What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Lawyers And What Actually Wins Cases

Courtroom shows promise fast justice, mic-drop speeches, and lone-wolf geniuses who win on instinct. We’re here to tell you why that picture is wrong—and why the truth is more patient, more disciplined, and ultimately more effective. We unpack the five biggest myths about legal work and map them to what actually gets results in criminal and personal injury cases.

We start with the speed myth: real cases rarely go to trial, and those that do often take 18 to 24 months to reach a courtroom. Discovery, depositions, expert scheduling, and motion practice all add necessary friction that protects due process. Then we tackle the closing-argument fantasy. Great closings don’t conjure new facts; they distill weeks of testimony into a few clear points, often within strict time limits. Attention is scarce, so the best tools are simple stories, clean visuals, and themes built from evidence the jury already trusts.

From there, we challenge the lone-genius narrative. Real wins come from teams: paralegals who wrangle records, investigators who secure surveillance and statements, and experts who reconstruct crashes or analyze medical causation. We explain why discovery rules kill “gotcha” moments and how rare impeachment actually works. We also deflate the money-and-glamour illusion: firms advance costs for years, juggle clients and court, and live far closer to email and depositions than to Lamborghinis and nightcaps. Along the way, we share practical notes on voir dire, pretrial settlement pressure, courtroom culture, and why many lawyers never step before a jury at all.

If you’ve ever wondered why your case feels slow, why your lawyer keeps asking for records, or why that perfect TV closing doesn’t show up in real life, this conversation will recalibrate your expectations and build trust in the process. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves legal dramas, and leave a review to tell us which myth surprised you most.

You can watch most full episodes of Law Have Mercy on YouTube!

For more FREE legal tips, check out our social channels:
Instagram - @chazrobertslaw
Facebook - Chaz Roberts Law
TikTok - @chazrobertslaw
LinkedIn - Chaz Roberts

If you are in need of legal guidance, visit our website: https://www.chazrobertslaw.com/

This show is co-produced by Carter Simoneaux of AcadianaCasts Network, Chaz H. Roberts of Chaz Roberts Law and Kayli Guidry Bonin of Beau The Agency, and Laith Alferahin. 

