Trial Lawyers Fight. Litigators Dance.
Selecting your attorney is a very personal decision. It is critical to learn as much as possible about your prospective attorney or law firm: education, experience, and reputation with peers and judges. At the core of this choice is deciding between the two basic cultural types involved with lawsuits: trial lawyers and litigators. Trial lawyers fight in the courtroom, while litigators tend to dance around it.
What Does a Litigator Do?
Litigators are found in larger business firms, usually charge by the hour, and are part of a litigation department. They typically have little or no experience picking juries, engaging in the give and take of voir dire with potential jurors, making opening and closing statements, or waiting — utterly alone — for a jury to announce its decision after a long, drawn-out trial.
By generally avoiding the courtroom and the real combat associated with it, litigation firms rack up the hours billed, paper generated and depositions taken. After much time is expended with theatric performances, the litigators sit down, settle the case, and go home. The true potential of a case is not achieved because the possibility of going to trial is never seriously accepted or desired.
We Are Trial Lawyers.
By comparison, trial lawyers start their career differently than litigators and are cut from a different cloth. Well educated, yet scrappy, they have learned to view the courtroom as a boxing ring, fighting relentlessly for criminal defendants or injured victims in personal injury cases. They have selected juries and waited for verdicts themselves. Motivated by the tension and win-or-lose challenge within the ring, they are determined to win for their clients while respecting their opponent throughout the fight.
Not all cases go to trial; in fact, few do. But the full potential of a case will only be realized if there are trial lawyers willing to enter the ring on behalf of the client’s cause. Bob Schuster and Brad Booke are those trial lawyers, and Robert P. Schuster, P.C. is a prize-fighting trial lawyer firm.