The Importance of Experience

I think experience in a courtroom, experience with personal injury is the biggest, it is the biggest and most critical factor in the representation of injured people.

Trying a case is fairly complex. It starts first of all with very intensive preparation.

I prepare cases from the first time I see people. Not just talking to them, but in my mind how I want to present a case at trial. But then as you think about trying a case, Voir Dire. Voir Dire is the jury selection process. It’s fairly complex, you know if you’re watching an attorney doing this in the courtroom, it looks like, it looks like there’s not much going on. He’s simply asking questions. But it’s the fastest thing you can do, that I can think of.

It’s like driving a Formula race car, because what you’re doing is your immediately selecting and rejecting responses. Do you know, if you get the wrong juror, if you get the wrong set of jurors, it’s doomed for you. And so, just that aspect is incredibly complex.

Opening statements: jury’s in Colorado don’t want to be bored to death. They want to know what the evidence is going to be and they want the attorney to it succinctly, be immaculately prepared and they want to hear it.

An opening statement is critical in a case and so is the cross examination of medical experts in a personal injury case. For instance, if you’re hurt and you go to trial, in the state of Colorado, you can be guaranteed, that the insurance company will hire a doctor, a medical expert. He will look good. He will be or she will be somebody with great credentials. Probably in the area of orthopedics, probably in the area of neurosurgery or neurology and you have to know what you’re doing in cross examining.

Once again, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will fail.

And the reason that experience is so important, is that you only learn that by doing it time and time again. You don’t learn it in the first case or the first five cases. I don’t think you learn to do it really well until fifteen, twenty, thirty cases. And I’m talking about trial cases, on your feet, trying cases.

It is a core part of being a good personal injury attorney. You know in Colorado, if you get all the way through to the trial and to the end of the trial and you asked for too much money, you’ll watch the jury and what they’ll do is, they’ll go, you just asked us for too much.

You really have to be very, very perceptive in court as an attorney, to understand what to ask for and it’s critical, absolutely critical.