Transcript

From TV Fantasy To Real Practice

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If my life looked like suits mixed with a few good men, I'd be dramatically exposing villains in court every Thursday at 217 PM. But instead, I'm reviewing orthopedic records at 943 PM. No cameras are following me around, I promise you. Today's episode of Law Have Mercy, we're talking about what Hollywood gets wrong about lawyers and what actually wins cases in the real world. Before I get in today's episode, I want to do a quick rant, and it's about the Amazonification, the amplification of society. Okay, so this has been a growing trend that I've noticed in the last couple of years, and it's been more prominent in the last few months and even weeks. And I'm noticing as I observe clients, as I observe society, my own behavior, my family's behavior, I'm noticing that the consumer, the general public, society, our attention span, and our patience is getting whittled away because of the expectations that we have now based on services like Amazon Prime. It used to be two days. Well, it used to be a week before you get a package. Now it's two days. Some places is one day, some places the same day. They're actually deploying drones to drop things off. Okay. And so we get used to that. Target pickup, target delivery, Costco delivers, Walmart delivers to your doorstep. And so we are becoming less we are becoming based less more and more on convenience and less and less on patience. Okay. And so that changes our expectation for everything. We drop a car off that's been damaged, we want it done the next day. Well, parts are on back order, parts take time to come in. There are other cars waiting in front of us. The guys didn't show up for work. Things take time. Mechanics are dealing with this, body shops are dealing with this. I think it's hitting pretty much every industry. But in the legal industry, which I know the most about that I can talk about is that we have a team that is super duper aggressive. We believe that we always want to put things in the other people's side. We always want to punt the ball to the other side and make them have to do their job. So rarely do things wait on us. But our network of people that we deal with is so complex. While we have a small team, we deal with so many people outside of this office. Doctor's offices, Medicaid office, right? Government bureaucracy, Medicare, government bureaucracy, health insurance. Well, those uh companies are consolidated and outsource billing and outsource all these things. Insurance companies, auto insurance companies that have limitations in place that protect them 30 days before they have to do anything. Uh, then we have to file a lawsuit and deal with courts and clerk schedules and judge availability. So there are so many things in the legal industry that requires built-in delays and time delays that people just have to be patient. It is crazy to see. Like a lot of times we'll get calls like, hey, you got a status update? You got a status update? And we say, like, look, we did X, Y, Z, but we're waiting on this guy to do his job, waiting on this guy to do his job. And I think there's maybe some some time where there's some inherent distrust that's coming from people's patience eroding. It's wild. But I'm seeing it. And look, I'm not innocent. I have lost a lot of my patience too, because of my expectation that has been put on me through large corporations, the biggest corporations in the world, the Amazons, the Apples, the Targets, the Walmarts, right? And so I think we all need to take a little step back and take a deep breath and give people grace, especially when it's in a complicated arena like medicine, like legal, like these other service industries. And know that when you hire a lawyer that you trust, that you believe in, know that that person has a job to do. You agree to that person, you trusted that person, that person was referred to you, you've read the reviews, he doesn't get paid or she doesn't get paid until they resolve the case, they're doing their work. And they're dealing with the same complex problems that you're dealing with, and they're pushing the ball forward. But they can only do what they can do. They can't control things outside of their office. You're dealing with bureaucrats, you're dealing with boxes and boxes and boxes of files, even the even the local medical offices. People don't show up to work, people get sick, their computer systems down, their phone systems down, things come up. But my rant, what I ask is that we all have a little bit of patience and grace moving forward with the people who we trusted. Okay, rant over. I think the first place where Hollywood really exaggerates and flat out lies is the fantasy of a quick trial. And I think that's perfect segue from my rant about the Amazonification of society. And so I'll look to my cousin Vinny as a great example. It's the kid gets arrested for murder, all right. So he's in a jail cell, he and his cousin are in a jail cell, they get Vinny to come down, and the trial is the following week. No bail, no bail hearing, no time delays, no discovery, nothing happens. It's arrest, incarceration, trial. That is just not reality. And I brought on Kevin to come talk some some game with us. Kevin, uh my cousin Vinny's a great example. I think the same thing happens in suits. I think the same thing happens in just about every movie where in a in an hour and a half you got crime, trial, or injury, trial. And verdict. And verdict. So quickly, very quickly. All within an hour. Hour and a half. What's the reality?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

That most of the times you're not going to try your case. Um, and I know a lot of these are based on criminal settings, but even those are not going to go to trial very often. And if it's a civil matter, like a personal injury case, even for less opportunity to go to trial, right? Maybe what would you say, 5% or less of cases actually go to trial. And assuming we're going to trial, we're not talking about a two-week thing. We're talking 18 months minimum before we get to our trial date. Most judges are putting things on the calendars for almost two years out.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah. I mean, we we have some criminal cases that we're not actually defending the guy. We're we're suing the guy. And those cases are two years old, three years old.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Yeah, I mean, they they get to the arraignment and then it's just a new motion date, a new motion date, a new motions date. Kick the can, kick the can. And then so they're not getting to anything in two weeks or one week for that matter.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, and and you're certainly not gonna look at the facts as they're presented on that day, uh a day or two after the arrest and say, okay, I'm ready for trial.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Like in my cousin Vinny, right? He gets the box of uh evidence the night before the trial starts. Right. They go on their hunting trip.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Right. And so he's going to review every single document. He's going to determine if he needs experts. He's going to prepare his dire his opening, his direct, his cross-examination, and all that in a night.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Oh, and by the way, he's going to go from being a trial attorney in New York to trying a case, was it in Alabama?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Alabama.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

So his license extended all the way from New York to Alabama.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, he didn't even have a license. So that that's that's one of the things.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

No, he did. He was just he didn't have the trial experience because it's a capital mart murder case. So most things require at least five years of experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

