Trial attorney Shane O’Dell from Naman Howell joins Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. to break down a recent case that resulted in a complete defense verdict. The case involved a homeowner being sued after a contractor’s assistant, hired informally from a parking lot, fell through an attic floor while replacing water heaters, sustaining serious injuries. Shane explains how initial assumptions about homeowner liability posed a major challenge, as jurors often believe that property owners are automatically responsible for any accidents on their premises.
Shane and Bill walk through how narrative strategy played a crucial role in the defense. Rather than opening with a sympathetic focus on the defendant, they shifted the “cognitive lens” of the jury by starting the story from the perspective of the contractor and the assistant. This reframing emphasized poor decisions made by others, redirecting initial juror blame away from the homeowner. Shane credits this approach, along with targeted voir dire questions about juror assumptions on property liability, as key to shaping juror perception from the outset. He also discusses how medical damages were dropped last-minute by the plaintiff to focus solely on non-economic damages – a move designed to avoid anchoring jurors with a high medical figure.
Shane and Bill also explore the tactical complexities faced during trial, including a non-suit of a co-defendant mid-trial and the withdrawal of damages claims just before key cross-examination, forcing rapid adjustments. Shane shares how maintaining flexibility and staying focused on the evolving trial landscape helped the defense team stay effective. Finally, the two discuss the emotional impact of a defense verdict for the client, the importance of involving young attorneys in trial work, and why mentorship, trial exposure, and civility with opposing counsel are essential for a sustainable legal career.
Full Episode Transcript
[00:14] Bill Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. Dr. Bill Kanasky here with a dear friend, special guest. All my guests are special, but this one’s really special and he’s been on before. Trial attorney from Fort Worth, Texas, where I’m sure it’s hot as hell right about now, just like it here is in Florida. Mr. Shane Odell. Shane, what’s going on, baby?
[00:40] Shane Not much, Bill. Thanks for having me. And it is, I can confirm it’s hot. I was at a golf tournament with my son on Sunday and it was 103 heat index, so it’s already full-blown summer here.
[00:52] Bill Oh gosh, that’s crazy. Now, how old is your son?
[00:56] Shane He just turned 14.
[00:57] Bill Okay. So, um, now different like when I was growing up, uh, we were poor and I played sports that didn’t cost a lot of money because I didn’t have a lot of money. I just like what just what’s the annual dad contribution towards a 14-year-old with a golf hobby. This cannot be cheap.
[01:18] Shane No, it’s it’s steep. And the problem is, yeah. You got to get new clubs over and over. He had two different sets of clubs last year for…
[01:26] Bill Well he’s growing. He’s 14. So, I say what every six to 12 months. I mean wow.
[01:32] Shane Yeah. Luckily now he’s at a place where he’s playing adult clubs like full-size men’s clubs and so the changes will be more limited on the equipment side. But yeah, access to the course, a range, coaches. I mean he’s got coaches that are at the course that we’re at. He’s got coaches at other places.
[01:54] Bill Our kids got it too good. They got it too good. They got it too good. So, you tell your kid, remember, you always be nice to your kids because you’re going to tell them, “Oh, by the way, when I’m old, you’re taking care. That’s why I’m taking care of you. So, you’re going to take care of me, you know, 40, 50 years from now, right?”
[02:09] Shane That’s right. You know, he broke his wrist in the fall and so he had a long break from it. And I was worried that he would either um you know he would hate that he had this break or maybe he wasn’t as interested in playing anymore, but he’s come back with a vengeance. He I think it reminded him how much he enjoys it. So that’s—
[02:27] Bill Well, that’s awesome. That is that is incredible. Well, good for him. Um I just sent you pictures on your phone of my upgraded man cave and personal home gym. We have not discussed what. Just let the audience know. As good as advertised?
[02:47] Shane That’s a full-blown gym. It’s got the Carolina blue and you’ve got the banners hung. Did you retire your own jersey in there?
[02:56] Bill I I get not my own jersey yet, but I got I got all the I got the I got the seven banners up there. Yeah.
[03:00] Shane And you have everything. It’s decked out even with the the Smith Center seats. Man, that is legit
[03:04] Bill You got the original Smith Center seats from when they remodeled. So, uh, yeah. So, we’re going good on the man cave. So, I just I needed independent verification. That was that it was pretty cool.
