May the Record Reflect
May the Record Reflect
65. Emergency Advocacy, with Judge Mark Drummond
For trial lawyers, “advocacy in a hurry” — injunctions, bail hearings, requests for orders of protection, emergency custody petitions, or immigration orders — calls for making the most of the limited time you have before the court, even if it's just 15 minutes. Former Illinois Eighth Circuit Court Judge Mark Drummond shares seven valuable tips on compressing your case to fit the time available, how to help the judge quickly understand what’s at issue in the proceeding, and what ethics concerns must remain top of mind for all advocates regardless of whether their time before the court is 10 minutes or 10 weeks.
Topics
3:43 What is emergency advocacy?
8:00 Circumstances calling for emergency advocacy
16:48 Making the most of the little time you have
17:40 Factors you must prove in your state
18:30 Primacy and recency
21:00 Appeal to the judge
21:47 Written offer of proof
23:15 Persuasive use of numbers
23:53 Offer time limits
27:00 Judges triage
27:39 What judges fear
31:02 Two things to be prepared for
34:11 Your duty of candor to the court
38:06 Signoff questions
Quote
“You’ve spent a lot of time going through law school. You’ve built a practice. Clients will come, clients will go. You built your practice brick by brick on the decisions you’ve made, the judgments you’ve made, and the choices you’ve made. And it takes a lifetime to do that. But you know, sometimes like a child that knocks down their wooden block tower, it only takes one time to tear all that down. And no single client is worth that.” Judge Mark Drummond
Resources
Judge Mark Drummond (bio)
"Death Penalty Cases in a Traffic Court Setting" (article)
"What Judges Want" (article)
Ethical duty of candor to the court (newsletter)
On today's episode of May the Record Reflect.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Attorneys who do case after case in front of the same judge. Sometimes the judge will say, can we just dispense with opening and can we get to the facts? And I always urge the attorneys to politely say, turn that down and just say, and mine is two minutes. Judge, if you'll just give me two minutes, I think I can frame up what's in issue and what's not an issue. And when a judge hears that an attorney will separate the wheat from the chaff, of course we will give you two minutes. If you can tell us, Quickly, what we need to decide and what is admitted or what we don't need to decide, we will take that offer each and every time. And if you're good at it, you can get a lot of persuasion done in two minutes to five minutes.
Marsi Mangan:That was Judge Mark Drummond, and this is May the Record Reflect. Hello and welcome to the monthly podcast of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. I'm your host, Marci Mangan, and in today's episode, here comes the judge again. This time, it's the Honorable Mark Drummond. Judge Drummond spent the first 20 years of his legal career as a trial lawyer before spending the next 20 on the bench, specifically the state of Illinois Eighth Circuit Court at the time of his retirement. Judge Drummond is that person, and we all know a few of them, who is even busier in retirement than they were when they had a full-time job. Currently, he serves in the dual capacities of executive and judicial director of the Civil Jury Project at the NYU School of Law. If you've ever attended a NITA program, the odds are pretty decent that Judge Drummond was either your program director or a member of your faculty. Case in point, Last year, he taught at 20 programs, serving as program director at seven of them. At NITA, he also serves on the board of directors of the NITA Foundation, which is our supporting organization that awards scholarships to public service lawyers so they may receive NITA advocacy skills training. Judge Drummond is also a previous guest here on May the Record Reflect, and I am pleased to have him back to talk to us about emergency advocacy. Here's our interview. So my guest today is Judge Mark Drummond. Longtime listeners of the podcast will know that that's a familiar name. This is, I believe, your third time on the podcast, Judge Drummond, and I want to welcome you back.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:It's great to be back.
