Jim Bostwick, Lawfirm Partner | Landmark Case Winning Lawyer & Author

Welcome to the Success Story Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. With a further ado, another episode of the Success Story Podcast. Thanks again for joining me. Today, I am sitting down with James Bostwick, who is one of the most respected medical, malpractice, and personal injury lawyers in the USA. He's the founder of Bostwick Impresson, Peterson, excuse me, he's cultivated reputation as a top-tier specialist in catastrophic malpractice cases and has secured numerous record-setting verdicts and settlements, nationally recognized Bostwick specializes in complex medical malpractice, malpractice, birth injury, wrongful death claims, all these very difficult portions of law and legal that unfortunately we have to deal with day over day. He is a huge proponent of, I guess, championing for these individuals that don't have the proper representation to note one of the most impressive things he's done over his career and that's what we're going to get into over the course of this podcast. He was ultimately able to obtain a record setting verdict for $21 million for a client. The story, I'm going to let James tell it, but basically this is one of the largest verdicts to date for a malpractice suit and that's what's sort of led to his book, which is now a best-seller, Acts of a Mission, and that's what I would like to sort of dive into a little bit and speak about the case, the book, the current, the state of the current legal system in the States. All these things are all great topics and we have an expert, so I'm glad to chat. No, thank you for thanks for sitting down. I appreciate it. Thank you, Sean. So you want me to basically talk about my background and how I got to this point of my career. I would love to. Yeah, because I think that when you look at the resume that you have now, so you're accomplished attorney, you've had some landmark cases. Now you're currently working on this book. There's been highly successful based on something that's the tap and years ago that you put out into the public. How do you get to this point in your career? What's your origin story? Where did you come from? Where did you find the passion for law, this particular type of law, and what sort of drove you to where you are today? Well, you know, many people that go into this have been interested in that their whole life. With me, it's very, very different. I was, my father was a doctor, my mother, a nurse. I loved medicine. I always wanted to be a doctor. And it wasn't until my senior year in the University of Washington that I realized that that actually probably wasn't a good path for me because I hated chemistry for one thing. And I didn't know what to do with myself. So my friends were taking the LSA, the LST, and I didn't even know what it was. So I went and took the exam, happened to get a good score, got into a school that was famous for having what they call a revolving door, Hastings, and here in San Francisco. They would let anybody in which is why I got in, I guess, and very few managed to make it all the way through. It was about about a third, 650 of us started in just over 200 of us graduated. And that's when I became a part of the law. And I fascinated. I loved it. But I never, I didn't know what I wanted to do with the law. In fact, my thought was, well, I'll go and I'll get a master's degree in business, and I'll put the two together, and I'll do something, you know, anything to keep from having to go out and work. But I was putting myself to school, and I had lots of different kinds of jobs. So I sent out 150 letters to 150 law firms. And I got a few back, and it just happened that a couple of them were from trial law firms, actually very famous, very well known trial law firms. I didn't even know what a trial lawyer was. It had never occurred to me to do that, for that to be part of my life. But I want to work for one of them. Luckily for me, probably one of the best firms in the country that do this kind of work. And I just found I loved it. It was, you know, I was a law clerk. I wasn't out of law school yet, but I went, you know, I got a job of them, and I went right onto it. And immediately, because of my background, and because of my love for medicine, I gravitated to those kinds of cases, because it's a natural for me. So I mean, I can speak language. I knew enough about medicine. I understood it. So I started doing not only all different kinds of medical malpractice cases, and other kinds of personal injury cases. But that became my niche, you know, we had the whole cross section, but that became my niche. Ten years later, I was a partner there, but I Q of a started to go in and decided to go off on her own and off we went to the start of law firm. Or I was really lucky, was this was kind of an interesting story. Our senior partner, his name is Bruce Walker, was probably one of the, it's not the best trial lawyer, certainly one of the top four or five trial lawyers in the whole country. At the first million dollar verdict, the first multi-million dollar verdict, a very brilliant man, very good judgment, and a great mentor. And when we left the firm, Bruce, you know, unlike fighting with us and having a big problem like many law firms did when they broke up, he was very, had a lot of common sense. He said, you guys take all of your cases, and just send me back 50% of the fee, you know, you, send all the money out of them, you take all the risk, if you win, send me 50%. Well, that gave us a whole body of cases to work on, and it gave him a bunch of money coming to him, but the guys that are out there trying to make it to the world, that was very sensible. He