4th Qtr
Villain emailed me in the middle of the night with new jury instructions. Umm, no, those were due to the court a month ago. I was a bit late on something else, I got zapped by the F$%^ing red light camera in downtown

In the morning I didn't object once, I just pretended to read the law book that I had kept the table so the jury could see it every time they exited the court room.

At lunch in the convention center (promax bar and an orange every day) I tried to sync my closing statement with the exhibits scanned my valued team member, Sister Walking.

Closing Time

- 'Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury this is, , , a picture of a siberan forest, that's my desktop wallpaper. It appears my laptop is not talking to the projector'

Yes on the biggest stage of my life I got Microsofted.

The bailiff lept into action, to tell me "Mr. Walking you should have got back from lunch sooner.'

But it's my job to turn a negative into a positive. 'Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, as you can see I made a mistake. We all make mistakes, but not all us of try to correct them. I am not going leave the room, fire my client, refuse to answer the phone, and mislead her on a termination letter. . . and when technology we still have paper.'

Thus whenever I wanted to reference an exhibit, I did the old school method of holding paper copies and walking them the jury box.

- Villain takes his turn to make a closing statement and talked about the law the entire time, barely mentioning the facts of the case.

- I get the last bite of the apple with my reserved time. I took the white board and a marker, 'Defense just used a lot of legal terminology, let us go through and define every single one" and thus I ended the trial with a lecture on semantics

INTERMEZZO
Awkward silence in the nearly empty court room while the jury deliberated. Just the lawyers and the client.

I asked that woman about her first case and got: "Well I clerked in the NY Court of Appeals and I have to say Mr Walking, while the judge has great latitude to help a new attorney you would not be allowed to get away what you pulled during this trial there.'

For the rest of my life I will regret not asking her 'Well what did they teach you at U Iowa? You know, where you are actually from.'

But I like conflict, so I asked V about his first case. In an instant, he somehow transformed into a human being. I don't recall one pleasant interaction with him in the last 4 years, I would even use hand sanitizer after talking to him on the phone. But today he glowingly talked about his first auto-accident case years ago in Michigan. Then V was against his friend from law school, and said friend threw a fit when V got a judgment_on_the_merits. Nothing like nerve wracking tension to humanize a lawyer.

I also asked if he thought the jury would be 'influenced' by the fact that it is Friday afternoon and they wouldn't have to come back Monday morning if they-


4:15pm: Bailiff enters and announces the jury has reached a verdict,