More likely than not, that 0.01% is all it takes to tip the scales of justice. Join us as inner circle legend, Charla Aldous, Eleanor Aldous, and Caleb Miller. Walk you through the critical moments, big decisions and bold strategies that win high cases and show you how to turn that 0.01% into a game-changing verdict. You're listening to the podcast where winning is more likely than not produced.

Powered by LawPods, everyone, welcome to another episode of More Likely Than Not, and as you can tell, I'm not Charla Aldous, so you're getting the B team today, but I hope that's good enough for everyone and we are so lucky to be joined by our good friend, Sach Oliver, welcome Sach.

Hey, thanks Caleb. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be visiting with you. I do miss Charla, but I'm excited to visit with you today. We'll have a great time.

I had to fill in for Charla last week. She was in Arizona at an Uber trial, and so I jumped on a hearing with a judge out in West Texas and I jumped on and I said, I apologize, I'm not Charla Aldi. And the first thing he said to me is, I'd much rather be looking at her today, but I'll tolerate you. And I feel like that's how everyone is with Charla. I'd much rather have Charla, but they're going to tolerate me, so I just appreciate people putting up with me.

Well, Caleb, congratulations on your partnership. I saw that on social media and I've been waiting to see you next to say, Hey, that's awesome and congratulations.

Well, I really appreciate it, man, and it means a lot to me and I'm thankful that Charla put the trust of the firm in me to move me to the next level. It's hard put into words what it means, but I appreciate it.

I'll tell you what it means. When you're working with the best like her and she thinks you're worthy of partnership, you must be the best too. That's what that means.

I felt like you were very real, you gave practical advice, but it seems like six months after I listened to that episode, your name was everywhere. You were doing these TLU conferences, you were on these other podcasts, and I think in the last few years you've really taken off and people are now requesting you for our Texas Trial Lawyers Association keynote speakers. For those who are not familiar with deSatchin, it's hard for me to think there's that many out there that haven't heard your name. But can you just go ahead and give our listeners just a quick background of how you got into law, where you practice, and what the Oliver Firm looks like today?

So literally when we bought this house, it had all these tiny toilets in there for all these little kids and it was painted rainbow colors on the outside for children. So my wife and I, on the weekends and after school, we would go and remodel this place. My dad drove over on the weekends and we remodeled this old building and we started up a law practice. We started up literally from scratch in that we were just hustling business. I mean, I was going around to different coffee connections that I found about networking events in the community at 7, 6 30 in the morning. And I would just stand up and introduce myself, tell everybody I have a personal injury lawyer, hope you don't ever need me, but if you do, give me a call. And matter of fact, that's how I got my first case, which was a slip and fall case against O Charlie's.

And so that's where we got started. And we got started old school trying cases, and they were tiny cases like that. My next verdict was like $6,000 and my next verdict was $19,000 and my next verdict was 27,000. And we just gradually 110,000 was the next verdict. And so gradually, and also by the way, I've had a string of defense verdicts, no doubt about it. I just got one in December. And so if you try cases that's going to happen. It's happened to me and I learned so much. It seems like maybe I even learned more from the losses while they hurt and they're awful for the clients. We do learn more from it. And if you look at our career, it's just been really gradual. It really has. We just continually learn from each trial, each deposition, each settlement even, and trying to improve the system and the work product.

We didn't have a pre-lit department, and I was kind of wishing I did at those years. So I mean, we literally just kind of like, whoa. So I thought, what are we going to do during COVID? Well, I'll tell you, we retooled, we pulled up our previous closing arguments, opening statements, read deposition transcripts. I put the whole team in, let's get better. Let's figure out how we can improve. Let's figure out what our weaknesses are, where are we doing it wrong? Where can we do it better? And that's what we spent that COVID time period. Well, I'll tell you, it was transformational. If you look at my verdicts before COVID, I want to say my highest verdict was, I don't even know, 400, $700,000. Okay. Now we had a lot of little trials, maybe as many as for a year, but that was the results before COVID.

If you look at our results after COVID, our methodology now matured, tested, implemented on multiple cases from the beginning all the way through, and we just learned much better ways of doing things and how to present evidence and how to connect with juries. And then our results have increased substantially since that time. And so I just really want to say I don't think there's ever been an explosion. I think it's just been tiny drops in a bucket, and we just want to keep filling that bucket up without a big splash that turns our bucket over.

And I think for the people who are living it, you don't see it as this explosion because it's years in the making. I mean people from the outside looking in say all of a sudden you showed up on the radar and it's probably in line with some of the big verdicts you got right around that time, which you've had a lot of really big verdicts. But for me, looking out, I'm like, Sach out of nowhere. And what Charla would tell you is it takes years and years and years. It takes you going to coffee shops and building those relationships and having people trust you with your success on the smaller cases for you to get the bigger ones. I want to go back though. We're definitely going to spend a lot of time talking about your methodology and how you develop that at your law firm because for our listeners out there, it's super unique. I don't know anybody, well, they may be doing it now, but I didn't know anybody doing depositions the way you were doing it when I read your book or when I heard about it. But I'm going to go back. So you said you started tried your first case less than a year after you were licensed. Is that right?

Yes sir.

Okay. And so that first case or those first few, who was teaching you how to try cases?

Well, I was blessed to have a wonderful mentor named Frank Bailey, and Frank was just a wonderful guy. What Frank did is he connected me, he connected me to Don Keenan, he connected me to Philip Miller, he connected me to Paul Scoter, he connected me. Frank had been a lawyer for many, many years, 38 years or something when I first met him. And he saw the potential in me, and I'm forever thankful for that. But what he did is he gave me Jerry Spence's books. I remember him walking in and giving me Jerry Spence's books and saying, read these. He gave me Don Keenan's books and said, read these. He gave me Rick Friedman and Pat Malone's books and said, read these, and I just soaked it up. I was like, yes, sir. And I read 'em, and not only did I read 'em, I would read, let's take Rick Friedman's book.

