Alex Spiro

25:43It seems like a high stress situation. And if you thrive going into that high stress situation, that seems like a positive. It is. They're having too many problems on one shoulders at all times for too many decades. I don't know is a good thing. But the actual moment as I'm walking into courtroom is one of relaxation, joy, intensity, all wrapped up together. The relaxation is in there isn't it for sure. I love that. I wouldn't guess that. Yeah, it's just like go because you're finally there. There's nothing left to do. I see it. I see. I see. Right. And so it's like taking a test where you know that you've studied.

26:24You know all the answers. I know it's well enough thought through in my head that I think I'm coming out ahead. Yeah. And in some ways, you get to get it over with. You don't have to keep thinking about it. Yeah, I think that's part of it too. And just a lot of it's just adrenaline, honestly. I am just as hopped up as I would be for like a sporting event. Yeah. Right. It's just it's very adrenaline based. Can you let go of all the information after the case? Yes. In fact, I don't let go of adrenaline, but I that takes a few weeks. But the facts. Yes. I mean, I always remember some stuff about each case.

26:58But I think I'm intentionally, frankly, washing my brain of it. It seems like that would make sense. There's so much volume of information that you're taking in all the time that if you don't get rid of some, I don't know how they'd be room for you start to come in. No, right. I'm not doing it brick by brick thinking it through, but I do let it wash wash away. How different are judges from case to case? They're pretty different. Like I mentioned earlier, we I have or people around me, and we'll just put it on me. Have noticed the pattern of some of the dichotomy I described. So I see some similar things where even other judges will say to me, oh, you know, so and so never gets like that.

27:36But, you know, I think you're making them a little a little nervous or they don't know which way you're going ever. And, you know, some judges, but until the third witness comes, they don't get into their own. I mean, I've had trials that started with with a judge interrupting almost every question I asked. Because they basically they wanted to know where I was going before I got there. How did that face anxiousness? And how do they know if I'm doing it in a different way and I'm doing it in a way where I'm not revealing my hand, how do they they would say how do they know I was going to get to something relevant.

28:06If I'm asking questions about 905 and the and the mama book, why is that relevant? So if they're very tight and anxious and they haven't seen my pitch before, they start interrupting interrupting interrupting by the third witness when they go, whoa, I get it. Something is about to happen here. They will then go back to, you know, normal judge school and be closer to each other than they are different. Are there any judges who are just like adversarial towards you? You have to ask them that you believe there are any. No. And I don't harbor such great. I hope that if any of them were ever asked about, you know, when I'm done doing this, they would all say, you know, more positive things than they.

28:48How often is the trial about the actual case versus an excuse to target someone? I mean, again, just in in my view that everything is pretty gray out there. They're not picking people off the street like a rendition and then coming up with a crime, but some combination of forces allows on the outskirts of criminal law. You know, a lot of people would come into the vacuum of it in certain circumstances and situations make somebody a shinier target. Then if they're a little shinier, then the crime can be a little less bad and still cause them to get caught up in the vacuum. And so I think some of these things are combinations where it takes a bit of a perfect storm to cause it to happen and a perfect, a perfect unraveling for a tone of gravel.

29:37To business competitors ever go after their competitors who were extremely successful just to try to take out the competition. Every hour of every day, every minute of every day. Yeah. So that's not about the law. That's about trying to get this guy, finding a way to get this guy. Listen, jealousy is one of these driving psychological motivations that we probably don't talk about enough. And just greed or whatever that is to take out the competitor, of course, that is now now the competitor who is doing the action would say what, but he's a bad actor. Yeah. And the answer then could be well, maybe from your lens, he's a bad actor, but you want him to be a bad actor.

30:22Tell me about the positions. I don't like them as much because I don't want to show my hand, but obviously as I'm pouring through the history of the case and the history of the people, I read every word. But I almost wish that the deposition is not a good deposition because then they won't know what's coming. Yeah. They knew perfectly what was coming and you can sit in a room with a bunch of lawyers and suits on and try to pivot around it. Right. But that can work out too because then they pivot themselves right back into the wall. Tell me about law school. Feels like a very long time ago. Good experience.

