Roger Dodd has spent most of his life trying cases in venues around the United States. From capital murder trials to complex personal injury cases, Roger has done it all. Roger has also devoted much of his career to speaking and teaching trial skills. His multi-day seminar in cross examination has become so popular that when a date is announced the seats fill immediately. Roger will be presenting on advanced cross examination at the upcoming PSBR Trial College and has seminars scheduled for Hawaii and Boston later in the year. Join Ben and Rahul for their discussion with Roger that ranges from his approach to cross examination to other experiences and lessons he’s learned during his four decades as a trial lawyer.
Episode Summary
Roger Dodd has spent most of his life trying cases in venues around the United States. From capital murder trials to complex personal injury cases, Roger has done it all. Roger has also devoted much of his career to speaking and teaching trial skills. His multi-day seminar in cross examination has become so popular that when a date is announced the seats fill immediately. Roger will be presenting on advanced cross examination at the upcoming PSBR Trial College and has seminars scheduled for Hawaii and Boston later in the year. Join Ben and Rahul for their discussion with Roger that ranges from his approach to cross examination to other experiences and lessons he’s learned during his four decades as a trial lawyer.
About Roger Dodd
Formerly a Board Certified Civil Trial Specialist for thirty (30) years and formerly a Board Certified Criminal Trial Specialist for 20 years, trial attorney Roger Dodd has represented clients in legal matters since 1976. Mr. Dodd has been a lecturer, expert witness, and teacher in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Russia, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, and various Caribbean locations (comprehensive map with all locations of Mr. Dodd's lectures).
Mr. Dodd is a frequent guest and commentator on television programs, including Court TV, Good Morning America, Geraldo at Large, and is co-author of Cross-Examination: Science and Techniques. He is one of a select group of attorneys to receive the distinguished Super Lawyer rating in multiple states. In addition to teaching throughout the U.S. and other countries, Mr. Dodd provides specialized individual training (www.doddlawclinic.com) and trial lawyer coaching (www.rogerdoddtriallawyercoaching.com).
Mr. Dodd is also a partner in the Jacksonville, Florida plaintiff law firm Spohrer & Dodd P.A. (www.sdlitigation.com) and the firm of Dodd & Kuendig, Park City, Utah (www.doddkuendig.com).
This is the elevate podcast where trial lawyers learn, share, and grow. Let's talk about how we can elevate our trial practices, law firms, and lives. And now here are your hosts, coming to you from coast to coast, trial lawyers, Ben Gideon, and Rahul Ravipudi.
33s
Ben Gideon
Today's episode of the elevate podcast is being brought to you by Smart Advocate. Smart advocate is award-winning case management software used to manage personal injury, medical malpractice, MDL class action law firms all over the United States. Great program, highly recommend it. Check them out at smartadvocate.com today's episode is being brought to you by expert Institute. Expert Institute is the place to go for everything involving experts to help you in your case. Check them out at expertinstitute.com and today's episode is being brought to you by Hype Legal. Hype Legal is a one-stop shop for all of your digital marketing needs.
1m 13s
Ben Gideon
Check them out at hypelegal.com.
1m 18s
Rahul Ravipudi
Welcome to the elevate podcast. I'm Rahul Ravipudi.
1m 21s
Ben Gideon
And I'm Ben Gideon.
1m 22s
Rahul Ravipudi
Ben. So we were off the record talking about our summertime workout schedules and yours had got me in awe. So what exactly are you doing over the summer to stay in shape?
1m 35s
Ben Gideon
So I've, you know, I think I might start training for a triathlon. I've been doing the swim and the bike legs of that. And I started swimming in the ocean right behind my house every morning, which I was a little worried about because we had a great white shark attack, just a couple of miles away from where I live a couple summers ago, where a woman was killed swimming in a wetsuit. But you know what? I think you're much more likely to get hit by a truck, riding your bike, then eaten by a great white shark while you're swimming still the psychology of it. Isn't great. How about you? I know you you've been out running with your son now regularly. Tell me about that.
2m 16s
Rahul Ravipudi
I have, it's been a psychological battle. I've got my 13 year old son, which I've been trying to get into running and every morning, about five 30 in the morning, he's mad at me and during the runs, which are anywhere from two to six miles, he's mad at me. And then when he's done, he says he doesn't want to do it tomorrow. And there we go, rinse and repeat.
2m 40s
Ben Gideon
So this is like a forest compulsion project for him. He doesn't have any freewill in it.
2m 49s
Rahul Ravipudi
No freewill. He's acknowledged that. And, and he's upset about that. And I've just been trying to teach him maybe rightly or wrongly about mental discipline and toughness and, and actually doing something that is hard, but you just need to do. And maybe in 25 years, he'll thank me for it. Or he'll stop talking to me. I don't know which one's going to come first. So I'm looking forward to seeing our guests and you Ben at the PSBR trial college, July 28th here in marina Del Rey, I've had the pleasure of being a student of Roger Dodd. And I still talk about it. I don't want to say daily, but almost daily with everybody that I have a chance to share that they need to learn from, from this band because his cross examination techniques are, are unique and incredibly effective.