I read Rick Freeman's book and in the back of his book, he has a sample on how to give an opening statement. And I would have a car wreck case two weeks later and I would literally copy and paste, plug in my plaintiff's name for where Rick's plaintiff's names were, change out bicycle wreck to Rear End Collision and go try doing it Rick Friedman's way. And then I read Don Keenan's opening statements from one of his great books, and then I tried it Don Keenan's Way, and then I read another book, Jerry Sp, and I tried it that way, and I know these were tiny cases, but what it allowed me to do is learn from these great lawyers and implement what they know and do. And then gradually it took me a while. Gradually I became myself. It took years though to find my own art and my own way of doing it, but the foundation is I just duplicated what other lawyers have done my first time to use the red flags.

It's in my book, I saw Zoe little page do it. And so I just want to say that over and over because that's what I want to encourage all lawyers to do. But particularly you're asking me about when I was young, 26 years old, and how did that work? Well, I duplicated what other great lawyers were doing, and so I really didn't know what I was doing in the regard that I had never really, I don't remember watching trials or it wasn't like today. I don't remember courtroom TV or anything like that. It was more of back then on a low budget case, we couldn't do all those crazy expensive focus groups we do now in mock trials and dress rehearsals like now. So I would test things on my wife at Thanksgiving, I would say, all right, after dinner, I'm going to do opening statement.

That's how we practiced back then on our cases. So it was fun too. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the simple days where it was that simple. Now our cases are so big and we're doing dress rehearsals for two days and jury simulations of all this stuff. And man, it works and you got to do it on these big cases. But man, every once in a while you just want to go back to when my girls were tiny babies and Cody and I just got married and we were doing these little car wreck cases.

That's funny because I got my start basically the same way. I was almost straight from law school. I had been licensed a couple months and I went to a high volume car wreck firm to work with a friend who asked me if I wanted to try cases. I don't think I understood what he really meant. So three days in at the new firm, they hand me a file, say, Hey, you're going to go second chair of this case tomorrow, go second chair, probably a $1,000 case. We go, we ask the jury for a certain amount of money. The first question they come back with is, are we allowed to award more than they asked? And I laughed. I said, oh, this is easy. And then the second case I had, I got poured out and so I learned my lesson quick, but I'm like, I got a bunch of experience early on trying the small stuff.

And I think back then, all you can think about is getting to the bigger cases. And so it's hard to focus and to think of the big picture, which is the experience is what matters. And you learn even on a one day trial, basically it's the same thing if you're doing it right as you were doing a two week trial. And so I did, I think I tried a lot of different things out. And on those small ones, it's easier. You feel like there's less at stake if you lose a $5,000 case. It's not the same as losing a case where you have a client who's paralyzed who needs the money to survive. It's a different feeling. But I did the same thing. I used to run everything by my dad. My dad is as conservative as you can get. He's a natural skeptic. He doesn't believe anyone. And so I said, if I can do a voir dire in an opening state with my dad and he's on the same page as me, I got a chance to win this thing. That was my first focus group participant. And things have changed a lot since that time, as you just talked about. So you started trying these smaller cases and at a certain point of trying different things, I guess you figured out what your style was. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean it took time. It's weird because we always say be you and there's a lot of truth to that, but if you don't know what you're doing and you're getting started and you haven't done it, then you need a foundation. So it's like, be you, but you need to read this book Rules of the Road, be you, but you need to read this book or be you, but you need to watch courtroom TV and see how Charlie's doing it. Watch her opening statements. Right? That's what I always say is that, yes, be you, but you've got to do the foundations. I just got through teaching a, a advanced deposition college in New Orleans over this last weekend. Had a great time. It was great learning, great teaching, but I got through teaching all the foundations of how to the depositions of our trial, I had a group of six people in the workshop, four different workshops over two days.

So it was in depth and I finished with, okay, here's how you use a timeline. Here's how you use an exhibit. Here's how you use a visual aid. Here's how you do the Miller Mouse trap. All of those deposition tools. And I had 'em role play, but I said, you don't change the principle on how to do restatement and summarize, but be you. And so what I mean by that is don't go here and go buy a cowboy hat, belt buckle and boots and look like me. You need to go be you and follow these teaching principles that have now worked for many decades by many lawyers across the country. And so that's what I would say to young lawyers who are wanting to get in there and try more cases or have dreams of working on bigger cases is do a great job on the one case you got, pray you get another case and do a great job on that case and then it'll happen then organically, most likely for you.

I think it's one of those things too. It just takes reps. You can't figure out, you said, be you. Obviously the simple part of that would be if you're not an aggressive person, don't go be aggressive. If you're not somebody who uses humor, invo dire an opening statement, you probably shouldn't try that for the first time with the jury. I think there's that part of it, which is you got to be you. But the other part of that too is you got to try things. Like you said, the way I view it is this, there's so many wonderful trial lawyers out there who have a lot of success doing it different ways, and I think it's good to listen and be open-minded and take tips from those great trial lawyers like you and apply it to your cases and see what works for you. But there are things I've tried that just didn't feel natural.

For example, the reptile method, the way a lot of people were doing the reptile, it just didn't feel natural for me. And I think there are things that I probably did that would be taught by Don Keenan or Rick Friedman, but the best tip I have for other people out there is you go, you listen to these great trial lawyers, you write things down and you try it. The trying part is the part that's the hard part because it's harder to get trial experience, I think, on these bigger cases. And so those small ones where we were talking about are great to do that. And not just that we'll talk about it later today, but a theory that we have, and I think you would have the same as focus grouping. You can treat focus groups like many trials now, and you can really take these tips and put 'em into practice and see what people think about 'em before you ever set foot in a courtroom. But I'm going to bring it back now. So you tried some of those smaller cases and eventually those smaller cases probably turned into bigger cases. And then walk us through the point to where you decided, and maybe it was COVID, I think you might've been talking about that earlier, but you're sitting down with your team and you decided to try something different with your depositions. So can you walk us through that process of how you developed that strategy?

And so he called us to associate us on that case. So that would be what I would think is my first big case. Okay. Huge case. And what that does at that point, as far as verdicts go, I'm guessing my biggest verdict is six figures and maybe a car wreck case or a med mal case or something like that. Alright. This case is huge. What that does is it forces you to really dive in and figure out what you've got to do. I had to learn everything there was about nuclear plants, the rules, the standards. I had the best set of defense lawyers ever. Arguably I think somebody would say they're the best in our tiny little state. And then they have a national practice too. They're phenomenal. So I'm like, okay, huge case. Magnificent clients, best defense lawyers in the world. And so I just went back to the drawing board on every aspect of litigation, everything, even the complaint, the investigation, everything there is to do including depositions.

