I wasn't an exceptional student, but I got into law school. It was a night program, actually. I worked full time during the day and went to law school at night for five years. When I finished, I met a judge who liked me, and even though I didn't have the same qualifications as a lot of others, he hired me. He was a federal judge and from there I eventually got into the Manhattan District Attorney's office, where I worked for about five years and tried many cases, including many, many homicide cases. And then for the last fifteen years, I've been doing what I do now, which is I go to court and represent people who are aggrieved or injured, and respecting whom, insurance companies refuse to pay money. I'm the one that actually handles the trials for these people.

I'll bet you don't know this, but most lawyers don't ever go into a courtroom. Most lawyers sit behind their desks and administer an office. Their skill, their art, is in getting clients. In New York City, there are thousands and thousands of personal injury lawyers, but I think there may only be 200 or 300 of us who actually go to court--who are what we call trial lawyers. One of the reasons for this is that 99 percent of personal injury cases are settled well before they ever get to a trial. And they're settled because it's in the interests of both sides to dispose of it out of court. You see, when a case goes to trial, you never know what a jury is going to do. It's a crapshoot. To get a jury to agree about the difficult questions of who may be at fault and who's negligent when, indeed, you can't usually get them to agree on what they want to have for lunch--well, you're just rolling the dice.

But despite this, some cases come up that can't be settled. The plaintiff feels his injuries are so serious that he wants to take a chance with a jury, or the defendant may take a firm position because he doesn't want to settle and set a precedent that would encourage more lawsuits. So then they go to trial.

These days, everyone sees court cases on television and thinks they are very dramatic, which they are sometimes. But what they don't see is how much hard work and sweat goes into a trial. For every hour that a witness spends on the witness stand, a good trial lawyer will spend fifteen or twenty hours of preparation with that witness. Because the witness and the lawyer have to be simpatico, to be one together, to be able to convey a coherent, clear story to the jury.

A trial lawyer tries to get the witness to look at the jury and talk to them and be honest and forthright, and most significantly, to be likable. And when I say likable I don't mean to be obsequious or to be pandering, I mean to be likable in the sense that you're really genuine, you're sincere.

But no matter how much effort the client and lawyer put into it, there's only a limited range within which a person may be able to express themselves in front of a jury. I mean, most courtrooms are tiny--the jury is physically only a few feet away from the witness. And they're like cameras. The jurors are cameras, and they're studying you, and they're observing every nuance of your body language and your facial expressions. Who are you? Are you credible? Are you really injured? It's objectively very scary. It really is. Even an honest witness can look dishonest because what happens is very nerve-wracking.

And by the way, I have never, and I mean this, never met an honest man. I have had rabbis lie. I have had priests lie. I have had witnesses of every color and denomination and persuasion lie. Clients come to me and tell me that they were caused to have an accident and they were injured in a certain way. But the truth is that it usually didn't happen exactly the way they say it happened. The client may be fundamentally and inherently a good and honest person but when it comes to their case, their theory is well, it's a goddamn insurance company, and they've got more money than God, and it isn't right, and it isn't fair. And so it's okay if, on the margins, on the fringes, they improve or enhance their story a little bit.

So we have to begin with a premise that it's not a question of whether someone's honest, it's a question of degree. And lawyers are the most dishonest people of all. A lawyer will prepare his witness in such a way that he, the lawyer, thinks he's being honest, but in truth and in all candor, he's really not. Because he's kind of steering or directing the witness in a certain direction--the direction that says the other party is at fault. And that's part of our business. A good lawyer has to approach every accident, every case, with the mindset that his client is not at fault. The other party is at fault. And so a good lawyer is often dishonest and so is everyone else. And the truth is that if everyone were honest, I would have a tough job impeaching them. And here's a curiosity: even an honest man can appear dishonest, because in fact most everybody else is fudging with the truth, so the honest man really is the easiest one to catch because he's the one that's not used to lying. So everybody lies. And for the lawyer, a trial becomes a real challenge of the wits, of your presence of mind, of your ability to think clearly on your feet. If you make the mistake of being too assertive with a witness on cross examination, the jury may never forgive you. Then other times you may have to attack, because a jury may feel that the witness is not being credible. But you have to be very cautious about it.

I do things now that I would never have done fifteen years ago. I spend much less time attacking witnesses than I ever did before. I have a much greater sense of confidence that through the sheer dint of my ability to analyze what they say, I can reason with them in front of a jury and show the implausibility of their testimony. Instead of insinuating the witness is a liar--and remember, everybody is lying at least a little bit--I can often expose them simply by having them reenact the events in front of the jury. If you go through all of the details, all of the nuances of every single act and action that that person did, you may hit pay dirt. You may be able to show a jury that it's simply implausible that what he says happened happened. Either because there wasn't enough time, or the distance wasn't correct, or some such thing.

Of course, the danger of that kind of examination is that you may not have anticipated every aspect of the event. And also, no matter how good you are, every trial lawyer always faces the terror, the fear that he'll meet a witness who is more glib, who is sharper, who is brighter, and ultimately just better than he is in a courtroom. I've lost cases that way.

