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The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
Trial lawyers can be real people, too—and this podcast proves it. The Velvet Hammer™ is back, and this time, Karen Koehler isn’t going it alone. Known for her fearless advocacy, bold storytelling, and, yes, even the occasional backwards dress moment, Karen is teaming up with Mo Hamoudi, a lawyer, poet, and storyteller whose empathy and resilience add a whole new dynamic to the show.
Together, they’re pulling back the curtain on trial law, diving into bold topics, heartfelt stories, and the messy, hilarious moments that make trial lawyers human. This is an unscripted, raw, and fun take on life inside—and outside—the courtroom.
The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
Placing a Monetary Value on the Loss of a Good Life
Episode 30: Placing a Monetary Value on the Loss of a "Good Life"
What constitutes a “good life,” and what happens when catastrophic events forever change its course? Karen Koehler reads an essay she wrote at 17 about what makes a good life and reflects on how her definition has evolved.
Mo Hamoudi shares a deeply personal story from his senior year of high school about basketball, a mother battling cancer, and an abusive stepfather. His account shows how early life experiences shape our understanding of others' suffering and the meaning of resilience.
Joined by Mike Todd, they explore how life's highs and lows influence what we value and how trial lawyers translate that into damages for clients whose lives have been permanently altered.
The discussion becomes a masterclass in advocacy, with Karen demonstrating how to channel a client's humanity in front of a jury and build a narrative arc that resonates on emotional, moral, and human levels. They unpack the role of life care plans, general damages, and authentic storytelling, and examine the balance between honoring resilience and acknowledging profound loss.
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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State.
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Okay, okay, all right. What are we doing? What are we doing?
Karen Koehler :I have no idea what we were even talking about, so yesterday, by the way, we were at a firm baseball game at the Mariners and near the end of it, which was around 6, 630.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Karen Koehler :Moe, who's there with his wife, all told us that they just realized it was their anniversary. They had both forgotten. So Okay, wait, I'm calling you out. Did you get her flowers?
Mo Hamoudi :I did. I went and got really nice orchids. But you got to understand.
Karen Koehler :Wait, how nice is nice.
Mo Hamoudi :Like, really nice.
Karen Koehler :What does that mean? They're like pretty, how many orchids, were there Five in a pot planted? Okay, good, that's good. Yeah, yeah, they're very nice. Okay, first of all, wait, there's no excuse for this.
Mo Hamoudi :There is no excuse, but there is something about a relationship when you know we've been together 18 years wait, look at how he said that.
Karen Koehler :If you're watching on video, say that again. Show me the grimace. What grimace you did you did it.
Mo Hamoudi :You went 18 years no, I don't mean it like that. Okay, okay, well then?
Karen Koehler :Okay, wait, You're supposed to look loving oh okay, wait, okay, all right 18 wonderful 18 wonderful years.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay that we've been together and we just forget the dates, but maybe that's a positive thing.
Karen Koehler :That it's like timeless. Mike, was that positive? No, it wasn't positive.
Mike Todd:I'll say this, I'm coming up on my 30th anniversary.
Karen Koehler :Oh, wow.
Mike Todd:And I can't get away with forgetting it once. So I don't think that it's.
Karen Koehler :Thank you, I don't think so, and you've been thinking about what you're going to do for the anniversary, right?
Mike Todd:We already have. We've been around so long that, uh, we 30 is a milestone we don't always buy each other gifts, like we get each other gifts maybe once every five years or something like that, um, or if I want to do something, you know like, if we think of something that we're like, oh, they really want, we'll do that, then, like this year, we planned a trip in Europe together ahead of time, so we already have all our plans.
Karen Koehler :And, by the way, wait, wait, wait, let's compare this A trip in Europe versus. I forgot until the ball game was almost over and got her some flowers on the way home.
Mike Todd:Yeah, but come on, he's got 12 years to get back to where I'm at.
Karen Koehler :Oh my God, I thought you were defending him, I mean look, I always think in life there's a path to redemption. Basically, you should just stop talking.
Mo Hamoudi :No, by the way, my birthday gets forgotten every year because I share it very close to somebody else. It's December 27th, so I always get forgotten. People always are in the throes of celebrating Christmas.
Karen Koehler :But I don't like Do you see how he changes to a sob story about his own birthday. Okay, I'm in the doghouse.
Mo Hamoudi :What do you want to know?
Karen Koehler :I'm in the doghouse. Well, you're not in the doghouse and you're just like pushing me more into the doghouse. I'm not. I'm not.