said, there's only one case, I want you to leave here. Jimmy said, I want you to leave that case that came in because of that huge verdict I got, and I want you to leave that little girl, Laurie. She was a, she had been 13 when she became a quadriplegic from, we thought possibly medical malpractice. She was in a now 16 or 17, she was living at a nursing home, her father had a band in the family, her, her brother was a narrative well, her mother had that best, couldn't help her, so she was living in a nursing home. At 16, and he said, I want that case, and I said that couldn't be anything better for that little girl than you take that case for us. He or later, he called me and he said, Jim, would you take that Laurie? I could say a case on the same basis of our prior deal. I said, well, of course I would, but why? And he said, because she calls me two or three times a week, and all she can talk about is you, because you're like a big brother. Will you take it? I think it'd be good for her. So I got to work on this wonderful, huge case, which had a lot of problems, because it was radiotherapy. It was an irradiation therapy. It was the very new specialty in medicine. It was something that nobody had ever done before, really. No cases had liked it. There were only maybe a little over a hundred doctors in the whole world that did that kind of work. And I think I talked to almost every day I'm one of them, trying to find an expert. I thought it was a case. I really knew it was a case, but I couldn't find it because they all knew each other. Finally, I found that guy in London, who was called the Grandfather of Radiation Therapy, who had retired, and it was well in his late 80s. He said, it is absolutely a case. I'll come and test it by. I tried that case back in the 70s for nine weeks. No offer. Well, they had a little offer, and they would drew it during the trial. And the verdict was the largest medical malpractice verdict in the history of the country, without Walter Cronkai. It was in newspapers all over the world. And that's what really that interesting sequence of events is what really got my career going in this field. So then after that, of course, we do lots of different kinds of cases, and I've had different permutations with my firm. But a later case that was quite interesting, which is the basis of the book you're talking about. And I'll tell you later why I wrote the book. But that was fascinating because I was still a young lawyer in the 80s, and it was barely hanging in there in practice. And this case came to me again with a person. When I say quadriplegic, I made a person's paralyzed from the neck down. That's what this little girl was, and this sex with this young man paralyzed from the neck down, from what we thought might be a medical malpractice. But the problem was, is that it was maybe a medical malpractice, but the lawyer that had handled the case had allowed the statute to run on that. So there was no way to bring that lawsuit against the doctors in the hospital. The lawsuit had to be against the lawyer. So you would have to prove not only the medical malpractice case, what they call a case within a case, but actually it wasn't a good case, and would have been successful, had he done it right. But you also had to prove medical malpractice. That the lawyer did something wrong. And the big problem, the case was that this was probably the most famous lawyer in the entire country. He was certainly beloved in San Francisco. He was in the papers virtually every day, the media loved him, the local borrow loved him, the public loved him, because he was very tangous. And always worked great quote and quite a character. So I had to decide whether I want, and everybody said I shouldn't take the case, and I had to decide whether I wanted to take that case on against this famous guy and risk really my reputation, the firm, and my future in the legal trial practice world. I did it, and the case worked out well, but it was quite an interesting journey. That made a great obviously because of those tensions that made a great underlying skeleton of a fun novel. The novel of course is highly fictionalized version of that, but that became the guts of the novel. I love this story. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I got a question out of that, but I was going to no, keep going. In this story, then I'll, I guess, I guess my question is, you know, you had a very early success and obviously the success continued, probably I don't think that every success of over the course of career was like a record breaking success, but there's a lot of successes. My, exactly, my question was, you know, at what point do you want to to branch out? And I guess you're probably going to segue into that with like, why did you want to write a book? Why was this something that, you know, you felt the need to tell over the story, because I'm sure there's a lot of cases that are just as emotional that aren't told over, which I think would make great stories, but we don't know about them. So I think that it's a, it's great that you've done it. Why? What was like your, your motivator? Was this, am I, am I jumping into the story too sooner? I apologize. No, actually, that is exactly where I was going to go. Next was, it was, well, why write a novel? You know, you're doing cases. You have people that represent, I mean, Lord, I'm busy. I mean, I, I, I'm still working, you know, 150% right at the moment, because I'm working from home like we all are, but, but I, I mean, I fly 180,000 miles a year. I am a very busy trial or why did I want to write a novel? And, and the answer is, well, I love reading. I mean, I'm, I'm nuts about reading. I love to read