[03:16] Shane Yeah, that’s awesome.
[03:17] Bill Yeah, I think I may start charging membership fees to my family and my kids’ friends that that come over because now everybody wants to use it. It’s mine.
[03:26] Shane Yeah, I can see that. I’d probably get a pretty penny for that.
[03:29] Bill Yeah, exactly. Right. Okay. Well, we have a couple things to talk about today. Um, what I want to start doing more of on the podcast, um, is talk about cases that have gone to trial and regardless of outcome. I mean, no one wants to talk about losses, but you should still talk about losses, particularly positive outcomes, kind of, you know, for the audience, uh, uh, you you had a recent case went to trial. Um, I would love you to kind of summarize uh the case kind of, you know, what some of the challenges, what what challenges were, what you were up against, and then we can talk a little bit uh about how I helped you out um as far as the narrative and the storytelling model for the opening. But I I think we need to start doing more of this because again, there you may not be going to trial a lot, but to get stories from trial and to learn I I think is incredible. So, why why go ahead and kind of summarize the case and um kind of what you’re going up against there.
[04:26] Shane Okay. So, yeah, it was a little bit of a unique case for us because we do a lot of commercial, a lot of um product liability. This was an individual um homeowner, and she had hired someone to replace water heaters in her attic. And I have a bad habit of saying hot water heaters and my wife has corrected me for years saying it’s not a hot water heater. The water’s not hot.
[04:52] Bill It’s a redundancy thing, right?
[04:53] Shane Yeah. So, she hired a contractor that she had some experience with to replace water heaters in her attic. And he went and he picked up an assistant, a helper, um, in a parking lot to help him with this project. And that assistant fell through the attic floor while they were moving the water heaters 38 feet, I think 37 feet down to the top floor and broke both arms. um rushed to the hospital and um was in a cast on both arms for six months and is unable to work and do manual labor now.
[05:27] Bill Well, let’s pause there. So, um he was picked up in a parking lot?
[05:32] Shane That’s right.
[05:33] Bill Okay. Now, uh maybe that’s a Texas thing. Um yeah, could be. Um but also, I think the bigger question is what? Not the hot water heater, the water heater. Uh, I know we talked about this earlier um during this case. Uh, you know, mine’s in my garage. Mine’s always been in my garage. Why? Why? Why is the water heater uh in the attic?
[05:57] Shane That’s a great question. It’s pretty common here in Texas to have maybe one or two, and there was a period of time where houses were being built, 90s, 2000s, where it’s actually really common to have them both upstairs. It’s easier to plumb that way, I suppose. But it’s very common. And that was actually part of our voir dire in the case was, you know, does anyone have water heater in their attic? Is anyone have a fully decked attic? Because there were all kinds of contentions about whether it was decked or undecked.
[06:23] Bill Yeah.
[06:24] Shane So, you know, getting that kind of understanding and and kind of collaboration with the potential jurors was important.
[06:31] Bill Okay. So, tell us about your client and and what were the claims?
[06:37] Shane So, the client was fantastic. She’s an amazing lady. She works in healthcare industry. Um, she made a really good witness. Sometimes you have witnesses that, you know, are just not great. She was instinctively good at pushing back when she needed to and not fighting things that she didn’t. I mean, she was really the star of the trial. She really knew how to handle herself and was very intelligent and um knew exactly when to elaborate and when to not.
[07:07] Bill Okay. Now do the did you have expert uh tell me about the experts uh you know experts because this a this seems to be a unique case. I mean I until you had until you called I I can’t say in 23 years I had worked on a water heater case falling 38 feet through several floors. I that that was not on my bingo card.
[07:33] Shane Yeah. So, the the experts um this was part of the the interesting thing about this case. Um really skilled plaintiff lawyer on the other side. Um we we get along really well. Um still talk and swap text messages. We had a um there was a third party um involved on the medical side that really made it impossible for us to settle the case. And so, we knew that we were going to trial simply because we couldn’t get them to play ball or be reasonable. And so, you know, that really kind of changed the complexion of the case. Um, I go with sports analogies a lot. I know you do as well.
[08:14] Bill Absolutely.