30:56You loved it. Yeah, I did love it. But you know, I was always curious and I sort of showed up there a little out of the blue in my own mind. I didn't intend to go to law school and it kind of happened quick. You just go take a test and you're there and you're thinking, wow, I'm here. You know, but it wasn't natural for me to go be a entry level person on Wall Street or whatever I could have done in an alternative world. How did you pick law school if that was not the track you were on? People suggested it. People suggested it. I loved a few good men in my cousin, Vinnie. Right. So I was going to ask you about your favorite court remove.

31:36Well, there has been very, I mean, no offense to those who have made them or been in them in the last 20 years. But I actually think that they very much trailed off where I understood how it all worked. Yeah. But a few good men in my cousin, Vinnie, I think. And so I think that they predisposed me and I was always a little bit of a justice seeker underdog router or, you know, in just a few years. Justice perceiver. And so the combination of those tendencies, you know, I was working in a hospital at the time and they were like, I mean, you're no scientist and you're in a very impatient. You were really going to go seven years ago to medical school.

32:09Right. And again, the entry level job isn't because, you know, too proud to do an entry level job. Those are some of the most important jobs at the hospital for sure. And in many fields, it's just impatience probably. I don't know that that would have been the perfect role for me. So, I mean, it's easy to say now, but if you go from law school to 24, 25 and you're a prosecutor, when you're a prosecutor, sure you've bosses, but you're very much in charge of your own cases. It is extreme autonomy, extreme. You're always then pushing the curve of what you're doing from the beginning. And if that excites you, and the more important, but some could say mundane roles of an entry level person in any profession would not have excited you.

32:49It allows you to push the gas further. Do you think law school now is the same as it was when you went? I really have no idea. At the time, you know, it was very secratic, at least Harvard was. And so, I liked that. I liked the debating. I enjoyed class. I enjoyed, you know, super smart fellow students and professors, you know, batting around and thinking through ideas. And, you know, I liked it. And it was fun. I mean, we were all together living in the dorm room and life was great.

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34:08Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform it your very best. Element electrolytes for sugar -free, keto -friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmant .com slash tetra and stay salty with Element electrolytes. L -M -N -T How do you think doing this job has changed you as a person? That's a complicated question.

35:05The parts of the sort of justice seeking the time in the courtroom have made me evolve and deeper and given me something important to do and principled to do that I'm happy that I am doing. I think is important. I think is somewhat unique, maybe fully unique. And that's given me purpose and purpose is one of the most important things. And I've been thinking about this a lot because you get older and so it causes you to reflect a little bit. And I just think there's a cost to everything. It's just a cost time. It's time. It's stress. It's battle scars. If you want to fly high, your wings will constantly be shot at or singed or whatever.

35:51And you're less on the ground smelling the roses if you're always up there in the mountains. And I think there's been a cost to that with me and for me. How would you say the stress affects you? You know, it doesn't, as I described walking to a courtroom, it doesn't affect me in sort of the moment. I just think that it is, it just can wear you down over time. And it sounds corny, but I don't know, it's corny. It's just, I don't like separate my problems from their problems. I'm not going to say that I am quite at the level of trying to find a way to solve something as the person whose life or business is on the line.

36:29But it is too close for comfort. Yeah. And so I have basically been through, right? If you watch somebody on trial, I actually try to case of a very close friend. And I got to watch him and his extended family, his grandmother, and everybody come to court every single day. And I watched for six weeks as they got older the way a president would. And if I am that tied to their fate, physically, psychologically, I mean, even just, I am waiting in the waiting room as if it was my family member. I understand. And I would say one trial changes somebody's DNA and complexion forever. And I've had 100.

