The Masters
The advocates, judges, strategists, and writers who did it best, and the one thing a trial lawyer takes from each of them.
Charles Hamilton Houston
He never argued Brown v. Board and died four years before it was decided, and he is the reason it was won. Read Houston for how a lawyer picks the ground and wins the case years before trial.
Louis Brandeis
The people’s lawyer and the inventor of the fact-driven brief. Read Brandeis for the lesson that the record is the argument, and that the best prepared lawyer in the room wins before he stands up.
Lisa Blatt
A San Angelo kid who has argued more Supreme Court cases than any woman in history. Read her for what she does before she stands up.
Constance Baker Motley
She wrote the first draft of Brown, argued ten cases at the Supreme Court and won nine, and became the first Black woman on the federal bench. Read her for the preparation.
Bryan Garner
The Texan who edits the dictionary the courts read. Bryan Garner made plain English a discipline for lawyers, and wrote the argument book with Scalia.
Benjamin Cardozo
One of the greatest judges and finest legal writers in American history, read for the courtroom: MacPherson and Palsgraf, the modern law of duty and foreseeability, and the proof that the plainest writing is the most persuasive.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
The strategist who taught the world’s navies to think, read for the courtroom: command of the sea by concentration of force, and the discipline of massing your strength at the one point that commands everything else.
Erwin Griswold
Dean of Harvard Law and Solicitor General, read for the craft: he made the government’s best case to suppress the Pentagon Papers, lost, and had the rarer courage to admit years later he had been wrong.
Quintilian
Rome’s great teacher of persuasion, read for the courtroom: the ideal advocate is first a good man and only then a good speaker, because a jury weighs the lawyer before it weighs the argument.
George Kennan
The strategist of containment and the long game, read for the courtroom: patience built on deep knowledge of the adversary, steady pressure at the points that matter, and the discipline to fight only where it counts.
John Boyd
The fighter pilot who changed the art of war, read for the courtroom: the OODA loop, winning by deciding faster and orienting deeper than the other side, until their moves arrive a beat too late.
Archibald Cox
The lawyer who would not back down, read for the craft: Solicitor General, Harvard teacher for half a century, and the Watergate prosecutor fired for insisting that not even a president is above the law.
Percy Foreman
Texas’s greatest criminal defense lawyer of his era, read for the craft: roughly fifteen hundred capital cases, one client lost to the executioner, and the plainest principle there is, that everyone is entitled to a defense.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Before the bench, the architect of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, read for the craft: winning equality case by careful case, representing men to move an all-male Court, and the discipline of the incremental campaign.
Ted Olson
One of the great Supreme Court advocates of his era, read for the craft: appellate argument as a conversation under fire, total command of the record, and loyalty to the argument over the side.
Racehorse Haynes
Houston’s greatest criminal defense lawyer, read for the courtroom: the accused is entitled to a real defense, total preparation behind the theater, and every independent reason the other side loses.
Joe Jamail
Houston’s King of Torts. The greatest plaintiff’s trial lawyer Texas ever produced, read for the courtroom: the jury as the great equalizer, total preparation, and plain talk to twelve Texans.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Out of the trenches convinced the frontal assault was murder. The indirect approach read for the courtroom: do not charge the strong point, find the line they did not expect.
Niccolo Machiavelli
A slur for five hundred years, and a libel on a careful man. The Prince read for the courtroom: the effectual truth, fortune and skill, and seeing the case you actually have.
Miyamoto Musashi
Sixty duels, none lost, then a book. The Book of Five Rings read for the courtroom: perceive what the eye cannot see, feel the rhythm, keep no favorite weapon.
Robert Greene
The author of Mastery, read for the courtroom: greatness is not a gift but a process. The Life's Task, the long apprenticeship, and the craft finally made intuitive.
Carl von Clausewitz
The strategist of On War, read for the courtroom: friction, the fog of uncertainty, the center of gravity, and war as the continuation of policy.
Irving Younger
The teacher behind the Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination. Control the witness, make your point, and have the discipline to stop.
Moe Levine
The New York master of damages. You do not try the wound, you try the whole person.
Stephen Zamora
My dean and my teacher, and one of the great scholars of Mexican and international law. He taught that the law is a form of respect.
Joseph Sanders
My torts professor. He taught that an expert’s opinion is only as good as the science under it, and helped write the book judges reach for.
Jack McGehee
A Houston trial lawyer who tried hundreds of cases and still made time to teach the rest of us how.
Edward Prado
Prosecutor, trial judge, appeals judge, ambassador. He served presidents of both parties, and everyone knew he was fair.
Gerry Spence
The country lawyer in the buckskin jacket who never lost a criminal trial. He won by refusing to be anyone but himself.
Clarence Darrow
The most famous defense lawyer America ever produced. He won by defending the human being, not just the client.
Edward Bennett Williams
He defended the most hated men in America and kept winning. The lesson was never charm. It was the work.
Earl Rogers
Before there was a fictional lawyer who always won, there was a real one in Los Angeles. The cross-examination legend who proved his cases with evidence in hand.
Daniel Webster
He defended a small college against a state that wanted to swallow it, and won with one sentence about love, after he had already won on the law.
John Adams
The most hated men in Boston needed a lawyer, and the best one in town took the case. Facts are stubborn things.
Aristotle
Every closing runs on a system a Greek wrote down. Ethos, pathos, logos, and why lawyers use a third of it.
Learned Hand
The judge who turned fault into arithmetic, and never made the Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall
Most lawyers try to win the case in front of them. He was winning the case ten years out.
Cicero
The greatest advocate the ancient world produced. The direct address, the concession, the killing pause.
Barnum
The showman who taught America how to look. A trial lawyer’s debt to the master of attention.
Orwell
He never practiced law, and he wrote the best legal writing manual in the language.
Jackson
A country lawyer opened the most serious trial in history with plain sentences. They held.
Barbara Jordan
Fifth Ward, Houston. Thirteen minutes in 1974, and the country sat down.
Sun Tzu
Six thousand words, twenty-five centuries old, still running the courtroom.
Darrow
Twelve hours on his feet, and nobody left. The defender completes the triad.
Lincoln
The best closing argument in American history took two minutes.
Scalia
Scouting report: the most quoted writer the Court ever produced.