It was the trial he had moved to Montana or something, so we knew he is not going to be here for the trial. This is it. And he was like one of the star lead witnesses because he was the project manager who was in charge of this huge piece of million of steel called a stator that they dropped at the nuclear plant and took life. So that is where we started. I stood up, I did cross examination standing up. I got the witness up out of the chair, I mean out of the witness stand, but we're in a conference room and he came up and we had phone boards on easels. Matter of fact, I had about 30 easels in the room with foam boards up and the witness during a deposition is up standing up with me walking around the room as we're going through exhibits and visual aids, there are policies and procedures and other things.

I had two cameras in the room because I was afraid of, I wanted one on the witness, like the normal traditional headshot. And then I wanted one capturing everything, me and him and the visual aids and the boards and everything. That was our first one. What was the awakening then? That case? There were about, I don't know how many depositions, let's say there were 30, could have been more than that, could have been less. But for purposes of this discussion, there were 30 depositions and these lawyers were so good. Well, it didn't take me about three depositions to realize I have to develop a new technique or a new maneuver about every one to three depositions through this case. So then that's the same thing with trial. You've got an order of proof with 10 witnesses. If you do the exact same thing with all 10 witnesses, this isn't going to go well.

I'm trying to break over into bigger cases and I'm turning down significant offers. Clients are on board with that of course. And so I'll just say that's just a growth period. It's what I would call it requiring a lot of discipline, a lot of risks and pushing through it. And it paid off because it was during COVID where it's like I could see clearly, and that break was a blessing because I got to reflect on everything and kind of bring all of that learning together, victories and failures and bring it together. And then all of a sudden I could see clearly and be me, take all of the learning I've learned from all these phenomenal great trial lawyers and kind of bring it into a trial product and a deposition that works very well that's now been proven for years now. And so that's what led into the book.

And years ago somebody asked me about writing a book about depositions, and I remember the first time I heard that I really just thought, I'm way too young. That's crazy. And then somebody else asked me and I just remember thinking, I don't have enough experience. Not only am I too young, I don't have enough experience. And then it just kind of great. I didn't force that. I got asked, I got asked, and then I felt like that my experience had to catch up with it to give it validity and I'm glad I waited. A lot of those things that I was testing, that's all it was, was testing. There's probably dozens of things I tested that failed that I obviously didn't put in the book. And if you had just written a book right out of the gate, you would've had a lot of bad material out there.

And so we tested everything that's in that book to success. We became confident through preparation, and that's what then you say what happened? I mean, we came out of COVID, had an outline for a book ready to go with all of the learnings. We tried some cases, got totally different results, like a whole new world, and it was kind of an wake up call. We were doing more intense jury simulations and focus groups and mock trials, and then we decided to go ahead and write this book, which took us about a year and a half. Meanwhile, we're trying some more cases and we're blessed and thankful to get some great results, and it just kind of all came together there. And of course now we're trying to make sure that what we do is the right thing and fundamentally correct for good people, good clients, and just keep doing it.

Yeah, I want to make sure and clear so I don't feel like I was by myself. Caleb, my mentor, Frank Bailey was a wonderful mentor. He had an office in Mountain Home. We weren't in the same building, but we talked to each other every day. And while I was lead counsel, Frank would usually come to those trials, and so I don't feel like I was by myself. Also, Ryan Scott, he is a legal research and writing guru. He's our chief litigation officer at the firm now. He has been with me 20 years. He came while he was in law school. I hired him months as a lawyer. He is been with me from the very beginning. He's tried every case with me and handled all the complicated legal issues. So I don't want to misrepresent the truth. Caleb, also, I've tried some cases with some phenomenal trial lawyers as either second chair or co-counsel, whatever wordings you want to use.

Yeah, I think it's great. I feel like you, even when I was trying cases and I was the lead counsel, I had mentors that would give me the confidence to do the things I wanted to do. And it sounds like you had the same and you had people around you that were supporting you, that were helping you. But I still think even when you're a lead counsel in your early thirties on a massive case, at least the way, even with Charla here, sometimes I feel you have that almost imposter syndrome or you feel like, am I ready? Am I experienced enough? And I think it can be a scary thing when the reality sets in if somebody's depending on you. I think that's hard. Probably doesn't matter how old you are, but especially when you don't have the skins on the wall yet just to go out there. And it sounds like you were just trying cases and maybe you had some losses along the way, but I think the part that matters is you're willing to try. It's easier when someone throws a settlement offer to say, I could lose or this, that can go wrong. But to actually step foot in trial and have confidence in yourself, I think that takes a lot.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, no problem. I do want to ask you about a couple of things. You said you bring up this good point. We're talking about depositions. There's two schools of thought, right? Some people say, I'm going to go take a discovery deposition. Other people say, I want to take a trial deposition. And I think the way I try to view things is every deposition I take should be a trial deposition. Because the reality is that when you're suing companies, people leave all the time. Somebody who's an employee that one day you're deposing them three years from now when you're in trial may not be. And so all you have left is the video to play. And I think what we do when we go and we try cases, and you have to do, I assume they call it the same thing in Arkansas, but deposition designations, you're designating portions of the deposition.

You're playing video clips. You go and you watch your depositions and you read your transcripts and you're like, man, I probably could have got what I needed in about 30 minutes or 45 minutes and you trim down a six hour deposition and you cut out all the background. I probably am of the mindset that every deposition, like you're saying, should be a trial deposition because you just don't know, right? You don't know which one is going to be played in front of a jury. And if you're going into a deposition saying, I'm just going to ask some questions and learn some things, you're probably doing a disservice to your client 'cause if that's all you get to play. You may not get anything good out of it.