3m 43s
Rahul Ravipudi
So Roger, thanks so much for joining us. You bet.
3m 45s
Roger Dodd
My pleasure.
3m 47s
Ben Gideon
So before we jump into the, the technique and the skills of cross-examination, which I'm really curious to hear about, can you just tell us a little bit more about your background? I mean, you definitely have this fascinating career where you've not only worked as a trial lawyer, cross the country in multiple different states, but you've actually appeared on some very well-known shows, including Geraldo and court TV as a commentator. How did you, how'd you get into that?
4m 21s
Roger Dodd
It's a lot like trial work. You take the first one, somebody sees you and says, Hey, I want you to do that over here. And that's how it worked with the lecturing. It's how work with, with cases with writing. It's how it works with the appearances or auto by far is a fun guy.
4m 41s
Ben Gideon
What were you doing on his show?
4m 42s
Roger Dodd
He was commenting on a couple of cases. I forget what it was. I think it was a murder case murder for hire $3 million life insurance policy. They leave all the cookie crumbs on the computer about how they look up, how to kill someone and stuff a day at work. And I've tried a bunch of death penalty cases. So I guess that qualifies me and I don't know, 30, 40 murder cases. And lately we we've done a lot more civil work the last 10 years or so. Criminals just don't have the resources anymore. Occasionally you get one it's really good. When we had 14 pounds of crack cocaine in Utah that made us very popular with the, the entire state and they had to turn them loose.
5m 31s
Roger Dodd
That just very brave judge, very ugly community reaction.
5m 36s
Ben Gideon
There aren't that many civil trial lawyers today that still do criminal cases. Do you still take them and w which type of case do you prefer?
5m 46s
Roger Dodd
Well, we do still take, you know, I was on a court appointed list in Georgia. You had to serve five years or six years, whatever it was, I was on for like 26 years. I enjoy those people. I, I mean, they're not your civil clients. It gives you a bigger picture of the world, not to say they're bad or worse or better. It's, they're just different. So we still do take them know, I still take, I took a DUI case recently because it was a relative, a distant relative, but it was relative. I did not need his mother yelling at me about not trying to help him. And so if it's case that we think we make a difference in, and we're interested, economic reality is a lot more money in PI work a lot more demand.
6m 38s
Roger Dodd
Personally, I think that there are not that many trial lawyers left real trial lawyers who will wait in and say, okay, let's go try the case. So as long as the next generations are not building trial lawyers, then we're going to stay employed. All of us, all three of us.
7m 0s
Ben Gideon
Do you think that the criminal cases have honed your trial skills in a way that just, if you solely did criminal civil cases that you wouldn't have developed?
7m 11s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, I think so. I do a particularly cross examination and opening statements. If you didn't know how to cross first 15 years of my practice, I would have died. And I did it every way you could do wrong. You know, life is a process of elimination. I just kept eliminating things that didn't work until we got to the things that did work. And then we tried to whittle that down to an understandable set of guidelines rules that would work in the heat of battle. And it, you could remember that you could execute anybody, give you a trial technique.
7m 51s
Roger Dodd
That's complicated. Shoot that person. Cause they're setting you up for failure. You look at the best educators around, not just in Trower. They make this subject matter, easy to perform in. Everybody. Life loves that. Well, juries do to juries, want to get it right? We need to be good teachers in the courtroom, not so much good trial lawyers, good teachers. Then you'll get the verdicts that we all like to get.
8m 22s
Rahul Ravipudi
Roger, just touching on one of the comments you made that the trial lawyers is a sort of dying breed. Why do you think that is?
8m 31s
Roger Dodd
It's hard work? I think that's the biggest problem. We get people in to intern or, you know, want to be mentored for awhile. I can't get it. They're asked to work, you know, they've come to me. He asked me I agree to help. And then they're lazy. Now beyond that, when I first started trying cases, maybe a third, maybe 25 went to a jury, the percentage is down to less than 1% now. So the whole system is now rigged not to go to trial. That's not a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a real thing. And reality is if you don't get in the courtroom and you don't try cases, fear incapacitate, you, the fear builds up to the point where people are afraid to go to court.
9m 21s
Roger Dodd
And just recently, I, I was involved in a case. I won't name the case where the guy he's really, really nice, man. He's been a partner in a high building from lots of people. And he's been a partner for 11 years. I don't know how long these practice probably close to 20. And he's had 11 jury trials. How do you get good with 11 over that period of time? And what was even more amazing was the trial judge had tried one jury trial in the preceding 16 months. Now, how do you get good at being trial judge? And his rulings were, they were very, very accurate, but they were excrutiatingly slow.
10m 5s
Roger Dodd
And listen, you're going to run jurors out of the block. If that's what you're doing, they already think we take too much time. And we probably do. Now give me a judge who asked to go slow motion because he has to look stuff up all the time. I'm not going to be able to keep my, my jurors attention. So the system's rigged not to go try the case. And again, we just settled a case yesterday and it is a fine settlement for the client. I'm personally disappointed. I wanted to cross examine the defendant best interest of the client. We sell the case. It's not what I like to do. It's not what I want to do. What I feel like I ethically have to do.