Marsi Mangan:Yes. I hope that listeners are picking up on this little trend over the last year here on the podcast, which is me saying to our guest, you came to me with this great idea. And as the host, I love saying this because I know that when faculty are coming to me with an idea, it's because they've got their finger on the pulse. They know what lawyers in the wild, so to speak, actually need and are talking amongst themselves about. So my first question is, why did you email me a
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Well, actually, Marcy, you know I have to thank you for the title Emergency Advocacy, because when I was pitching my plan, you came up with the title Emergency Advocacy, and it's perfect and it's timely. I love it because my wife and I are now addicted to the show The Pit, which, like the old show with Kiefer Sutherland, 24 hours, every episode covers one hour in a very busy emergency room. Now, I can't say emergency advocacy is like an emergency room, because fortunately, all the cases in court do not involve life or death, but they are still very significant for those involved. And in a nutshell... I have done cases and have taught cases which have full discovery, documents produced, depositions taken, and full-blown hearings. But a lot of the advocacy going on these days are short hearings. And I figured I needed to talk about the short game.
Marsi Mangan:Yeah, we haven't done that very much. So your point is well taken.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:So going back to 1985, I took the NITA course as a student, and in 1986, I started teaching for them. And part of NITA's mission is to assist others through legal service organizations. In the past 10 years, we've provided training courses for over 600 public service agencies, agencies that help people, help families who cannot afford an attorney. For example, I'm doing four such courses just this year. In the past 10 years, we've provided over 1,000 scholarships for attorneys and legal services for our regional courses. And these attorneys and legal services are in court often, sometimes all day, doing case after case. In many cases, they don't have the luxury of discovery. They are in front of judges who do case after case all day. And they must convince a judge, in a short period of time to see it their way. So that's what I call the short game, to use a golf analogy, you know, the old adage is drive for show, putt for dough. And working on a good short game takes time. So, I'm probably going to be arrested by the attribution police for this next quote, because it's been attributed to many. But Mark Twain famously said, quote, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. And it applies to speeches. According to legend, Woodrow Wilson was asked how much time he needed to to prepare a speech. And his response was, it depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If only 15 minutes, I need three days. If half an hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.
Marsi Mangan:I love it. I love quotes, actually, in general. When I was a little girl, I used to collect quotes because I had read the book Harriet the Spy, and one of the characters in there was Harriet's nanny, old golly. And rather than using her own wisdom, she relied on the wisdom of illustrious people. And so I think that that's when I just started collecting quotes that I liked in a notebook. But, you know, I'm digressing now.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Quite frankly, a great quote is a great persuasion advice in front of a judge. That's true. Circling back to Twain, he was once asked how much he would charge for a two-hour speech, and he said it'd be $1,000 for two hours. So they asked, well, if you'd cut it in half for one hour, would it only be $500? He said, no, for one hour, it's double. It's $2,000. They said, why double? He said, it has to be a better speech.
Unknown:Yeah.
Marsi Mangan:So emergency advocacy, what are some of the examples of circumstances that might call for emergency advocacy?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Well, I'm glad you asked because this is the reason that I wanted to do a talk about emergency advocacy because a lot of court involves emergency advocacy. It could be bail hearings, either on behalf of the prosecution or the defense, orders of protection, injunctions, emergency custody petitions, immigration cases, juvenile and adult detention cases for hearings such as mental health issues. I mean, the practical matter is that in federal court, less than 3% of all civil cases ever get to trial. But there is a lot of advocacy going on in the cases that I just mentioned. And those cases have little discovery involved. The information is thin and they have to be advocated in a very, usually very short period of time.
