For the second year, Haynes Boone attorneys participated this week in the firm’s three-day Trial Academy, where associates worked alongside partners to try a case to a jury of summer associates.
Haynes Boone trials global chair Victor Vital created the Trials Academy last year after seeing young lawyers who needed more courtroom experience. Vital told The Texas Lawbook that for the firm, the academy represents a “crucial investment” in its attorneys, offering training that will make them more valuable to clients.
One of the biggest differences this year was in pre-academy preparation. Participating lawyers had a skills training session a month before the big event and then spent two days in the firm’s Dallas office diving into the content and workshopping before trying the case in a courtroom at the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law.
The attorneys are required to complete Haynes Boone’s deposition skills training before participating in the Trial Academy. Last year, only associates participated, but this year, associates got to work alongside partners.
Shane Read, who has written law school textbooks and is a consultant on lawyer training matters, was tapped to choose a moot court case.
He settled on a hypothetical case where a trucking company was accused of negligence following a crash that killed a 7-year-old boy and paralyzed a 12-year-old boy. Academy participants were told the parent who was driving the children hit black ice that forced the car into oncoming traffic.
Across two courtrooms, a total of four trials took place Thursday.
In courtroom A, Houston-based senior counsel Lynne Liberato served as the judge in the morning.
“One thing I’ve noticed: I did a lot of moot court. I never remembered the compliments, I only remembered the negative stuff,” Liberato said, “and so most of the negative stuff isn’t going to help them, I don’t think, unless it’s some kind of broader picture,”.
She approached her job as judge with the understanding that it can be difficult for young lawyers to try a case in front of firm leaders they look up to and admire.
“They have a courtroom full of people, and these are people who are going to be helping determine whether they make partner and determine their reputation in the firm, even externally, the summer associates kind of sitting there in judgment of them, that’s hard,” Liberato said.
New York-based associate Aishlinn Bottini represented the parent, Blake Wooden, who was played by Dallas-based partner Emily Buchanan. Bottini said she felt lucky to participate, since there aren’t many opportunities to get direct feedback like that. She tried the case alongside North Virginia-based partner Todd Garland.
“Between where I started and where I feel like I landed — even though I’m hard on myself, I’ll never say I did a great job — I can at least say I improved,” Bottini said.
Right before she did her cross-examination, one of the partners handed her a note with five pointers on it.
“I scanned them all, and it was like the exact advice I needed. And one of them was like, ‘You’re in control, you’re going to tell the witness what to do,’” she said, noting the encouragement gave her license to be more assertive in her questioning of the witness. “And then when I got the feedback, the feedback was like the cross was the strongest thing I did.”
Dallas-based counsel Elizabeth Wirmani, along with Charlotte-based Chelsea Corey, represented the trucking company and the driver, Rene Lombardi, who was played by Dallas-based partner Calmann Clements. Wirmani gave the closing, where she talked about her own life experience of being in a car accident after falling asleep at the wheel and being hit by an 18-wheeler in the other lane.
“I don’t discount the fortune of my circumstances that night, but if those circumstances had been different, if that driver had been in the left lane when I landed there, it wasn’t his fault. Just like Renee Lombardi, that driver that night was driving safely,” Wirmani said in her closing argument.
The eight-member jury, comprised of summer associates, was tasked with answering five questions and returned a defense verdict. In the other room, faced with the same five questions, the jurors sided with the plaintiff.
After lunch, two more trials commenced with the attorneys who had played witness now trying the case.
Fort Worth-based partner Thomas Williams presided over the trial in courtroom B in the afternoon.
In this trial, New York-based associate Joe Pinto played a single father who lost his child in a car accident. How each group presented their openings and closings and used demonstratives was different.
Both of the afternoon trials resulted in hung juries.
At the end of the day, Washington, D.C.-based partner Jon Bowser, Dallas-based associate Nicole Sims, Pinto and Wirmani were awarded Best Advocate. New York-based counsel Jenna Decker, New York-based associate Michael Freyberg, Dallas-based associate Barry Zhang and Wirmani were awarded Best Witness.
Vital said he felt the academy went “fantastically well” but knows there are always ways to improve.