Resources

Litigators vs Trial Attorneys, Conrad & Scherer

In today’s society, litigation has become more commonplace. Either because people have such different opinions about a situation that they can’t work to a resolution or based upon the nature of society today, the only way to get a resolution is to ultimately go to trial. A client who is faced with going to trial will know that there’s going to be a resolution, oftentimes it’s a resolution that they cannot control because somebody other than themselves will be making the ultimate decision.

At Conrad & Scherer, we do have a specialization in being trial lawyers and that is a very specialized aspect of being a litigator. A litigator is someone who can evaluate facts, go to the courthouse, argue emotion, take a deposition, address various aspects of building up a case but a trial lawyer has a unique specialization because of the fact that there are special rules with respect to the rules of evidence, there’s a different type of strategy, there’s reactions you have to be able to think on your feet and be able to respond to a variety of different situations and understand that whatever you plan may not be the path that you follow because a trial is a living breathing object and you have to be able to move with it.

The relationship between a litigator and a trial is that it’s it’s like running a relay race where the litigator carries the baton to a certain aspect and then there comes a point in time where the case is going to be tried and the baton then goes to the trial lawyer who presents it to a judge or to a jury.

I think in order to be a successful trial lawyer you have to have a comfortable presence in the courtroom and the only way that occurs is through doing it over and over and over again. Ultimately you develop a strategy that works, you have to be yourself, you have to develop your own style. Every person is different on how they present, how they argue, how they raise issues with the court. But in order to be able to try a trial lawyer which is your playing field, you have to be comfortable on it and the only way that happens is by doing it on a repeated basis in a variety of different circumstances.

I’ve tried probably close to 120 different types of cases through arbitrations, jury trials, non-jury trials and you just develop the art form you develop the confidence to be able to to see a situation, to strategize, to think on your feet, to react, to know the questions to ask, to know how to present a case and be able to get a successful result and i think that through the 25 years or so that i’ve been practicing I’ve tried to hone that skill and when a client hires me they know that they’re getting someone who’s got significant trial experience who’s not afraid to take a case to trial.