Marsi Mangan:As you mentioned, you were an advocate yourself before you took the bench. Have you handled all of these types of cases in your roles as a lawyer and as a judge?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:I have handled all these types of cases except for immigration cases. The ironic thing is that I did write about an article about immigration cases, and I'll tell you about that in a minute, but I was involved in a fascinating case as a third-year law student. I graduated in May of 1980, and in my second and third year, actually, I was clerking for a law firm, and the law firm represented a bank. Now, in early 1980, the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. On January 1st, 1980, silver was about $6 an ounce. But by January 18th, 17 days later, it was nearly $50 an ounce and over 700% increase. Between then and what has been dubbed Silver Thursday, which was March 27th, 1980... The bottom dropped out, and it went from $50 down to $11, and this case happened somewhere in between that time. So what had happened is the bank had loaned a lot of money to a coin and gun shop, and the owner was not paying after repeated attempts to get him to pay. The market was growing. going wild. And there was a story in the local newspaper about the gun shop owner and his coin shop. The bank decided it was time to go in and file a suit for replevin to try to get the collateral back. And what we had to do was a replevin without notice. So this was a hearing when we were in front of a judge ourselves. The other side was not there. And we didn't want to alert the other side that we were going to do this because we were afraid that they would take the collateral or hide the collateral. So we had five things that we needed to show to the judge fairly quickly. We learned that the gun store owner was headed out of state to go to another gun show. So we had five things we had to show. We had to show a clear security interest in the coins, which we had by written documentation. We had to show irreparable harm, and we showed that because coins are small. They're easy to hide. You could hide a small fortune in rare coins in the front pocket of a pair of pants. We had to post bond. We had to answer the question that any judge would ask, why aren't you giving notice? We used the newspaper article for that, and we had to safeguard the coins for the full hearing. Now, in the newspaper article, there was a picture of the owner standing at the counter dealing in coins, and he had a gun on his hip. And he talked about how there were two shotguns in either corner. And so that was one of the ways we convinced the judge that it might be dangerous to just walk in there and start repubbling the coins. Sure. With regard to safeguarding the coins, I only learned about this later. We had a man, his name was Oscar Dodson. I learned later that he was the president of the American Numismatic Association. He was a rear admiral in the Navy. And during World War II, he was one of the soldiers who was responsible for transporting the gold that France had before they fell to the Nazis on the USS Vincennes to the United States so it could be safeguarded at Fort Knox. So we could not have had... a person who had a better reputation, um, for integrity and knowledge than Oscar Dodson to safeguard these coins.
Marsi Mangan:Wow. So fascinating. And you got to work on that as a law clerk in law school.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Yes, I was there when, uh, When we repleved the coins from the coin shop and we went in there, we had some sheriff's deputies with us. We had a safe cracker to open the safe and we did not touch the guns. Ironically, when the owner learned that we were repleving the coin shop.
Marsi Mangan:Hmm.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:We were timing how long it would take for the owner to drive back to where we were. And we timed it to get out of there before the owner came back. But according to the officers who remained there, the owner wasn't all that concerned about the coins. He ran upstairs and evidently he had a vintage Winchester rifle. And all he was concerned about was that no one had pulled the hammer back and Interesting. I want to circle
Marsi Mangan:back to what you said about immigration. You mentioned that you wrote an article, although you have never had an immigration emergency hearing. Is that right?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Right. So we were doing a training for legal services attorneys back in 2018. And I was giving a lecture, and at the end, I asked any questions. And one of the attorneys said, Judge, how can you pack as much persuasion into the shortest period of time? And I said, well, why do you ask? And there were two attorneys sitting together. They were both immigration attorneys. And they said, we have hearings called master calendar hearings where very significant issues can come up. And sometimes the hearings are 15 minutes or less. And I expressed some surprise at this. And then they quoted an immigration judge who had just appeared on the John Oliver show.
Marsi Mangan:Wow.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:And she said it was like, handling death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.
Marsi Mangan:Wow.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Which I thought was a compelling analogy. So I wrote an article entitled Death Penalty Cases in a Traffic Court Setting, Lessons from the Front Lines of Today's Immigration Courts, and I called her. Her name is Judge Dana Lee Marks, and I wrote an article about the three things that Judge Marks urged attorneys to do. And simply stated, one, organization is key. Two, make sure your client knows why the question is being asked by either you or the other side. And three, give the judge what they need.
