Trial Prep Organization – Create a System to Prioritize & Delegate
Don’t you just crave a fool-proof system to help you conquer trial preparation, regardless of how many people you have on your team? In my recent experience assisting a group of lawyers, it was evident that the make-or-break in their case was a robust method of prioritization and delegation.
In this episode, we dig deep into the mechanisms of planning, organizing, and executing tasks effectively when prepping for a trial. I’m sharing crucial insights on how prompt decision-making and appropriate workload distribution can significantly amplify the results at the end of the day. I’m also teaching you how to assemble a top-notch trial team, even when you’re flying solo. Drawing upon my own experiences, I can’t stress enough the importance of knowing your abilities and limitations, seeking help when needed, and nailing your opening statement well in advance.
Plus, I’m giving you a real-world example of a recent trial I was involved in, illustrating the essence of time and why defining roles and prioritizing tasks early are so critical. No matter the size or scope of your team, this episode aims to equip you with the essential tools and strategies to streamline your trial preparation process.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Prioritizing and delegating tasks for trial preparation to excel
- Taking time to make prioritization decisions before deadlines
- Building a successful trial team
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Supporting Resources:
If you have questions, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.
Episode Credits:
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back to the Trial Lawyer Prep podcast with your host, me, Elizabeth.
Thanks so much for joining us on this podcast journey. I really appreciate it. We are almost to episode 100, which is very exciting. But today I want to talk about trial preparation organization. [00:01:00] Lots of folks are going back to trial. Lots of things are being tried. It’s very exciting. I’m so excited for folks because we are finally getting back into the groove and some courts are even trying to groove a little faster, which is awesome.
And I had a recent experience where I’m helping some folks get ready. We’ve done some focus groups and they’re gonna go to trial and I just, I was really impressed at their organization, how they had their team organized, how they had prioritized things and how they were coming back around to that about 30 days out of trial and going back through and fine tuning whose job was what and what they expected.
And it was really great. And I am grateful to be a part of. Being on that team to help with that trial and knowing what my role is, of course, always helps me excel. But I know that sometimes that does not happen when we are going to trial. And I [00:02:00] know that there are times, because I’ve been there as a solo, I’ve watched other people going into trial where there was a lot of disorganization, there was No prioritization and things just fell through the cracks.
And I was thinking about this podcast episode yesterday and sitting outside. And it’s this point in the year that we have all these little hummingbirds that come through our yard. And I always put a feeder out in the, Summer and springtime, but there’s just this rush, and it’s this particular part of the species that they come down, they go to Rockport, and they just fly across the ocean and go to Mexico.
It’s really cool, but they need a lot of energy to do that. What happens is normally we have one little resident hummingbird, and he just fights everybody off. So there’s one or two people, they have little fights, and he can normally fight them off, but During this time, there are like four and five and six, and it’s just this huge scuttle bug.
And it’s really cute, of course, cause [00:03:00] they make these cute noises, but they can’t fight them off the whole time. So eventually everyone’s just at the feeder and just partaking. And that’s great. But what it made me think of was, It’s our brains and what our brains go through when we’re trying to prioritize.
And everything is fighting for that vital brain power, right? That creativity, that energy, those thoughts, that power, and sometimes it’s not a big deal. We have one or two things that we’re handling in that week or coming up or three things, maybe a couple of depositions, some intake calls, right? And we can.
Prioritize that. Oh yeah, I’m gonna do this. The depositions, of course, help cases, so I’m going to prioritize that. I’m going to use this time here. Intake call, not so much, but I’m going to do it. And we’re able to organize our brain power and then know, I can’t do that, let me send it over to someone else.
So we have time to make those decisions. But what I see oftentimes is when we come up to [00:04:00] trial, And we are getting in that 45 day range, that 30 day range. And it’s six and seven and eight different things. It’s motions in limine, it’s deposition designations, it’s outlining cross exam, it’s preparing witnesses, scheduling witnesses, getting a hold of those before and afters, working on that opening statement, fine tuning that jury selection.
Or even just starting on all of these things. So they’re all fighting right for our brain power. And when we don’t have thoughtful prioritization and delegating, it just doesn’t happen. And so what we end up having to do then is what I see is a lot of people pick questions. What they love to do, right?