[08:15] Shane It was kind of like going to trial against somebody who went for it on every fourth down, ran a fake punt, fake field goals. I mean, he was he was throwing it all all everything that he had at the case, and I respect that. At the same time, we had to be really on our toes. So, we had medical billing experts um about the charges and the costs and that kind of stuff. Uh at the pre-trial, the day of and day before jury selection, uh he non-suited all of those claims and just tried the case on non-economic damages, mental anguish, pain, and suffering. Pretty common. And so, well, we’ve seen that a lot on lower medical cases. This was not a lower medical case, as you can imagine. Two surgery uh on your arms in cast for six months. Um the number the medical was well over $100,000. And so, we’re seeing more and more now in Texas where the even the bigger medical numbers are being non-suited to prevent there from being an anchor on the medical.
[09:16] Bill Everything’s big in Texas, Shane.
[09:18] Shane That’s right. That’s right.
[09:21] Bill All right. So, you you figure out you’re going to trial and um you and I had talked uh beforehand. Why don’t you kind of start cuz I you know I do so much consulting um you know on opening statement uh construction because I see a lot of issues uh with this, voir dire as well, and I think that they’re intimately uh connected but um having a good story having a really good narrative not telling your story in the wrong way that’s a big thing with me and what we’ve seen uh god over the years is that the story that may come from you and your heart and what you think is the right story may not may not be the the right story and you can tell a story you know a number of different ways and I also think that um I think it’s very difficult um for any attorney plaintiff or defense is when you I mean how long did you have this case before trial?
[10:18] Shane This case was around almost three years before trial.
[10:23] Bill So three years you you know you can kind of get blinded right by your own confirmation bias and you’re working up this case, working up this working up this case and you think you got the story and maybe you don’t have a story. So, why don’t you kind of talk about the original story and kind of how you first envisioned um sharing this with the jury?
[10:44] Shane Yeah. So, because our client was such a strong witness and a really great personality, we I thought that we would feature her in the opening and start the conversation with trying to relate to the jurors. One of our voir dire questions was, “Are you a homeowner or do you live in an apartment?” Yeah. You know, do you have you been in an attic before? Have you ever hired someone to replace a water heater? Ever hired a contractor? Those kind of questions.
[11:06] Bill Sure.
[11:07] Shane Um, a lot of things that we asked about were, you know, oh, well, I assume if something happens on my property, I’m automatically responsible for it, which is not what the law says.
[11:18] Bill Everybody thinks that. Like if you rear if you rear end somebody in an auto accident, you’re automatically at fall. That’s not how it works.
[11:27] Shane That’s right. And so I’ve heard you say this before, but if you want to find the problem, you have to address it.
[11:33] Bill Yep.
[11:34] Shane And so that’s what we had to do was figure out and I think that was one of the biggest issues in the case was homeowners believe that if something happens on your property and other people believe that if something happens on someone else’s property, they’re automatically responsible for it. So, we asked about it and we dug around in voir dire about it. So, then we were going to dovetail the opening and really feature our client and talk about her and how great she is. But really focusing on that midway through the opening and and going with, you know, she hired a contractor who she trusted to do this. She delegated that to him, and she should be able to go to work and do the things she needs to do and not worry about what happens while they’re performing this task at her home. But when I talked to you, and this was kind of reframing it and trying to use your flashback formula to, you know, start from the time when the water heater or when she actually we’re going to start from the time when she got home from work that day and there was a hole in the ceiling and then we were walk backwards from there. Um, and we still I still did that in opening, but I didn’t do it out of the gate because after talking to you, we really focused on shifting that cognitive lens. Really focused focused the case and I did my opening from the perspective of the contractor to start and then from the perspective of the plaintiff who was picked up in the parking lot of a Home Depot to do this one-off project.
[12:59] Bill Yeah.
[13:00] Shane And so that’s where we started and that’s I thought the opening went extraordinarily well. I think it really set the the stage and it made our client seem like it was just a matter of circumstances that had happened at her house that if something something bad was going to happen because of the circumstances, the choices that were made by the contractor and the choices that were made in other places and it just so happened to occur at our client’s home.