Mo Hamoudi :I'm just.
Karen Koehler :Remember what we talked about yesterday.
Mo Hamoudi :What did I say about? Sorry, oh, you said a very good thing about sorry Put your sorry's in a sack. Well no, she said it's not an apology if you say I'm sorry, but so point well taken. It was a weak response by me.
Karen Koehler :Oh, you have to admit it, I will take it. Because someone told Mo sorry but and I'm like, yeah, you had me at sorry and then you lost me at the but.
Mo Hamoudi :That's a good point, well taken, it is All right. All right, what are we talking about?
Karen Koehler :Okay, well, we're talking about the good life.
Mo Hamoudi :The good life.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, so sometimes when Moe and I go on a walk, we ask each other questions like a profound question.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, we do.
Karen Koehler :Like why are you limping? Or you know what did you eat for dinner yesterday? But other times we ask these profound questions, and one of them was, I think if you could do one thing to make your life better, what would it be?
Mo Hamoudi :You know we'll ask stuff like that.
Karen Koehler :Yes, okay, going back to January 12, 1978, I wrote about what is the good life. Okay, and I thought we could talk about it.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :How do you know if you're experiencing a good life? Think about this when you can honestly say that you're as satisfied and content with your life as you want to be, then you have a good life. This is according to my 18-year-old. No, I was have a good life. This is according to my 18-year-old no, I was 17 years old self.
Karen Koehler :Because of everyone's different morals and goals in life, all people aren't going to have the same idea of what a good life is, so I can't come and say generally what a good life is. Instead, I have to tell you of my own views on the subject. To me, the good life represents my feelings on what I want out of life. It's my goal of having a totally fulfilled soul. In order for me to have such a life, I think these things need to be present. Number one happiness. Number two personal achievement. Number three self-satisfaction. Number four meaningful relationships with others. And number five contentment.
Karen Koehler :Interestingly, I did not put contributing to making the world a better place, which I think maybe that's tied up in personal achievement, but if I had to do it now, I would add in be more specific in contributing to making the world a better place. So happiness is important for me to have in a good life, because without joy, life would be a dull, boring and too helpless process. Can you imagine what it would be like if there was no happiness in your life? Depressing, I'd feel, so deadish. I mean, without happiness, what would you look forward to? Okay, then I have a high school example here which I'm not going to read to you.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :But I do want to talk about what makes a good life, and here's another reason I was thinking about that.
Mo Hamoudi :Let me see that. Can I see that please? I want to see it.
Karen Koehler :We represent.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, before we move on. I'm going to ask some questions.
Karen Koehler :Okay, but let me just tell you the other context of why I thought this was an interesting topic. We represent people whose lives have been turned upside down and they are no longer feeling like they're having a good life yeah in fact, we, we, we've had, you know, we have people that believe they've been betrayed by the government yeah, by the system.
Karen Koehler :their loved one has been killed, their claims have been disregarded, fought, they have been in terrible circumstances. Many people cannot make ends meet. Some people have to declare bankruptcy. Many people have to lose their homes, move in with their parents or anyone that they can find to help them. Other people, young people, end up in nursing homes for the rest of their lives, young like I. Have one client who was 17 when it happened. She's now. I think she's now 35. No, yeah, she's close to 40. Been living in a nursing home the whole time and how privileged I am. Right to talk about my good life as a 17-year-old person. So I thought we should talk about the good life.
Mo Hamoudi :I think that's a great topic to talk about. So I thought we should talk about the good life. I think that's a great topic to talk about. What I love about what you wrote is that it's so straightforward and simple when you talk about happiness, personal achievement, self-satisfaction.
Karen Koehler :And then I give an example for each one.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, and meaningful relationships with others.
Karen Koehler :Yeah.
Mo Hamoudi :That one jumped out to me Like what does that mean?
Karen Koehler :And so, then again, looking at clients, especially like, for example, tbi clients whose whole personality changes. Their ability to comprehend or communicate with the world changes, or people that have lost someone, like their friends, don't know what to do, even their family. They don't want to say anything that's going to make them upset, they stop being able to interact with them. On both sides, people aren't there for each other.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, I mean, we get to go on a walk and a lot of our clients can't even do that. So you talk about meaningful relationship, like we go walk several miles and have conversation and then we are. That that brings joy, that's, that's the good life, and we have clients who can't do that, and yet I mean so this is really part three of money, yeah. Wait what.