For example, if you really love cross exam, like you’re probably going to do the cross exam outlines first, right? Ignoring everything else, opening statement, jury selection. Or what happens is you just have to sit down and go by deadlines, right? Which is the [00:05:00] first that has to get done? Where’s the biggest fire that we got to put out?
And what is the right quote unquote prioritization when it comes to trial prep? I would think it totally depends, right? I don’t think there’s one right or wrong answer. But I think the whole point of the question is that you got to stop and take that time and be thoughtful before you have no time. And then you are rushed to complete so many things.
And when we are rushed, we don’t do our best. It just, we don’t have all the power that we need. We don’t have all the thoughts. And what I see so many times is we rush to complete something. It’s due at five, and we don’t even complete it the day before and then have time to review. We have to complete it and send it in by that 5 p.
m. or, or send it, exchange it by 5 p. m. And we’ve missed something, right, because we have rushed, and that’s what we really want to avoid. We are trial lawyers. We love going to trial. [00:06:00] And so sometimes I think we don’t prioritize because we really don’t want to go to trial. We’re hoping that it’ll settle at the last minute.
And so we let a lot of these things slide down to that last minute. And I know from listening and being around some of the wisest trial lawyers, they know the importance of taking the time to choose what they prioritize before Those deadlines choose for us because we know that rushing around really weakens our preparation and our product that we’re putting out there.
And so just talk a little quickly about an example. So Andrew Gold was on the podcast a trial that we had done together in Seattle. And in that trial, we had five lawyers. On the plaintiff side. So we, one, had to organize and delegate because that’s a lot of people and everybody needs to know where they’re going to go, but [00:07:00] there were three of us, myself, Mr.
Keenan, and Andrew, who had a trial just two weeks before the start of the CLB trial. So we really had to prioritize earlier than we normally would because we knew that we would be working on this other trial and wouldn’t have time to stop, check, review, are you doing this, micromanaging, which is another reason why we want to have a system that we prioritize, delegate so that people know what they’re doing and you don’t have to worry about it.
So we sat down and we delegated, or of course I didn’t, but somebody else did. For example, our Seattle lead counsel, he had the opening statement. And he had actually been working on that with focus groups, but he had that. That was his thing and nobody else had to worry about. The Seattle associate had the motions and the briefs, which made sense because one, we had no time for that.
And two, we don’t have experience with the judge or Washington law, so that makes sense. Andrew had the cross of experts. [00:08:00] And I had exhibits and witness prep and before and afters, right? So that meant I needed to make sure I had time to schedule, had the exhibits in order. And when we got to Seattle, no deadlines were missed.
Everybody was pretty well in order. Of course, there’s always little last things that change, which is another reason why you want to make this system, even if your system is just sitting down and looking at the list of things to do. Motions in limine, jury instructions, opening statement, and just knowing, okay, what can I do now, what can wait, or I know some people who, once they get a case in, they start with the jury instructions first, right, put them in the file.
That’s all great. Some of those things are going to be easy, some of those things are not, but you can think out ahead of time, and that’s really what you want to be doing. Because. You will not have time as it gets closer to trial and things [00:09:00] start changing and you start getting extra stuff, right? So opposing counsel is very good about giving lots of extra things to fight about, lots of extra things to think about as we get closer to trial as distractions.
Now, you may be thinking, Hey, I’m a solo, Elizabeth. I don’t have five people to help me try a case and I don’t want five people. I’m a solo. I’m a solo. It doesn’t matter. If you are one person, this means you really have to be extremely diligent about prioritizing your time and your brain power. And you’ve got to get help with tasks that you don’t like or that you just suck at.
You can’t do everything. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in being a trial lawyer is you cannot do it all. Something will suffer. And it will be significant. And the wisest trial lawyers that I know don’t go into battle by themselves. So I know a lot of folks who [00:10:00] they pair up with people to try cases, or you’ve got an all star paralegal who pretty much acts like a lawyer, right?
But either way you have got to see the writing on the wall that you can’t do everything. And looking at the examples of Of great trial lawyers and great verdicts. It’s a team and It’s also what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. So I see many times amazing folks who are great in the courtroom.
They’re persuasive. They’re very good at that, but they stink at jury instruction. So they’re going to hire appellate counsel to handle the jury instructions, creating them, arguing for them, right? They’re going to have those appellate counsel who do briefs on the points of law that they don’t have to do now.