books. And because I read so much in my, you know, in my business life as a trial or I wanted to read, yeah, I read stuff that's, my wife calls junk. I don't, I don't, I don't agree with her. She, once in a while, turns me on just an actually good literature, but I, I like legal thrillers and stuff like that. I mean, I love that stuff. And, but I, but I had it very frustrating, you know, the years to read it. And because number one, it's, it's all about criminal law, mostly, which is fascinating. And, and I, I love that stuff and everything, but there are way more lawyers out there that you're doing civil work that, you know, that the public, they need civil lawyers too. They need civil lawyers for their business disputes. They need civil lawyers to take care of their custody issues and divorces and state issues. And, and when they get injured, and you know, there are lots of civil lawyers out there working their tails off. And there really aren't any books written about them. Maybe to, you know, and it's, it's actually can be as exciting. It can be just as nerve-wracking. And it can be as huge risk involved for the, both the parties and the lawyer. But nobody writes about it. Well, would the exception occasionally of some very famous authors who'd like to make jokes about it and talk about the stereotypes, you know, the ambulance chasing, which, of course, you know, it's a typical, stereotypical reaction. That's what all the civil lawyers like. In reality, of course, our lawyers like that, but very few. Very few, the, you know, the huge majority of them out there taking big risks for clients that they've gotten, you know, pumpkin, maybe two emotionally involved with and are trying to, trying to do what they can for them. I wanted to tell that story. I wanted to, and the other thing that really bothered me about legal books and TV and, and, you know, and movies is it's not realistic. Any lawyer that looks and reads your what's on in a courtroom or reads what's happening and sees it on a movie, they shake their heads because it's, it's just not what happens in real life. And real life can be just as interesting, but it's not authentic. And I thought, what, maybe can somebody write a book that is not only fun and has romance and has danger and has betrayal and has risk has all those fun things, but also it was very authentic is actually what, what the laws really like, what lawyers really have to go through and what they think and what they worry about. And where they, you know, there isn't a lawyer that has done what I do that hasn't set the farm at one point or another on some case where, where they're not sure what the result is going to be, but they just feel I owe them to the client. Now, I think that's valid. I think there's a, I think the reason why you're writing it out and building out, like, you know, basically, every time you put stuff out into the world, like you build out your own brand, I appreciate the, I guess the honest reason as to why you're putting this out. And I think it's important as somebody who is a successful lawyer, are you looking to do more? Are you looking to, to create more content? Is this something that you want to take on or is this just something that was like a really strong passion project that ended up? And like, I, we didn't even speak about, tell me, like tell me some of the things you mentioned before, because I don't want to miss quote, but the, the accolades, like this book is it, like, it won an award. It, it sold out of its first iteration. So now it's going to, I think paperback, but tell, walk through some of the things that it's won. And I guess, like, what do you want to do next with, you know, now you're, now you're an author, which is a fun thing. What do you want to do next with it? Well, it didn't win anything. It has been nominated. I'm very, very honored that it has been nominated for the 2020 Harper Lee Legal Fiction Award. It's, it's, the, the Harper Lee Foundation is governed by the University of Alabama Law School. And I was, you know, honored to have been nominated by the law school, actually, the folks that administered the, I don't have any idea how they even saw the book or how they knew about it, but they nominated it for this award. In May, typically, they picked three pianos. So pretty soon. And then usually in the summer, I don't know how that's going to work this year, but usually in the summer, they, there's a, the finalist is announced. And so my, you know, obviously, I'm not planning on, on winning it, but it's a huge honor to have been nominated for, because that's one of the most prestigious awards. And it is the award for this genre, this legal fiction. So that's great. Yes, the hardbound book is completely sold out of the first edition. There are still some around in the bookstores that are all unfortunately shut down right now. But I think, you know, the publishers completely out of them there at the dawn. The hardbound is supposed to come out in July, I think the ninth. So it can be pre-ordered at this point. And there's an audible, actually, the audible is, it's great. I never, I read books and I'd never listened to an audible before. And so the first audible I ever listened to was mine, which is an interesting experience. Roger Wayne is the narrator and he's great. He's an actor and he really got the characters and he does different voices. And that's kind of fun. If you're the kind of person who has to drive long distances, audible is a lot of fun. It's hard for you to have the time. Is it? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah. So that's, and that's, you know, and it's pure 400, you know, reviews and it might stall them or fight star for star. And that's, that's, it's doing really well. Like I don't know if this is the norm for somebody who's written the first book. I'm assuming not. I'm assuming that most people that write a book for the first time. This is what I'm glad I clarified because I actually wasn't sure if it was just a historical account of the trial that you won or it was a fiction that was based on a lot of the facts that were presented, but it wasn't a true historical. So now I understand it makes a lot more sense to me. But I don't think a lot of people have this much success. I'm looking at some of the reviews as we chat. And it's done really well for, you know, in all seriousness, your first, your first book. That's, that's very impressive. Very, very good. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is because I mean, I didn't think, I mean, I write for legal stuff. I write briefs and stuff like that. And, and, and the white, what made me think I could write a novel? Well, I didn't. Actually, when I would complain about, you know, books should not be authentic. And my wife said, heck, stop complaining. Write your own sample. You always sound like that. I was like, that's for you. Yeah, exactly. And she, she's been, well, I signed her up for a novel. I see what? Yeah, yeah. Three or, you know, birthday, how to write your first novel over the age of 40. I signed this up. And so we did. We went and it just kept going. And, and actually, you know, I wrote, oh, maybe two thirds of it. Well, my daughter was a baby, you know, because we put her to bed early. We didn't go out. And so I was writing at night and, and, uh, became a habit which it has to be for me. And then my second daughter was born and she did not usually. That was the end of the writing. So years later, I went back and said, well, that was stupid. Finish the damn book. And so I did. And I finished the book. And then, of course, that's what, when you're a quote, writer unquote, and there's a lot of people out there that will understand thing is then what do you do? Then what? I mean, I had no idea what to do with this. I had about 500 pages in a computer. Uh, and, and along the way, I'd actually lost most of it. I thought, and luckily, a friend who I'd send it to sent it back to me in a floppy, if you remember, if they used to have floppy disks. And I was able to get going with it again. Um, so I just had there. And, but a former client who, uh, whose son was born, uh, with the birth injury, he was a, it was a medical malpractice case. And we became friends when I was handling his, his child's case, he came to the definition to get very involved in the process. And, but it happens that he's a well-known movie for this year in, uh, LA. And, uh, he, he heard that I did the books. He said, well, I need to read it. Well, I said, okay. And I sent it to him, you know, kind of picked him up. Oh, my God. Well, I didn't hear from him for four years. And I thought, oh, my God, he hated it. Clearly, he hated it. And so he's just afraid to call me and tell me how bad it was. Um, then one day he called me, uh, a year or so ago, and he said, Jim, I finally read the damn book. I loved it. He said, it's, it's, it's my favorite book, and movie of all time. He said, in the legal genre, here's, uh, you know, it's the verdict. Yeah. And Paul Newman played it in the verdict. And he said, this is, this is like that. This is better. I think I want to make a movie out of it. Well, wow. Okay. That's cool. He says, yeah, but then we can't make a movie out. It tells him to publish. He helped me get a couple agents. And then that's sort of the process, you know, and it wasn't really until some very difficult and, and cut through editing, which I had to do, taking the book down from a lot of 550 to 450 pages that really, I think, became something that was readable, something that had the fat cut out of it, something that kept people going. Yeah. And are there people that, you know, that give me negative reviews? Yeah. That's, yeah, that's wonderful. It's like, you know, it's like a painting. Some people like the painting. Some people think it's horror. Uh, writing a book is like that. It's, it's a creative thing you put out there for the world. Some people love it. Other people, you know, that's just out there. The thing, you know, I'll tell you something. No, you can't, you can't ever make content. You can't ever make anything that's, that's suited for everyone. And if you are, I've got a lot of content. Yeah. That's right. That's right. I, I, I think it's just fascinating. Sometimes when I see the negative reviews as it's all these great, you know, uh, that gets, it makes it real, you know, it makes, it, it shows the cross section of people are actually out there reading it. Yeah. That's, which is, you know, that's, that's what you want. So, see, but still, I, I don't know what, you didn't answer my question. Like, what's next? I'm curious because you have this book. You, you have to figure out what you want to do another one, or is this like a one and done? It's meant as a trilogy. Okay. Okay. It's meant as a trilogy. And, uh, and so, and I have, I definitely have the, uh, the plot line in my head and I am working on the sequel. And the way I operate is that I have to, I don't work on an outline. Some writers need an outline and, and that works really well for them. When I'm writing, uh, it starts just coming out of my head. It's wonderful, really. Like, when you get, when the flow gets going, yeah, I would find myself, yeah, I, I think you've done any, any creative writing, you know, I think in, I'm, in the shower, I'm suddenly thinking about what this is. I know what's going to happen to this guy. What's going to happen