[13:25] Bill Yeah. And if if you start the story with your client, it’s your client’s actions and judgments and decisions that are going to be judged most, you know, um, you know, right out right out of the gate. So, by switching that up and starting starting your story at a different time point to put the key f the key people you want to blame, you push them up first and leading with that. Um, very very wise. And then your client uh, comes in uh, after that. That’s a very very powerful uh way to do it. Uh I I’ve again I’ve kind of seen it done the the opposite way where it can it can really blow up in your face because you want you’re like hey I want to talk about my client this great person. The problem is when jurors get to your opening they’re like salivating for somebody somebody or something to blame you know and so if you so like your heart tells you I’m going to start off with my client. Well, that’s the most time they’re they’re most the jurors are most eager to blame somebody. So, what you want to do is take your best stuff on alternative causation or or somebody else in the case. You put that up front. You give them that. And then when you talk about your client, you’re the jurors their hunger for blame has been satisfied and you fed these two other people to them up front. Now, talk a little bit about um the plaintiff’s opening. What was that like?
[14:55] Shane Um, the plaintiff’s opening was uh factual. It was well done. He set out his theme. Um, it was wrongs. Um, it’s the you you see this uh plaintiff theme, you know, pretty consistently. It’s about wrongs and how do we right wrongs and this is this is the only way we have is to compensate people with money for things that happened to them. Um, and so that was that was their opening. It the openings were short.
[15:25] Bill How long was your opening?
[15:27] Shane I think it was nine minutes. I think we had 15 minutes total. I think it was nine or 10 minutes. Um had had time left on the table. Um I’m not sure if if the plaintiff lawyer planned to do a long opening in this case. I don’t believe that he did, but I’ve had other other lawyers when I say I only need 10 minutes for opening kind of panic a little bit because they want to go on for a long time. And I think any more than 10 minutes and you you’re just talking to hear yourself talk.
[15:54] Bill Yeah. And so yeah, the general um rule here, you know, it it really depends on the case, depends how many parties there are, right? And and and kind of how complicated the case is. You know, you got that I call it kind of like that 20-to-30-minute sweet spot where if you land in that interval, you’re going to be in good shape. If you have a really really straightforward case, and we’ve heard the plaintiffs on their podcast say this, you got to I mean, plaintiff attorneys very actively advertising this. Hey, if I got a really straightforward case, I don’t want to complicate things. I want to simplify things. And they’re very good at simplifying things. So, they’re shooting for that, you know, 10-to-15-minute mark because if you do that, you can tell a solid story. It’s very easy for jurors to follow along. It’s almost impossible for them to get lost and in 15 I mean in 15 minutes they can pretty much remember everything you said. You know, you go up there and here’s the problem. You have a plaintiff attorney get up there and does their opening in 15 minutes and it’s razor sharp and then defense counsel gets up there for 45 minutes or an hour. These people are are not following that opening period. It’s done number one. And that’s just from a short-term memory and attention. Uh but but then you contrast it with wait a second, you know, this first person got up there and was razor sharp and was 14 minutes, right? Or 13 minutes or 15 minutes and then defense counsel gets up and is all over the place for 47 minutes. Just the perceptual contrast to that uh is is is a real is a real problem. Let me ask you just something about that between you and your colleagues at the firm uh when you guys have meetings. Have you guys is that something you’ve talked about as far as kind of a general strategy for the firm? Because I got to tell you the I read one I I was hired I I had a weird example. Let me tell you about this. So last week I was hired uh by a current client who um and they’re a new client and we worked on several cases the last I’d say year, but they’re a newer client. Uh and they got rocked on a case like a year and a half ago. And so, this client sent me the voir dire transcript and the opening statement transcripts and said, “I’m gonna pay you. I want you to just analyze what happened and tell me what happened.” And Shane, the opening statement was not not only was it just entirely too long. Now, I had a transcript, but it seemed to be pushing almost an hour, right? Probably 50, 55 minutes, which is way way too long. and was just it had like no story. It was just all over the place. It was really impossible to jurors to follow. Do you guys um at your firm uh talk about this stuff to say, “Hey, as a firm, you know, we really need to be thinking, you know, jurors have changed and we want to we want to be more razor sharp and we want to get right to the point because if we go long, uh it can create a bunch of jury problems.”
