Professional development for lawyers who read the fine print
Nine competency-based courses across advocacy, professional responsibility, and client counseling — anchored in the legal dramas that get the ethics questions right. Each one is five modules.
Competency track
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Advocacy & Litigation
Case theory, examination, and courtroom judgment — the craft of persuasion under rules of evidence and real time pressure.
Trial Advocacy, Narrative & Evidence
Case Theory: Building and Trying a Persuasive Case
The Good Wife stages more competent litigation than almost anything on television: a firm that wins on theory, sequencing, and the exhibit nobody expected. This course dissects those trials into the transferable craft of building a case a jury can hold in mind.
State your current case in one sentence a juror would repeat in deliberation. If you cannot, you do not yet have a theory.
What you'll be able to do
- Draft a case theory that governs every tactical decision in the file
- Structure direct examination that builds facts rather than recites them
- Cross-examine with controlled, closed questions and a defined objective
- Sequence evidence and witnesses for cumulative persuasive effect
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Theory, Theme, and Story
Anchor: The firm builds a defense
- Case theory versus theme versus spin
- Narrative structure a jury retains
- Testing a theory against the worst fact
Module 2. Direct Examination
Anchor: The sympathetic witness
- Witness preparation ethics and limits
- Open questions, pacing, and exhibits
- Rehabilitating a shaky witness
Module 3. Cross-Examination
Anchor: The expert under pressure
- Closed questions and control
- Impeachment mechanics
- Knowing when to sit down
Module 4. Evidence and Motion Practice
Anchor: The suppressed exhibit
- Admissibility strategy before trial
- Objections that protect the record
- Motions in limine as trial architecture
Module 5. Opening, Closing, and the Jury
Anchor: The verdict
- Primacy and recency in practice
- Arguing inference without argument in opening
- Reading a jury and adjusting mid-trial
Criminal Defense Practice & Investigation
Running the Docket: Investigation, Strategy & Criminal Defense Practice
A defense practice run out of a car is a study in triage: which case gets the investigator, which client gets the hard conversation, and which plea offer is genuinely the best available outcome. This course treats defense work as strategy and operations, not just courtroom performance.
Of your open files, which one are you avoiding — and what does the client not yet know because of it?
What you'll be able to do
- Build an investigation plan proportionate to the charge and the resources
- Evaluate and communicate a plea offer without steering the client
- Manage a caseload with defensible triage and documentation
- Work effectively with investigators and expert witnesses
Syllabus▾
Module 1. First Contact and Intake
Anchor: The new client
- Scope, fees, and engagement letters
- Early case assessment
- Preserving evidence and witnesses immediately
Module 2. Investigation
Anchor: The investigator's findings
- Directing an investigator and defining the theory to test
- Discovery review at scale
- Brady, disclosure, and what the file does not contain
Module 3. The Plea Decision
Anchor: The offer on the table
- Advising without deciding for the client
- Sentencing exposure and collateral consequences
- Documenting the advice given
Module 4. Trial Preparation Under Constraint
Anchor: Trial in three weeks
- Prioritizing preparation when time is short
- Witness sequencing and exhibit management
- Contingency planning for the ruling that goes against you
Module 5. Practice Management
Anchor: The car as an office
- Caseload limits and competence obligations
- Trust accounting and fee disputes
- Sustainable practice and burnout in defense work
Judicial Ethics, Discretion & Systemic Consequence
The Judge Who Chose: Judgment, Consequence & the Limits of Discretion
A respected judge makes one protective decision and spends a season discovering how many other people it damages. The series is the strongest available case study in second-order consequences, recusal, and the moment discretion becomes rationalization.
Name the decision you would make differently if you had to publish your reasoning alongside it.
What you'll be able to do
- Identify conflicts and recusal triggers before they become public
- Trace second- and third-order consequences of a discretionary decision
- Recognize the rationalization patterns that precede serious misconduct
- Design personal and institutional checks on your own discretion
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Discretion and Its Boundaries
Anchor: The first decision
- Where rules end and judgment begins
- Discretion documented versus discretion assumed
- Public confidence as a legal interest
Module 2. Conflicts and Recusal
Anchor: The case he should not hear
- Actual conflict versus appearance of impropriety
- Disclosure practice and timing
- Handling pressure to stay on a matter
Module 3. Second-Order Consequences
Anchor: The cover-up widens
- Systems thinking applied to a single ruling
- Who bears the cost of your discretion
- Reversibility as a decision criterion
Module 4. The Slide
Anchor: Each subsequent choice
- Rationalization patterns in professional misconduct
- Sunk costs and escalating commitment
- Off-ramps and who can offer one
Module 5. Institutional Safeguards
Anchor: The system responds
- Peer review, transparency, and audit in courts
- Reporting obligations regarding colleagues
- Restoring trust after institutional failure
Ethics & Professional Responsibility
Conflicts, confidentiality, candor, and the slow slide that ends careers. Written for the moments that never look like ethics violations at the time.