Marsi Mangan:Well, if you've got a copy of that available on PDF, we'd be happy to share that in the show notes.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:I will be glad to post that.
Marsi Mangan:Yeah, it You talked about having to pack a lot of information into just a short amount of time. You mentioned you've got to be organized to the nth degree. So I would love to know what kind of tips and advice you have for making the very most of the little bit of time that you have, if we could get into that.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Sure, Marcy. Well, I have seven. And I'm going to use the same technique in advocating for the seven that I heard about from a famous minister. The minister was asked, why are your sermons so effective? And he said, because I essentially give the sermon three times. I tell him what I'm going to tell him, then I tell him, then I tell him what I told him. Okay, the rule of three. It's the rule of threes. So the seven I have are one, know the elements. Two, use primacy and recency. Three, appeal to the receiver. Four, put it in writing. Six, numbers help. Seven, offer time. And I'll add a bonus in, know how judges triage.
Marsi Mangan:Okay, well, shall we take it from the top with number one?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Yes. So find out the factors that you need to prove. And these vary from state to state. It varies from case to case, whether it's a bail hearing, whether it's an immigration case, whether it's an injunction. You have to make sure that you check all the boxes because you can be assured that the judge is checking all the boxes.
Unknown:Mm-hmm.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:So one way of doing it is to do it like the minister. You know, Your Honor, we're in front of you on X case. We have three submissions we need to make. They are boom, boom, boom. And here I will turn and address the first one. Hopefully, the judge will be saying, wow, this attorney is efficient. This attorney is not going to waste my time.
Unknown:Mm-hmm.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Number two is using primacy and recency in your oral submissions. So I don't know how many times I've had a motion for summary judgment filed in front of me and I see the title motion for summary judgment. And then the first line says, this is a motion for summary judgment. And then the next line tells me the standard for a motion for summary judgment. And I know that. I know it's a motion. I know the standard. Yeah. So in terms of primacy, when time is short, you want to lead with your best line. Marcy, you talked about a quote. The article that I wrote about immigration court was for Litigation News, which is an EBA publication. And in one of my first editorial board meetings, our editor, a man by the name of Mike Yablonski, was talking about how to write leads, right? And the editor next to me leaned over and said, you better listen to this guy. And I said, well, I am, but why make a point of it? And he said, because he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Marsi Mangan:Oh, wow.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:And Mike Yablonski told us in that first editorial board meeting that he spent maybe half or a third of his time on just the first paragraph of of a story that he wrote. And the reason that he won the Pulitzer Prize was that he was a reporter for the Kansas City Star. And he was on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about the skywalk collapsing in the Hyatt in Kansas City. He enjoyed working with attorneys so much that he then turned to the practice of law. So if I want to be able to capture the judge's attention, in terms of primacy for my case. I was once doing a training in Kosovo, and one of the attorneys said in one of our tribunals, we're given a choice, opening statement or closing argument. Which would you choose? And I said, I will pick opening statement each and every time. I will pick primacy over recency.
Marsi Mangan:I had a feeling you were going to say you'd go with the first thing. Set the tone right at the beginning and ask the judge for what you want.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Exactly. There should be no question on the judge's mind. And that leads me into three, appeal to the receiver, the judge. For example, in bail hearings, the ultimate two issues for any judge in a bail hearing are one, will releasing the defendant be a danger to others? And the second is, will they appear for the court date? So you cut to the chase. You address those two issues head on. And the judge says, wow, this attorney is efficient. This attorney will not waste my time. Sometimes I would write what I call a case in the nutshell for the judge. It's just one paragraph thick with facts that advanced the ball for my case. If time is really short, And the judge doesn't have a lot of time to hear what you have to present. File a written offer of proof. As a judge, I cannot prevent you from filing anything you wish. The clerk will not turn down any written submission. So say to the judge, Your Honor, there is a lot more that I would like to tell the court. We have it here in writing. If the court could review it when it has time, we would appreciate that. I'll be glad to stick around. The bottom line is don't give up. File your written submission. We judges must give you, quote, the opportunity to be heard. And those are code words for any judge. When we hear the attorney say, Your Honor, we would like to be heard, we know there is a long line of appellate court cases where judges have been reversed because litigants and attorneys were not given the opportunity to be heard. But when time is short, be efficient and Use your opportunity, and if you have more to say, tell the judge you put it in writing, and here it is.