[19:01] Shane Yeah, absolutely we do. In fact, we’re having a firm retreat in a couple weeks and our topics that will be discussed at our attorney meeting are 15-minute topics to try and get people to distill information. I’ll tell you, I think one of the hardest things for anybody in this business to do is to distill down a complex set of facts or an issues into as few words as possible and be efficient. It’s easy to get up there and talk about everything. It’s easy to tell them about the whole case and you know everybody including the plaintiff’s shoe size and you’ve got your client, you know everything about her and her family and but it what’s hard is to really be efficient and to get in and out and hit your points. That’s what takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of experience and it takes work.
[19:49] Bill It’s let me let me tell you this and and I’ve worked with a number of defense counsel on this and some plaintiff counsel, you know, in the in the on the commercial side of things. The emotional discomfort of a 15-minute opening is is no joke. I mean, I’ve had a lot of push back. I can’t tell this story. Like, I need 45. It’s like, no, you don’t. And if you need 45 minutes, you got a bad story. And to try to get an attorney to take a case and boil it down to a really solid 15-minute story, it’s hard. It’s really, really hard because jurors, you know, when in an opening statement, you get into the weeds in an opening, you’re going to lose people. I mean, you’re just going to lose people. You got to stay in the clouds. Right. Right. And that’s that gets really really hard because I think there’s I’ve I’ve had defense counsel tell me that like I want to go an hour because I have this duty and obligation to my client to defend this case. I can’t do that in 20 minutes. And I say to those folks, I’m like, now that’s an emotional that’s a defense mechanism right there, right? That’s an emotional response. But the best way to defend your client and the case is to tell the the best story, right? Not necessarily spend more time defending, right?
[21:12] Shane No, I agree with you. I mean, you helped us on a case a year or two ago. It was a it was 30-day trial commercials case, and I think I opened that case in 20 to 25. It was less than 25 minutes, and we were in trial for a month. Um, you’ve got to pick your story and then you hit the, like you said, you hit the highlights, you lay the groundwork. That doesn’t mean when you get into your case and chief or into the into the witnesses, you can’t branch out and go deeper. That’s where you go deeper with those, each witness and you start building your story for closing and plugging in the details.
[21:46] Bill And that’s the key. Have the have most of these details come out through through the witnesses, right?
[21:54] Shane It’s almost like a a movie trailer. We’re show you some of the highlights. We’re going to tell you generally what what you can expect and we’re going to get you to plug in and tune in to the rest of the trial and watch what we’re going to do.
[22:04] Bill Yeah. So, this—So again, so the cognitive lens, which if you listen to this podcast, you should know this is pretty much the first two to three minutes of your opening, right? This is really what you’re setting up your main characters, you’re setting up your main storyline, and you’re putting certain things in the spotlight, and you’re assigning blame immediately. Okay, that’s the cognitive lens. By the way, Shane, every single movie trailer, every one of them by design is two to two and a half minutes. Every one of them. And there’s a reason for that because that sets the stage, right? Imagine if movie trailers were 15 minutes. You—You’d never get through it.
[22:42] Shane No, you’d never get through it.
[22:45] Bill You’d lose your mind, right? So that’s why you got that first couple minutes to really set the stage and that’s where I think most of this work can be done and that’s where I worked with you because I’m like listen we got to get this first two minutes is everything.
[22:59] Shane Right. Right.
[23:00] Bill And really and then your last two minutes is pretty much a rewording of your first two minutes. Right. Because you want to you want to start and you want to end in the same spot really to make that the most powerful. And so that’s a really really good structure. And again, this this case I analyzed for this client, I felt terrible. And by the way, this was this was a 30-year veteran defense counsel, and it was it was it was just it was a terrible opening statement. It was really it was really really bad. Um and I don’t think a lot I don’t think a lot of um time um you know relative to other things that happen in litigation. I mean, think about I how how much billable time does your standard attorney defense attorney have in opening statement construction annually? What percentage of your overall—three?
[23:51] Shane Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you’re—Yeah. If you’re trying five to seven cases a year, you’re not—that’s already a small percentage of what you’re doing and then you’re doing opening only, that’s that’s really narrowed the scope. 3% might be an overestimate, but yeah, it’s probably 3% or less.
[24:12] Bill Exactly. And another bad thing that happens is a lot of attorneys, you know, they’ll go back to an opening they did on a different case and kind of try to match that. So, if you made mistakes there, they carry over, right? And so, there’s a better way to do this. There’s a scientific way to do this. And you have my paper. Everybody’s got my—I’ve talked about this on the podcast a million times. Did a bunch of CLE’s on it. So, you guys could look that up. Um, so tell us about—tell us about the outcome. Tell us about um tell about tell us about what it’s like to wait for the verdict and all that stuff.