Legal Ethics, Candor & Disciplinary Risk
Slippin' Jimmy: Professional Responsibility and the Gradual Slide
Almost nothing Jimmy McGill does in his first season is disbarrable. That is exactly the point. This course walks the sequence — shortcuts, favors, small deceptions, then a document nobody was supposed to see — as an ethics curriculum built on the way real discipline cases actually begin.
Which shortcut in your practice would be hardest to explain to a disciplinary panel with a straight face?
What you'll be able to do
- Spot the early-stage conduct that precedes most disciplinary complaints
- Apply candor, confidentiality, and conflict rules to ambiguous fact patterns
- Handle client confidences when a colleague or family member is involved
- Build practice habits and consultation routes that create off-ramps
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Where It Starts
Anchor: The document shop
- Competence, diligence, and the pressure to cut time
- Advertising, solicitation, and client development limits
- Small deceptions and their compounding
Module 2. Candor and the Tribunal
Anchor: The altered filing
- Duty of candor and correcting the record
- Fabricated and shaded evidence
- Withdrawal obligations when a client insists
Module 3. Confidentiality and Privilege
Anchor: Family and firm
- Scope of confidentiality beyond privilege
- Inadvertent disclosure and shared spaces
- Exceptions and the narrow crime-fraud path
Module 4. Conflicts of Interest
Anchor: Two clients, one interest
- Current, former, and imputed conflicts
- Informed consent and waiver limits
- Screening and firm-level systems
Module 5. Discipline, Recovery, and Culture
Anchor: The bar hearing
- How complaints proceed in practice
- Self-reporting and remediation
- Firm cultures that catch problems early
Supervisory Duties & Firm Governance
Firm Culture: Supervision, Credentials & Institutional Integrity
An entire firm quietly maintains a fiction about one associate's credentials, and every partner who learns of it becomes complicit in a different way. Suits is therefore an unusually clean vehicle for supervisory duties, reporting obligations, and what firm culture does to individual judgment.
If a junior lawyer at your firm were doing something clearly wrong, how many people would already know before anyone acted?
What you'll be able to do
- Apply supervisory and subordinate-lawyer rules to real firm scenarios
- Build supervision systems that catch competence problems early
- Evaluate reporting obligations when a colleague's misconduct surfaces
- Assess how compensation and culture shape ethical behavior at a firm
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Supervisory Duties
Anchor: The associate's first file
- Responsibility for the work of others
- Reasonable supervision in practice
- Nonlawyer assistants and vendors
Module 2. Competence and Credentials
Anchor: The secret
- Unauthorized practice and misrepresentation
- Verification systems that are not insulting
- Duties on discovering a colleague's deception
Module 3. Reporting a Colleague
Anchor: Who knows what
- Mandatory reporting thresholds
- Internal escalation before external reporting
- Retaliation and protecting reporters
Module 4. Incentives and Culture
Anchor: The billable pressure
- Compensation systems and ethical drift
- Billing integrity and time entry
- Client pressure as an ethical stressor
Module 5. Governance That Holds
Anchor: Rebuilding the firm
- Ethics infrastructure at small and large firms
- Conflicts systems and intake discipline
- Training that changes behavior, not just attendance
Duty of Zealous Representation & System Realities
Reasonable Doubt: Duty, Zeal & the Client You Cannot Read
The Night Of follows a single case from arrest through verdict and shows every actor in the system optimizing for something other than the truth. It is a demanding, precise anchor for zealous representation, client autonomy, and the professional obligations that survive a bad system.
You do not know whether your client did it. What in your representation should change with that answer, and what should not?
What you'll be able to do
- Represent a client zealously without requiring belief in their innocence
- Respect client autonomy on decisions the client owns
- Recognize how bail, charging, and plea structures shape outcomes before trial
- Meet investigative and disclosure duties when resources are inadequate
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Arrest to Arraignment
Anchor: The first night
- Custodial interrogation and early access to counsel
- Bail decisions and their downstream effect
- The first client meeting
Module 2. Zeal Without Belief
Anchor: The defense takes the case
- Duty of zealous advocacy and its limits
- Handling a client who may be lying to you
- Emotional distance as a professional skill
Module 3. Client Autonomy
Anchor: The plea offer
- Decisions reserved to the client
- Counseling versus steering
- Capacity, pressure, and custody conditions
Module 4. Systemic Forces
Anchor: Inside the jail
- Charging discretion and structural bias
- Resource inequality between parties
- Duty to the system alongside duty to the client
Module 5. Verdict and After
Anchor: The outcome
- Post-trial obligations and appeals
- Living with outcomes you did not control
- Advocacy for system reform as professional duty
Client Counseling & Negotiation
Counseling clients who will not listen, negotiating without leverage, and managing the relationship that makes or breaks the representation.