10m 45s
Roger Dodd
I couldn't look that lady in the eye and say, I can beat that offer. So it was trial lawyers. We all do the same thing. You're honest with them. And they go, I don't want to take that chance. I don't want to take that risk. And you know, what, if it was my case, I'd probably vote the same way she did. But as a trial lawyer, I want to go do trials. You know, the clinic helps keep your skills up a little bit. It's not the same as a trial, but it helps even as a participant or an instructor, it helps. And there's nothing else out there. So you have to do those kind of stuff. Now, the days of sitting in a lecture hall and listening, those are over for real trial lawyers.
11m 25s
Roger Dodd
Those are over.
11m 26s
Ben Gideon
So we're going to get into your cross-examination techniques. But before we do that, I'm interested you do you and your partner, Trish who we've had on the show. And she was fantastic.
11m 39s
Roger Dodd
She is a great trial lawyer. She really is.
11m 42s
Ben Gideon
I mean, you can definitely tell that just even on the podcast.
11m 46s
Roger Dodd
Well, she does stuff that I look up and go, okay, on my best day, I can't do that. That is not working with this. And she just does it naturally injuries, absolutely adore that they're wrapped paying rapt attention when she's talking.
12m 2s
Ben Gideon
So you guys have kind of a focus and in the seminars you do. And I know you do them all over the country on, on cross examination. Is that because you believe that cross is the most important part of the trial or is that just the area you've decided to focus on?
12m 20s
Roger Dodd
Well, it not only is my belief. It is reality. If you can win your crosses, you'll win your cases. I don't see any juror being motivated by a direct examination. It's all self-serving every bit of it is. And it is by nature that plaintiff's lawyers love to hire experts. You know, you've got a problem, hire another expert. They almost always cancel out unless you can cross the other guy's expert. Now I will admit voir dire is very important and we do teach some of that. But I think cross is even more important. And it's more important now because you're not getting to the jury.
13m 2s
Roger Dodd
So now you have to do your cross examination in depositions. So five years ago, maybe eight years ago, probably eight years ago, I came up with a design of uncrossing at depositions. The same way I do a trial, no more of this crap of open-ended what happened next? I don't need that. I got that. Most of the time, what I want to do is get verbal requests for admissions during the, the depositions, whether they're designated to be used to trial or not, I'm still doing it the same way. Now there's going to be some open-ended, but most of it's going to be cross. Then I'm going to use the cross to negotiate at mediation, to use as selling points at mediation, your guy said this, he can't live with that on his stand.
13m 52s
Roger Dodd
I'm on a terrible part. That's what makes cases settle. Again. It goes back to the fear and the opponent. If you opponent knows you can cross and will cross and we'll show up, then their fear level goes way up.
14m 6s
Ben Gideon
Do you think that you become a victim of your own success in the sense that you're so effective doing that at depositions? That nobody wants to try the case at that point, because you've already won it.
14m 16s
Roger Dodd
It's reality. Anyhow, Ben, you know, when you tell me one out of a hundred going to trial and I suspect that's not even accurate, I suspect that's too high just because everybody I talk with, no one's getting to trial
14m 32s
Ben Gideon
Except Raul has had about four in the last three weeks, but
14m 35s
Roger Dodd
Well, he's such a nice guy. Everybody thinks that he's going to be nice at trial. They, they don't understand how meany can get, of course, making your child get up at five 30 in the morning. So that 25 years from now, he might be a good person. Ad shows meanness to,
14m 54s
Rahul Ravipudi
I would play the long game. Roger
14m 58s
Roger Dodd
I'm with your child. If he calls our representative and I like getting up early in the morning, but he needs a little bit of free will
15m 10s
Rahul Ravipudi
Gets that from two to 3:00 PM.
15m 15s
Roger Dodd
Well, yeah, he, he's probably going to be a very productive, psychotic citizen.
15m 20s
Ben Gideon
So you're teaching a seminar at the PSBR trial college in advanced cross examination. Can you give our listeners a little preview of what they might learn if they were to go attend that seminar and kind of what everyone's appetite for that?
15m 39s
Roger Dodd
Well, on Saturday morning, Trish, my partner and I are going to in real time critique, Brian Panish is crosses.
15m 49s
Ben Gideon
When you say real time, do you mean he's going to be doing one live or are you going to be critiquing one he's already done
15m 55s
Roger Dodd
Either way. And I think what the plan is, I haven't really been following it. I've been working on a case is that they're going to have clips either of trial questioning, cross examination or deposition cross-examination and we'll suggest. And what I mean by real time, we're not going to watch them ahead of time. It's not going to be scripted. I hate that one. When people, let me see your tape and let me watch it five times, and then I'm going to critique you. Okay, well, any chimpanzee can do that, right? You have enough preparation time. That's unfair to the person performing person performing is doing it in real time.
