There are some lessons you learn in law school. There are others you learn because a case comes along and decides, rather rudely, that you are going to learn them the hard way. My first hung jury was one of the latter. I was a prosecutor, and the case involved an aggravated sexual assault of a child. It was serious, complicated, emotionally difficult, and, as it turned out, educational in ways I did not fully appreciate at the time. A hung jury is not the result anyone in a courtroom sets out to achieve. When it happens, you naturally start picking apart what happened, what you missed, what you could have done differently, and whether the outcome might have changed if you had approached something another way. I did exactly that. Then I did something that has probably served me better throughout my career than any clever courtroom technique ever could have. I listened.
Sometimes the Most Valuable Lessons Come After the Trial
After the trial, I reached out to jurors who were willing to talk with me. I wanted to understand what they had heard, what they had focused on, and where my approach had fallen short. That required something lawyers are not always famous for doing: being quiet long enough to hear an answer we might not particularly enjoy. Lawyers spend an enormous amount of time talking. We make arguments, ask questions, explain statutes, challenge evidence, negotiate, persuade, and occasionally use far too many words when five would have done the job. We are trained to advocate. We are not always trained to sit back and wonder whether the person across from us understood what we were actually trying to communicate.
What I learned from those conversations changed my approach to voir dire dramatically. I learned to address the subjects I knew the other side would eventually touch before they had an opportunity to define those subjects for the jury. That does not mean giving away your entire trial strategy during jury selection. It means paying attention. It means understanding what people are telling you, rather than merely waiting for your turn to speak. It means recognizing that jurors bring their own experiences, assumptions, concerns, and questions into a courtroom. You cannot simply erase those things because you would prefer everyone to arrive as a blank slate. People are people. Apparently, this remains true even inside a courtroom.
Listening Is More Than Hearing Words
There is an important distinction between hearing someone and actually listening to them. Hearing is passive. Listening requires work. You have to pay attention to what is being said, how it is being said, what is not being said, and sometimes what the person is struggling to say. That applies to jurors, witnesses, opposing counsel, judges, colleagues, and especially clients.
Clients are often coming into a lawyer’s office on what may be one of the worst days of their lives. They may be frightened, angry, embarrassed, confused, or simply overwhelmed by a legal process they have never encountered before. They do not necessarily need a lawyer to immediately give them a ten-minute lecture on every possible legal theory. Sometimes they need someone to stop talking and let them explain what happened. You cannot properly understand a problem you have not actually heard. That sounds obvious, but obvious things have an irritating habit of being forgotten when everyone is busy.
Trial Work Has a Way of Exposing Assumptions
One of the reasons I value courtroom experience is that trials have a way of exposing assumptions. You can prepare extensively, know the law, understand your evidence, and believe you have anticipated every argument. Then someone says something you did not expect, a witness remembers something differently than you thought they would, or a juror reacts to a question in a way that reminds you that human beings are not spreadsheets.
Preparation still matters. In fact, listening made me a better believer in preparation, not a lesser one. The better prepared you are, the more capable you are of paying attention when something changes. If you are scrambling to remember your next question, you are not listening to the answer you just received. If you are so committed to your argument that you cannot recognize a weakness in it, you are not really evaluating your case. Preparation gives you room to think. Listening gives you information worth thinking about.
The Lesson Has Followed Me Into Private Practice
Years after that first hung jury, I still think about what it taught me. My practice now includes criminal defense, general civil litigation, family law, probate, and trust and estate planning. The subject matter changes, but the need to listen does not. Every client brings a different story and a different set of circumstances. There is no universal script that works for every person or every legal problem.
As a solo practitioner, I handle my own legal research, drafting, strategy, and court appearances. That makes listening even more important. There is no one else sitting in the next office who heard the client’s story and can fill in the missing pieces for me. My name is on the work, and I take that responsibility seriously.
I am still learning. I suspect I will be for the rest of my life. I have always described myself as a lover of perpetual learning and a work in progress, and I meant it. The older I get and the more experience I have, the less interested I become in pretending I have every answer. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is ask another question. Sometimes it is reading another source. Sometimes it is to reconsider your assumptions. And sometimes, particularly in a courtroom, the smartest thing you can do is stop talking and listen very carefully to what someone is actually telling you.
My first hung jury taught me that lesson. I am grateful it did.