and I wear

a red tie every day. And particularly

when I'm trying a case not in Philadelphia

or it's not in my hometown,

I am extraordinarily careful

because I recognize I'm a guest and

I don't put my feet on the furniture

either literally or figuratively.

And I just tried this case in Chicago and

against the very famous,

probably the most famous

Chicago lawyer there is,

I know where I am in that situation and

I just believe the things that I was

taught by my mother and my father.

You don't get a second chance to make a

good first impression and you don't have

anything nice to say.

Don't say anything at all.

And I could carry on these alphorisms

for a while, but you get my point.

Apply your own values

and your own personal

approach outside of the courtroom

to the inside of the courtroom.

Don't vary in the slightest.

I was teaching the other day and two days

ago and I asked my student to explain

the case and she started to explain a

case and she's a first year student and I

wasn't that good.

And I said to her,

I said, "Respectfully,

I think that the way you're explaining

the case is the way you think that a

lawyer would explain a case."

And she's a first year student,

so she can't really pretend

to be a lawyer. So I said,

"I would rather that you explain

the facts of the case as you would

if you were sitting across from a friend

at Phil's coffee shop up the street,

please start over." She started

over and she applied that.

And she did a perfect job, not a good job,

a perfect job because she

was just being herself.

She wasn't being what she thought

she should be pretending to be.

And I think if we do that, that's

the first step in being good.

And then there's a lot of other things

that go into it is to being sensitive to

the moment.

Last night at Stanford,

I played a videotape for

my class involving a drug

product liability case where the president

of Merck Research Laboratories was

defending the company by

explaining how his mother had taken

Vioxx, which was the drug involved

in the case. And of course,

we had confidence in Vioxx.

We wouldn't have let our mothers take

Vioxx if we thought there was any problem

with the drug. I mean, it's

a superficially attractive

argument, isn't it?

And I had to cross-examine

that. And so I said,

"I don't want to ask you

about your mother, sir,

but you brought it up and so I'm going

to have to ask you a few questions." And

I started to ask him about his mother,

why she was taking the Vioxx and what he

knew about her experience on Vioxx and

the like, and he started talking about it.

And I felt myself being uncomfortable

that I was asking him about his mother,

even though he made me do it.

And even though I said,

"I don't like asking you this. " Anyway,

after a while I said to him, again,

this came from a wellspring of how

I was raised. I said to him, "Sir,

does your mom know that you're

talking about her like this today?"

That's not a question lawyers would

tend to ask of witnesses in a courtroom.

It's the kind of thing you'd say to

somebody in a coffee shop where you were

concerned about their behavior. Anyway,

he looked at me and he had that

look on his face like, "Wow,

I really did something wrong,

didn't I? " And he said,

"My mom doesn't know about talking

about her this way." I said,

"Are you going to tell

her?" And he said, "Yes, I

am." I thought to myself, if

this is ever shown to a jury,

this is going to be a good moment

because this is like this ... Yeah,

they may think there's some logical

inference a jury might draw about safety

of the product from the fact

that the family took it,

but the overwhelming fact of it is

you're inappropriately discussing the

personal health of your mother

without her permission or

knowledge. And again, where

does this stuff come from,

the judgment about it?

Well, just being yourself,

thinking about things like a mature adult,

like I hope a decent human being,

and also in the moment being relaxed

enough to be able to freely think

through what's happening with me

now. I'm asking these questions,

I feel uncomfortable.

If I feel uncomfortable,

then maybe the jury watching

this will share that discomfort.

Maybe I should pivot from that and utilize

that discomfort and turn it back on

the defendant. How can I do

that? And again, if I'm relaxed,

if I've slept well the night before,

if I don't have caffeine

on board or sugar onboard,

at least those are important things

for me from a diet and rest standpoint.

And I can think more clearly,

I can get myself to a place

where I can ask, I hope,

good questions that will help my client's

cause. A lot of that isn't a matter,

Ben, if you think about it,

necessarily a preparation,

it's not a matter necessarily

of, it's not theatrics,

but it's a matter of staying within

yourself and knowing who you are

and acting the same way in

the courtroom as you do in

a coffee shop.

Yeah. I mean, that's such a great

insight and it sounds so simple.

And once a younger lawyer who's

hearing this will think, "Well,

that's kind of common sense

and a no-brainer," but

trying some high leveraged,

stressful trials and see what you're like

when you're in that moment and whether

you're capable of doing that

and getting to the point where

your mind is open to that and your

intuition is raised enough to be able to

execute those kind of things,

that's higher level stuff.

And it isn't something

you can really teach,

but it's worth saying that so people

have in the back of mind and maybe can

execute when the moment comes.

Just a couple more things

because we're about at the hour,

but I'm curious about the

business, your firm. I mean,

we had a discussion at a recent meeting

where you encouraged me to do some more

direct to consumer marketing. We actually

followed that advice and for the last

three or four months, we're doing

that. I've enjoyed it actually.

We're really trying to target a message

the way something we're comfortable with

that will resonate. We tested

it where it's been successful.

In looking at other examples of

plaintiff's practices that have effective

vertical integration of being

effective at marketing directly to

people on the street and also

doing high-end trial work,

there aren't that many examples

across the country. I mean,

obviously Kline & Specter is one,

but there aren't many others.

What was your philosophy

behind doing that?

Because it is kind of an

exception rather than the rule,

and why have you been able to pull that

off where very few other firms have?