Karen Koehler :This is really part three of how do you value a person, a person who doesn't have a good life.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :I mean, look at how entitled I am.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, yes, but you're also. How old are you? I'm 17.
Karen Koehler :Okay, but you weren't entitled at age 17.
Mo Hamoudi :No.
Mike Todd:I don't know, Mike, if you were as entitled. I was probably entitled, I mean at age 17, I was going to a private high school.
Karen Koehler :Oh my gosh, the most entitled of everyone in the room? Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like, when you're that young you're sort of brash, you don't know. You don't know.
Mo Hamoudi :You're naive and I mean, I time I thought, you know, I was going to change the world and I had no idea what life was going to be like I would not have written this.
Karen Koehler :Well, yes, he would not have written this. I would not have written this no no, but when you look at the good life, yeah, I mean you even had an idea of what the good life was.
Karen Koehler :You're, and you could tell us that was, but it was a lot different than mine. Mine was like you know, I'm walking down in my little rose garden and this is going to happen and this is going to happen, and this is going to happen. I'm going to be so happy. Right, I'm going to just be super happy. I'll look at this while you're talking further for some examples. But the importance of even the concept of having a good life has to be monetized when you are a person whose good life has been destroyed. Not only, maybe, the current good life, but all hope for the future has been fundamentally changed forever in a way that's terribly dramatic.
Mike Todd:And that's the same for people whose lives weren't good before something happened.
Karen Koehler :At least you had hope.
Mike Todd:Yeah.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, okay.
Karen Koehler :All right, now you've got me thinking. All right. So tell us about when you were 17 years old. This is before you graduated. I wrote this when I was a senior in high school. Okay, yeah, so at the beginning of the the winter of your senior year in high school, if you were to talk about a good life, what was it? And was it? What did your good? What's the difference between your good life then idea and then what you were hoping to achieve in a good life? Be honest.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean, I remember a moment and, and I remember, and I remember and this is I need a little background before I talk about the moment that winter, because it's such a memorable moment I was, I played basketball and I remember becoming getting the opportunity to play basketball when I was in the eighth grade, going into my freshman year, and I didn't, I was terrible, and a coach really gave me the opportunity to play, but he also the high school coach, john Pugh, gave me the opportunity to play, but he also invested a lot of time in me and I was improving and one of the things that I perceived to be the good life was, um, my, my, my fellow players. Parents would come to the games and watch their um kids play and celebrate with them, and my mom never came.
Karen Koehler :Never came or couldn't come.
Mo Hamoudi :Never came early on, never came to my games.
Karen Koehler :Was that because she was working or?
Mo Hamoudi :She worked long hours and she was struggling with chemotherapy and cancer.
Karen Koehler :That's right.
Mo Hamoudi :And so I never asked her to come. That's right, and so I never asked her to come. But I remember wanting the experience of her being there and watching me and I worked so hard to play basketball and I wanted to get to a place where I was excellent and good and good. And my senior year she came on senior night and watched my game and I remember that I was just so proud to have her watch me play. I played a really good game and then they took our picture and there's a picture of me and my mom and I've cut it out. There's somebody in there and the other person that was in there was my stepdad and I did not understand why she brought him. And I remember taking the picture and just thinking that the good life was kind of confusing for me because, you know, the things that my stepdad did to me growing up as a little kid was so terrible, and so it was confusing for me because they were so happy to have her there watching me play, because I worked so hard to show her that I could accomplish something, but I didn't know why she brought him.
Mo Hamoudi :So that is the most memorable night of my senior year and I give flowers. I get flowers on senior night. I get flowers on senior night and honestly, all I wanted to do was the good life for me, was to leave and go away. And I remember that night I just started to make plans of how I could escape and then, as I was creating the good life idea of where I would go, I felt a pull and, like an anvil sitting on my back, that I would have to leave her and I did not want to leave my mom, I didn't want to leave her, and that pull and push just really made me give up on trying to figure out what the hell the good life was.
Karen Koehler :When I read you write that, I just feel the good life right now is that my son, Jude?
Mo Hamoudi :I told you to stop talking about Jude. But he just he writes like this yeah, hopelessness. And my son is like that. So it's just, you know these kind of topics. It's just like how do you monetize that? I don't know how you monetize that, but, um, I know what it is, I can talk about it and talk about it, you know, um.
Karen Koehler :So Well, I think, I think first of all, thank you for sharing and for not actually crying, because you've cried like three times in a row with me lately. That would have been four, because I got a lot going on but that was a non-tier cry.
