the Zealous

Infuriating excerpt from What it Takes to Be a Trial Lawyer if You are not a Man by Lara Bazelon, The Atlantic, September 2018:

Last year, Elizabeth Faiella took a case representing a man who alleged that a doctor had perforated his esophagus during a routine medical procedure. Before the trial began, she and the defense attorney, David O. Doyle Jr., were summoned to a courtroom in Brevard County, Florida, for a hearing. Doyle had filed a motion seeking to “preclude emotional displays” during the trial—not by the patient, but by Faiella.

“Counsel for the Plaintiff, Elizabeth Faiella, has a proclivity for displays of anguish in the presence of the jury, including crying,” Doyle wrote in his motion. Faiella’s predicted flood of tears, he continued, could be nothing more than “a shrewdly calculated attempt to elicit a sympathetic response.”

r/Lawyertalk 28.08.23 post by reddituser jtuffs:

I am shocked by how awful so many lawyers are

Does anyone else feel this way? I see the work product of so many of my adversaries - usually solo practitioners who I am assuming were solo from day one and never had to please an experienced partner and never had a real mentor - and it literally astounds me. Sometimes it seems like they have no idea what the law is on the area we are briefing or arguing about. Sometimes they submit papers filled with typos, or with different font sizes in different paragraphs, or with half of it double spaced and half single.

In the realm of food safety advocacy, few names hold as much weight as Bill Marler. With a formidable track record of holding food producers accountable and championing reform, Marler has solidified his position as a driving force in the fight against foodborne illnesses, working to ensure the health and safety of our food supply, in the US and around the world.

Marler's transformation to food safety champion began in the early 1990s, when he represented victims of the infamous Jack in the Box hamburger E. coli outbreak.  Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. coli Outbreak that Changed the Way Americans Eat, by best-selling author Jeff Benedict, chronicles the Jack in the Box outbreak and the rise of Bill Marler as a food safety attorney. The book is now the basis of a Netflix documentary of the same name.