37:10And so, yeah, I just think it's, it's scar tissue. Does the story change in the courtroom? You mean from what I expected to be going in? Yeah, you go in with a lot. A lot. I mean, you know, we don't go from the, the halls of the hospital to outer space. But when something turns differently or witness appears differently, I mean, I will have a plan to go after witness and watch them appear and appear differently. Or watch the other side, and I don't know what they're planning. Watch the other side pull or change a door or whatever. And being able to adjust on the fly is one of the most important.

37:48Can you give me an example of an extreme unexpected something that happened on the stand that led you to change direction? Well, I mean, I remember one trial was a corporate dispute where they intentionally called the first witness who was a seven year old female, small and personality, small and frame, you know, who was just there. Who was the, they called first intentionally so that I would skip over them. So they would get their story out without having to deal with me for the first day. Okay, very interesting. But they coached the witness too much and I picked up on patterns and hour in. So what would have been in this particular case, what they expected to be a 30 minute cross examination, which I would have frankly expected to get through music, went on for three days to the point that by the end of the second day, a trial that we should have never been able to even have a chance of winning was already one.

38:46Because the amount of coaching and it just unraveled, they were vulnerable to that very cross because they were never prepared for that cross and because they were such a nice person, they were able to feed information through them. And so it just kind of exploded on them because the person was overly scripted when you went off script, they didn't know what to do. Not only did they not know what to do, they were readily available to me to tell the jury that they had been told exactly what does that. Yeah, that not none of it was true, but that they were putting their finger on the scale that basically and that then by the time that was done, you start looking over at the table of lawyers that put this witness up to this case was over.

39:29You start with an opening statement. How scripted is it? Is it an outline or a script? It's closer to script than an outline because an outline suggests like I'm trying to hit these eight points and be done. And it's a very short script because the jury can't follow too much. Okay, and I don't want to show too much. Is the shorter the better? What do you say? All things equal. Yeah. Do you memorize it? If I didn't have my notebook, it's memorized, but I'm glancing down. Okay. It's not full memorized. It's memorized to the extent that I could do it without notes, but it wouldn't come out the same way.

40:13Is there ever improvisation added? Definitely. In the opening, this hasn't been that much action. Splashes here and there. Right. And I'm also, if I'm playing defense and this, I'm hearing a few new things as they give their opening. So they'll be splashes, tweaks, read the room kind of stuff. It's not a wholesale kind of change. Unlikely the wholesale change at that time. And closing statements. I think about that as soon as I figure out what happened. Really? From the beginning backwards. And what effect was that? Before the trial. Way before the trial and way before the opening. Wow. Everything else is upon leading towards the submission.

40:45That's really interesting. Yeah, so I'm thinking this is how it's going to end because this is what really happened. Yes. How do I get myself there? Yeah, yeah. That's the first thing I'm thinking about once I figure out what happened. Did they teach that in law school? No. Tell me about the element of surprise. The greatest gift against a competitor. What are your thoughts on free speech? I'm a proponent of it. It means different things to different people. But, you know, the founders of the United States made it the very first part of the Constitution because it was so important to them. And as you watch society evolve and even, you know, think about all the things that we once thought were true, that then debate taught us what we're not true.

41:32I think it's very dangerous for governments to begin to police it. Because where does that end and how does that work? And it becomes untenable. And so, you know, I, it's a bit cliché to say I'm a believer in free speech. But I think this is a topic on to itself, something I'm going to write about at some point. Because, you know, misinformation, my views on what happened on college campuses. I have a lot of views on a lot of these topics that I would like to, like a trial lawyer, lay out. And people can hopefully think about them differently and maybe think about them in a better way. I would love to read that book.

42:09How's that going to do? Great, please. Tell me about criminal justice reform.