16m 35s
Roger Dodd
They don't have five takes. So I think the critique should be in real time to then we're going to say the things we really like about it. Say things we think he can improve on as both of, you know, penny. She is, I've said this before publicly and Keith, Nick makes him crazy to hear it. So I'll say it again. Panish is a generational lawyer on cross. You're going to see a couple more of those, but it's like Michael Jordan, he's going to do stuff intuitively that most of us could plan and not pull off. He has such a good sense of how to listen. And he's an example.
17m 16s
Roger Dodd
I always give to people. The best cross examiners in the world are the best listeners, not the best talkers, the best listeners, because that witness is going to open a door for you. And that's the turning point in the case. And everybody feels it. They don't know it. They don't see it. They don't hear it. They feel it in a jury has this. Now has this empowerment of that was important. And I know what I'm going to do. Now. He has that ability and I'll say this warm, he's willing to get critiqued in front of anybody. And that I think that's hard when you get to y'all's level.
17m 58s
Roger Dodd
Panish is level, there's a natural defense mechanism. It goes up and says, please, Lord, don't let me throw up on my boots in front of all these people, you know, I was supposed to be somebody please don't let, let somebody figure out that I'm really, you know, a scared little eighth grader. He's fearless about that critique in. And I always say, I won't do it unless a person asked me personally to do it because otherwise it's not fair in front of that many people. And he called and said, would you mind doing it? I said, I'll do it. If Trish can do it as well. And the reason we'd like two critiquers, there's two points of view. One's younger, one's attractive once a female and then there's me.
18m 42s
Roger Dodd
So you get both ends of the spectrum, but yeah, that should be exciting. I absolutely am excited about doing it. I don't mind lecturing, but I'd much rather critique in person. And I think it's, it's more spontaneous with the audience. There's a lot more to be learned that way than something that's already scripted.
19m 5s
Ben Gideon
So when Trish was on, she gave us the three core rules, which I think were shorts questions with leading questions, with one idea, per question, and going from the general down to the specific, is that what it was
19m 19s
Roger Dodd
Almost got it, right? Not topics, not areas, not ideas. One little detailed fact. It's a level of you guys are trying cases at you cannot beat an expert unless you factually beat him. One little fact at a time I saw Rahul, when, when we were together, working together, ripped up an expert witness in the only thing he was doing right was one little fact at a time until the guy got to the point where he ran out, he ran out of road, there was a dead end. If he was in a car, he would've gotten thrown out of the vehicle and he did adjust because of that.
20m 2s
Roger Dodd
And he was doing it because he was listening and he was catching himself. He'd say, well, what about, and it'd have two or three little facts in there and say, wait a minute, let me back up and fix it. And every time he did it, this witness who's a professional witness would get this look on his face. Like this is going to be a bad day, right? And that's what drives verdicts in my opinion,
20m 26s
Ben Gideon
Beyond that those three basic points, which are those seem simple are actually more, I guess, profound than thank once you start to try to do that because you realize, even though you think you might be good at cross, you're actually not doing it that way consistently every time I've noticed in my own crosses that that, that happens beyond that. Are there other things that we should be looking out for in structuring a good cross doing the three, those three points also listening, obviously to answers carefully. But I think a lot about when I'm, when I'm trying to plan a cross of, I do mostly medical cases.
21m 8s
Ben Gideon
So docs that are very sophisticated, you know, full Harvard professor and fellowship trained and, you know, authored 10,000 articles on the subject that we're crossing them on. You know, you're not going to win the battle. If you start to get into the weeds of the area, they've spent their lifetime learning about. And there can be a lot of risks there to kind of entering that, joining battle with them there. And you're always looking for that point of leverage, like where do you have something that significant to your case, but also something where you can make elicit that, that feeling, as you said, where the kind of air comes out of the courtroom and you know, there's kind of a turning point.
21m 55s
Ben Gideon
How do you find those things? Sometimes you look and you don't see any openings and you wonder what should I do now? Cause I don't see it. You know, I can go one question at a time, one factor at a time, and I'm just going to put the rope out there and it's going to be longer. I'm going to hang myself and it's going to take a longer time now. But how do you find that opening that really makes that difference?
22m 19s
Roger Dodd
Preparation is a lot more important than presentation. We all like to think we're cool in the courtroom. I'm involved in a case right now where there are 50,000 documents, 50,000 documents. We have a lawyer who went through 50,000 documents and she found stuff that I'll be darn. Anybody else found now how much time she spent on it? Hours, days. But that's where it comes from. Preparation is the be all we can talk about everything else in the courtroom. And we all like to look good. It's the preparation and you're right.
23m 0s
Roger Dodd
You don't want in the weeds you want in the significant stuff where this doctor, in your case, who's written 10,000 articles has never written on this because this is the most important thing in this case. And he's written about other stuff and he wants to talk about the other stuff. And he wants to talk about Harvard. You don't want to talk about how hard it is to do something and do it right under pressure. And to me, that's where you get them almost all the time. Get them into reality. What happened in this case? Don't tell me how smart you are.