Of course it’s going to cost, but again, You want to put together the best possible trial and you can’t do that alone. [00:11:00] So if you’re a solo, here’s my message to you, get some help. Any less serve I’m ever a part of on all the local trial lawyer stuff, even my statewide stuff, nationwide stuff. When somebody says, I’m going to trial and I would love some help.
Always somebody chimes in, right? Somebody’s always, yes, please, I’m happy to go help you. We go down here in Austin and just help and watch and pick a jury, right? Be extra eyes. So, uh, There’s always going to be help out there. Of course, if you have extra time, you can go find those people who excel at the things that you do not.
For example, if cross examining defense experts is not your jam, trust me, there’s somebody out there who absolutely loves it. But you know what? That person’s probably not going to be the best person to do a direct exam of a client or direct exam of a for and after. And that’s what people do, right? We are drawn towards what we love to do.
We all have different skills and different talents. And your [00:12:00] job is to know yourself and to know what you love and what you excel at. And then stop and look around and find somebody who excels at the thing that you don’t, because they’re going to be out there. I see this all the time with firms that I work with.
Well, they be a pair of people that work together because they compliment each other so well, right? Like, It, it, it’s just like a wonderful compliment sandwich. And I’ve also see it where lawyers pair up and initially they think, Oh, you’re going to take opening. I’ll take this and you’ll do this person and I’ll do my client for direct.
But as they get into things, they realize, wow, you know what? This is my client, but you are really good at direct exam. Like you need to do this because that’s, what’s going to make the best trial possible. And those are calls that you have to make. But what those folks had done was. Spent enough time together to see and they prioritize what they were doing together and delegated [00:13:00] ahead of time and not on the courthouse steps to be able to put together the best possible trial.
And they want a lot of money for their client. And I know that they were really glad that they were able to look at each other and say, Ooh, you’re better. We do this? Oh, you’re better at that. Will you do this? Like we want the best possible trial that we can create. So last example, and this is more of a longterm example because I deal with a lot of folks with focus groups.
I think this summer I hit my thousand focus group. Very exciting. But what I see so often in doing focus groups with so many different folks is we get down, we’re coming into trial and. We’re going to do an opening statement focus group and. They don’t write it down. They just wing it on some points, an outline.
And I just, and I ask, did you write it down? I just, I’ll write it [00:14:00] down later. I’ve seen, talked to other trial lawyers and they just, they wing it. I know in my mind they don’t wing it. I know for sure they don’t wing it. They may look like they’re winging it, but they’ve spent hours and hours of time Knowing the file, working on that opening statement.
So don’t kid yourself to think the great people, the good lawyers, the trial lawyers with all this experience, they don’t write it down. Yes, they do. And they work on it and they think about it. And I can tell you from my experience with Mr. Keenan, that was his greatest strength was being able to sit almost in a meditative state and just think about a case.
And digest it and mull it over and think about it and think about it. And then he would make notes on his cell phone. And because he trained himself to do that, right? He’s a busy guy. He goes and blows and does all kinds of stuff. That is his superpower because that is the thing other people are [00:15:00] not doing is stopping and thinking and walking through that and mulling it over multiple times instead of just that one time.
Or that maybe two times take the time to write things down. Trust me. It is everybody’s got to write things down. Greatest authors, right? There’s drafts, there’s manuscripts, right? So don’t skip that step of trial prep and organization of just writing things down. All right. We started off talking about trial organization.
I got a little bit off the sidetrack and opening statements, but the episode is about just being intentional about creating a system that helps you prioritize all the tasks for trial. Delegate the ones that you don’t like, right? Find somebody to help you with those ones that you don’t like so that you can really fine tune, give it the best possible outcome, put in the best possible work that you’ve got your best product.
That’s what trial is about and not winging it [00:16:00] and not being rushed because you waited too late. Because you let deadlines rule your prioritization and not your own thoughtful process. So, I hope this was helpful. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review on your favorite platform. Send it to folks that you know that may be approaching a trial or have questions.
For example, I got a call the other day about somebody who said we’re thinking about doing our own focus groups in house. Could you fill the call? And I said, I can, but I have, I think at least six episodes on my podcast about DIY focus groups. So maybe start there. There’s a free download. So anyhow, there’s tons of resources.
A lot of them are on the website, larricklawfirm.com podcast. And until next time, thank [00:17:00] you.