And I learned something, and I learned that to be an effective trial lawyer, you have to be respectful even of the people you disagree with. And that’s how my practice has developed. And I think it’s been more successful. I get along very well with the opposing counsel. I don’t give away what I’m not supposed to, but I really believe in being polite and respectful. And I think Mr. Kargianas taught that, and I believe in putting my client first. And my dad taught me that, the doctor. His office was always jammed with patients. Because they all knew that Campiche cared about them.

But there’s a big ‘but’ I tell everybody.  Because I’ve learned that notwithstanding that, just to push the envelope and take that extra deposition of the representative from the corporation or you know what, let me just find out about that critical eye witness. Let me depose that person. I can’t tell you how often. And it’s sort of kitschy, it’s sort of common vernacular to say ‘gold mine.’ I don’t mean gold mine. When you do that extra step, when you push the envelope, gold on the right term, the term that I would use other than gold mine. It is a case changer. Where before you thought the case was exactly how you thought it was going to play out, and the discovery and some of the witnesses you’re taking are just confirming your own, what I’ll call, lawyerly inertia.

Your own bias, and I don’t mean bias in a bad way. We all have bias when we look at cases. That’s why one client may go to another attorney and say, that attorney says, oh, you do have a case where the first attorney may say, I don’t think you do. So I don’t mean bias in that we have a prejudice, but bias in terms of what we bring to a case. And for a few extra hours and a few extra dollars of doing a deposition when you’re like, oh, should I really do this? I think I know where this case is going to end up. I can’t tell you. And it never ceases to amaze me. Where all of a sudden the case just blossoms, it takes on organically a whole new life. But what does that mean?

That means, sure, you’re happy that you’re stuck to it, you went against that on your own lawyerly inertia, if you will, and you’ve proven yourself better, right? So it’s sort of a revelatory, and it is a satisfying feeling when you do that. But who benefits? It’s the client. To pick up the phone and tell the client, guess what? You’ll never believe what came out at that deposition. Everything you were saying about what you remember. And we couldn’t find any evidence of it. And your case was weak because we couldn’t find anything else or any evidence or any person to corroborate or confer with. Oh my goodness. I’ve had clients actually come to tears because they feel exonerated. They feel just by the fact that I pushed, got more evidence. And what they were saying was confirmed. And we’re not even saying the outcome of the case. We don’t even have a settlement yet. We don’t even have a verdict yet. The thankfulness that they express, somebody is listening to them. Somebody has heard them. That feeling of satisfaction that the client feels and that you feel in those moments. And unfortunately, they’re few and far between. There’s perfect order to the universe of what we do.

I’ll say that one last time. When you’re thinking that there’s still a possibility and there’s a stone that is material stone, you know, not something that’s just some fringe stone, but a real material stone that you should unturn and uncover, go ahead and do that. I bet you more often than not, you’re going to find that there’s some real beneficial information that’s going to change, or at least greatly influence the case. And if there was anything I had to impart in 30 plus years of doing this, it’s just that. Because not only does it help the client and make the case more valuable, but it just, on a certain level, makes you personally gratified that you’re able to do that on behalf of somebody, and ultimately you get a better outcome.

When it came to law school, my parents were like, no, just become a teacher. Why do you want to go to law school? And I said, no, I want to go to law school. When I passed the bar, my parents never thought that I would be able to pass the bar. So I ended up passing the bar and, and they were very, very proud of me. But I always knew there were people in my life that didn’t believe that I could do that. But whenever I hear those discouraging comments, I feel encouraged. And I don’t know why. I don’t know where I got that from, but I do feel encouraged whenever I hear someone tell me that I can’t do something. And when they do tell me that I can’t do something, it drives me just to accomplish that. So I think that’s one thing that I would like to tell people is just when people tell you that you can’t do anything, or you can’t do something that you really want to do, just go ahead and do it. Just prove it to yourself that you can do it. And don’t let that stop you. Just do it.

When I wanted to be a lawyer, my mom said, look, you know your cousin Marty Garbus. You know, Marty is probably the most famous First Amendment lawyer in the country. He’s represented President Reagan, the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, Lenny Bruce, the comedian. He’s had four civil rights cases in the Supreme Court that got people voting rights. I want you to talk to him about your goals because I support you in your goal to be a lawyer to help the working people and make things right. But I want you to talk to Marty. So we all went to lunch. My mom had actually raised Marty after his mom died. They were very close. And Marty said, look, to be a lawyer who’s successful and does good in the world, just remember that you have to have money behind you. You have to have financial strength.

And he said, let me give you an example. And he went through all the famous lawyers of the sixties. You remember William Kunstler, Dan, you know him? I go, yeah, I know William Kunstler. He’s famous. Well, did you know that his girlfriend inherited millions of dollars and she supports him? No, I didn’t know that. I just thought he got his money from his cases. All right, now you know. And he went through the list of all of these sixties radical icons and told me their source of money. He said, how are you going to do a case if you can’t pay for an investigator, if you can’t pay for paralegals? They’re not going to work for free. So he said, you’ve got to balance making money with doing good. And he said, then you will have achieved your true goals, but don’t be embarrassed to ask to be paid from people who can afford it. So if you look at a personal injury practice, for example, does that support your civil rights work?

The case that I’m doing that I talked about earlier, I talked about this child who was killed by John Muir Hospital and how we are fighting to improve John Muir Hospital. If I didn’t have financial strength, could I have laid out the money to handle that case? So never be embarrassed to make money, and never be embarrassed to have heart, because they go together and they don’t contradict. So remember what my mom did with her career, helping people, what my dad did helping people, not just with that young man, but his whole career was helping the working people save money and buy houses. And remember young lawyers that use something like CloudLex, use the tools, go to bar meetings, ask people for help, and contribute to your community, but always take care of yourself and your family. They go together and they bind together, they’ll make you strong, and they’ll make it a better world too.

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