That's right. And so where we're looking at from the from the PI side, you know, we don't now Louisiana's extended uh prescription, the statute of limitations to two years. So we don't even have to file suit until almost two years if we want. We can do it sooner, but uh a lot of times we choose not to. And so the the client is treating and we're gathering evidence and we're building our file before we even file suit. And then once we file suit, they have 30 days to answer. Sometimes those days are extended. Then you do depositions, you you you exchange discovery, then depositions. These are months and months and months before you even get a trial date.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

You can't even schedule a deposition within two weeks of when you decide you want to take it. Yeah. I'm doing one right now that it's been in the scheduling process since October. Yeah. Right? For whatever reason, our conflict, their conflict, their client doesn't want to do this, their client doesn't want to come to this day. We got to travel to Texas, we got to travel to Mississippi, you got to accommodate everything. Um, and then God forbid that they're sick because then we had to reschedule it and push it down.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

It's amazing how many people get sick.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Personal issues, right? Personal issues. I had a personal matter come up the night before the deposition.

Scheduling Realities And Delays

Myth Two: The Grandstanding Closing

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah. I think the second big um myth is like the big dramatic courtroom speech. And oftentimes that's in the closing argument. I think of Philadelphia, I think of a few good men, I think of a time to kill, where the the closing argument just brings it all together, and it's this emotional, fiery speech that brings the jurors to the ultimate decision.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, I don't think that's that's not reality, right? The closing statement, it's usually just bullet points of what you proved throughout the trial. It's usually you highlighting those main points that you try to make through trial that you believe was elicited from the witness and presented by the evidence. And so now you're just drawing attention to that matter, right? So you're you're taking two weeks and you're doing this for the purposes of the closing statements. And in most courts, they give us a time, a time frame, right? You have 30 minutes, you have an hour for your closing statement, your closing arguments.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

And that's that's usually prepared. Uh a lot of good lawyers will keep notes in the course of the trial, and but but a lot of times that closing argument is prepared the night before.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

I think I think the only one that would be off the cuff and can sometimes change a view is your rebuttal. If defense counsel says something that favors your your position and you can highlight it at that moment in rebuttal, but everything else is pretty structured, and you're just condensing what's been done over the last week, two weeks, however long the trial is.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Now, I was taught and you were taught through our trial advocacy programs in law school to bring some color to it. It is a performance, it is performative, and so there is definitely some drama that could be added, but you and I would try to add some drama, but the reality is it's it's it's really hard in most types of cases to bring that dramatic effect uh of a car wreck, let's face it, where there's not debilitating, life-changing injuries, and a lot of times they're very cookie-cutter and not not good for a movie.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Right. Well, I mean, people use all kinds of different formats, right? But there's trial colleges and you know, trial universities and courses that tell you to hit certain points in your opening statements. So, like you're saying, it is pretty structured. What I always tell people, especially like drinking at a bar or hanging out with your friends, is a real life opening statement is not perfect, it's not flawless. You're gonna stutter, you're gonna forget what you're saying, you may switch gears in the middle of your opening statement because you just feel compassionate about what you're saying at that moment, so it's not perfectly rehearsed like the movies make it out to be.

Structure, Attention, And Settlement Odds

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah. And look, we we just got to watch a lot of good opening statements and and and closing arguments, and the number one rule is always make it shorter than you think. Because people's attention span is not what you think.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And if you're gonna use demonstrative aids, like exhibits, it needs to be less words and more like picturesque, I guess. You know, like use more pictures or more symbols or charts. Because if if you are trying to get your your jurors to read whatever PowerPoint, whatever slide, whatever board you're putting up, they're not listening to you.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, and and let's take a step back too is all right, we're talking about the dramatics of a closing argument or even an open statement. Well, let's just talk about the statistics. Statistically speaking, that's 0.001% of cases. Correct. That'll even get to that point, right? Because the majority, the overwhelming majority of cases actually settle.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Look, if you pick a great jury, right, which there are experts to help you pick a great jury, but if you pick a truly wonderful jury and defense recognizes that you picked a good jury, you'll probably settle right then and there.

unknown 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Case over. So you just spent two days doing voidir and case is over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

We had that. We had that in Texas is we we picked a good jury and the case settled.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

And so people don't understand that. And some judges will cry require you to do a pretrial settlement conference. And a lot of cases settle at that point.

