Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life from Great Chicago Trial Lawyers
Edited by Steven F. Molo and James R. Figliulo
368 pages; Law Bulletin Publishing Company
Disclaimer: The publisher provided a free review copy of this title for review. My policy for this blog is not to accept any form of compensation for reviews, but I will accept review copies–which per my policy, I will then share, free of charge with a law student interested in reading the title. If you’re a law student, interested in reading this book, contact me via e-mail: first reply receives the book via snail-mail.
The first thing to note about Your Witness is that it made me want to be in a courtroom. As nervous as I was in Trial Advocacy, I did enjoy it on many levels. Trial is a combination of performance, battle, and intellectual pursuits that make being in a courtroom something very unique–and highly addictive.
I also have a confession… I read this book while studying for the bar exam.
This is important for two reasons: first, I passed, which means I managed to retain some sanity with the study breaks this book provided; second, it’s an easy read, not too distracting. Each of the fifty chapters is contributed by a ‘who’s who’ of Chicago trial lawyers. The common thread is that they are offering advice about cross-examination techniques and lessons from their years of experience.
The quality of each chapter, accordingly, varies quite a bit. Unfortunately, sometimes great skill in the courtroom really don’t translate into great skill at the word processor. Since I’ll soon be practicing in Chicago, I won’t burn any bridges here, but I’d say out of 50 chapters, there are probably 10 which are really outstanding, another 30 well worth the time, and 10 which could have been cut without missing anything from the book. There are probably five authors who could easily write enjoyable books of their own, and maybe, if I run into them around town I’ll suggest it. And there are a few others that I might not want to be up against in court, but that I think should put down the word processor and walk away slowly. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out who the editors probably just included to save face in the Chicago legal world, but there are a few of them.
The styles of the chapter, as well as the topics covered, vary as much as the personality of the individual attorneys themselves. Some offer straight up lessons, with examples thrown in to punctuate a point. Others write largely anecdotal war stories, but still offer some insight into cross-examination as the ‘moral of the story’. Those are my personal favorites. Some of these attorneys have some incredible ‘tales from the trenches’ that carry along with them valuable lessons on a variety of subjects relevant to cross-examination, including depositions, experts, witness preparation, advocate witnesses, hostile witnesses, liars, etc.
Even though some of the chapters are less valuable than others, the format of the book lends itself to skipping a chapter here and there if you find a particular author not to your liking. Additionally, since each chapter stands on it’s own, it is an easy read. You can pick up a chapter waiting on the train, standing in line somewhere, avoiding another Barbri test set.
If you’ve every taken Trial Ad and enjoyed it, I think you’ll enjoy this book. If you plan on being in a courtroom (representing someone, that is) in your career, you’ll enjoy this book and hopefully get something out of it as well. And even if you don’t practice in court, but just want some insight into what makes those members of the trial bar tick, I think this book is worth a read.