Negotiation Strategy & Leverage
Leverage: High-Stakes Negotiation for Lawyers
Billions is a sustained negotiation seminar disguised as a drama: leverage discovered, manufactured, and misread by people who mistake aggression for strategy. This course extracts the discipline underneath — interests, alternatives, and the settlement most clients should take.
In your current negotiation, what is your client's actual alternative if talks fail — and have you said it out loud to them?
What you'll be able to do
- Analyze leverage through interests, alternatives, and information asymmetry
- Prepare a negotiation with defined reservation points and concession plans
- Counsel a client toward a rational settlement against their emotions
- Recognize and counter hard-bargaining and pressure tactics
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Interests Beneath Positions
Anchor: The first standoff
- Positional versus interest-based bargaining
- Diagnosing what each side actually needs
- Information gathering before the first offer
Module 2. Leverage and Alternatives
Anchor: The threat that lands
- BATNA, WATNA, and reservation points
- Manufacturing and neutralizing leverage
- Ethical limits on threats
Module 3. Sequencing and Concessions
Anchor: The deal takes shape
- Anchoring, framing, and first offers
- Concession patterns that signal weakness
- Multi-issue trades and value creation
Module 4. Counseling the Client
Anchor: The client who wants war
- Expected-value framing for settlement
- Managing ego, publicity, and revenge motives
- Documenting settlement authority
Module 5. Closing and Enforcement
Anchor: Signing day
- Term sheets, drafting risk, and ambiguity
- Relationship preservation for repeat parties
- Post-deal compliance and dispute clauses
Client Counseling & Relationship Management
The Difficult Client: Counseling, Boundaries & Loyalty
Damages is about what a client relationship becomes when boundaries erode: loyalty confused with obedience, information used as currency, and a lawyer who can no longer tell whose interests she is serving. It anchors a practical course in counseling, expectation setting, and independence.
Which client would be most surprised to hear you say no this week?
What you'll be able to do
- Set engagement expectations that prevent most later disputes
- Deliver unwelcome advice to a client who does not want it
- Maintain professional independence with a dominant or emotional client
- Withdraw from a representation properly when the relationship fails
Syllabus▾
Module 1. The Engagement
Anchor: The first meeting
- Scope, expectations, and communication cadence
- Fee conversations without discomfort
- Screening clients you should decline
Module 2. Advice They Do Not Want
Anchor: The strategy disagreement
- Framing risk in the client's terms
- Written advice as protection for both parties
- Handling clients who shop for a different answer
Module 3. Boundaries and Independence
Anchor: Too close to the case
- Professional distance and personal entanglement
- Client pressure to bend rules
- Signals that independence is slipping
Module 4. Conflict Within the Client
Anchor: Competing factions
- Identifying who the client actually is in an organization
- Constituent conflicts and up-the-ladder reporting
- Joint representations and their fault lines
Module 5. Ending the Relationship
Anchor: Withdrawal
- Grounds and mechanics of withdrawal
- File transfer and continuing duties
- Post-representation confidentiality and conflicts
Client Trust, Plaintiff Practice & Resource Asymmetry
Plaintiffs' Side: Client Trust, Mass Claims & Uneven Fights
A burned-out lawyer takes on an opponent with unlimited resources and clients who have every reason to distrust lawyers. Goliath makes the plaintiff-side realities concrete: earning trust in communities, communicating across many claimants, and litigating when the other side can simply outspend you.
Your client group has forty people and one shared outcome. Who speaks for them, and how did that get decided?
What you'll be able to do
- Build trust with clients who are skeptical of the legal system
- Communicate consistently across a large or dispersed claimant group
- Litigate strategically against a materially better-resourced opponent
- Manage aggregate settlement ethics and allocation conversations
Syllabus▾
Module 1. Earning Trust
Anchor: The first community meeting
- Listening before advising
- Plain-language explanation of process and timeline
- Trust with clients previously failed by institutions
Module 2. Many Clients, One Case
Anchor: The claimant list
- Communication systems for large groups
- Managing divergent expectations and outcomes
- Confidentiality within a claimant group
Module 3. Fighting Asymmetry
Anchor: Motion practice from a small office
- Choosing the fights worth funding
- Discovery leverage and proportionality
- Experts and financing realities
Module 4. Settlement Across a Group
Anchor: The offer
- Aggregate settlement rules and informed consent
- Allocation fairness and special masters
- Explaining a number that will disappoint someone
Module 5. Sustainability and Access
Anchor: After the verdict
- Contingency economics and case selection
- Burnout in public interest and plaintiff practice
- Turning a case into durable change
Bring this track to your firm or bar association
Firm retreats, associate academies, and ethics-hour series. Join the waitlist and tell us which track your lawyers need first.