42:16It's never been successful anywhere, you know, since the dawn of time, and you can go back, you know, forget hundreds of years, thousands of years, every society pretty much has a minority population that has been incarcerated at a larger extent. And if that's the case, you got to ask yourself, isn't the society using the weapon of the justice system in a negative way? The next thing you have to realize is that the law works backwards. So, you don't get to go, okay, what do we want the law to be? The law is an imprint, like a geological imprint of what happened before. So, a case comes down and says XYZ.

42:57The next case can't say something too different. It has to say, well, we're interpreting XYZ to be XYZQ. And so, it can't evolve that quickly. And because so much of the population has been incarcerated or disenfranchised, the people that are in charge of the legislature, the judiciary, the people on the mountaintop, are not from the population being as most harmed. So, they are not as likely to be speaking to that constituency. They may want to, emotively, they may see what I'm describing. But it can't possibly, I say, I can get almost so close to the person who's going to be incarcerated as their own mother.

43:38But I can't get as close. Yeah, I'm not their mother. And so, unless the legislature and the judiciary all had someone who had gone through the system falsely accused, how can they ever get to that same point of reflection? And so, you know, there have been things done around the edges, but it's still historically based. And so, if you want to use America as an example, and the original sin of the Constitution and the incarceration of black and brown people in the country, even if we change the laws, a lot of these folks, they're great, great, great grandparents were slaves. And they're great, great grandparents finally got the chance to even go to a school.

44:15And they're great grandparents got to go to a school that looked at least a little bit like the schools I got to go to. And so, that obviously ebbs through the entire lineage and affects everything. Their dads may not have been around. Their moms may have had to work two jobs. They weren't buying extra flashcards. And so, the kid is a harder time getting a job. He's going to be more likely to steal a loaf of bread. And so, what to say other than it's a messed up world and until, unless you gave somebody the same opportunity at the start, you could never even it out. You know, and I'm not a socialist, I just, that is the truth.

44:58So then what do you do about that? I mean, we have made some reforms. You know, bail reform was something that I fought for very, very large prison sentences other than in the worst crimes. Don't make a lot of sense. People are different at 30 than they are at 13. And in most societies, you don't have 40, 50, 60 year sentences for drugs or childhood burglaries and things like this. If a kid is picked up in the suburbs in some state in the United States, they get a ticket and they go home. They call that a burglarie in other parts of the country. And depending on the color of your skin, you go away for 10 years.

45:36So, another long and complicated topic that has gone on for hundreds and thousands of years. How is a system different in different parts of the world, do you know? I mean, I know I'm not an expert per se in some ways. There's similar in some ways, not every country has jury trials. Right? Most westernized or civilized societies have shorter jail sentences. The United States incarcerates a higher proportion of people basically by any metric than any country in the history of the universe. And then there are parts that are the same, the facts of the facts. The laws, frankly, tend to be somewhat uniform.

46:12Right? You're not allowed to do things to other people you wouldn't want them to do to you. And again, they're similar from the way I started, which is that we often pick on the minority. Right? And we pick on the person that can't defend themselves. So, when you say that even watching at some level, the cases I've handled or whatnot, the system doesn't seem fair. Imagine the person that doesn't even have a legal team effectively. So, it's a complicated messed up part of our world and a sad part of our world. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise.

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48:18Tell me about the first time you met Elon. First meeting. I was told he had considered calling me into a meeting on a couple of cases that they had that he had been told that there was a kid in New York that you know, like to try cases and was was okay at it. And I would hear, oh, he was going to call me in and then he didn't. Who the hell knows what happens. And eventually he called me to San Francisco. I went, checked into my hotel, went to Tesla Factory, kept me waiting for nine hours or some ridiculous amount of time. And he came out and he sort of said, I have got to go to LA, just get in the car basically.

48:56And we flew from San Francisco to LA. And the punchline of the story I guess is not that he kept me waiting for so long or that I was such a kid, but that my stuff was in the San Francisco hotel run. So that's that happened. And what did you make of the meeting? Was it interesting? It was very interesting. Meeting pretty much all people that are very unique, interesting. You know, and there are only so many people that are effectively one of one. Yeah. And if you have a chance to meet those people, like them, love them. I know people are polarizing, especially when they're one of one. But you know, whether it's listening to Paul Simon in a concert or it's watching somebody that you know, you say yourself is there ever going to be another.

