The first time I spent a full day in court, I was astonished during noon recess to find that no one had considered lunch plans. Consequently, we spent most of the hour and fifteen minutes the judge allotted scrambling to accommodate everyone’s preferences and dietary restrictions rather than focusing on the afternoon’s arguments. No one enjoyed the meal.
The next time I spent a day in court, I placed our lunch order in advance and brought easy-to-eat snacks — which came in handy when our morning session ran long.
I call this “trial hospitality.” While it might seem like a frivolity, accommodating creature comforts on busy court days makes a big difference. A little treat can have an outsized impact on your mood. Once I got a Diet Pepsi for a friend in the middle of a grueling evidentiary hearing. The look that fell upon his face when he took the first sip was one of the most profound expressions of relief I have ever seen.
A plaintiffs lawyer I admire knows one key to keeping his team focused is ensuring they are fed and refreshed. For big trials, he books a conference room at a hotel near the courthouse and transforms it into a war room stocked with retail boxes of snacks and beverages from Costco. The place looks like a bodega. There is always a ridiculous supply of Red Bull. Everyone helps themselves to whatever they need as they work around the clock.
These days, when I go to trial, I bring hospitality boxes for the team. It's filled with an assortment of nonperishable snacks that are good for a pick-me-up: beef jerky for protein, chocolate-covered almonds for quick energy, mints to refresh, and Advil for enduring a long afternoon in hard wooden chairs. We’ve nicknamed this hodgepodge of portable comfort foods and headache relievers “Trial Mix.”
We devote countless hours to preparing for trial: printing exhibits, ensuring the tech works, orchestrating travel for experts, organizing trial binders – the list goes on. All these tasks are important, but none is more critical than keeping your trial team from getting cranky and running out of gas during marathon days in court. It doesn’t take much effort to improve the trial experience and energize your entire team when they need to be at their best.
Brilliant!!!