But the longer I do this, the more familiar I am with all the aspects of an event. And if you've done hundreds and hundreds of automobile cases and hundreds and hundreds of cases involving incidents at an intersection, well, you have some specialized knowledge, and there may be one or two specific things that you can ask a witness that could impeach them. Of course, to be a good trial lawyer, you have to learn about everything, not just intersections. That's where the skill and the art comes in. If I try a case involving a sciatic nerve, I have to know more about the sciatic nerve than an orthopedic surgeon or a neurologist. I have to know more about the subject at hand than the experts who oppose me, so that I can form a series of questions to try to impeach that expert, to show that he's wrong in his expert opinion. I have to be a jack of all trades.

For instance, I once represented a client who was a roofer. In simple terms, the case concerned the fact that my client was caused to have his hand impaled--literally impaled--on the roof of a building by his power tool (a Stanley pneumatic stapler). My client had thought that the tool was disengaged from what's known as its power hose and was therefore safe to clean. But even though it was disengaged, the stapler still retained some power in it. There was no warning in the directions for the tool saying that this might happen. And we felt that made for a defective tool. And indeed, that tool--loosed from its power hose--still had the power to drive a nail through my client's hand into the roof.

So we sued this company, and they brought the country's leading expert on pneumatic tools from California to represent them. And the lawyer that defended this case for the insurance company only handled power tool cases. That's all he ever did for his whole life.

Now, this was the only time I had ever tried this kind of a case. And I felt, understandably, that I was in over my head. And when the expert witness took the stand and I examined him, he was making me look terrible. He was making all these technical points as to why my arguments were not feasible and why the tool was safe for use and why the instructions were sufficient and ample to warn the user. And then, without going into the details, I came upon a certain fact that I hadn't noticed before: the little tiny head that connects the power hose to the tool was confusing. It had two heads that looked the same, and if it was screwed on backwards then air could be retained in the tool even though you had otherwise followed the instructions. And I confronted this expert with this. And for me it was one of the high moments of my career, because after about a half hour of questions about this, finally this expert witness turned to me in front of the jury and said, "Look, Mr. Wolfe, you got me. I can't answer any more questions. You're right. It is confusing. It is defective. And I can't (laughs) explain to the jury why it was done that way." And for me, that was a terribly exciting, uplifting moment. In an area that I knew almost nothing about, I was able to accomplish that.

So I am definitely a jack-of-all-trades. I have tried cases involving swimming pools where a child drowned. I've tried cases involving explosions where a client died in the airport because they failed to properly warn of a bomb that had been planted by a terrorist organization--my client's arms and legs blew off and he died in the airport. I've had cases involving defective drugs and cases involving the Dram Law, which holds bartenders and restaurants responsible for serving too much alcohol if a man goes out and has an accident or injures someone. And that's just the tip of the iceberg and each of these cases have involved their own unique areas of specialized knowledge. I'm always learning.

Now, of course, the public is very cynical about these cases. They feel that most if not all of them are frivolous and without a merit. They read in the newspaper about multimillion dollar verdicts, and they think, oh, my God. But for every one you read about where there's a million dollar verdict, there are a hundred where the results are bad for the injured person. And, indeed, more than two thirds of these cases are lost. The plaintiff gets nothing. Zero. Juries are very unsympathetic to these lawsuits.

In fact, in a larger sense, people are generally unsympathetic to plaintiff's lawyers and this is kind of unfair. I mean, in every courthouse, there are two different kinds of animals: plaintiff's lawyers and defendant's lawyers. And in the waiting rooms and the lunch rooms or wherever the lawyers congregate, the plaintiff's lawyers always sit with the plaintiff's lawyers, and the defendant's lawyers always sit with the defendant's lawyers. There's no mixing. And the plaintiff's lawyers always say how terrible the defendants are and how awful the insurance companies are and how unfair, and the defendant's lawyers always say what terrible boors the plaintiff's lawyers are and how all they want is money and they realize that there's no basis to their client's cases. And this is the same conversation in every court in every county in every state every day for the history of mankind.

I see it through my perspective, obviously, because I'm a plaintiff's lawyer. But my view is that the usual plaintiff's lawyer is someone who is more liberal politically, who is more caring of individual rights, than a defendant's lawyer. A plaintiff's lawyer tends to be not only politically, but in all respects generally more caring about the welfare of people. At least that's how we see ourselves. By the way, parenthetically, the defendant's lawyers see us as mercenary people who are only concerned with the dollar and not at all concerned with our clients, which of course we deny.

The truth of the matter is that maybe a number of lawyers who practice plaintiff's law do look to the bottom line because we get paid on what is called contingency basis. In other words, we don't get paid by our client on an hourly basis. And this is true in every personal injury case: the person who's injured comes to a lawyer and signs a retainer agreement whereby he agrees to pay in effect one-third to his lawyer if and when the lawyer either settles the case to the client's satisfaction and/or there's a judgment or result from a jury. Either way the lawyer then gets a portion. Usually one-third. So a plaintiff's lawyer can realize a very substantial result for his client. Five to ten million is not unusual in a very, very serious injury where there is liability and there's fault on the side of the defendant. So in one fell swoop, the plaintiff's lawyer can have a windfall. But on the defendant's side, even the very best trial lawyers--and there are some excellent defendant's lawyers hired by insurance companies, senior guys that are really excellent--they're paid by the hour. So although their hourly rate is considerable, they only get paid for the time they put in that case. And the insurance company watches over them to make sure that they don't over-bill.