Marsi Mangan:Okay, so that was your fourth tip, that put it in writing, correct?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Correct.
Marsi Mangan:Okay, so what is number five?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Numbers. We process numbers in a different part of our brain. They are persuasive. It conveys you are organized. Judge, there are three reasons why we more than satisfy this factor, three reasons why this should be granted. I always loved it when I said numbers because almost 100% of the time you would see the judge reach for a pen and she would write on her pad, I could see one, two, and three. So use numbers, they are persuasive.
Marsi Mangan:Yes, and a very easy organizing principle. Okay, so that was number five. Let's move on to tip number six.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:If the judge says they don't have time in general, offer a time limit. Judge All I need is five minutes. All I need is 10 minutes. Or judge, counsel and I have agreed. All we'll take is 15 minutes. I'll take five. Other counsel will take five. Any questions that you might have, we can handle in five minutes. So if they say in general, I don't have time, try to give them a specific block of time. Try to offer time. flexibility on time, early, over the noon hour, late, anything that you can do to convince the judge to give you the time you need and to convey to the judge you will be efficient and respect their time constraints.
Marsi Mangan:Well, you know, you're mentioning that brings to mind something that I experienced when I was in Nigeria for NITA last fall. We were doing a semi-annual training for the Office of the Public Defender, and I was fascinated as I was sitting in on some of the sessions to learn that opening statements are not really a thing in Nigerian courts, which is so kind of mind-boggling for us in the United States. And I know that sometimes faculty hear things from participants at programs, they say, oh, well, I practice in this jurisdiction, so that's not allowed, or I'm in family court, immigration court, whatever, and that's not really a thing. But during one of the sessions, what I heard from our program director, Judge Ann Williams, suggest, and which the Lagos State judges who were present at the program affirmed, if you ask the judge for five minutes to do a quick opening statement, you will often get it. And that's what I'm hearing from you is, may I please have this time? And then what the judges did say is, well, if I don't have five minutes, then ask me for two. And so that was the advice that I heard in Nigeria. And then when you get that two minutes, my God, you better be ready for it.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Oh, my gosh. That is almost exactly what I say when I'm asked the question, because attorneys who do case after case in front of the same judge, sometimes the judge will say, can We just dispense with opening and can we get to the facts? And I always urge the attorneys to politely turn that down and just say, and mine is two minutes. Judge, if you'll just give me two minutes, I think I can frame up what's in issue and what's not an issue. And when a judge hears that an attorney will separate the wheat from the chaff, of course, we will give you two minutes. If you can tell us, Quickly, what we need to decide and what is admitted or what we don't need to decide, we will take that offer each and every time. And if you're good at it, you can get a lot of persuasion done in two minutes to five minutes.