next? And then, then I have to stop myself and say, wait a minute. He's not real. Yeah. He may be loud. What are you going to have to next is you're going to have out of your head. They come, they become a lot, they start doing things you never expected. They do. That's when it becomes a fascinating project. And that's when they have a life of their own. And I think that's what gives them some real dimension to the reader, I think. I agree. So it's there. It's happening. I'm working on it. I love that. You know, it's nice to see that you've done this successfully after, after a great career. I think that that's a lesson for a lot of people listening that it literally, you know, don't be so, you can be laser focused on being successful, whatever you want to be successful in, but it doesn't mean that other things can't, things that you may have not even realized, you know, come into your life and you can take them on. And it may be something like, like, this seems like it was a very long project that finally came to fruition. And like, now look at where it is, right? So that's, it's a very good lesson for people that are listening to be focused on what matters and be focused on your primary objective and what not, but also don't, don't discount anything else because I don't think that life ever ends up exactly, to look at what we're dealing with now. Life never ends up exactly what we think it's going to end up like. So the more open we are to different ways of, you know, growing ourselves professionally, you know, of course, you write a book. There's some money that's great. Obviously, you know, as a lifelong trial attorney, it's probably not to the same extent as like what you actually do for living, but you know, maybe one day it could be. These are all these different ways to sort of diversify. And I think that I mentioned this very briefly before we chatted, but what I wanted to pull out of this was you've had your entire career, you started a book who was successful. Everyone, a lot, not everyone, a lot of people right now are dealing with a lot of disruption in their lives. Their, their norm is, is just completely revoked. Like they have, they've been fired, they've been let go. They've been furloughed. They can't complete their job. They can't make their money. They're stressed about, you know, feeding their family and whatnot. And all these things that are very important are now being sort of flipped on their head and people have to figure out a deal with it. Just know that you can go into something new and be successful. And this may be, this may, you know, a lot of people have stressed out, but this would be a very good time, in my opinion, at least, to start to try and do things. And I think you're just like, you're living, breathing proof that there's literally no time in your life when you can't start something. So that's really what, I don't know what your opinion is if you agree to disagree, but that's what I got out of it. Oh, I absolutely agree to be this, and this is one of those extraordinary moments in history. I mean, we are going through something that, you know, in our lifetimes, we've not, I mean, I was born during the Second World War, but I don't remember it. And then that, of course, was an extraordinary event. You know, we've been through 9-11. We, you know, folks, my vintage and went through Vietnam and the incredible things that changed the country and changed thinking. This is, this is at that level and perhaps way more. And I think, I think that we have to refresh our thinking. I think we have to take what is the bad things and look at how we change them, how we fix them, and where we go from here. I think there's a country at our institutions, how we take care of the vulnerable in our society. What we do about folks that, you know, are homeless, we're having to address all that and we're having to do it from home. We're having to do it. And the same thing is in people's personal lives. I mean, I'm very lucky. And could my business completely collapse? Because of this crisis, absolutely. I mean, we're like all businesses, unless they happen to be Amazon and they're delivering things to people. Or they're, you know, in the essential category where they are working twice as hard by and putting themselves in a risk. Most of us, our businesses are, they're, they have the spiket cut off. You know, I'm trying, I'm working a bit more hours and longer days and seven days a week. And I'm not really able to move my cases because for the first time, I think in the history of the American judicial system, it is shut down. Yeah. And when I say shut down, I don't, I don't mean that there aren't some judges in there working with clerks from home and judges maybe in the office and maybe working from home, trying to do certain things that have to be done. But basic things that we need are not happening in the justice system. And the ultimate thing you need for criminal situations and for to, to, to, we're a defendant can find out on their guilty or are they going to be acquitted or in a civil case? You know, is, is the defendant going to be held responsible? Is the family going to be able to get some money to take care of the loved one and, and have a life for a change? That is all around to a halt. That has never happened. And so those institutions need to look at that and all of us that are sitting there thinking about, how did I get in this place? Having opportunity to, if we can look at it, that's what I think you were saying. There's an opportunity to think out of the box. Keep an open mind. Think, think of other things you can do. Think of the other possibilities. I mean, obviously not everyone's not going to go out