Amen, brother. That's basically our philosophy and methodology in a nutshell. That's it. I realize things have changed. It hasn't always been this way. I totally get it. But today with how much emphasis there is on discovery on how much you're required to exchange the information with the other side on the requirements for mediations now what insurance companies are requiring for evaluations to put a monetary reserve and ultimately make a decision about settlement. And of course the way cases are tried now with witnesses that are over a hundred miles away or outside the state or corporate representatives or defendants, they can be played by video. The Depositions Are Trial methodology you just outlined is so important. And so that may change. I think. I don't know how it would change in the future other than in my lifetime. I've already seen multiple changes occur. So I'm open-minded that things change and that's why I'm always watching and studying and doing focus groups and trying cases and watching people and seeing how the system works. But yes, I think that we as attorneys are better off to prepare as if our next deposition is the trial conduct the deposition. That way the results will be 10 times better and a hundred times more usable.

So I'm going to ask you about how you select the people you want to depose because I think part of, if you're going to play these at trial, you're probably more selective on the people you're deposing in. I think a lot of folks, and I'm sure I've been guilty of this too, go through the process and there's not a lot of strategy to it. Oh, I'm going to go depose everybody who was out there. I'm going to go depose a corporate representative. I'm going to go depose these people. How do y'all at the Oliver firm on a case, sit down and figure out who you need to take a deposition of. And I guess the other part of that too, and we can get there here in a second, is before each deposition, are you sitting down? I assume you are way before in writing down what do I have to get? And they probably go hand in hand. You figure out who you need to depose and then why do I need to depose them? What's the admission? So can you walk us through how that works?

Sure. At the beginning of the case, we're going to have a brainstorm session. I'm going to stick specifically to answering your question where we're going to have a deposition strategy game plan, and we call it the scenes of the play and the characters in the scenes. So we break down the case on different categories. So if in our tractor trailer cases, we primarily do tractor trailer cases, secondarily do construction work site cases, so that's where we specialize all over the country. And so our tractor trailer cases, if we have a maintenance issue, a hiring issue, and a cell phone issue, okay, three issues in the case. Those are different scenes of a play, and this case has got to be a play. At the end of the day, the juries want to watch and then make decisions about. So we're going to break that down and say, who do we need depose regarding the cell phone issue?

Who do we need to depose about the hiring issue? Who needs to be deposed about the maintenance? And of course, you're going to have a corporate rep that covers all three, but you may have a safety director or download cell phone expert or a fatigue expert or a mechanic or a third party. You see the drill. The point is, is we put all those people up on the drawing board, what we call the think tank, which has a bunch of sharpies walls, magnet vault walls, and you start writing this out, all right, we need to depose this person, this person. And we usually have somebody on the team who's been digesting the discovery for what we know at that point, trying to give us specific names if we have it. A lot of times, even if we don't have the discovery, we can get it through Google.

Now point is we're coming up with a plan and then we want to sequence that plan and develop an order. And then we have a different session where we break down by witness what we want to accomplish with that witness. And the way we approach that is what are the 10 worst things this witness can say about their own case? That's how we develop our outline. And the reason you have to do it that way is because it frames you with that person. It frames you with that position or job title. If you say, what are the best things about the plaintiff's case, a lot of times you say, oh, they're just salt of the earth people. Well, that is important. I'm not trying to take away from that. That doesn't do you any good if you're deposing the director of maintenance of a trucking company.

So the factors for why you think you have a great case oftentimes are different than what are the 10 worst things. This director of maintenance or this director of safety or this corporate representative or owner of the company can say about their own case, we were reckless. We did it. We never should have hired that person. It looks like we don't care. We want you to pay policy limits. We want to protect our assets, life matters, those top 10 things we want 'em to say. And then you start drafting that outline in the case. So that answers that question on how we do that. And that happens early on, usually before discovery because we usually don't know the names of the people we want to depose when we've done that. I want to tell you this too. We're going to issue notices for those depositions early.

A lot of times we'll do it with the complaint when we file the complaint. That's how early I prefer to do it, if not right out of the gate after they've answered their complaint, we want to get those notices filed and we'll probably do more notices of depositions and people and positions and corporate reps than we'll actually take. But what I have found is to get ahead of those motion for continuance and scheduling issues. And also the only time I can get ahead of the opposition, the insurance companies and the corporations who have more resources and money than I do is if I start out ahead of them. And so if I issued 10 deposition notices with the complaint with dates specd out there, then I'm working ahead of them to get the scheduling started. They're going to have to now get back with me to reschedule it, which we normally do to work with schedules, mutually agreed dates.

They're going to have to get back with me on scheduling. And then what happens, we start taking depositions and usually after so many depositions, you realize I don't need the back half and you can let 'em go. That's the better way of doing it versus taking a deposition and deciding, oh, I need to go take three more. And I'm not saying that hasn't happened to me, it's happened to me many times. I'm just telling you what's the best way to keep that trial date that you are thankful you got for a year and a half from now. So did I answer your question?

Yeah, I think you answered my question and additional questions I probably had. You see that on defense side, at least we do now they're sending with their answers, they're sending notices of depositions.

Smart.

Yeah, it is smart, and you control the narrative if you do it first. And not just that, what do we have all the time with corporate reps, especially, you don't have anyone responding to you about depo dates. You got to follow up 10 times and then they say, we can give you a corporate rep deposition five months from now, and now you're looking at a continuance. And so I think you're right. Get ahead of it. Keep your trial date. If you can't keep your trial date, your case isn't getting resolved because the best thing for getting a case resolved is putting pressure on the defense and the carriers who are looking at a trial.

We just had a case out in, I think it's in Oregon, where the defense lawyer wrote us and said, can we please move the 30 B six noticed deposition? And we responded, yes, we are glad to work with you on that under one condition in writing, in binding, you agree not to file a motion for continuance in this case. And they responded and said, nevermind. Well, the 30 B six deposition is on, but you see, that's the type of things we're very nice and kind. Hey, yes, we'd be glad to do that if you allow us this request and then we don't care. I would've done either one of those for them. So they're both going to be a win-win. But those are the types of things we're going to do on every single case strategically and systematically.

So then if you are sending notices out with your complaint, how much of a presu investigation are y'all doing? I'm assuming it's pretty robust. You're already going to kind of know what we need to get, who we need to depose. I mean, how many months are y'all taking to do that presu investigation on a normal tractor trailer case?