Marsi Mangan:Ah, that's chewy. That's good stuff. Okay, I think we're on number seven now, right?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Yes. know how judges triage. So I'm back to the pit. We're back in the emergency room and judges triage it. will the case involve possibly death or bodily injury or firearms involved? Is there something that is going to happen that for, for example, a child has moved across state lines? Is there a change of residence, a change of school, easily disposed of assets? So judges have a triage in their mind when they approach these cases. Okay. You know, A judge's worst fear is an above the fold headline, and I know not many people take the actual paper these days, or a leading news feed where a judge has done something, granted something, or denied something, and something terrible has happened. In addition, another one of a trial judge's worst fears is having to do it over again. because we were reversed. We denied a citizen their opportunity to be heard. I find in high volume courts where they're in every day doing the same types of cases, you can have advocate fatigue, you can have judge fatigue. And I always go back to G.K. Chesterton. He wrote an article years ago called 12 Men, and I'm sorry that's sexist, but back in those days, the juries were all men. And he starts it out in a very funny manner, saying that he was summoned for jury duty because in his small city, they had summoned everyone whose last name began with C. And he wrote this book beautiful. It's about a page and a half and the entire thing is worth reading. But it talks about why we have juries. And I'm going to read this because I think it brings home my point. Chesterton writes, now it is a terrible business to mark a man out for vengeance of men. But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed as he can to other terrible things. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked. Some of them are good. Not that they are stupid. Several of them are quite intelligent. It is simply that they have gotten used to it. Strictly, they do not see the prisoner in the dock. All they see is the usual man. in the usual place so When we go in, we have to convey to the judge in a short period of time, how unique this case is, how this client is unique. It is not the usual person in the usual place. And our goal as advocates in these cases where the evidence may be thin at the beginning and time is short is to find that uniqueness and convey that to the judge, especially judges who do case after case after case of all day. There's that very interesting study that has been done about sentencing before lunch and after lunch by judges. And I'm so glad they did this study because it really planted in judges' mind that as the day goes on, am I consistent in how I am deciding cases?
Marsi Mangan:It's fascinating. Is there anything else that you need to be prepared for in emergency advocacy?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Well, I have two things that I want to discuss when time is short. And I believe there is a great tool that can be used in every state if you're denied at first and the case is set on down the road for hearing. And that is the very powerful tool of a request to admit facts and genuineness of documents. It is in, I believe, every statute in every state. And it's a powerful tool. You send it out and the other side has a time limit. And if they don't admit or deny what you put in there, if they fail to answer, then it is deemed admitted. So it really separates the wheat from the chaff. In addition, if the other side doesn't answer it correctly or doesn't answer it honestly, and you have to bring extra witnesses, you can apply to the court to get costs and fees in certain cases. So it is a very powerful tool that is often overlooked. It's easy to file. And judges like attorneys who try to separate the wheat from the chaff in cases.
Marsi Mangan:Okay, that's a really great tip.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:The last thing I want to talk about are two ethical requirements. And a lot of times when I do CLE courses, they ask, we would like to have an hour of ethics at the end of the day. And I say, quite frankly, that is the wrong message that I want to send. So I will build ethical moments into presentations. Because to put it at the end of the day conveys it's an afterthought. And it's not an afterthought. Ethical rules are not only rules of ethics to be redundant, but they're also rules of persuasion. So the two I want to talk about is the one, first of all, citing contrary authority. There is an ethical duty to cite contrary authority that you know that is directly against your position, that the other side has not cited. It's an ethical rule, but it's also a rule of persuasion. There is nothing more powerful to me as a judge than an advocate who comes in and says, Your Honor, this is our position in this case. However, we have to admit that there are two cases which are arguably against us. Here they are. We believe that both of them are distinguishable upon the facts for these three reasons. You want to fine for that attorney. It makes you appear that you are less worried about the contrary authority. So there's no downside to citing contrary authority, a rule of ethics, but also a rule of persuasion. And finally, the rule of candor to the court. So in these short cases where you have a limited amount of time, you're going to be asked questions and And in some cases, you're going to be asked a lot of questions. Going back to the Coyne-Raplevin case, the attorneys that I was working with were asked a lot of questions by the judge. Why can't we give them notice? Why don't we have a hearing on this before you go in? And the attorneys had to answer the question. So you will be asked questions, and your rule is you must be candid with the court. You cannot shade the evidence. You cannot mislead the court. Now, a lot of times attorneys will say, well, I was zealously representing my client, which is also a rule of professional responsibility. But in all the cases I've read where you've had the balancing of candor to the court versus zealous advocacy, candor to the court always rules. The other thing that attorneys should know is that if a judge ever finds out that an attorney has violated the candor to the court or has misled the court in any way, many states have the West Point rule, and that is the judge must report the attorney. I can remember a particular case when I was sitting on the bench and it didn't involve a misstatement to me. It involved an attorney who bounced a check on a trust account. What happened was that the other side owed his client, I think it was attorney's fees or property settlement, the client gave the attorney a check, the attorney put in the trust account, and when it was handed over to opposing counsel, the check bounced. And I told the attorney, you can't bounce a check on your trust account. That is not your money. That is the client's money. And I had under the rule, I told the attorney, I've got to report you on this. I have no other choice. So with regard to the court, I always thought of it this way. You've spent a lot of time going through law school. You build a practice. Clients will come, clients will go. You built your career brick by brick on the decisions you made, the judgments you made, and the choices you made. And it takes a lifetime to do that. But, you know, sometimes like a child who knocks down their wooden block tower, it only takes one time to tear all that down. And Marcy, no single client is worth that.