[24:50] Shane That’s probably my least favorite part. It’s terrible. You don’t know. There’s nothing you can do about it. Um it’s all in the can. It’s sent back and you sit there and wait. Um the jury asked a question. Um so we came back, the court basically said, “Y’all go eat lunch.” Um the jury was going to eat lunch and then start deliberating. They asked a question during lunch, which we didn’t know that they were already deliberating. So, we came back to the courthouse, got the question, um answered that question, and then right after that, they had rendered a verdict. And it was it was a little surprising that they rendered it right after we answered the question. Um but it was a complete defense verdict. They didn’t get to the damage question in the case. Um there were—it was a great result for our client. Um, I think something that is probably—I don’t want to say underestimated or underappreciated, but um, the client when she heard the verdict just all the emotion of three years just let go. She started crying. She was very emotional. Couldn’t have been more appreciative of our help. And I think a lot of times we forget about the toll emotionally that the cases take on the defendants because the focus of the case is always on the emotion on the plaintiff.
[26:07] Bill No one talks—So, uh, I’m not sure if you listened or saw, uh, our recent podcast with attorney, uh, Larry Hall up in, uh, St. Louis. He ended with that and and we like I was like getting emotional on the podcast. He’s like, “Yeah, like like typically all the hugs and the tears are from the plaintiff side with like nobody talks about the defense.” And he said it was a very very emotional, you know, um, positive outcome and that, uh, you know, the the defendants do have—they’re people too, right? Okay. And they tend to get dehumanized in this process because it’s all about the plaintiff and that’s not true. And so, I’m—well congratulations to you uh your client uh that’s terrific. It’s a great outcome and I appreciate that uh that breakdown.
[26:48] Shane Now I will say too on with Larry Hall, you know, right before and during that discussion of the emotion, the passion that he has for his clients really was highlighted. Yeah. And you know, I love that he said he—they presented their case unapologetically. Yeah, jury can tell when you’re sincere. They can tell if you care for your client and you’ve been plugged into the case, and you really feel strongly about—it’s not just about zealously advocating for your client. It’s believing in their position, knowing them as people and wanting a good result for them and doing your best to try and get that. And I could not agree more with that. And the jury can feel it. They can tell it for sure.
[27:31] Bill Outstanding.
[27:32] Shane So, two quick things on this case. this because of the uh you know going for it on fourth down and the trick plays. Um we had a pretty cooperative codefendant. Um and so there were all kinds of issues with the codefendant obviously and pointing fingers at him and so we got to a place where we felt like we could—and they understood the strategy behind it. It wasn’t something that we did without um talking to codefendant because I don’t feel like I—I didn’t want them to feel like we were cutting their legs out from under them unknowingly. Um but the focus of the case was on us because we had the money. And so, it really ended up being um something where we had to go after the codefendant a bit. And the plaintiff lawyer, to his credit, was pretty wily. And in the middle of trial, right before we—he—the codefendant was called to the stand, he non-suited him and then argued that we shouldn’t get to have a blank on the charge for the codefendant. So, he non-suited the medical at pre-trial, non-suited the codefendant after we’d pretty strongly pointed the finger at him about halfway through the case. Um and then our best cross-examination material on the plaintiff were lost wages, loss of earning capacity. He dropped those claims before the cross-examination of the plaintiff. And so, all of that work that all that all the material that I was going to use in cross or the plaintiff went away. And so, you have to be flexible. It was it was as much just being flexible and prepared as anything. And I I think um you know it’s just a world of you know how do you pick and choose what to defend and where to go when the when the target is constantly moving.