49:43And that makes it interesting in its own right. Does every case come down to a simple principle everyone can understand? I think so. But in order to pull off the ultimate ability to see that, you have to get a lot of other things done along the way. To get to that point of clarity is a lot of work. Yeah, and it could be two or three points of clarity that you need to layer upon oneself to reach the ultimate conclusions. Not every accident is a horrific criminal accident. Not every bad person did something bad in that moment. And the truth ultimately is X. But if you don't get past one and two, the blinders and the fog is so great.

50:33No one can ever see the third point. That's interesting, the idea that this guy's maybe done bad things in their lives, but he didn't do this. That's a lot of the people I've represented go into a trial very unpopular. Wild. Is the law static or does it change? It changes, but it moves slow. It's glacial. It relies upon what happened yesterday and very rarely are there pronouncements that change it in wholesale ways. If a case is controversial, is it negative to you or it doesn't matter? That is a question that people would have differing views on. For you know, well, it doesn't become negative for me, meaning if I didn't feel principled and comfortable doing what I was doing, I would do it.

51:20But boy is a complicated because if everybody goes in thinking, wow, what a horrible thing. If the person is even accused of that, they're a horrible person and what kind of monster would be their lawyer. You know, you're talking in terms of a complicated deck to start things with. But I like to think that because I believe that I've had a principled career, if I do take on a case that is extra controversial, I'm hoping that the reasonable person at least, the sophisticated reasonable person sees it and says, there's a reason he's taking this on. He sees something in this case that makes him think that he has to get this truth out or he has to fight against whatever's wrong with the system.

51:59And if as long as I have a breath, you know, I just need a little bit of space to operate. But listen, a lot of these cases can start between the anxious judiciary, the opponent who has unlimited resources and it has spent six months working up to the moment of trying to kill you and the client, complicated clients, complicated subject matter. You can start six touchdowns behind and the first two quarters of the game, where your pads and you wouldn't want to watch it live. Wow. Has a client ever let you down? Not unforgivably. I try to get them to listen. You try to get them to not repeat mistakes.

52:41Try to get them to do the right thing. But you know, some have tried to put me in positions I wasn't comfortable in. And I'm not let down because I didn't do it. And I don't sit in judgment of people like that. Meaning I see them for what they are, which is complicated and flawed and they made mistake in that moment. And they should have done that. But I'm not stewing or unforgiving of any of them. Have you ever let a client down? You'd have to ask that. I mean, I'm taking very few cases. I have been for quite some time taking a very small percentage of cases that one could take if you had on the minute time.

53:21So 25 people call in the three day period, which is not an unusual situation. You know, and I'm talking real substantive person knows one person in common with me. I take one out of 25, 24. And then there's other people who they may not see it the way I see it, but wanted to push an envelope in a way or present in a way that I just don't have enough time. I don't have enough will. I don't have enough fight in me to take on every fight on the earth. Would you ever recommend something specific based on something you see that you don't want to do, but you feel like this other guy would be the right person to do this?

53:54Yeah, I refer. Yeah, I send cases all the time to people. Right. The way I go at these situations is so intense that you can't do it. It's like some glow that every time I use it, it burns off. Yeah, it's limited resources. There's only so much time. It's only so much time, but it's also like I don't know how that zone that I'm talking about. I don't know how many times I can get there. Yeah, it's not unlimited. I understand what is a plea deal. It's a negotiated less than what they were going to get if they lost a trial. And worse than they would get if they never, if this situation ever came about.

