The Most Important Thing

Judges don't like to be appealed.

Most will enforce the rules, as good umpires do at baseball games and referees at football games. That's what they are paid to do. That's all they are supposed to do. They aren't supposed to help either side. They aren't there to answer your questions. They are there to enforce the official rules so both sides participate on a level playing field.

When they don't do their job, their decisions must be appealed.

They don't like to be appealed!

Keeping this uppermost in your mind is the key to winning.

If a judge knows your evidence and winning arguments are securely in the court's official record in writing, and what's been said at hearings or trial has been accurately recorded and can be committed to a written transcript for the appellate court to see, he is far more likely to rule in your favor than if those things are missing. He knows when you've prepared your case for appeal by making sure the court's record reflects what's happened at each stage of the proceeding, and he knows when you have not.

You must always be preparing your case for appeal ... if you want to win.

You must make certain the judge knows you will win on appeal if he rules against you on anything that might cause you to lose.

Many lawyers never figure this out.

They see actors on TV strutting about courtrooms in expensive suits, hovering over the jury, threatening witnesses, and pulling last minute surprises. Many think their "performance" is what wins, or buttering up the judge, or using long words nobody understands, or waiting until the last moment to introduce new evidence they'd been hiding from their opponent.

That’s not how you win in real life.

Preparing the "record for appeal" is how you win, not burying your opponent with paperwork or persuading the judge to see things your way or making a spectacle of yourself for the jury's entertainment.

You win by knowing what facts and law control the judge, facts and law the appellate court will force the judge to honor, then using every step in the proceedings to ensure that all those facts and law get in the record and that your opponent is prevented from introducing any facts or law forbidden by the rules of evidence and procedure. (More about this in later classes.)

Your talk or the testimony of witnesses means absolutely nothing if the words do not end up in writing filed with the court clerk so, if you lose, you can show the appellate court where the judge failed to do his job of courtroom umpire preventing the rules from being broken.

Written words in the court file win court cases, words that can show an appellate court that you should have won, if you lose in the lower trial court.

I’ve won court cases for years and showed tens of thousands how to win, and all of it comes down to this simple truth: Judges don't like to be appealed.

Court cases are won with written words that are filed with the court clerk so they can be sent "up" on appeal if the judge fails to do his job.

Without a writtenrecord you cannot appeal. Without a writtenrecord the appellate court has nothing to consider. Trial judges know this. If you don’t make a winning writtenrecord, the trial judge will know you cannot win on appeal, and he will decide the case any way he wishes, knowing you can’t win on appeal.

There are many ways to get your evidence and legal arguments safely into the written record, and there are ways to prevent your opponent from getting his evidence and arguments into the record.

Lawyers who don't understand this are easy to defeat.

Judges hate to be appealed!

So, use the court to learn how to: