Trial lawyers often treat direct examination as the lesser cousin of cross-examination, treating it as a routine recital rather than the central act of…
Articles
The Art of Direct Examination: Telling the Client's Story on the Witness Stand
Litigating Class Actions: Risks, Rewards And Strategic Judgment
Class actions can transform a dispute that appears modest for one person into litigation with consequences for an entire market. A defective financial product,…
Why law and culture can never be separated
The deeper I have worked inside the long arc of legal history, the more I have come to see that statutes and verdicts are never born from pure logic. They…
The Seventh Amendment and the Enduring Legacy of Civil Jury Trials
Few constitutional provisions capture the tension between popular participation and professional judging as vividly as the Seventh Amendment. Ratified in 1791…
Legal Risk Management Strategies for Australian Small Businesses
Small businesses remain the engine room of the Australian economy. According to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, more than 2.5…
The Great Dissents That Changed American Law
A dissenting judgment begins as a losing argument. The court has spoken, the majority has established the immediate rule, and the litigants must live with the…
Preparing a witness for trial testimony in Australian courts
Australia's common law tradition shapes every aspect of trial advocacy, from the way barristers address the bench in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney…
The Impact of Technology on Courtroom Evidence
Courtroom evidence used to arrive in folders, banker’s boxes and carefully numbered exhibits. Today, a trial may depend on a smartphone extraction, cloud…
A trial lawyer’s reflections on the rule of law
The rule of law is often discussed in grand language: constitutional government, judicial independence, equal justice and respect for legal limits. In a…
The Evolution Of Lender Liability From The 1980s To Today
Lender liability has changed from a relatively narrow concern about oppressive banking conduct into a broad body of litigation involving contract, tort,…