Yeah, so what I always tell my team is let's get everything we can and once we've tapped out what we can get pre-suit, then at that point it's time to launch. There's a tipping point there, but generally we can do it in three to six months. You do the onsite inspection, you see what they'll give you pre-suit, you get everything you can FOI in public realm. You then of course do the background checks. I mean we will have the dirt on the truck drivers and the trucking company before we file suit all the safer data. And if we have the trucker's name, which we almost always do in the trucking company just from the police report, our background checks can get their driving records and all kinds of stuff for surrounding states. And we always do the event where it happened, we do a deep background check on the state where it happened and each state around it, and then we do a little broader background check on the driver.

We know the safety violations for the trucking company, so we can put all of that in the complaint, much less what you get through your inspections. So we're going to do detailed inspections with our team of experts. This is not groundbreaking. I think you guys do the same thing. My friends, Joe Fried, Dino Colombo, John Romano, they all do the same thing. I mean, I'm not saying something groundbreaking, but if you hadn't heard this before, amen that you're listening because we can do all of that early on and that's why our complaint package are so robust. Something else we do as though we hire forensic accountant ahead of time before we file the suit, it gets everything there is to know from an organizational background on the different entities involved before we file the suit. I learned that the hard way too, if you file the case, then you have to motion to amend or leave for amend, and then you get these continuance and then you find out three months later you need to add another entity and they automatically get a continuance. And so we started doing that on the front end and if there is a possibility and that subsidiary, subsidiary subsidiary game that the corporate defendants play, they have to do that. I'm not upset with 'em about it. We also have to bring them into the case from the very beginning, have to, or we be playing that game like they used to have at the old county fairs where they put the P under the tea cup,

The shell game,

The Shell game. And so we want to try to get ahead of that shell game by just bringing 'em all in. And then a lot of times you can make agreements on letting certain ones out. If you give us your tower of insurance, if you sign an affidavit that this is the entity that's fully responsible, if you sign an affidavit, you're not going to blame these other entities at trial. So you see there's things that we do now systematically that we're doing way in advance to filing that lawsuit.

And that's an interesting point. That is a pain. I've never thought about bringing in a forensic accountant because what we usually do is we have so many of these cases where you sue about 10 entities that all sound exactly the same. You're not sure which one is responsible. A lot of times you know who the defense lawyer's going to be and they're not telling you who you need to sue. And so that's really smart. I hadn't thought about that, but that's something I definitely want to look into. I think I'm of the same opinion or our firm is there's a lot of people that will get a suit or get a case and they'll file it within the first week, and that's kind of their standard practice. But the way we do it around here is we probably do it more like you where I want to do that robust pre-suit investigation because we have so many tools available to us now in our practice that allow you to get information used to only get through discovery.

I was just thinking about the safer searches. I had a trucking case last year that we settled because there was limited insurance, but I never had to file a lawsuit. I was able to get so much dirt on the trucking company through safer and through just open records requests. And then once our expert went out there and did a scene inspection and then download, I mean there really wasn't anything else we needed. And I think that's the benefit you have of maybe being a little patient and not just drafting something generic and filing it. And I also think it's my opinion, and maybe I'm wrong here, but the more robust you make your complaint and the more detailed, and if you're putting screenshots of the safer searches and the foyer requests and the black box download and you're putting all that in your complaint, they know you're serious. They know you've done your research and it's only going to get worse from there. Is that something y'all have experienced?

It is. It is. There's two different philosophies, and this is why I like to say this, and you said it and you mentioned it earlier, if you listen to some successful trial attorneys speak, let's say you listen to six of them and I'm the last speaker, I always say, everybody here is, right. That's what I always say. Everybody's right. What applies to you in your case. And here it's like where we evaluate filing a lawsuit right out of the gate is if there's a PR positive factor involved. So if we get hired really close to the event and there is a PR advantage to the clients and the case to file it immediately, that's when we do. So there are some other scenarios that are one-offs where that's to the advantage, but normally, quite honestly, the event happens. They hire a different attorney in a different state that attorney decides to associate our team and then we're coming in on the case and it's not within that window, and so we're better off to just go ahead and do a full blown investigation and launch a complete and robust complaint package with everything that we can.

That's normally the case.

That's a good point though you bring up because there are the nuances. There are certain cases that I would say when for example, we have sex assault cases a lot, if there's a perpetrator that you believe has done this to multiple people, there is a benefit to you and others out there to quickly file a case so that people know, Hey, this guy's a danger, stay away. And so there are certain cases that we're going to file quicker than others for that reason. Sometimes too, if you know there's multiple parties involved and you don't want someone filing in federal court when you know can be in state court, there's advantages, things that we need to think about where, hey, if we can be in a Texas Dallas County state court and we're afraid somebody's going to file against this out of state corporation and get removed, and that's something you need to do. But the other question I was going to ask you before I want to move on to some of the other cool things y'all are doing at the Oliver firm is are y'all the type of firm that when you have a case before you file, you've already lined up your experts?

Most of the time there are scenarios where that's not true, but most of the time we try to do that. Keep in mind we're so specialized and we handle certain select cases, so we've got a team of experts in different parts of the country that we work with all the time, and so I generally have touched base with them obviously before we ever launched the lawsuit. If there is a unique case like the nuclear case, I'm definitely going to do that. We spent months and months and months interviewing probably six different experts and ended up hiring about three of them for the nuclear case. And so when we have a unique construction site case like that, we got a case right now in Nebraska involving a forklift and a construction site and they knocked off a gentleman roofer and he fell down and unfortunately is paralyzed.

That's a unique setting and a unique jurisdiction with unique rules on forklift safety and roofing safety and OSHA and all that stuff. And so we wanted to get some experts involved early on in that case. And so we did. We hired some experts early on and then we added more experts throughout the case as we saw fit in a need. That's basically my thoughts on that is you got to do your due diligence. If you need experts to do that due diligence or it's required by statute in the state you're in, do it. If you don't, then it's okay not to, but just don't wait too late. That's the same thing I'm saying there is our experts love working with us because we give them six to nine months notice before their report is due and depositions are due.

Some of these experts need four months because their calendars are so backed up. I mean, yeah, I've seen that where especially on the other side, we send our expert disclosures and you can tell when you get the responses from the defense back, the dates that are included, it's like the day before the expert disclosures are due and then you don't have as many options. I tend to prefer, especially if it's a case we haven't had a lot of experience before on, I like to do those curbside consults with experts and make sure that, Hey, am I going in the right direction here? Is this something, are you telling me if we find X, Y, and Z through discovery and through depositions, you're going to support us. I'd much rather know that early on before you start heading off into litigation and incurring a bunch of costs that you're going to have expert support and that you have the right kind of expert.