So, overall, the big money is on the plaintiff's side. And let me make it clear about lawyers and money: if I hit a big case, I can get a very big result. But any plaintiff's lawyer will tell you that's not why we're in it. We're in it because we care about our clients. Because for every guy you read about that gets a big verdict, there are a hundred little fellows that are trying little cases for injured people that you never read about. And they never recover substantial money, but they represent their clients with great vigor and devotion.

I've had several very, very substantial multimillion dollar results. I represented a little three-year-old girl who was seriously burned as the result of a radiator that exploded. She suffered very serious facial burns and obviously you can appreciate that a jury would be very sympathetic to her and have no patience with the landlord who simply didn't pay attention to see that the radiator was well maintained. And that resulted in very, very substantial results. Although I can assure you that the child and the mother would gladly give up those results to avoid the kind of scarring and pain, emotional and physical and otherwise, that the child had.

But what the public doesn't understand is that these cases are often appealed. In other words, if I win a seven figure result in a trial, the insurance company is going to bring that case to a higher court and can hang that case up for years and years. And ultimately, these cases never, never result in the kind of recovery that you read about in the paper. Okay? You read about this McDonald's case where a man recovered an $800,000 award after some McDonald's coffee spilled in his lap and scalded him. What people don't know is that the trial judge reduced that jury verdict. This is a power that a judge has. And even if a judge doesn't do that, the insurance company can appeal it and keep it hanging for years. And then three years later there's a tiny little article that the case ultimately settled for ten cents on the dollar. So there are very few lawyers that are walking away with huge fees. It's just not happening. It hasn't happened for me, and it doesn't happen for my friends. It's just not there. And plaintiff's lawyers will say that's not why we're in it. We're in it because we care about our clients. And, by the way, that's the way I feel about it (laughs).

For me the greatest appeal of a trial--and this is really a very embarrassing thing to say, but I'll be truthful about it--is that a trial is a matter of control. You have an adversary who has as many years experience as you do, who's a partner in a very substantial law firm, who has had many good results--who has great stature. And you and he understand one significant thing: that the lawyer who seizes the control, who imposes his will on the jury, on the judge and on the entire trial, is the one who more often than not prevails. And it's really a titillating thing. And I must say to you, and maybe this is a function of the fact that I'm in my fifties now, that titillation is as powerful for me as almost anything that you can conceive of. There's a moment when you're in a court room and you can look at the jury and realize that they're with you, that every nuance of what you do, every moment of your head, every question asked, every question left un-asked, every pause, every hesitation, every emphasis upon a word is appreciated by that jury. And there's that one-ness that you have with the jury. It doesn't always happen. Often it doesn't happen. But when it's perfect and when it's right, it's incredibly titillating. I guess that's the same feeling that a race car driver has when the race is going his way. When he has that control over the situation.

But for a lawyer, that power is even more exciting because it's a dynamic situation: at any moment it can turn bad and it can turn sour on you. It can be going your way throughout the whole course of the trial, and then one morning you can come into court and ask the wrong question or ask too many, or repeat the same point too many times and lose. So it's a very exciting, thrilling thing for me. I love what I do. But it's also very debilitating and very exhausting. It's emotionally and physically draining. It has resulted in my losing a marriage. And it has had a bad effect upon my health. I sleep three hours a night. My mind is constantly racing about the case that I'm trying. It has made me unfit to be in social settings. I can count my friends on less than a hand because I am frequently very distracted. I'm very nervous. And when I finish one trial I go to the next. And the sad part of my business is that a trial lawyer is only as good as his last trial. You can have tremendous results and then suddenly you lose a case and as far as I'm concerned, I'm a loser. And I'm a loser until my next trial.

They say, and I believe it's true, that trial lawyers and surgeons have the highest percentage of drug addiction, of alcoholism, of eating disorders, of mental illnesses. I read in the paper every day a friend that I knew--young, forties, fifties--dropping dead of a heart attack or having a stroke. It's a very stressful thing. It does havoc to your body and to your disposition. My boy has told me already that the last thing in the world he wants to be is a lawyer because his daddy is too nervous. And on a weekend when all the other fathers are watching their kids playing soccer and enjoying the moment, my mind is involved with a slip and fall from a stairs in Harlem. Or a doctor who didn't properly diagnose cervical cancer or some other trauma.

So let's be honest with each other. It's vanity, okay? I love my job probably most of all because it appeals to my vanity, my sense of self worth, which is really based not on one being a good person or a worthy person, but upon an exciting circumstance and the opportunity to accomplish the impossible. To have a result which another lawyer might not get. Getting a million dollars when, say, another trial lawyer may not have been able to get that kind of money. Or examining a witness who is very hard to impeach, and then suddenly you hit pay dirt. That's what I love. That's why I do it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

TO ARCHIVE