Myth Three: The Lone Genius Lawyer

SPEAKER_00 14:00

All right. Myth number three is the rogue genius lawyer myth. The rogue genius lawyer myth. Okay. Genius lawyer by himself picks up a document and says, okay, I read this and I read this 10-page document in 10 seconds. I'm ready for trial. No staff, no paralegals, no intake, no medical record, not boxes and boxes of your review. They're ready for trial.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Wait, that's not true.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

That's not true. And look, suits makes it look Mike Ross, does it? Yeah. Look, suits is uh, first of all, that's another myth that we roll around wearing$2,000 suits every day. I'm currently wearing a t-shirt and I'm gonna get a lot of work done. Uh email, phone calls, document review, preparation for a hearing I have coming up Monday. I'm gonna wear a suit to court, but we don't wear suits every day. And I dang sure rely on my team to help prepare me.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

All right. Question. You think that myth is true for New York attorneys? Or do you think that that's a myth just for Louisiana people?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

You talking about wearing a suit?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

The suit and tie?

SPEAKER_00 15:12

I think that when you're in a more corporate setting, there's more of an expectation to wear a suit. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Because look, I've been to some of the big firms in New Orleans. You know, I've been into Jones Walker's beautiful, beautiful multi-floor office space, and pretty much everyone in there was in dress clothes.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Okay, were they wearing suits or were they wearing suits button-downs?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

No, I mean they were wearing button-downs and slacks and all that. But the funny thing is, is there's a custom tailored shop on the first floor of their building.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Well, that helps. I wore, whenever I worked in a defense firm, I wore uh slacks and button-down every day. I didn't wear a suit. I didn't wear a tie. I wore slacks and button-down every day. And I think on Fridays I wore polo shirts. I think about the office, uh, not the office, office space. It's Hawaiian shirt day, right? Like that's a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Well, look, I settled two cases and I don't even have socks on.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

So we wear, we're very casual here. I think we Kevin since Kevin started here, we we upped the dress code a little bit. I get some some grief that I'm I'm wearing gym clothes. I don't wear gym clothes for the record to the office, but I wear some nice chinos and a and uh sometimes I wear t-shirts, a nice t-shirt with with chinos or even jeans. Uh I wear button-downs occasionally when I'm when I know I'm for sure meeting with clients. And I wear suits to court, but I don't wear a suit every freaking day. But look, you got to be comfortable to be productive.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

You do. Right? And and if you're not meeting with anyone, I mean it's like working from home. You're not gonna wake up and put a suit on to work.

Teams, Experts, And Real Preparation

SPEAKER_00 16:45

I don't wear my pajama pants. And after my recent trip to Park City, I can tell you there are people that wear pajama pants in public. Now, look, I I'll say this in the criminal setting, I have seen, I have done cases completely by myself where when I was a public defender, I would get a file, review it, and go try the case. And my good friend Benny Benizesh is the best at it. You give him a file, a couple pages, and he's ready for trial. He's just that smart. But in the personal injury game, we're talking, we need a whole team to be able to work the case.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you gotta go through if it's an 18-wheeler case, you gotta go through boxes and boxes of documents and records and videos. Accident reconstruction is report one, report two, defense hired IME, you know, medical examination. They hired their own accident reconstruction as they did the download of your vehicle, they did the download of that vehicle.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

And those are all experts, those are all extra people involved in the process.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yes. That you have to literally review all of those documents just to prepare for their deposition, let alone saying I'm gonna wing it in trial for the first time. My cross-examination is gonna be the first time I speak to this expert.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