23m 40s
Roger Dodd
Tell me what happened here. Tell me why the doctor went through a red flag. Why didn't the doctor just stop? Why didn't he take a time out? Works for kids. But he went through the red flag and now we have a bad result. So wait, when you say I looked, I didn't see anything. If you're going to take the case, look harder, look deeper, then expand your field. Don't just focus on this is what happened. This is what I got crossed on. What about everything else that was involved? Because nothing happens in a vacuum. These defendant doctors do not operate in a vacuum. They have real lives. They have children and they get in trouble.
24m 22s
Roger Dodd
They have distractions. They have all this other stuff. You have to go find it all. I mean, we, we were involved in a medical case in Georgia where literally, because we had person on the inside of the office who was unhappy with the doctor, left the doctor. They leaked to us that he and his wife had had the, a big fight. The morning of this surgery. At first, we didn't believe it. We thought this is a setup. This isn't working. But I got them in deposition to admit that he was upset that morning. And you know, he never admitted that trial. He never admitted at trial. His, his lawyer would have had him so prepped for that, but we got him to admit it at the deposition.
25m 7s
Roger Dodd
And that's what we call the can opener. We just got a little piece into that. Can, once you get that little old, when the hole tends to explode, that's why you're listening because he's going to say something worse. Then he started telling me how it really wasn't that big of a fight. And we weren't talking about medical malpractice anymore. We're talking about a fight. How big is the fight? How angry were you? How's your blood pressure. Juries could understand that. And the other side knew it. And they did the right thing by the, by the patient. I don't think they'd ever done the right thing. Have we not find out about their fight?
25m 47s
Roger Dodd
So it's always microscopic you know, you get into such detail, but you also have to look at the big picture and say, what else was going on here? What else was involved here? And there's almost always a, what else?
26m 3s
Rahul Ravipudi
What's your favorite type of case? Daniel. Roger, I know you've done so many trials. You can't even keep count or maybe you can, but of the whole array. Is there any particular one where you would love to revisit and do more of those?
26m 19s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, I mean, before I went to law school, I drove a truck as tractor and I know a lot about truck driving. I know all the bad things cause we did all the bad things. This was before electronic log books and all that. I mean, I had three sets of books personally. I don't know how many other people have, but I still like doing trucking cases. They're complicated, they're dangerous. I think it's Minnis more tracks on the road than ever still enjoy doing those. But it really, for me, it always comes down to the personality of the clients. I I'm fascinated by how well people do after they're injured.
27m 1s
Roger Dodd
They do so much better than I think I would if I had a similar injury or that how well their family does after a death. I know they do that better than I've done it. So I think that's really kinda, and, and I, I, I think that juries can see that they can feel that they feel the plaintiff. And you know, if you have a plaintiff, who's in charlatan, well, they're going to feel that too. But if you have a good person, man, they're going to do the right thing by, I believe in juries. And I don't just say that, you know, I'm a trial lawyer. I believe in juries. I've seen juries get it right with terrible lawyer performances on both sides and they still get it right.
27m 47s
Roger Dodd
They get past that trial stuff and they get to the right results sometimes for the wrong reasons. But whoever came up with jurors, I'd say that's one of those great inventions that no one ever talks about takes for granted. Have you seen him get it wrong? Yeah. Occasionally as soon as you said that, I, I have a case right here, you know, it's still bugging me 20 years later and I can't decide if I just screwed the case up completely. Or if the jury just got it wrong and I have a good friend, who's a psychologist. He says, do you think maybe it's a little bit of both and that's probably right.
28m 27s
Roger Dodd
Still haunts me still. I think about it. And I ended up shaking my head like this because I, I just, I want that one back. I think, I think I could do a better job than I did. And I still don't understand why the jury do what they did, but how
28m 44s
Ben Gideon
Do you handle losing
28m 46s
Roger Dodd
Not well, when I was younger, healthier, I would wash away in my blues. And I realized it's at is a real trap for trial lawyers. If you're losing or you have a bad day and you're going to do a lot of drinking, you're going to have another bad day. Now I get real quiet. Now I've asked people to leave the house. Don't kick the cat. Don't yell at the dog anymore, but I get real quiet. And then I go through the most painful part of being a trial lawyer, the post-mortem, what could we have done better? What could we improve on? Can we get another shot at this one? That's always painful.
29m 26s
Roger Dodd
But I think educational, I think is we incorporated in the firm's home, a partner in, we have mandatory sit down debrief, and those are painful. That's just painful as hell, I think. But if you're going to get better, you have to do that. It's like watching the game film after game, man, you do a bad play that coaches run that thing back 20 times to show you how bad that play was makes you better player. So we incorporate that and that that's part of the, as part of the process, particularly what can we do better? What have we learned from this? How would we do it differently next time?
30m 8s
Ben Gideon
What's the hardest witness you've ever had to cross.