[29:20] Bill Well you were when you said fake punts and fake field goals and going on for—you weren’t joking. I mean that’s—that’s a lot of adjustment to be made um on your part. So, uh well great great work. Let’s wrap this up with uh two other topics. Let’s talk, you know, something um I know you’re passionate about and we talk a lot about in the podcast is um the training of uh and mentoring of younger attorneys. And we’ve seen one of the major obstacles to this is um clients not wanting to finance that. Clients not wanting, you know, uh second and third chairs and stuff like that or not at least not wanting to pay for it and wanting, you know, you or one of your partners to do everything and that doesn’t help uh young attorneys. Can you talk uh about kind of your philosophy on training and mentoring and how you talk to your clients to tell them, you know, how important that is because um if your young people are not getting the experiences um and the reps, you know, that that they need that they’re not going to grow and you can’t really have your cake and eat it too when it comes to this stuff.
[30:29] Shane Yeah. I know it’s it’s critically important uh for us to obtain the experience for our young lawyers. Um the perspective they gain. I mean, you can work on cases all day long, but if you don’t understand where it goes at the end of the day, and that a jury’s going to make a decision based off of a bunch of questions on a charge, and those questions on the charge are formed by your pleadings, and and they then you get to introduce discovery and evidence, and plug those pieces of the puzzle in, they’re really only kind of practicing with half of the formula. If you don’t let them see how it goes at trial, then they don’t ever think, “How are we going to get this in? What are we going to do to try and make get this in front of the jury?” They see a good fact for us or a bad fact for the plaintiff and they’re like, “Oh, we’re going to evaluate the case on this.” Well, the question is, is it coming in? We don’t know. We’ve got to do the work to see if it’ll come in. If it will, great. If it won’t, then we can’t evaluate the case on something the jury will never hear. Right.
[31:28] Bill Yeah.
[31:29] Shane And so obtaining that experience for them is critically important for a number of reasons, but that perspective is one of the huge reasons. And this client, to their credit, um, I wanted to take a young lawyer. I took one of my partners, Brad. You know, Brad, we went down and tried the case and the young lawyer watched and he helped and he got stuff ready and he briefed things like the getting the blank on the charge for the codefendant when they got non-suited. Um, they briefed a lot of that stuff and he was he was really very helpful at trial. He definitely did not sit back and just watch and observe, but the client was on board. They were happy to have a young lawyer in there. Um, they know the importance of investing in the future of the defense bar and that’s something that I think is extraordinarily important is to see, you know, the game being played, right? I mean, you’ve got to go to the game and watch it from the sidelines and get a little involved. You know, go out for the coin toss, go on, play special teams a little bit, and then then you can come back and start getting more and more comfortable being more and more involved.
[32:38] Bill That’s—that’s a really big deal. Now, as far as a firm, you know, kind of another issue that’s popped up related to this is, you know, young attorney retention. Um, that, you know, that’s a big topic uh across firms. Um is that part of your firm’s philosophy to to not just finding talent’s one thing, keeping them is another—is to um you know have mentorship and have training and uh that level of involvement. As kind of a uh you know one of the of probably many uh carrots to to keep people because I think it’s gut-wrenching and we’ve been through it here at Courtroom Sciences and I know you guys have been through it—is you invest a lot of time and money and effort into somebody and then two years later they leave and go someplace else and you’re like—well what the what what the—it’s it’s a real gut punch. Um what what are some of the ways you guys work on this young attorney uh retention.
[33:41] Shane Yeah. So, so first off, I’ll address your comment about the gut punch. It 100% is and it will make you think, well, maybe I shouldn’t invest that time because man, that seems like such a waste. It’s exact opposite response that you should have. It should make you press in more to the mentoring and more to the teaching and more to the to the learning and engagement. Um, over the years I’ve developed a kind of an a a policy or a philosophy of getting them involved in their own mentorship and getting them involved in the teaching each other.
[34:16] Bill That’s great.
[34:17] Shane So they do we have weekly meetings and people are responsible for topics. This week I was responsible for it, but I haven’t been responsible for it in about three months. They bring a topic in, they talk to each other, they learn from each other’s experiences. They try to develop approaches, answers to those questions where I’m starting to teach them how to answer each other’s questions instead of having to come to me all the time.
[34:42] Bill Yeah.
[34:43] Shane And that teach is kind of like giving them a fish or teaching them to fish, right? Difference. And so having them involved in the process I feel has been a huge help for our retention because they feel engaged, they feel heard, they feel like they are part of the solution. They’re they’re um involved in it and want to continue to be part of it.