and run a novel. But, but there are so many other things that you need to be open to. And I, I think it's a, I walk on. I'm not going to call it a wonderful opportunity because there's nothing wonderful about what's going on. But I, I think it is, it is an opportunity. Which we can grab a hold on. I agree. I want to, you know, I'm just curious your, your insight because you're still, you're living through it. What does, you know, what does justice look like today? What does a system look like today? How are we? How are we? Because people don't stop committing crimes. People don't stop, people don't stop having to be put through, you know, our justice system. How do we do that remotely? That seems like an incredibly difficult task. And I don't know how we're doing it. I'm curious, just to get your, your input. Well, the fact is that we don't, we don't know how to deal with it, where the courts are failing, right from the Supreme Court of the United States down. Actually, Supreme Court has, has decided they're going to have some hearings and they're going to have them orally and they're going to, and they're going to have them be public for the first time ever. And that's, that's new. See, they're thinking, okay, they're thinking there's a fresh spot there. All right, we have this problem. Let's approach it from a little bit different standpoint. That's transparency. That is a good thing. I mean, it's a bad thing that we have to have only oral arguments on the phone. It's a good thing that they're thinking about transparency. So right from the top, there's an opportunity for change. And in courts all over the country, in every state, everybody's doing it differently. That's another problem because we have, you know, I have, you know, I'm going to, in a state with all these different counties, one county has stopped all jury trials for 90 days. Another county has stopped all jury trials for 60 days. Another county has said, we're going to take everything on calendar and shove it down 90 days or 60 days and we're going to move everybody as far out as the calendar goes to everybody remains in line. That's a sensible thing to do. The ones that just stock the ones that were coming up, they're going to have a wave hit them whenever we can start getting back to some semblance of normal. And I use that word normal very advisedly that it's not going to be normal. I think that's what we all don't want to admit to ourselves. It's not going to be the same, not for maybe a long time. Possibly, if ever. And the courts have to adjust to that and they're starting to work on that. The lawyers are working to try to help the courts and the courts are working to try to help the lawyers. And that's all good. That is a good synergy that is going to be, again, something good is going to come out of a very bad situation. But in the meantime, it's awful. There are actually less crimes I hear because people are home. They're not out. And so there are less crimes occurring. And people are sheltering, so they're not out doing bad things. And so in a weird way, that's a good thing. But there are still crimes. There are criminals that have been there may or may not be criminals. There are people that have been accused. Under the law, they have a right to a speedy trial. They have a right to be arrested. They had this happen and all that. Well, what did all defendants usually do? They waive that because they went, what is good? Delay. Some day you'd know the law and get me bail, you know, I'll face this tomorrow. I'll face this next year. What are they all doing now? I refused a way of time. I had a constitution right to speedy trial. You can't give it to me. I want to get up. It's a huge problem. The courts are trying to deal with it. When we do get back working and we do get the courts actually grinding back into operation, when they get all of the courts, the judges are going to have to deal with first criminal cases. The single cases will have, they don't have the priority with the criminal cases to do. So this mother who has a brain damage child who has been working 24, 7 night and day, you know, working herself and her family to the bones to try to help this birth child who's been waiting three, four years for their trial date. Now I have to maybe have to wait another year or two. They may not be able to. They may not be able to manage. They may not be able to physically handle that. That's just an example. Somebody that's dying of cancer, their case needs to be heard before they're gone. That may that's not happening. There may be no way in hell. Their case can be heard before they die. A lot of repercussions. A ton of repercussions that are. Well, and I haven't even come to the biggest one. Is that in the end, in our justice system, what is the, what is the thing that that decides everything? What is it? What is the final exam? Where you get your grade? What is it? It's the trial. It's where the jury says, yeah or may, the defendant is guilty or not. The the plaintiff who is injured has a case or they don't. That's what juries do. How do we have a jury trial if people have to be at least six feet apart from each other and with masks on? How do I pick a jury if they have a mask on? I can't tell whether they're smiling at me or sneering. How do I pick a jury if we have to do it on TV? How do a jury make a jury decision if all the witnesses have been seen on TV like some movie or some TV show? There's nothing. There's nothing. What is great about our system is it's up close and personal in a court. It's people seeing each other sweat. It's seeing each other move and fidget. It's watching body language. It's it's that instinct that smells that you get in a courtroom. Yeah. We