Judge Richard Leon, of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled today that the United States failed to persuade him to block AT&T’s bid to acquire Time Warner under antitrust law. See the 172-page opus here: AT&T Opinion 6-12-18…

Today, United States District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan issued LIBOR VII, in which the court granted class certification under Rule 23(b)(3) to a class of plaintiffs who bought over-the-counter instruments that paid interest in terms of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and who allege that LIBOR-setting banks conspired to suppress LIBOR during the 2007-09 financial crisis. The court declined to certify the OTC plaintiffs’ state-law claims or any claims by two other…

  This coming Thursday, I’ll give a talk about Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial at the University of Texas law school Civil Litigation Conference in Austin. My series of posts on the subject ends with this one — and it’s the best one of them all, in my view.…

In this penultimate installment of my series on preparing difficult witnesses (DWs) for trial, we get to some of the real nitty-gritty: Learning the story of me, doing a full interview, and then explaining what matters and why. As will become clear, the sequence matters — a lot.…

In Part 3 of our Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial series (see Part 1 and Part 2), we study a key aspect of trial-team dynamics and the necessity of getting face-to-face with difficult witnesses (DWs).…

In Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial — Part 1, we looked at the four major types of trial witnesses. We also sketched “some of the more significant ethical considerations that govern your dealings with each category”. We then took “a short and non-exhaustive look at the two major privileges that trial lawyers deal with: the lawyer-client privilege and the lawyer work-product doctrine.” In this post, we’ll cover the necessity for getting really ready and something you…

For your client to win at trial, the trial lawyer in you must tell a human story, one that moves jurors to decide in your client’s favor. Flesh-and-blood witnesses fill essential roles in the drama. So-so ones will turn the story to mush, and bad ones will allow your friend on the other side to beat you and your client about the head and neck with it. Difficult witnesses – DWs – therefore pose a…