Litigation Journal, Spring 2021

Features

Litigation & Trials

Cameras Might Alter Courtroom Behavior: Maybe That’s the Point

Frank LoMonte

The federal judiciary’s resistance to photo and video coverage has deep roots. If the critique is that cameras change people’s behavior, the retort is that sometimes behavior needs changing.

Litigation & Trials

The Art of Prepping a Witness

Daniel Nathan, E. Scott Morvillo, Warrington Parker, Robert Stern, and Elizabeth Marshall Anderson

Thorough preparation is time-consuming, emotionally draining, and (sometimes) costly. But it is time well spent.

Litigation & Trials

Trial Practice Is Better Than Trying to Practice

Kristin Bender

For years, a young lawyer feared that she'd chosen the wrong profession. Four experiences of unrelenting, strategic, competitive, and at times terrifying intellectual theater changed all that.

Deposition

Recollections: Refreshed and Recorded

Len Niehoff

Memories fade, but can be brought back by records and objects in ways that allow them into evidence.

Litigation & Trials

Demonstrative Evidence: Tell and Show

Jennifer L. Keller and Chase A. Scolnick

The digital age has conditioned all of us to assimilate more information simultaneously through visual and auditory cues. The same is true for jurors.

Professional Development

Show Them the Way: Using Feedback to Improve Writing and Writers

David J. S. Ziff

We can’t avoid editing junior attorneys’ writing. It’s part of our profession. But we can make the process more effective.

Columns

Litigation & Trials

Respect for One Another

James A. Reeder Jr.

It's possible to be a great trial lawyer and a decent human being as well. Be an example to younger lawyers.

Litigation & Trials

Writing Effective Settlement Conference Letters

Hon. Sunil R. Harjani

A federal magistrate judge, who reads hundreds of settlement letters every year, offers his suggestions on how to best craft them.

Litigation & Trials

Gathering Personal Information in the Age of the GDPR

Mark G. Califano, Antonis Patrikios, and Polly Sprenger

Many countries, have developed, and are developing, legal privacy protections for their citizens and residents that are significantly broader than those in the American legal system.

Litigation & Trials

Mr. Lincoln’s Music: The Thorny and Monumental Third Paragraph of the Second Inaugural Address

George D. Gopen

Lincoln faced a stymying rhetorical and political problem in fashioning his Second Inaugural Address.

Litigation & Trials

Facts, Memory, Testimony: Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV

Kenneth R. Berman

Memory has a central role in resolving legal disputes, yet it can be so invisibly unreliable. The flaws of human memory call for reassessing how courts treat cumulative evidence.

Litigation & Trials

Statute Without a Home

Robert E. Shapiro

It is high time for the courts to point out to Congress that it has put in place something that just simply makes no sense.

Litigation & Trials

Be Yourself, Sell Yourself

Kenneth P. Nolan

You are different, unique really. Some crazy combination of genetics, environment, and personality. And if you adopt the persona of another, you will fail.

Litigation & Trials

Who Can Attend a Deposition?

Michael Downey

Lawyers are often advised to tell the other parties in advance when they may be bringing a potentially controversial observer to a deposition.

Headnotes

Litigation & Trials

Parental Alienation Is Real

Ashish Joshi

Family court judges have held that "there is no doubt that parental alienation exists" but also that it is "not a new phenomenon."

Litigation & Trials

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr

Richard Dean

Far and away the ablest lawyer involved in the prosecution effort was Thomas Jefferson , though he never set foot in the courtroom.

Litigation & Trials

In Memoriam: W.B. Park, 1936–2021

Steven J. Miller

Bill became Litigation’s exclusive artist. For almost 35 years, he drew every cover and all our inside images.

Renew Your ABA Membership

Litigation Journal, Spring 2021

Cameras in the Courtroom: An Ill-Advised Policy

Sua Sponte: A Judge Comments

Features