The Trial Lawyer Nation Podcast: A Cycle of Learning and Sharing
By Michael Cowen
I
started the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast back in January 2018. Since then, I have had the pleasure of interviewing some of the best minds in the legal world, including David Ball, Nick Rowley, and Keith Mitnik. It has been a great opportunity for growth on my end, and its reach has extended far beyond what I expected. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, it became clear I had to shift my focus. This pandemic has affected almost everything we do as lawyers, and I felt an immediate need to use my podcast as a resource. Our episodes have covered topics our legal industry is discussing regularly; and reaching six months of social distancing guidelines, the conversation has now turned to the virtual, partially virtual, or socially distanced with PPE jury trial (which my firm has agreed to do in two cases) and research into the changes in juror mindset because of this.
Working Remote and Staying Afloat Right after the initial stay-at-home orders for San Antonio hit on March 23rd, I recorded an episode with fellow trial lawyer Jacob Leibowitz, titled “COVID-19: Working Remote & Staying Afloat.” The episode focused on adapting a law firm to function in an ever-changing crisis situation. We talked about technology, remote work, cash flow, and employee morale—all aspects that we had to figure out quickly. Looking back on that episode now, we really had no idea what the extent of this pandemic would be, but we knew we had to find a way to 10 San Antonio Lawyer | sabar.org
keep moving our cases—and that’s what we did. Jacob was kind enough to create guides for how to use Zoom for depositions and mediations. My firm put together video tutorials for clients and employees to learn the technology, and we shared these videos with law firms across Texas. Jacob and I discussed the pros and cons of Zoom, and how to ease the concerns of mediators and defense counsel who originally resisted the idea of remote mediations, so that cases would keep progressing. Shifting our firm of thirty employees to a completely remote workforce in a matter of days was no easy task. We had to purchase company laptops for employees who did not already have a laptop, while mitigating the challenges of server capacity and cloud migration. We discussed the hurdles of working from home and how we had been adapting at that point. Jacob’s message still holds true, “You need to go full force into this because you’re going to end up learning a whole lot, and you need to.” In March, no one knew how long this would last, but lawyers needed to adjust rapidly to protect their clients’ interests and sustain cash flow. My initial method for maintaining employee morale was relatively simple—overcommunicate. Before the pandemic hit, we could pop into each other’s offices or bounce ideas off each other in the hallway. Overnight, these options were eliminated. To combat this, we started holding daily, weekly, and monthly Zoom meetings with our teams. While we are all suffering from serious Zoom fatigue now, these meetings continue to be an integral part of our remote work strategy
