Visiting LincolnTeam of Rivals, Doris Kearns’s popular Lincoln biography. Lincoln, the Spielberg movie based on Kearn’s book that will be up for an Academy Award. Killing Lincoln, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s recent bestselling book about Lincoln’s assassination. Lincoln’s everywhere. If that’s not enough last Friday, while visiting my oldest son and his family in [...]
Lesson 2 – Sincerity is What Matters in Trial AdvocacyThe keys to trial persuasion are to be sincere and to be able to project that sincerity. Sincerity, more than eloquence, a good appearance or any other attribute, is what really matters in trial advocacy. Sincerity in the trial context means that the lawyer believes the [...]
Lesson 1: A Trial Lawyer’s CreedWhen I left the prosecutor’s office for the first time way back, my colleagues gave me the multi-volume set of Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. They knew he was my role model for being a lawyer. He still is.In this bicentennial year of Lincoln’s birth, we can still learn from [...]
