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Continued... Page 2 > A Book Review

In orchestrating these appearances of testimony, evidence and argument that will create the view of reality favorable to their clients, trial lawyers must integrate heart, mind and reason. He concludes that:

The master trial lawyers are the ones best able to realize this integration . . . these abilities are not, ultimately, verbal or cognitive. They are qualities of mindfulness, outward manifestations of inward grace.

This is a book that all trial lawyers should read. The only caveat in this regard is that the book is not as helpful as it might be to civil practitioners, in that its principal focus is on criminal proceedings. However, for trial lawyers of all callings, it supplies a more sophisticated analysis of the dynamics of winning and losing, the interplay between substance and style, illusion and reality. The awareness cultivated by the book cannot help but give any trial lawyer a more informed view of strategy, tactics and theme choice.

The author has an appropriately respectful tone for who trial lawyers are as people and how this combines with the intense and exacting demands of their craft. Yet, his obvious respect for the profession never causes him to lose his objectivity and become a groupie. In the end, the book is better for the fact that he is an outsider to the profession, because it allows him to take an uncumbered "real life" view of what he sees evolving before him in the courtroom.

This book is a start in a new and better direction -- a view from the trenches that breeds an understanding of and respect for what it is that trial lawyers are and do. Hopefully it will lead to even more thoughtful works in this vein in the future, both by this author and others.