30m 13s
Roger Dodd
I've literally had a Catholic nun in south Georgia in her regalia, a little silver cross, you know, dangling from her waist. And the only good part of that cross was, it was short. She impaled me so many times in such a short period of time that I looked up at the judge and he's a he's passed away now, of course, but he, he had his hands like this and he was shaking his head and I realized everybody else in the courtroom was too. That was a very, very difficult witness. And, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't sign up to do that again, voluntarily.
30m 56s
Roger Dodd
I cross-examined a, what we thought was a co-defendant in a murder case, unindicted. They never got that. Right. And I wanted him to say that my client really wasn't the aggressor and we were doing fine. And out of the blue, he just started yelling. I told Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, are you crazy? You crazy Bobby? And he said that like 20 times, I mean, it is such a flameout and burn and crash that my grandchildren have heard stories about it and make fun of me about it. They'll come up to me like at Christmas and say, Hey, have you seen Bobby lately?
31m 37s
Roger Dodd
You know, That that was a terrible witness. And a lot of it was my fault. I was jumping to conclusions and he wasn't educated, but he was street smart and he knew I was jumping ahead. And he just very calmly wouldn't go there. And then he volunteered that. And of course the prosecutor used it in his closing arguments. So that's the best thing about a good opponent. They will find the flaw in your case. And you will hear about it in closing argument. So if you ever didn't think that was important, you now know that was really important, but yeah, those two come to mind right away.
32m 22s
Ben Gideon
We'd like to thank the sponsors of the elevate podcast, steno national court reporting service that allows trial lawyers to defer the costs of court reporting until the end of the case, take a look, steno.com and by law pods, LA pause is the podcast production company that we use to produce the show that produces a podcast for lawyers all over the country. They have an expertise in podcasting and the law, check them out@lapods.com. What's the most effective cross examination you've seen, whether it's one you've done or when you've watched somebody else do.
33m 9s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, without a doubt, it was Bobby Lee cook in a federal case in Georgia. I might have been practicing two years and he kind of, for reasons I never figured out kind of befriended me and I got to watch him cross examine someone to the point where the jury would not look at the witness. And the only question was would he ever stop? He was so effective and it could have gone on for longer period of time. And that probably will always be in my mind, the best cross I ever saw. And Mr.
33m 49s
Roger Dodd
KUKA is very humble about it. You talk about someone who could try a case. He could cross examine that's one end of the spectrum. And he could for dire like crazy, the other end of the spectrum, completely opposite skillsets. And he could do both to the point where you go. Damn. Yeah, that was, that was a great one. Emory Walters was a great one. I saw him cross examine a, a teenager to the point when there's a recess in the middle of the cross and Emory was outside and he had a, he had a, a green sports coat on, for whatever reason. I don't know why he had an offer trial, but the, he wasn't in the courtroom and the witness comes back in and turns the bailiff and says, is that man in the green jacket coming back?
34m 40s
Roger Dodd
And I thought, oh yeah, you know, you're being crossed Emory Walbridge you never hear that name. It's not a famous name outside the state of Georgia. And then a generation there'll be nobody left to remit. He remembered by, but I would put him up in the top five I've ever seen. He was generational. And one of the thing about the really, really good ones, they are so kind to younger, less experienced lawyers. They go out of their way to teach. They go out of their way to make, make sure that you got the learning point. Yeah. Bill shepherd out of Jacksonville, he just passed away his phenomenal cross examiner.
35m 22s
Roger Dodd
But all three of those have some buttons, something in common. Now they're all passed away and I don't see anybody coming around to replace. And if you don't get enough skills, you don't get enough trial work. I don't know you get that good. You know, who's the best shot on the range, the guide shoe, 2000 bullets a day, you got to practice your skills. And if you don't, you're not going to be everything you can be. That was pretty damn depressing. Nudge. Think that I just said that,
35m 48s
Ben Gideon
You know, I've I was reading some descriptions of lawyers who had passed away and kind of their biographies being sent around on a listserv that I'm part of. And they were describing this one lawyer who had crossings. I think it was someone, a lawyer. I'm sure you've heard of named Rex car, but it could be. But I think this is who they were describing. And they were saying about one particular trial that went on a long time that he had one witness on the witness stand and cross-examined him for, I think it was either five or six months.
36m 22s
Roger Dodd
Wow.
36m 22s
Ben Gideon
And there are stories I've heard about that. Occasionally where people are on the stand, cross-examined over very prolonged periods of time like that. And I think about kind of the modern sort of fast trial approach where people are trying to put P wit confining witnesses to 20 minutes or less, where do you come down on that? And how does that kind of mesh with your approach to, to cross
36m 49s
Roger Dodd
Look, I've done really long crosses multiple day crosses, and I've done crosses that were 10 questions. The question is, what are you crossing on as first question? How important is it? If it's not important? Why are you talking about it? So then the next question is, what juror? What listener do you have? Judge, jury, whatever can they tolerate a long cross and more and more? The consensus is juries are not listening as well as they once did. When I started 45 years ago in a small south Georgia town, a jury trial was a damn day to take off and go to court and watch the lawyers try the case.