Karen Koehler :But I feel very emotional about that because because when you describe that for me and mike, we were there with you, didn't you feel like you were there with him, um, and so point number one is even a highly privileged person that worried about, like, what disco they were going to go to on the, you know in the weekend, which just talks about, is capable of understanding the human experience and connecting with it.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :And so, therefore, when we're talking about our clients and we use them as data points, there is no connection.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :But when we talk about our clients and show them and let them reveal themselves either and oftentimes we're the ones that have to reveal them- yeah. There is a genuine connection.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :Because my heart was up here when you were talking also, even though I didn't live your life, yeah, but you could communicate it to us, and so I think that's what we do as lawyers, which is really special when we're talking about things like damages.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes is.
Karen Koehler :we have that opportunity to be the. You know there used to be this soap star opera. I mean soap star star Linda Evans and she. Do you remember, wasn't it? And she was into this guru who lived up in Yom Olympia, near Olympia, remember the guru? And they could channel the old gods from supposed old gods or beings from medieval or times and Mike's laughing because he knows exactly what I'm talking about. But I've always felt like we have to channel our clients for the jury to understand, because this isn't something that you can explain with a grid.
Mo Hamoudi :No no.
Karen Koehler :Look at how different our good lives were and you know what. Your good life is more appealing than my good life. Mine is just a bunch of entitlement. No one's going to care about me like they're going to care about someone who's really really had to strive yeah and overcome. That's like that. That. That archetype is the most powerful archetype and I I super appreciate that.
Mo Hamoudi :But one thing I'm constantly very vigilant about is that the experience makes me feel entitled, like to allow myself to feel entitled because, you know, I don't want to say that like, oh, I went through this. Therefore, you know, I'm, you know, better. One thing I really like what you just said is about, you know, channeling, channeling. Channeling is such an important word.
Karen Koehler :You've got to take yourself out of it.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :Like a lot of people will say, oh, those trial lawyers are so egotistical. Well, the good ones have. And even if you are egotistical and you have to have some ego to be a trial- lawyer, because you're going to be kicked to the ground and fought against so much. You have to be able to have the ego to pick yourself up, but you have to put that ego aside in terms of being able to channel the humanity that you're presenting.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay. So what I would love to see you do is, if you can channel a little bit, take what I just told you and in your own words, or a client, and just maybe teach practitioners and channel a little bit. What's the process? How do you channel?
Karen Koehler :Well, let's say that you are now a give me something bad that happened to you.
Mo Hamoudi :Recent.
Karen Koehler :Just pretend, pretend Okay your client. What happened to?
Mo Hamoudi :you? Oh, I was involved in a scooter accident. I was hit and my legs are devastated and I can't walk anymore with my friends and talk about life and I can't play basketball.
Karen Koehler :Did you suffer a debilitating brain injury as well?
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, and and uh, I suffered a debilitating brain injury and I can't write poetry like I used to, which is like a passion of mine and you can't really talk either. Okay, all right.
Karen Koehler :I'll use the concept of good life too, if you're a jury. Everyone here has at some point or other thought about what they want out of life and whether they're going to get it. I call it the good life. Not all of us achieve it, and all of us probably almost all of us are always striving towards that. We're hoping that our job will get better, or we're hoping that we can maybe buy a house one day, or we're hoping that maybe we can have a child, because you know the doctors are saying the chances are slim. Maybe we're hoping that a parent will be able to hang on long enough for a cure for Alzheimer's to come in. Maybe our best friend who has cancer will go into remission. It's part of our daily thought process is to hope for a better life for us and the people that we care about.
Karen Koehler :Mohamoudi grew up a little differently than I did in fact extremely, and maybe some of you feel that maybe you had something similar happen to you than to him. But he grew up in a war-torn country where he listened to bombs at night as a little child and thought all the time he was going to die. He developed severe PTSD even though he didn't know what PTSD was, and he was never, of course, treated for it, because how could you be in a war-torn country like that? And his little trusting body went along with his mother to America with a side detour of picking up a Pakistani stepfather who abused him and his family. His idea of a good life was much different than mine and then yours, and yet he still had an idea of a good life. Maybe life would be better. Life was better when he got to the United States because he didn't have to hear the bombs. Maybe life would be better when he could get away from his stepdad or at least grow big enough that he could hit him. Life could get better if he could move away. And life did get better when he did move away. How much better was Muhammad's life going to get? What were his dreams? What were his hopes? How hard did he work to achieve them?