And sometimes, like you said, it can take a while to find the right people and get the reports. I do want to move on a little bit. So we talked a little bit about your depositions or trial technique, and I know you've done a lot of podcasts on the deposition methodology that's in your book, but what I would say to our listeners is the best way to learn about that is simply to get Saatchi's book. He puts QR codes in with real life examples of the visuals he's used in depositions in cases. I think there's video clips in there as well of you doing it live, and so I think the best way to learn about that is to actually buy his book. And so I want to move into a little bit different direction of things you and I talked about when you were out here in April with us that I thought were fascinating. So I want you to tell our listeners how you're using focus groups in your practice. People know by now if they've listened to our podcast. We're all about focus groups, big data focus groups, in-person, focus groups, all of it. And so can you tell us what y'all do with your cases on focus groups?

Sure. Well, first of all, we do all of it, Caleb. That's what I want to say. And also I'd like to mix it up. Our normal methodology is a very, very informal focus group. Early on in the case before you filed the lawsuit with six to 10 people, generally in person, I call it having a conversation with people just talking about this case. Tell 'em what you know about the case and then listen and let them ask questions and you're having a conversation. You're not asking people for a judgment, you're not asking people for the verdict. You're just conversating like you would at church. That's what I always like you would at the grocery store and the language that you pick up there is so helpful in the complaint. What they want to know is helpful in drafting written discovery. It just frames your case the right way because the day we lose focus that everything we do is about a jury is the day we start getting bad results.

And so that's how it starts the case out. Then we're going to move into generally that pre-suit investigation and we're going to get crazy amount of data and information gathered and we're then going to do a virtual jury simulation and it could be with a hundred jurors, but it's all online. It's virtual, it's very affordable. We're going to test certain things and so now we now know that there were no brakes on the rear axle of the tractor. We now know that the truck driver tested positive for methamphetamines. We now know that our client ultimately, while they were in the hospital for three months, sadly passed away. Okay, so now we're testing the story on a hundred different jurors on how they feel about issues and so then we move into the file, the lawsuit, and we move into the discovery phase and I like to take some depositions to really get a feel for things, get some video clips, and then do a mock trial where we're going to actually bring in an adversarial process and you can do that in many ways.

We're now hiring defense counsel to help us with that. They love doing it. It's so much fun and I learned so much from those defense counsel who are doing that, truly defending the case. We're going to do that several times because I like to do it at least once while we're taking depositions and then at the very end, that's why we call it a mock trial. At the very end, after we've taken all the depositions, we're going to do a full blown jury simulation where we bring in a ton of jurors and we do a full blown plaintiff's presentation with video clips, all the exhibits, your order of proof. We're going to defend the case in a similar way where we hire defense lawyer, get defense consultants, do all that stuff and defend the case systematically, have a rebuttal phase and then divide it the jury into, if we have a hundred jurors, we divide 'em into 10 or 12 different groups and video cameras in every one of them and give 'em the jury instruction verdict forms and have 'em deliberate.

And then we do post verdict interviews. Jury consultants do all that. I don't do that myself. The jury consultants do all that and really break down what's happening and how it happened and why it happened. And then we generate reports that are digestible information. So one of the things I always want to test is what makes the jurors the most upset? What's the most upset piece of evidence? People call that mad factors, right? Well, if we have four potential mad factors in the case and we have a hundred jurors and the number one piece of evidence that makes people the most upset is unanimous out of a hundred people, well, how are we going to start our order of proof? The number one mad factor? What's our first thing we talk about when we do our theme and sequencing and our opening statement? You see what I'm getting at?

So we then can digest this information in very measurable methods. I have my team put it into a bar chart so I can see out of a hundred people, 90 of them at the exact same mad factor and it is speeding through a construction zone. 30 of them have fatigue sleepiness as the second mad factor. 22 people, you see how it stair steps, it's just like screams at you, your sequence of the case. So those are some things that we're testing and then we're doing dress rehearsals. It depends where the trial is. Quite honestly, if our trial is in, we just had one in New Mexico in Albuquerque, and so we did the dress rehearsals on Wednesday, Thursday before the Monday trial started so that we move the whole team out there and we're not going back and forth. It depends where the trial is and we pick it, but it's generally I try to do it in that time period where you can just move in and take your printers and all your boards with you and just move in, get set up, take your coffee maker, take your blankie, whatever you need and get ready for trial.

So for some of the focus groups, are you doing some of the in-person ones in-house at Oliver Law? Don't you guys have a courtroom at the office?

Yes, we do and it's cool and we love it and we use it quite a bit. That first focus group, a lot of times, no matter where the case is in the country when we're just having a conversation, a lot of times we'll just do it here in the house. Before I got on this call with you, I was talking with our co-counsel on an 18 wheeler case in Portland, Oregon. It's not going to do us a lot of good to our focus group research here in Arkansas for that Portland, Oregon case. So we're going to do all of our focus group research in that Portland case, in that region in jurisdiction. So that's why the way our practice has grown and now it's nationwide and so we're using our courtroom here at the house less and less and less, to be quite honest with you, Caleb, but we have two Arkansas cases right now. We're thankful for those and excited about those cases. They're great cases and we'll use our courtroom in those as well. However, as you know too, there's no way, that's why I can only do it at the beginning. If you're in a true jury simulation, that means they don't know who's who. They don't know everything. They don't know who they're working for. It's a truly unbiased test. I can't

Do it here. Everyone's going to know you,

Everybody's going to know me, everybody's going to know it's my house and everybody's going to know I'm paying you. And so you get skewed results. Even in our Arkansas cases when it gets down to the mock trial and jury simulation phase, we're going out and getting a hotel or something, a gymnasium at a local school and doing the focus group testing in a neutral area where nobody knows anything.

So do you have somebody you work with that's setting these things up for you nationally?