know someone's lying or someone's yeah. Yeah, you get those feelings. You can read people. Yes. And and the best thing is when a jury, you know, a lot of people want to stay out of jury service and all that, but if they actually go through it, usually they'll love it because it's a wonderful process because it's 12 totally different people coming together using all their different views of life to make a sensible decision and that combination, if it's done right and if they have the right attitude, it's fabulous. So what it's what made our system thousands of years of civil delusion, this is the best. It's not perfect, but it's the best. How does they do that if they're interacting with each other on TV? I don't know. I don't know. And maybe we can get back to normal or maybe the new normal is something different than what we have. That really is good. Well, I'll tell you, regardless of what of what the new normal looks like or if the normal is a more semblance of what it used to be, there's going to be lasting impact even if minor to a point where the justice system, well, it's not just justice system, speaking of justice system because you're a lawyer, but every conversation I have is, you know, what the industry, pick your industry, it's changed forever, basically. And there's no way around it. Everything. Yeah. Everything. I mean, how do the restaurants come back and be the same? It's so many wonderful restaurants. Most restaurants are kind of on the edge anyway. How are they going to survive this? When they come back, if they have to have people sitting six feet apart, if the lawyers are all got masks on and gloves, are people going to go out? Are they used to now ordering out now? Are they used to cooking at home? You know, which is not bad thing. What happened to that industry? Are we going to have hotels doing as well? Are we going to be traveling as much? There are going to be other viruses. Is this virus going to mutate even if we can find a cure? And even if we can find a vaccine, how we've had vaccines for food for years, but they're rarely a vaccine that is, you know, makes this bulletproof from the food. If it mutates, we may face this, you know, it's also the psychological impact. You know, even I referenced this a lot, but in Wuhan, where it was obviously, you know, ground zero, and now they're allowed to go back to restaurants and allowed to go, but nobody's going to restaurants. Nobody's going out. No, everyone's too afraid. And you don't know how long that's going to last for either. That's right. Yeah. I mean, when I walk up on the mountain behind our house, ring mountain, I mean, people are, people have masks on in the outdoors, on a mountain. And people are walking off the path and standing out in the brush where the chicks are, rather than being near somebody who's walking by them. Not everybody, but this is changing the world. We can't even, we not now, but we can't smile because we can't see the smile. It's the far reaching impact of this or there's just beginning to dawn on all of this, something. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. You know, I'm, I mentioned this before, but I think that as, as this drags on, I would love to get your, obviously, it's nice to speak about the, the book and hopefully it does very well, but I would love to still get your, you know, your ongoing insight as to how this justice system is coping because that's something that I find very interesting as well. Personally, I find it very interesting. Just it's an incredible the amount of disruption. But anyways, I digress. I can tell you, I can tell you a little bit, a little bit about that because I mean, we have folks that have been heads of major organizations in the, in the bar, particularly those organizations that are from both sides, plaintiff and offense. Those organizations have been, you know, we've been having ad hoc meetings and we've been coming up with guidelines that we can help and recommend to the court and help each other and recommend to the governors of the states and things like that. And what they, and I think, and they're been aligned with what we were talking about before, you know, look for a way to have this improve how we do things and get the courts more involved in streamlining the process. Get the courts more involved in making sure the cases move and, and, and, and how can the courts really help with that in a positive way? How can the lawyers help with that? How can they volunteer their time to, um, to sit in and act the special masters to help cases move, help make decisions on behalf of the court to the judges will be busy and, and sit pro tem. Because lawyers can be appointed by the court, take an open sit down and have the same powers any judge that was appointed or elected, um, because under the authority of the most courts, they can sit pro tem to do that. Experience lawyers should all volunteer to do that to help the courts. And then we're going to, the biggest problem they're going to have that is, are we going to have rooms to, to, to, to do the trials and bench trials? That shouldn't be a problem. Jury trials? I don't know, you know, I've actually visualized that how do you see the jury? You don't put it in little plastic cocoons. That would be stifling and suffocating and be horrible. So maybe we put it in the back of the room where the gallery usually sits and spread them all out and we as lawyers would be trying the case to the back of the room. As opposed to the judge would be behind us, you know, and when the witness may be stood up, I mean, we got to think fresh. Yeah. We got to think about how we can do this and have it still be safe, but it's to be a good system, you