No.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

You're not doing your client justice if that's what you do.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

If you get to court, you don't ask a question you don't know the answer to.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Well, you shouldn't, um, because you don't know which way your case is gonna go if you ask a question you don't know the answer to.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Although lately we've been thinking about waiting to ask questions in court for strategic purposes.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, but we have a more than a good idea of what the answer is.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah. And we have documentation that we've prepared to impeach them.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, we're preparing. We're hoping that they give the answer opposite of what we know the answer should be.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

The next myth is the clever question myth, the silver bullet, the smoking gun that comes out in court. And legally blonde is a good example. Uh, the iconic hair care contradiction moment. It wins the scene, right? And and we've seen it in other cases. Did you order the code red? Right? That was in a few good men. Um, my cousin Vinny, he brings on his um Marissa Tomey. Marissa Tomey, who's his spouse or his significant other, that was before they got engaged, and she's an expert. Never mind that there wasn't a period of time, a deadline to announce your expert disclosures. Never mind that she has an inherent bias because she's the girlfriend of the defense lawyer. Never mind that the proper report wasn't submitted with the court and her CV and credentials, and they did it all in the courtroom, right? That's not true, right? Because we go through all this and there's challenges with all that, and motions and liminy and dober challenges. But my point is very rarely is there, well, never is there really a smoking gun in court because we already know all the information before through discovery rules and discovery rules both in the criminal setting and personal injury setting, we know all the facts. Both sides know the facts because we have to disclose all that information.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

You know, it's funny you brought up the the witness thing because before downstairs I told Lady if you watch like the Lincoln Lord, the new season, the entire trial of the Lincoln lawyer, right? Because he's on trial now for murder.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Oh, thanks, Kevin. I don't need to watch it now.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Every day during the trial, there are new witnesses being added to the list. Like, and I mean, like they go in for their morning session, and after lunch, they have a new witness. And then the next day, a new witness, and the judge is allowing these new witnesses to come in and testify.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

So can you imagine saying it's a Brady violation? Right. Can you imagine saying, I'm gonna go try a case for murder, of all things, murder, and we're gonna bring in random witnesses throughout the entire trial that no one knows about.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Can't prepare, can't do your background search on, can't depose them and get their opinions.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

And your private investigator is holding the subpoena to bring that witness to trial, and they're just following them around for the day of so to hand it to them. You've got to come to trial right now. Here you go.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

So I think what what we're suggesting is the law is when by the time you get to trial, it's much more transparent than you would think. Right? So both sides, now look, there's always some hidden strategies along the way, but from the factual standpoint, the facts, who are the witnesses? What are they likely to say? What are the documents? What are those documents likely to say? What are the photos? Because you have to agree on all that stuff before the trial even starts. What documents are going to be produced, what what exhibits are going to be offered, and so there's no gotcha moments.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

There shouldn't be. I mean, unless you have like some good impeachment evidence, which doesn't happen often, everyone knows ahead of time what's being presented from an evidence standpoint. Yeah.

Discovery Rules And No Gotcha Moments

SPEAKER_00 21:48

And impeachment is a cross examination of someone's opinion, uh, and you can rely on different types of information that may have not been disclosed because. Because they have basically presented themselves to the court and offered an opinion, and you could impeach them based on some other things that may have not been that may have not come to light. A good example is surveillance. You say that you can't do X, Y, and Z, you can't play with your kids, you can't go outside, you can't bring your trash to the road, and then they bring some impeachment evidence in the terms of surveillance where they got a surveillance video of you bringing your trash to the road, playing with your kids, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

But even then it's not if you did your discovery process right and your disclosures right before trial, they have to produce the surveillance video, and they have to produce with that whatever they have. So you've at least had a chance to see what your client's likely to get implicated on.