54:31So, you know, you were going to get five months after trial, you can have one month. It's a risk -adjusted bargain. How did it come about? I mean, in some level, it's natural to bargain in this way. In some ways, it creates the wrong incentives on the system. Because the truth will come out of the trial. The truth doesn't come out in a plea agreement. Yeah. So if there's too many cases on the docket, they start playing them out and playing them out. And the lawyer who has too many cases or not enough inclination to fight is going to tell their client to take a lot of pleas. And you know, that then becomes complicated because sometimes clients should take deals.

55:07But it's hard to hear that. It's hard to hear that because it's hard to admit to wrongdoing in the first place. It's hard to hear that because you know that we live in a system where if you take a deal, that other person has more time back because they don't have to have the trial. So it's a necessary part of the system, but it has become too ever -present. And if it monopolizes the system, it's not a real justice system. It's a system of pleas. Do you have any opinions on high -profile trials that you weren't part of? Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Sam Bankman, Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Marby Weinstein, OJ?

55:43What's it like watching a public trial knowing what you know? Well, I mean, I try to not have opinions on the ultimate reality of what happened because I don't know enough. And I'm trying to tell everybody my entire life. In fact, it's the one time somebody will hear me pipe up a little bit at a dinner party about anything substantive is when I want to remind everybody you don't know what happens. You don't jump to conclusions. Yeah. So since I'm, that's the one time you see me pipe up, I don't really want to be in the position where I'm sitting around going, you know what, that was guilt, that was not.

56:16Not to be an arrogant prick, but it's usually pretty painful to watch other than Eiffel -Baley. And the only one of those cases you're talking about that I actually saw any part of any substance was OJ, and that was 20 years before, you know, I was a full grown lawyer. So I don't have, you know, much in the way of opinions on them. Tell me about Tiger King. I don't know if you know Eric Good. I do. I just remember when he was an animal lover first. Yeah. And you know, he had the turtle ball, and he would talk about animals. And so he went at this with the different lens. But I was this prosecutor who had prosecuted murder cases that he knew.

56:57And so, you know, I might ask him questions about turtle conservancies that I don't know anything about. He would ask me questions about the criminal justice system. So eventually they and Netflix asked me, what I look into it and the family wanted me to look into it. And so they reached out to me and, you know, I re -investigated and put it together my way. I'm not going to remember every detail. I do remember, though, one of the first things that I did was there was one anecdote or part of it, which was that she was outside. She meeting Carol Baskin in the middle of the night. The night he went missing effectively.

57:36Okay. This is as I recall the allegation. And it occurred to me that that's interesting because there was no debate about it. Right? What are the facts that I know for sure? She was out in the middle of the night the night that he went missing. And so I said, I just remember specifically, it was the first instinct I had was I called somebody that knew her for, you know, a decade plus and sort of said, is this the kind of person who went out past midnight and the response was never, ever, ever. And you know, make of that what you will. You worked with mental illness before becoming a lawyer. How?

58:13I worked with mental illness as well. How thin is the line between what we label normal and what we label mentally ill? There is no line. There is no line. We're all psychological beings. We are all very complicated. Some of the most successful people that you know are the most tortured. Some of the most stable looking are the most unstable. I think the DSM would say that the way that you can figure out if somebody's personality issues or disorder or not is whether it has a profound impact on their everyday life. Does everybody that work with them quit? Does everybody that spends a night alone with them leave?

58:52Are they unable to function? Can they not hold down a job? Unable to function would be the disorder of the DSM. But ultimately it's far, far more complicated than that. And people's psychology is a continuum far more profound that goes up and down far more than a person's growth and height and weight and physical traits. Far more complicated. Describe the home you grew up in. I grew up in a small house in a suburb of Boston on a cul -de -sac. Were the insisters? Yeah. Three siblings. Older younger? All younger. You know, at one point we shared rooms then you know we kind of made me as I got it became a teenager my own little you know small room.