Yes. Well, a HA does that service and they do it phenomenally. A J has a service where they will set up, they have a headhunter service. You can tell them the demographics you want ages so many males, so many females. If you're in a community that is primarily Hispanic, like we got an 18 wheeler case in south Texas, as you know that's primarily Hispanic, and so we said we wanted 85% Hispanics and they will put it together and do a great job. Philip Miller, as you know I've shared this with you, is the jury consultant that we primarily work with on our cases. We've worked with many others, Harvey Moore, Betty Duncan, several others that are superstars, but I've worked with Philip the most and Philip is who got us started using a J and I always tell you, they have become our go-to and do a great job.

That's really interesting you brought that up. Our office has been trying to figure out this idea of how we're going to do some in-person focus groups and actually our practice is still primarily in Texas, although we do have some national cases now, not as much as you do, but when Sean k Claggett was out here in September with us, he was the one who was telling us all about how their office does it and how they do it every Friday, and then you were telling me last year in April that y'all are doing it on every case and I felt like we're missing out on some additional opportunities to not just focus group our cases, but I think get reps in practice, avoid dire, do a jury selection. You know what happens is you go to trial, your trial's on a Monday and Friday now all of a sudden want to pay your number and so you get ready and you never get to actually practice. And so yeah, we've been toying with the idea of doing something more regularly and so I'm definitely going to check out that a J service. That sounds really cool.

That's how I felt when Sean was out here similar to when you were out here in April when you came out with us and we had a nice steak, I guess early dinner, late lunch, whatever you want to say, and you kind of talked to us about your methodology. Sean did the same thing with us and I learned how they're doing things in his consultant work with John and Alicia Campbell and actually they were just on our podcast last week and we just dropped that episode today, so I appreciate the plug from you and we found out we were the fourth ever big data study that they did. It was on one of our cases and so we've been using them for a long time and you can't have a big case around our office without using one of their big data studies, but just kind of exploring what other people are doing and the work that we can learn from.

I think we've been doing big data a long time, but I'm learning that Sean and Alicia are helping other lawyers run 5, 6, 7 studies on their cases mid trial even and it's pretty incredible. But I think everybody out there is going to be wondering how you're able to do this on all your cases and it's probably important you tell them how many cases you have because it will make more sense. Obviously if you have a hundred, 200 cases, you're unable to do five or six different jury simulations or focus groups, so how many cases you normally have?

Our max capacity is what I tell my team is 24 cases. I dunno if that changes someday. We have 18 or 19 cases right now, so we keep that caseload right there where we're at. We're in a sweet spot right now where we can grow some big cases, we can accept some more. We had historical years and we're thankful for it and 24 and 25 and we're blessed. But what happened there is it's great. As you know, our cases turnover is a minimum of one year and it's more like two to three years on these cases that we were, and so we were blessed to close out a significant number of cases by verdict, two verdicts and by settlements in 24 and 25. And so our case number a little low right now at 18, however, if you ask my team, they're celebrating because 18 mega cases versus 24 and we're really, I'm telling the team right now, Hey, let's do it all on every case.

And so we put significant litigation expenses into each one of our cases and it's an interesting mindset because I'm extremely conservative, individual conservative with money, conservative on the budget, but I'm telling my team is I want to push those litigation expenses on these cases. That means we're doing the work. And so if I look up and we haven't spent any money on a case in a month, that means we didn't work on it in my opinion. Generally whenever I see and I get a report from my CFO once a week and I see this expense on this case and this expense on this case and this expense on this case and right now with all 18 cases have expenses this week, and I see the same thing next week that tells me that me and my team are pushing all 18 cases like let's go. And so that's how we see it and that's how we can really maximize all of these techniques that we've learned from all these great trial lawyers all over the country all these years and what we've developed ourselves and just maximize the value to the best of our ability on these cases.

I think it's funny you say that there's that sweet spot because we're probably 20 to 25 cases any given time, but if you increase that three or four cases in a year, it seems like it's insurmountable. Oh, we maybe need to get another lawyer or paralegal in here and then if you decrease it another three or four, you're like, we need more work. We need the phone to ring. And so I think having that, whatever it is out there, if you have more cases or less cases, I think the important thing is having the time on each case to maximize the value and to be able to do the things you want to do and to do the things that y'all's office does. I think you need the time and you need the team because you're doing probably more than I've ever seen somebody do on a case before as far as your focus grouping, your trial preparation, your deposition preparation, your investigation, and for the big cases, that's probably the way you need to do it, but you can't do it with 50 unless you start growing.

And I know not everyone wants to grow. We certainly don't want to get too big out here either, but I just have a few follow-up questions I want to ask you. Something we like to do on our podcast is we like to ask some deeper questions at the end to really get to know our guests and for our listeners to get to know them on a personal level. And we talked about advice you'd give to younger lawyers earlier and you were pretty clear about that. I know though from our conversations that we've had, you are a big family man, you're married, you have two girls I believe, and y'all do a lot of things together and I know there's a lot of parents out there listening to this who have kids and who feel overwhelmed sometimes with the amount of time and energy it takes to be a successful trial lawyer. So what would be the advice that you would give them on how to properly balance the work life?

Well, an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ is what brought me into balance. I was way out of balance before an abiding relationship and once I realized what should be number one in my life and that relationship with Christ, it then put Cody and the girls in the right relationship and time and it balanced me. Whenever you determine what's the number one, what's the number two and you're real about it, then what you realize is that there's so many things that don't matter or you also realize things that are consuming your time that ought not be. So for me, that's where it is. It's just a choice. It's what it is. It's a choice that we're going to prioritize. God girls and I say Cody, RESA Reagan, the firm, the farm, and so we're faith, family firm farm. That's what I say right there, and it's in that order and that's just the way it is.

That's our culture. Now I want to be humble and honest with you. Six times a year my wife sits me down and says, you're out of whack. I mean, so having a spouse who's strong and you have a great relationship with and you can talk things through and you listen to her or him. Whenever we listen to our spouses who have that relationship with us, when Cody says to me, you're out of whack. I haven't seen you in three weeks. You've traveled too far and too long. I've got a little wake up call because I'm addicted to what I do. Let's just be real about it. I love it. I eat it up. I'm addicted to it, and so if I don't have it under control, it consumes me and I just take off. And so I have to be conscious about it. Caleb, that's just the realities of it, and I think it's what step one's admitting you have a problem, I've got a problem.