[35:05] Bill That—that’s awesome. Final question. I think this is uh interesting, too. Um I’ve seen your style over over the years, and you just mentioned it about 20 minutes ago. You said you had a good relationship with the plaintiff attorney. Um, you seem to have a philosophy which I want to hear about. Um, and I know that you deal with very difficult plainiff attorneys and and you seem to even with the most difficult plaintiff attorneys, you seem to be able to get on their good side and be able to communicate with them and and and and be rational with them more so than than than other defense attorneys. And we we’ve talked about, you know, more specific, we won’t mention names, but um those that other people just cannot get along with. You seem to be able to get uh along with that. Can you talk a little bit about that philosophy and how that’s um that’s that’s that’s a that’s a good thing and a helpful thing um when you’re working up your case that that really even though they’re your adversary, they don’t necessarily have to be the enemy. And you’re probably, if they are the enemy and you’re treating each other as enemy, you’re probably not going to be able to logically talk or come to any resolutions and it’s just going to be a pissing match the whole way, which that may not be the best thing for your client, right?
[36:25] Shane Yeah. I think that’s—so there’s a a couple of comments I’ll make on that. One, the philosophy is easy for me to follow just because I feel like that’s just generally my approach, my personality. And so, I will say you should learn from others and learn to emulate others that you feel like you can follow. Um, everybody has their own approach. And so, if you try to just imitate someone else’s approach that doesn’t comport with your personality or doesn’t comport with your style. The jury will see that too. Opposing counsel will see that. And it it won’t it doesn’t necessarily work just to say like here’s the template and here’s how you go do it. You have to figure out what works best, what’s most genuine for you. Um I think two things um that that help me in that in that world. One, I always try to keep the client interest as the focus. It’s not me, it’s not about me. I try not to take it personally. Sometimes I do. Um but I don’t lash out or get angry or get upset very often. Um because I’m trying to think what’s—this isn’t about me. It’s not an ego thing for me. This is what’s best for the client. Um the other thing is is these cases like this case we tried three years. I mean that’s a long time to be involved with someone exchanging emails on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. um you get to know those people on a personal level, or you can just go scorched earth and you know dread when the emails come in and not want to deal with it or try to avoid it or do something like that. That to me is no way to practice when we’re involved in these cases and we’re kind of involved tied at the hip and communicating for the next two or three years. It’s got to be enjoyable to have that communication. We can disagree. Yeah, we can disagree all day and we can go fight for our clients’ interests and we can have knockdown drag out and at the end of the day still be congenial and be nice to each other and and that that makes practicing law a lot more fun for me. Um, and just a lot more enjoyable.
[38:31] Bill It’s probably better for your health, too.
[38:34] Shane It’s got to be. I mean, it has to be because you I’ I’ve been around lawyers that get wound up at the drop of a hat or every email that comes across and I’m just like, man, I I can’t do that. Your blood pressure is probably through the roof and it’s just not good for you.
[38:49] Bill Yeah. Well, speaking of lashing out and in and pure anger, there’s one situation that I’ve seen you uh completely that way. Let’s talk about Baylor football. We have uh college football will be upon us here. It’s under a 100 days until opening kickoff. Um, just got spring practice is done, portal windows closed. What’s the—So, you got 12-game season coming up. What’s—What’s the story on Baylor football and what, you know, are they are they nine and three? They eight and four are they 12-0? What—What are your—What are the thoughts? What are the rumblings coming out of Baylor?
[39:27] Shane Expectations are high. Um, Sawyer Robertson’s obviously back. Um, he played really well last year. This will be his second year under the offensive coordinator running more of a spread as opposed to that power zone offense that they were running. Um, Aranda always has strong defenses, and they’ve loaded up on the defensive side. I mean, expectations are high. Um, as a as a Baylor alum and a Baylor fan, I’m I’m hesitant to go any further than expectations are high.
[40:01] Bill I unfortunately know exactly how you feel. Well, um, thanks Shane. Thanks so much. Uh, you’re always welcome on, uh, the podcast and you and I keep in touch pretty regularly, so uh, we’ll keep doing that. To our audience, thank you very much for listening to the Litigation Psychology Podcast, please make sure if you’re listening on Spotify or Apple or whatever, iHeart Radio, whatever they have out there, YouTube, um, give us a review, give us a rating. We’d appreciate that. Again, Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences.I’m Dr. Bill Kanasky. We will see you next time.
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