Myth Five: Big Money And Glamour

SPEAKER_00 22:47

And if you're gonna ask your client that on direct, you're an idiot. Right? The next big thing is the money illusion. All Hollywood lawyers, big verdict every week, unlimited clients, lavish lifestyle, riding around in Lamborghinis with presidential Rolexes, zero downside, and they're after trial all day. They go to happy hour and they have a beautiful model that meets them at the bar and they stay out till 2 a.m. and they have trial the next day as they ride off in their Lamborghini.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Wait, I did that last week. So I have the model. Maybe not the Lamborghini, but I have the model. There you go. So kudos to my wife.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah. What's the reality? We work cases for years, we front the costs, we risk losing. It's hard to get clients. We have soccer practice at 5:30. We have little league practice at 5 30. Our weekends are spent on the couch recovering from our week. We're bringing, we're going to the sky zone, bring our kids, jump on trampoline. You know, like it's completely different.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

We're returning phone calls from our client.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Kevin just bought a new truck for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

And we're returning a call from our client. I haven't heard from you in three days. Well, I was in trial. Right. So what's the status of my case? Right. So the reality is completely different. It would be nice though to say we just finished a trial, so now let's go to happy hour. Let's drive off in a Lamborghini. But the reality is, is within 24 hours, you're back on the grind.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

You're back on the grind. We we went, we had a a happy hour after our Christmas party. I think you and Bradley had uh maybe a beer at at lunch after y'all settled a big case. Um and then got back to the grind.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

You probably spent the whole time back from Baton Rouge returning clients' calls or calling me and asking me about stuff. Like it's a constant grind. We don't live in a courtroom. That's another myth we don't live in the courtroom.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

No. We spend most of our time in office, you know, meeting with clients, and we don't take that positions every day. Um we take them often, but we don't take them every day. We're not going to hearings every day. You know, like the Lincoln lawyer, I love that show by the way. He drives from courthouse to courthouse for multiple hearings on the same day for different cases. Yeah. And he just grabs a photo and he's walking in and he gets the bail reduced.

Daily Grind, Court Time, And Reality

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Yeah. Well, I can relate, like when I did a lot of criminal, and so I was a public defender and I had my own private criminal practice, I spent a lot more time in court because there were hearings. Now, was I arguing the whole time? No. A lot of times it's just appearances that you got to do to satisfy the subpoena and move the ball forward. But I wore a I went through a lot more dry cleaning when I did criminal law. I was in for I was dapping up the bailiffs. Everybody, when I walked through the metal detector, no one asked me to take anything out of my pockets. Everybody knew me. The clerks all knew me. The judges knew me better because I was there so often. The criminal practice, there's a there's a there's a term and that a lot of lawyers say a saying, and a lot of lawyers say is you can't make money in court. You cannot make money in court. And what that means is when you're in court sitting around in a in a pew, gossiping with other lawyers, those emails are stacking up, those phone calls are stacking up, your client's calling you to check on the status of the case, you're gonna have five messages when you get back to the office. It eats up your time. And ultimately, I loved practicing criminal law, actually. I really did because of all those reasons. I like to go to court, I like to uh try cases, I like to argue some of the motions. It's interesting. Criminal law is very interesting because it deals with the constitution and constitutional rights. And I as I was evolving in my personal injury practice, I couldn't do it anymore because I was in court too much. You get there at nine, the judge may not take the bench till 10:30 sometimes. Some judges are very punctual, some judges don't are not. They let people work out deals till they take the take the bench till 10:30. And so then they call you up. Man, it's 11:30, it's lunch. You killed a whole morning in court on a pretrial motion for one case.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