Am I tithing? That's significance. It changed the way I saw things. And I'll tell you something else that we started doing that I had to take a leap of faith because at first I thought, this is crazy, but we started taking off on Fridays and one o'clock and I was like, oh my gosh, we're going to plummet. We started doing that. It was just the opposite. Our productivity skyrocketed. Skyrocketed to the point that I started taking off every Friday totally the day the team still takes off, I think at noon or one o'clock on Fridays. And so there are things like that that it also let the team know what is perspective, quite honestly, people seem to work harder Monday through Thursday knowing they're going to get off on Friday and it works really well. That took a leap of faith for us, but it worked out so well. My team always hear me say that and they say, well, hey, if it worked that good, why don't we just go and start taking off on Thursdays? I'm like, hold on.

Yeah, hold on that let's not push it too far. The other thing I'll say I noticed when we were hanging out last year was you have this great ability to put your phone down when you're presenting and when you're talking to people and not be distracted. And that was something I picked up on right away that I think the entire time you're with us, you didn't look at your phone one time. Is that something conscious you're doing when you're with people to be present or when did that start?

Yeah, I try to do that. Caleb, first of all, I am 45 years old, which is in that generation where while a cell phone is something I use all the time, it's sitting here on my desk now, but it's not my number one priority. I wasn't raised on a cell phone. I mean, I think I was 19 years old before I got my first cell phone. Do you see what I mean? I want to be sympathetic to a different generation that's never known life without a cell phone. So that's one thing that I would say about that. When I got my first iPhone was actually on my wife and i's first anniversary, and she was kind of like, put the thing down. I'm like, this is fascinating. This is crazy. This new iPhone, it's a new toy. And after that, I read a book by Arianna Huffington called Thrive, and she actually has a series of chapters in there on how to properly use a cell phone.

And I'll just tell you, I've been implementing it ever since, and that's why you see me. I'm just not on the cell phone. I do it strategically and at certain times, but not when you and I are engaging or what I call, when I'm actively fostering a relationship. There's no way I can actively foster a relationship with my cell phone as a distraction. Also, we talk about active listening. There's no way I can actively listen to you if I'm on my cell phone. I can passively listen but not actively listen. And so I see this as a choice. Do you want to actively listen to this individual? If so, you just put the cell phone away if you're okay in a passive situation, and I might pick it up a little bit at a time or insulting the individual. We'll keep texting.

Yeah, I really, it's funny in this day and age, you just don't notice that very often, and I was probably, I'm not too far off from age from you, and I remember it getting one for the first time in high school, but I think even in our profession, the tendency and the habit to want to check your emails all the time is something I struggle with where you feel like if you're not checking it for an hour, you're going to miss MSJ that is just filed or some offer that came in. And so yeah, I thought that was one of the coolest things I'd seen. So good on you for doing that. Now I just have one more question before we end here and then I'm going to talk about some of the stuff you have upcoming. But one thing we like to ask our guests is what do you want your legal legacy to be? I know you're huge on education and you're doing all this stuff, so if you could tell anyone at the end of your career what you want to be remembered by, what would it be?

Humility and giving. That's what I want it to be, is that I was humble and I gave freely what it's been given to me. And I think that most of that is going to be education and sharing. Really thankful that I'm able to do what I do, have been able to do it for 20 years now, thankful that it has been able to help so many people make generational change and that we're able to continue to do that. So when I get done with this, whenever that is, I don't know when that is. God will decide that timing. I hope that it finishes with he was a humble trial lawyer and he gave back.

Well, I can definitely attest personally that you've done that with us. You've been nothing but giving of your time and your ability to educate other people, and I want to talk a little bit about that right now before we get off. So can you tell our listeners where they can go and find your book if they want to purchase it?

Sure. The title of the book is Depositions R trial, and our website is ww dot depositions r trial.com, and you can buy that book. There's a QR code on there, and so feel free to follow through on that QR code to get more content. I'll tell you that this year are going to be doing even an update on the content for the QR code, so going to be refreshed with new material and new content to go with it. And so check it out. And I'll tell you that I've already been asked by our publisher and several others to write another book, so I haven't made a hundred percent certain decision on that. However, I'll tell you, I have started an out

Well, great. I can't wait to read it, and I'll just tell everybody out there too. I know that you're going to be teaching again at Trial Lawyers University at Huntington Beach in June, so if they want to go out and see you there, you're going to be there for our Texas listeners. I know I just confirmed that you and Joe Free will be doing something together at our annual that's held in Dallas in November, so we're very excited for that. And then one other thing we were talking about at the beginning of the show, which I just heard this last week, is that you are in the process of building a new ranch that's going to be a potential place for your depositions or trial seminar as well as some other workshops for trial lawyers. So can you tell us briefly about that and then we'll go ahead and close out today?

There's all kinds of things that can happen right there on the ranch, a TV riding. We have three caves on the ranch if you're a spelunker. So there's just all kinds of neat experiences. Also, in May and November, we also do cattle branding. So if you've ever wanted to be a part of a more literal ranch experience and brand some cattle, you could go down to the cattle headquarters of the ranch and brand cattle that afternoon. And so it'll be a neat experience. So I've never heard of anything quite like this, but I hope people are able to come to that, learn about depositions, our trial, become better trial lawyers, but find also some wonderful peace and serenity and say, wow, it's just good to sit by a campfire and eat a good old fashioned hot dog, followed by more.

And that's going to be an ability to also have, what is it, the Oliver Angus Beef.

That's right. So yeah, we have our own beef line, Oliver Angus Ranch Beef. We have prime beef. It is phenomenal. I hope you get a chance to try it someday, but Sure, yeah, we'll be serving all of our Angu Ranch beef at this event too. It'll be neat.

I think you can tell, and we at all this law here, we actually kind of like each other and we absolutely love what we do, and we work a lot of our cases up from the get go, but we're brought in on cases a lot. We try cases all across the nation. If you have a case that you're interested in talking to us about, we'd love to hear from you. We've tried everything from trucking, workplace injuries, explosions and burn cases, DR. Shops rideshare, sexual assault, birth injury, your personal injury cases. If you need a partner to help you with your case, please call us. We can be contacted at aldouslaw.com. We'd love to hear from you.

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