37m 32s
Roger Dodd
I mean, people did that. No one could do that. Now. Not even lawyers. We can't take time off to go watch somebody else. Then the third factor I think is, so are you earning your cross as you go, don't tell me, you're hitting 50%. That's a terrible cross. Don't tell me you're hitting 70 and still not very good. That means 30% of this jury's time has been wasted. So my answer is, look, if you have a cross, it truly is worthwhile and it's going to be two hours. Then your cross should be two hours. And if you have a cross it's really worthwhile and as three days, then your crushed should be three days.
38m 13s
Roger Dodd
There's no, there's no time limit on these things. And here's the biggest thing. When witnesses start volunteering, that cross is going substantially longer, substantially longer. I just did a deposition. Two, three weeks ago of quotes, expert witness is actually in California, in Sacramento. And the direct might've been 10 minutes and the cross was an hour and a half because he started volunteering and now I'm turning them into my damn expert. And I have him ratifying all, but the conclusion of our expert, he's saying, yeah, that's an appropriate test.
38m 55s
Roger Dodd
He's saying, yeah, that test was done correctly. Yes. The methodology was good on that. I'm affirming my expert with their expert. Am I expert? Hadn't taken a stand yet? Not to me. That's an hour and a half. Good cross. They don't know what to do with him now. Now they don't want him as a witness. Well guess who's endorsing him as a witness now, you know, I don't know how the judge is going to handle that, but it's going to force probably a settlement. They sure are happy to take my call. Now before the deposition, they didn't give a damn about me calling from Utah. And now we're on a, Hey Raj, how you doing basis? You know, I can always tell when I've gotten under somebody's skin where they just, it just blew back on them.
39m 41s
Roger Dodd
Boy, they want to look me up. They want to ask me questions about my personal life. Yeah. They, they fixing to get your wallet out.
39m 50s
Rahul Ravipudi
So Roger, in the classes you teach, are you going back to in-person by the way, are you still doing them remotely?
39m 56s
Roger Dodd
We're we're back. We're back. We have Ashley with two in Hawaii. In August. I was always reluctant about Hawaii. I had to cancel because the pandemic was alive. One I had to cancel because of the, of a volcano one time alive one. So I just, I believe in omens and I thought, no, the powers that be are telling me, don't show up on that island. So my son, who's an excellent trial lawyer, Matt put in to do one, you know why? So, okay, we do that and I should have known this. I didn't know it I'll admit it.
40m 36s
Roger Dodd
Hawaiian is halfway to Australia. So we've been trying to teach Australian lawyers for a long time. And we always misfire because it's like 16 hours difference or something and taught a lot of people from mainland that's only 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, depending on where you're at. So we were always able to do that, but the distance was just too big with Australia. So Australia lawyers bought five of the age seats immediately and they were a day ahead, I guess. Anyhow, they were ahead of Americans. So we had a lot of angry American lawyers. We didn't even get a chance to get a seat.
41m 17s
Roger Dodd
So we're, we're doing a second one. And that's, I think either sold out or almost sold out. Then we do an east coast swing in October, September. I got a bunch of trial sets. We try to mix them up and then find times when we can do them. I love the in-person, but the travel just kills you.
41m 44s
Ben Gideon
Can we get you to come to Maine?
41m 46s
Roger Dodd
Yeah. As I mentioned in an email to you that I'm sure you didn't read. And I say that because I didn't get a response, but I know you're a trial lawyer. You're busy.
41m 55s
Ben Gideon
If it had exclamation points in it, I would have responded.
41m 59s
Roger Dodd
Well, I think you take the record. I
42m 2s
Ben Gideon
Thought I did respond, but
42m 4s
Roger Dodd
No, you, you probably did. I, we have some kin up there in Maine and I know that Maine is not a bad drive from Boston because we've done that drive and Boston, believe it or not. It's salt lake city to Boston is an easy flight. So yeah, we were happy to do that. Now, if you tell me, you ask some pheasants or checker or quail or ducks in Maine to shoot, then the answer is absolutely. We can do mate.
42m 33s
Ben Gideon
Oh yeah. We've got a big hunting culture here.
42m 36s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, but I'm talking about birds. I don't want to shoot anymore.
42m 39s
Ben Gideon
Turkey turkeys.
42m 42s
Roger Dodd
If you ever gone to Turkey on,
42m 44s
Ben Gideon
I'm not a hunter, but I have friends who do a lot of Turkey hunting.
42m 47s
Roger Dodd
Okay. Well you have friends that sit for long periods of time in the Colt and don't move because turkeys are smart as they can be and they are Wiley. And so you have to be very, very patient. Now look at me. Do I look like,
43m 2s
Ben Gideon
What about ducks
43m 4s
Roger Dodd
Ducks? I'm good with ducks. Ducks are appointments.
43m 7s
Ben Gideon
We have ducks too.
43m 8s
Roger Dodd
Yeah. Ducks come in half an hour after sunrise. So you can almost set your clock by that. So I love shooting ducks. So you get up early, you go out, shoot ducks, get cleaned up, go to work.
43m 23s
Ben Gideon
I'll set you up with someone who can take you duck hunting. If you come to Maine. How about that?