59:43And you know we ran around riding bikes and playing with football and cause and trouble. Did you guys still get along? Yeah, we're very close. Great. What do you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young? Penn's what young means. But I remember thinking the world wasn't just place when I was 16. Right and thinking and believing in second chances and thinking people had to fight for other people and everybody deserved a shot. So a lot of that core stuff that I think led to you know this chapter of my career has been very constant throughout. I was more achievement oriented when I was a younger adult and I am now at some level I just don't give a shit.

1:00:32And at some level I realized there's a cost and that is definitely a change because I'm not looking I don't look at things and it's a recent change as a scoreboard. Yeah. You still want to win though. You damn right? Was there something that happened at 16 that allowed that revelation of fighting for the underdog let's say. I don't know that there was one revelation I grew up in a liberal home. I grew up in a home with a single mom at that point. I myself would cause trouble and think it's no big deal. You know kids you were a kid that well you sure easy for you and I to say not everybody looks at it that way.

1:01:18Yeah. I remember my mom taking me to the hospital where she worked. I remember seeing kids at every possible disadvantage you could say. I remembered thinking that it wasn't really fair the way that so and so got X, Y and Z. This person got nothing. And how could you ever expect that person to end up in the same place. Yeah. And I just felt that you got to even out the score a little bit. That sounds like the answer the fact that your mom worked with she did and you got to have that experience play to big role. It definitely played a big role. It's hard to know right which of these things was like an imprint then right in my own like listen.

1:01:58I wish I wish people would stand up for me more. Yeah. Right. And so as I'm growing up and nobody wants to stand up for me I'm carboring some of that inside going you know. If somebody ever tried to do that to somebody I'm watching over good luck. Yeah. You know I still always remark well when I'm alone that how much harder I fight for other people than any of these people would ever fight for you know maybe that sounds like a pity party. No it's just your nature. It's just my nature. Yeah. It's just my nature where other people will be like well we'll put up a little resistance but you know they come and take him you know it was it was fun while last.

1:02:35Would you say you have good days and bad days are you pretty even killed. Good days about this. How does that impact things or does it. It's also you know a question of when and in continuums in terms of when that question is being reflected I've definitely gone through periods where the intensity of what I do has weighed on me the loneliness of what I do has weighed on me. And to the degree that you know one day people will think I was good at this creating loneliness at the top weighs on me. And you know whatever little bit of success I have now you know too many people asking for too many things.

1:03:19Ways on you creates loneliness. Yeah. And so yeah I mean that stuff but you know you you pop back out of it you know and you pop back out of it quickly and you just remember I mean and I think this is something that comes from age there's a Kipling poem if you know that nothing is as good or as bad as it may seem in the moment. Yeah. And boy is that true about life. Yeah. Right that the what is the point of sweating the small stuff. And so yeah you remind yourself of those things you find find your purpose reset all yourself realize that the whole fucking thing is probably stupid. And you pop back up and you go fight.

1:03:56You mentioned Eiffelie Bailey earlier what was it about him that was impressive. There's only a couple of lawyers that I've seen that had the ability to really trap a witness across examination right I mean I don't want to say that anybody but a good trial lawyer which is like nothing nothing to write home about can take a witness and look at an index car business well you were 18 feet away and the lighting wasn't good and there was something obstructing your view or there's a mic cousin Vinny cross examination about that right you know you know what's that on the window is this. That's a silt you know whatever that I love that movie yeah I've seen the long time that's not sort of higher level.

1:04:39Try a work and I thought at least a couple of things that I saw Bailey do. We're at another point of complexity. And also like this big a trial lawyer you have to have a personality here a personality I hear I hear good bad and ugly but you had a personality so it makes it makes it a little bit more interesting. Yeah what do you think about most outside of work. What I'm going to do next meaning work wise or in general. I think it's a little bit of both. Are all cases different or are there common themes or archetypes that you've come to realize over time that they fit in certain categories. All cases are definitely different but all cases have have some of the same threads which is it's it's always about people.

1:05:25People doing things that upset other people people. People suffering from their own psychologies and their own mistakes those are the bricks of an orphan.

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