know. I agree. I agree. Very good. A couple, I just have a couple like sort of life lessen questions that you've probably have some insight over your career that I like to ask, but before, is there anything else about the book that, you know, your career or or our current legal landscape, sort of the topics that we've covered that you wanted to, do you want it to speak about? Did we cover everything or? Oh, no, I think we've, we said a lot of, I think that could be talked about it. Yeah, but I think we know how high points. Yeah. Okay. Good. Very good. I appreciate that. And thank, thank you. The one question I like to ask everyone is a lesson that you would tell your younger self across your career that would help you get to where you are a little bit quicker. Oh, how would I get to where I am quicker? Yeah. Or it doesn't have to be quicker. That's probably the wrong word, but just just think of it as a lesson that you would tell yourself after after your entire career that somebody who's listening could take in and sort of implement right now like a some wise words, I guess, is the best way to put it. Yeah, I think the thing that that I would say to young lawyers and to young people that are starting out in any business context is that there is a, and I have mentored many young lawyers along the way and my son is a lawyer with us and I am mentoring him, which is a wonderful lucky experience for me. And so what I, what I think about I think the most important salient thing I can say is you know, you don't have to approach your, your attack in the world in a competitive adversarial way. You can accomplish as much or more, usually a lot more by approaching things in a way that tries to bring people together in whatever's going on, try not to become an odds with the person that you're dealing with. Who's your competitor for one thing? And in our field, it's the guy on the other side, you're adversary. In business, it's the people you're competing with to sell something or you know, there's lots of ways to go about things that don't involve knocking heads. And it takes young people a while to get that and I think the sooner you get it and the sooner you learn how to work around that and come back to how can we do this in a way that benefits in both of us? How can we do this in a way that is not negative? There's so many aspects of business life and all different walks of business life where that is an important concept that gets you so much farther down the road. And it also makes you feel better and makes them very good. That's a good one. I haven't heard that before, but it's very good. Oh, I have one more thing for you. I have one more thing. Where would you or where do you go to learn and grow? Like you have a book, a podcast, an audible, what's your go-to right now that you would suggest somebody go to to read or learn? I am. This is not a non-fiction. It can be a creative fictional work. You mentioned you like legal fiction. There's something that it has inspired you and there's lessons that you could pull out of that. Well, I do so much mass-agreting in the work I do that I don't have time and that's a terrible shame because I lose out by not going to those places to do that. But where I go is I go to my colleagues. I go to other people I know and respect and I talk with them and I raise subjects and I play the devil's advocate and I listen to what they say because in the end many of the best ideas of the world are just the synthesis of previous ideas, other people's ideas. If you put two or three good ideas together, then you get a wonderful new idea. That's my main source. Always has been in working on my trial lawn, my cases and how to do things and working on business aspects and in my personal life and how to deal with my children when they were adolescents and all that kind of stuff. That's how I've done it. This in terms of reading, yeah, in terms of reading, for fiction reading, I have really, I found a fellow by the name of Peter May who's a English author who wrote a great series of trilogy about the Hebrides. I think he's a marvelous. It's a mystery. We've done it, but it's a marvelous useful language and interestingly enough, I haven't read it yet. He just republished a book about a pandemic in London and I'm kind of looking forward to reading that because he's a very good author. Very good. If people want to go find acts of a mission, I'm sure they can go to Amazon but any other places they can connect with you, reach out to you, social media, websites, that kind of thing. Oh yeah, we have Facebook, Instagram, we have all that and LinkedIn. It's in all those medias. I have to tell you, I am a technologic genius, of course, being in my 70s. I don't know anything. I have wonderful young people that are teaching me about this, but those are great places to go and of course Amazon and my son actually works for Amazon as an HR department in the East and Seattle and it's sheltering in place for longer than all of us. Yeah, I'm just looking now. If you go to Amazon, if you type in James Buswick, I know you can go by Jim, but if you type in James Buswick, I just Google that you have Amazon, you have Goodreads.com, you have Simon and Schuster, Post Hill Press, Audible. It's all there, so just, you know, that's probably the best way for people to find it. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you. I appreciate the chat. Thank you. There's been fun. Yeah, thank you very much. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of The Success Story Podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, IHeartRadio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. 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