43m 27s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, that's, that's a real perk for me. I mean, I can distinctly remember as a young lawyer, I had my suit under my waders last day of duck season and, and we get into a message birds. And so we're shooting a little more than we thought we were. And we're going to run a little late. This is before cell phones and all that. So my waiters leaked a little bit. So I'm walking down the hallway of the courthouse and my feet are going to crush. My socks are all wet and no one says anything. Everybody hears everybody's looking around.
44m 9s
Roger Dodd
They can't figure out what's going on in a bailiff comes over to me. Good friends, still good friend. He said, is that you squishing? I said, yeah. He said, you go duck on this was yeah. He says, I want some, or I'm telling the judge. So yeah. I love appointment shooting.
44m 28s
Ben Gideon
Well, we'd love to see you here in the, in the great state of may or Northeast we'll, we'll try to set that up offline and we can let our listeners know if you're heading this way so they can sign up.
44m 41s
Roger Dodd
Here's the deal. I don't know how many more cases I'm going to try. They keep getting settled. Maybe I should rub up against roll and get some of that. I'm going to court stuff. So, but I know I can teach you teach a bunch more. And so we're trying to find that balance of, let me try as many as I can. I'm not done yet, but I recognize the candles burned down some, but I can teach until I'm completely demanded. So we're, we're happy to teach anywhere
45m 12s
Rahul Ravipudi
Rogers and excellent, excellent teacher. And he's taught, I think almost every lawyer in our firm, we've added a few lawyers. So we're going to schedule another time with you, Roger for them as well.
45m 23s
Roger Dodd
Yeah. I actually told Brian that I thought we should do that live just to see how everybody thinks live versus zoom.
45m 36s
Rahul Ravipudi
Yeah.
45m 37s
Roger Dodd
The experience we had with you all, I don't know, we did six or seven separate groups with you was always very, very positive for us, but there is that live factor of you can't replicate on zoom.
45m 56s
Rahul Ravipudi
No, that's true. But the experience who was more exhausting and more learning in that two or three day time period than any trial or anything else I've done. So I, I would highly recommend it to anybody who's aspiring to, to just get better at the practice of law and in being a trial lawyer. And so Roger, for anybody who wants to, you
46m 23s
Roger Dodd
Were exhausted as you are working your tail off. Yeah. And, and that's, that's what the clinics do. They require you to work hard and most people kick into gear and you saw it in your group. People the second day were 10 times better than the first day. And I don't know what it is. People go home, they have a glass of wine. They go to sleep. They come back, they're better. And we, we can always mark how good a clinic was by the difference between day one and day two.
46m 55s
Rahul Ravipudi
So Roger, if anybody wants to reach out to you to see if they can schedule a session with you, how should they get all to you?
47m 1s
Roger Dodd
You know, it's online Dodd law clinic, but my personal email, well, my professional personal email is doddlaw@doddlaw.com. And just send me a real quick don't don't make it a two page damn email folks do bear grass. I need some information. I'll get you to the right person. Send me two, two pages. I might just tell you, can you summarize this? Do bear grass or I may just not read it.
47m 32s
Ben Gideon
Sure. You put in a lot of exclamation points. So,
47m 35s
Roger Dodd
Well, listen, I mean, that's, that's so California and, and now I realize that's passive aggressive for what he's doing to his child. No, I'm totally with you child on this. Now I was forced to do some stuff and guess what? I don't do it anymore. And I don't care that it helps society. Raul, I'm not doing it.
48m 5s
Rahul Ravipudi
I was forced to read as a kid. I still,
48m 7s
Ben Gideon
I think there's one problem that gen Z there's have. It's not that they do too much. It's as the father of three myself, I can assure you. They're not overburdened. It's probably, it's definitely good for them to be doing some forced labor in my humble opinion,
48m 25s
Roger Dodd
Everything in moderation. But I grew up in a neighborhood where every male, every, every older male had been to world war II and they thought our generation sucked at work ethic. And every generation, since then I hear the same thing. These guys won't work. They don't have work ethic. I say it all the time with these new lawyers, we finally got cracker Jack and she just worked my tail off. I won't say uncle, but I sure want to say uncle at the end of some days, she'll say, can I ask you one more question? I'm like, I was so close to a glass of wine. I could taste it.
49m 7s
Roger Dodd
It, it, of course you have to say, of course you can't. No, you can't say you, you, you can outwork me. You can't ever give into it.
49m 15s
Ben Gideon
Well, thank you Roger, for agreeing to do the podcast. This has been really great. And it's great to meet you. Look forward to seeing you in person at the end of July in LA. Yeah,
49m 26s
Roger Dodd
Yeah, yeah. You're going to be there then
49m 28s
Ben Gideon
I will. Oh yeah. Yeah.
49m 30s
Roger Dodd
That's great. All
49m 31s
Rahul Ravipudi
Right. Thank you, Roger. You're
49m 33s
Roger Dodd
Welcome. See you soon. Thank you bud.
49m 36s
1
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