Monday Mentors with Austin Trial Lawyer Tom Jacob

By Daniel Hare | September 14, 2020

Tom Jacob, trial lawyer with Whitehurst, Harkness, Brees, Cheng, Alsaffar, Higginbotham, and Jacob, PLLC in Austin, joins us on today's show! Tom talks about Zoom trials, the Feres Doctrine, outlining before you write, and lots of recommended tools!

COVID Update (Recorded July 30, 2020)

Finished off a federal bench trial by Zoom; had one final witness as COVID hit, so earlier this summer the judge/parties went ahead with the final witness by Zoom to close the trial.
Had been doing a lot of remote depos pre-COVID so they were prepared when that ramped up
- He built an app to use with Zoom to quickly pull up case files documents, annotate them, and display them
  - His partners screenshare PDFs on their screen
- Lots of hearings by Zoom too; probably more now than ever because it is so much more convenient and easy to get the parties together
Looking forward to the Travis County pilot program; jury trial much trickier
- Very easy for jurors to get distracted, especially for longer trials
Lots of time/cost savings

His practice/firm

He practices mostly in federal court representing veterans and military service members against the U.S. government in personal injury and medical malpractice cases.
- Examples: catastrophic brain injury in a child; building fell on client; Sutherland Springs mass shooting case
Gets clients by referrals, being active in the community, writing/publishing, and getting found on Google
For 50 years active duty military haven't been able to sue the government for medical malpractice / personal injury because of the Feres Doctrine, judge made law that barred these types of claims, but Congress recently passed a law to counter that doctrine. Now these military members can bring an administrative claim (still cannot sue).
- Not perfect since it is the agency you are suing that is making the determination, but it is something
- New law just went into effect, and the agencies are passing the regulations right now
Congress is also working on COVID liability provisions that could impact their practice and whether their clients can bring claims if it is written broadly
- Odd because most of the lawsuits being brought due to COVID are not tort-lawsuits, so immunity from torts doesn't align. Most lawsuits are employment, evictions, etc.
- As of September 11, this Safe to Work Act, Senate Bill 4317, has not yet made its way through Congress.

Advice for lawyers in practice

No matter where you are on the drafting ladder, turn your draft in ready to file
- While he was clerking with a firm during law school, he wrote a motion that the partner approved of, but criticized him for not filling in the partner's bar number to the signature block.
- Even if you know it is going to go through multiple revisions and multiple people
If you don't know something, ask. Don't want to ask the partner who assigned the work? Ask a paralegal or associate.
When you are writing, you should always outline first
- Always knew this but didn't put it into practice until more recently
- Thought it was outdated
- Now he outlines everything
- Uses an entirely separate application (OmniOutliner) where he outlines (focus is on substance)
- When you get to the prose piece, you don't have to worry about the substance and can focus on the prose/writing

Advice to lawyers who are job seeking

As a lawyer you are a professional writer, which includes being a professional publisher (understand how layout/design impact substance)
Be able to hold the conversation in an interview

Rapid Fire Questions

Thanks again to Tom Jacob for joining us on the show!