Marsi Mangan:Yeah. Amen. Well, speaking of quotes, I'm reminded of Dostoevsky. who said that the worst possible sin is when, and I think I'm paraphrasing here, is when you've destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. And I think that's one of the things we're talking about here.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Very true.
Marsi Mangan:Well, we have just put your admonition to get everything done in a very short amount of time, right to work. And I haven't been paying super close attention to the clock, but I think that we've Probably could have fit at least two emergency hearings into our chat. What do you think?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Yes, two minutes or five minutes. We could have had a lot of hearings.
Marsi Mangan:Well, you have fit a lot of really important information into this short amount of time, and it's kind of a meta moment for us. Do you have time for two quick softballs before we sign off?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:I do.
Marsi Mangan:Okay, number one, one of my favorites is, what travel plans do you have for this year?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Well, next month, I'm headed over to Burgundy with my wife and my daughter and her husband. They're both Psalms in the Napa Valley, and I have never been to Burgundy, so it will be fun to be led around by two experts.
Marsi Mangan:Oh, that sounds delightful.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:The other is that I'll be doing some training overseas. I'm going to be doing the solicitor's training in Belfast, and then I'll be at Oxford training barristers in the fall.
Marsi Mangan:Fantastic. And that's for NITA. The first one is?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:The first one is for NITA for the solicitor's advocacy course in Belfast. The second is for the Southeastern Circuit, which includes London. And the barristers go to Cable College and we run a week-long advocacy training program.
Marsi Mangan:All right. Second question. You know, you actually already answered it, I think. I usually like to ask a guest what TV show they are currently obsessed with, but it sounds to me like you're into The Pit, right?
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:Yes. Yes. It is a fast-paced, very interesting show. And I've been reading all of these articles about how doctors are reporting that it is very authentic. So it's fun to watch that show and see them triage as we triaged in court.
Marsi Mangan:Excellent. Well, I have to say that all this talk about emergencies has me feeling a little wound up right now. I think I'm going to have to go take a walk and cool off after this recording is over.
Judge (Ret.) Mark Drummond:It's been a pleasure as always.
Marsi Mangan:Yes. Thank you so much for another great episode and happy and safe travels. Thank you very much. Thank you, Judge. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and subscribing. Remember to check the show notes for the two articles that Judge Drummond wrote and wants you to read. The first one is the Death Penalty Cases in a Trial Court Setting article that he mentioned in the episode. The second one is called What Judges Want. It is Judge Drummond's top 10 list of what judges want from counsel appearing before them, and it gives terrific insight that will help you in your proceedings before the bench. We at NITA wish you the very best of luck in your depositions, motions, and trials. Happy lawyering! May the Record Reflect is a NITA Studio 71 production. NITA. We are advocacy enhanced, mentorship reimagined. Welcome to the community.