And some judges sound to donk it and go in order, and then some will say, what are the matters that have been resolved, or what are the quick ones? Let's take those up first. Which ones are which matters have attorneys? Let's take those up first. But other other than that, you may sit in you may literally sit in court for three and a half hours for your five minutes to explain your case.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Yeah. And then some some judges say, Well, we have 12 inmates that are sitting in the jury box. We're gonna deal with the inmates first because we got to get them back to the jail. And you're just sitting there, shooting the breeze with other lawyers. And look, it's cool to talk to other lawyers and hang out and you know, wear your suit and bounce around. It's actually surreal. Growing up like I grew up, growing up like Kevin grew up, I grew up a single mom and little old Cecilia. Kevin grew up, you know, first generation from Mexico. He's out there in Morgan City. We live for that moment, right? Being in a suit, being in court, being on this side of the bar, that's why they call it the bar, this side of the bar, uh with the lawyers. It's cool. And then that coolness wears off after about five minutes, and that that email and those text messages start coming through and say, Man, I gotta get out of here, I gotta get back to work. Can you relate to that, Kev?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Oh, absolutely. You know what's which hearings I like to do? Like the motion for summary judgments and all that hearings, because it's usually all the attorneys are put on the same docket for the same day and everyone's arguing, and that's when you have a true audience. Yeah. Because I mean, we've been to trials before where it's five people in the audience, right? If it's a big trial, people are interested in it. If it's not a big trial, it's the jury, the attorneys, and three people sitting in the thing. So there's no drama like on TV. There's no row of cameras.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

No, we don't have cameras in Louisiana. A lot of states allow cameras in the courtroom. We do not allow cameras in a courtroom.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Most courtrooms don't even allow you to bring your cell phone in unless you're an attorney. And then if you go to the federal courthouse chat, you can't even bring in your watch or your cell phone.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

I got kicked out of federal court. I went observe a trial, and my darn watch rang, and the judge kicked me out of court. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

That doesn't make it to the club. Oh, it absolutely does.

Court Culture, Cameras, And Waiting

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Now, and another thing to note is what we're talking about is like personal injury and criminal, and family law deals with the court. You got a whole probably 70% of the law that doesn't even deal with the courtroom at all. A lot of people think that all lawyers, well, I don't want to, I don't like arguing, so I don't want to be a lawyer. Man, there's a whole list of lawyers that are just transactional lawyers. Real estate lawyers never see the courtroom. Oil and gas lawyers rarely see the courtroom. Um, property lawyers rarely see the courtroom. Like there's a lot of transactional things that happen where you arguing before a judge or before a jury is not even part of the practice.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Yeah, I mean, I went to be an immigration attorney when I was in law school, right? So I thought that's what I wanted to be was an immigration attorney until I saw the stack of forms that you have to fill out and that it takes hours to check little boxes and fill it in. And I was like, that that's not that's not what I want to do. My idea of being a lawyer was the TV version of it, the Hollywood version. Like I wanted to go to court and argue something. So my first few cases were criminal law and family law. And you should have seen when opposing counsel for family law cases when I requested depositions. Around here, no one requested a deposition for a family law matter. Right. But I wanted to depose people. I wanted to depose the guy that the wife or the husband allegedly was having an affair with. Imagine how awkward that is, right? In a family setting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Does deposition are you able to depose people in family law?

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Just people don't take advantage of it.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

They don't take advantage. I mean, you can do discovery. Now the court has a lot of it standard, you know, a lot of it standard. When you got to go to a hearing officer conference here in the 15th JDC, you have to produce certain documents. So for custody matters, for child support matters and all that. But if you're going to ask for permanent spousal support, you have to prove you're not at fault. And so I'm going to do discovery. I'm going to do that positions. And I did. I subpoenaed some individuals that were supposedly the, you know, the person that they had an affair with. And you'd be uh amazed how quickly that matter resolved. Kevin, you're so mean.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Well, you know, I did my job. My client was happy about it. I guess so. So in closing, look, Hollywood makes law look super emotional, super dramatic. Real personal injury law is analytical. Hollywood makes it look la makes it look fast. Real world, the law is very slow. Real litigation is patient. Hollywood makes it look all dramatic and glitz and glamour. Real law is disciplined and humble.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Laffie at personal injury is black tees and slick hair.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

You don't want a movie lawyer. You want someone who's prepared. Hope you enjoyed the show. Hope you learned a little bit about the differences between Hollywood and real life. I hope we didn't make it seem too boring. Stick around for the next episode. Make sure you subscribe. Give us a five star review. Appreciate you.