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Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)'s avatar

Mr. Lat, my appellate work has been only sporadic. But I was told when I became a trial lawyer, and believe based on 44 years of practice since then, that a lawyer's win/loss record at trial isn't very useful.

More useful, but much harder to assess, is the number of cases you win that you ought to have lost, versus the ones you lose that you ought to have won.

I've of course won cases I ought to have won, and lost cases that were effectively unwinnable. Indeed, I've been hired several times on unwinnable cases, in which my sole goal was the least-bad version of losing. I call these my "dead-stick landing" cases, meaning my client and I each got to walk away after the inevitable crash.

It's the cases you lose but ought to have won that teach you the most, though. The war stories from those cases are a good curriculum for learning to be a trial lawyer, and I love hearing them and (painfully, ruefully, but honestly) telling them.

And of course, even the best trial lawyers settle most of their cases, in which their skill and zeal may demonstrably result in a superior settlement to that which could have been accomplished by lessor effort, or by a lesser lawyer. Like the 80% of people who consider themselves a better than average driver, though, many lawyers maintain their egos mostly through the wiggle-room created by the difficulty of assessing settlement results.

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Carl's avatar

I'm undefeated in Supreme Court arguments (1/1). Ya gotta know when to quit.

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