I've always been interested in marketing,

so I think I come to it naturally.

I've helped to run a lot of

campaigns for public office.

I think there are certain similarities

between somebody running for Congress,

and just as an example,

and someone who is a lawyer and is

informing the public about their

accomplishments and what's important

to them and what they have to offer.

So I think that's helped me

in conceptualizing television

advertisements and the

like. But of course, lawyer

advertising is very dynamic,

multifaceted and changeable.

And so I'll raise something

with you and your audience,

I think will hit home with many people,

and that is the issue

of lawyer billboards.

You cannot drive in a

major American city today

without being impressed,

I'll use that word,

at the high percentage of billboards

that are utilized by lawyers.

And you don't have to

think well of yourself as a

practicing lawyer to think not

well of some of the billboards

that appear. And some of

them are fine, some of them are not fine.

God knows what the public thinks

about some of the billboards.

I'm not sure that it really helps our

profession that we have so many of the

billboards and some of the messages

that are on the billboards,

but there's no regulating the billboards.

People have constitutional right for

the last 50 years to put up billboards,

and they've been doing it more

and more. Anyway, in Philadelphia,

which is wall-to-wall lawyer

billboards, we put up a billboard.

We put up several billboards, not too

many, just enough so they could be seen.

And here's what they say.

Don't hire a lawyer

based upon a billboard.

Don't hire a lawyer based upon

a billboard. The billboard,

just so you have a mental image

of this, is almost entirely white.

The message that I just articulated

is in small letters. You have to

work for it to read it.

And then in the lower right-hand corner

in very small letters is our firm

logo. And again,

you have to really search the find

on the billboard who put it up.

And the billboards have

been a staggering success.

They have caused enormous conversation,

not just in the legal community,

but in the lay community.

There's been a lot of

social media about it.

There's been a lot of discussion about it.

There have been lawyers from around the

country who have told me they've heard

about the billboards, they've

seen images of the billboards,

they're going to put up that billboard

themselves and their own community.

They've actually asked me if I have

an objection. I say, "Of course,

not only I have no objection.

I'm delighted to hear it.

I just want you to send me a picture of

your billboard after it's up so I can

see it. " And come on, guys,

people shouldn't be deciding who

to hire based upon a billboard.

It's not enough information.

It may be a starting point,

but it's not an ending point.

I think I feel good about that billboard.

And now I'm going to do the same

thing, Ben, on the buses. Again,

the buses are plastered

with lawyer advertising.

I'm going to put an ad on the

bus on the buses that say,

"Don't hire a lawyer based on a bus ad."

And I'm going to do the same thing on

the subway cars where again,

they're plastered with lawyer

advertisements and I'm going to say,

"Don't hire a lawyer

based on a subway ad.".

Let me give you one. If you

pull it off, I want credit,

but I think you should run a 60-second

TV ad with that on the screen for

60 whole seconds and nothing else.

Well, here's what we've done on that.

We have bought five-second commercials

from those stations that will sell them.

Not every station will sell them,

but we simply have the billboard

on the five-second ad and

a voice comes up and says

the words on the screen.

Don't hire a lawyer based on a billboard.

I don't need 60 seconds to

articulate that message. No.

No, but that's the whole point.

I just think of it because

when one of our Senators,

Angus King first ran for Senate,

his very first ad was turn off the TV.

And the ad was designed to look as if

the TV went off and then it just stayed

off, but it was extremely memorable

ad. It didn't say anything else.

It was about in order for our kids,

the first best thing you can do is

just turn off the TV and then the TV.

And I've always been struck at how

effective that was. I mean, it's 20 years.

I still remember that ad.

And it's kind of similar to the

concept you have that less is more.

And just I'm paying for

60 seconds to show you a

single message that is don't choose

a lawyer based on TV commercial.

I think you're onto something.

I just think 60 is a long time.

What I'm going to do-.

It'll sink in over that time.

Yeah. When I get off with you,

what I'm going to do is I'm going to

have our guys make it up as a 15 and as a

30, and I'm going to look at it as

a 15 and a 30 and think about it,

but it's a very good.

Idea. My other insight into it is

take your logo off of it. Well,

there's a bit of an.

Issue. Yeah,

there's a bit of an issue there because

the billboard company requires you to

identify yourself. I could put the tiny

letters at the bottom kind of thing.

Because people would

know it was you anyway.

There is something to that. I

have thought about that aspect,

but I put it small enough. One

of the lawyers in our firm said,

"I think you should change the billboard.

I can barely read the logo." I said,

"Well, if that's the case, it's exactly

the size that I want it to be. ".

No,

I did see a photo of it and I think

it was a brilliant marketing campaign.

So we're fortunate in Maine,

they don't allow billboards here,

so we don't have the state.

It's not a discriminating

against what the message is.

We don't have billboards at all.

There are no billboards as

a matter of zoning, I guess.

That's a great benefit to you,

Ben, as practicing lawyer at Maine,

because respectfully,

I don't think you want to compete

with the billboard lawyers.

I really don't. Well, Shanin, I really

appreciate you coming on and chatting.

I know you're very busy. And

also, I mean, it's worth saying,

you've been so generous of

your time and advice to me,

especially as we were getting

our firm off the ground.

We've modeled a number of our

things after stuff you've done,

and so I just really appreciate that.

Thanks, Ben. All the

best to you. Thank you.

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