Legal Grounds | Brent Turman on the Portrayal and Practice of Law, Being Willing to Adjust the Narrative, & the Outsized Impact of Unseen Work.

When someone asks what I ‘do’ for a living, there are times I want to respond with, “I tell stories.” After all, most attorneys spend their time trying to get the “full picture” of what’s happening in a given case, and the best narratives give us just that. 

Now, unfortunately, somewhere along the way the expression, “telling stories”, became short-hand for “making stuff up”, and since there’s already plenty of jokes about lawyers’ relationship with the truth, my answer is typically a much-less mysterious, “defense attorney”. 

But as someone who consumes a fair amount of legal media - be it in books or on screen - I can tell you that truth is almost always stranger than fiction. But as my guest this week is quick to point out, just because a story is ‘strange’ doesn’t mean it has to be ‘complicated’. 

Joining me this week is Brent Turman, a trial attorney whose commercial litigation practice covers a variety of matters including business disputes, intellectual property, real estate, arbitration, and civil RICO actions. 

But before his legal career, Brent was an Associate Operations Producer for ESPN & ABC College Football, also producing commercials, industrial videos, in-arena entertainment, and music videos for clients throughout North America. 

Now he pulls from these experiences, frequently giving trial skills presentations across the country, teaching other attorneys about the strategies and tools he has used in the courtroom.

We discuss how Brent found his way into the legal profession, the narrative tools from his early career have transferred into deliverable results for his clients, and so much more. 

Enjoy the show!