Karen Koehler :This is a story of a person that literally beat all odds to somehow scrappily conquer one thing after another, and now, with a beautiful young child, with a loyal and faithful wife of 18 years well, 16 plus two whose anniversary you just forgot to whose anniversary he just forgot we come to a day when he gets on a scooter and, through no fault of his own, hits a divot in the road. That's there, that shouldn't be there, that has a dangerous medical object protruding from it, one of many potholes that we all go by and just think are normal in the streets of Seattle, waiting for the government to fix them. He is now unable to walk, unable to talk, and there is no more opportunity for Mo, that little boy who listened to the bombs and made a better life. There is no more opportunity to hope or dream for a good life. The end.
Mo Hamoudi :That's really good.
Karen Koehler :Why? Thank you.
Mo Hamoudi :That is really good. That's fantastic. Okay, Now follow-up question.
Karen Koehler :What you did is it wasn't that good because I didn't start crying Like normally. I would yeah, you hadn't practiced it.
Mike Todd:You stumbled on a couple of words and stuff like that, but I thought it was really good and I think it was a good example of what you were asking for, which is and I don't think that every attorney can do this, every attorney can do this it's having the empathy to feel what is wrong in that situation. What is, you know, the, I guess, the reaction to the action of you being injured, but being able to frame it with how you had a difficult life to begin with and this is now turning it into another difficult life of a different type.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, and exactly what you just said, but I just gave you the exercise. So obviously, what it tells me is is that one you have to trust yourself and just go there, and that's what you were doing, and I think that the juries overwhelmingly appreciate a lawyer who's trying to talk with them, visit with them, rather than try to give them a prepared statement like to have a lot of preparation. So I think that's the strength of what you just did is to show how you were just trying to tell them exactly the feeling. What's super interesting to me because I've never thought of it, because you're doing it in my history is let's hope that's the day.
Mo Hamoudi :It never history, and no yeah, but what was super interesting to me is is that you, you, you, you, you described an arc from my childhood towards a, the, the, the difficulties, then upwards, moving up towards the good life, and then now another challenge, and then, but what can't be really answered is that, my goodness, is this guy going to make it again? How is he going to do? Like I'm thinking to myself, like I want to know how that story ends with this injury, and so you've created an opportunity. Now we've got to talk about how you ask for money in that context.
Karen Koehler :So a jury is going to look at. Can we fix this?
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, First Okay okay.
Karen Koehler :So we'll have a life care plan, which would be in the millions, clearly because of what's happened to you.
Mo Hamoudi :And what's a life care plan?
Karen Koehler :A life care plan is when you hire someone like Tony Chapa who talks to all the doctors and figures out what will it take to not just keep you alive but to try to keep you going mentally, physically, always. And how is that going to happen? And it could be the difference between you having to live in a, you know, rehab hospital or rehabilitation home old, you know, we would call them old folks home in the old days. Now they're, they're mixed, but whether you stay in a facility, an institution basically, or whether you're able to live in a private home and have care given to you. So that's issue number one. That's normally not the hardest issue.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, talk to me about the general damages.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, the general damages are the harder issue, and that is the loss of the good life, the loss of the dream of a good life and the loss of a good life.
Mo Hamoudi :And general damages for those that are not lawyers. What is that?
Karen Koehler :Pain, suffering, disfigurement, emotional distress, all of that, emotional distress, all of that and, of course, in that case if you had a brain injury, loss of consortium of your own child and your wife, which is loss of love, care, companionship, attention, guidance, support. So what you do, when you're able to not just preach at a jury but also have them as we were talking about channeling, being able to really understand, like what happened here on a human level, and building a bond, is we're having them have to value that. How precious we've already talked about that how precious is this person's life, how precious is this person's ability to have a meaningful living existence without pain and horror and no hope.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, I just learned something else. Okay, so the life care plan and then the general damages the pain and the suffering. And then you have my gosh painted me as a person who is resilient and can accomplish great feats. They're going to be thinking about the pain, suffering and inconvenience that I'm going to endure.
Karen Koehler :I hate the word inconvenience by the way.
Karen Koehler :I mean, there's some words that I really don't like and I won't use them. Like pain and suffering is a trigger because it's been hijacked by the defense bar to talk about whiners oh, pain and suffering, pain and suffering. But when you actually talk about pain and actual talk about physical suffering and detail what that means, you know the the metal in your body, or the fact that you can't go to the bathroom by yourself, or someone has to wipe you each time, or or you know all of that, the indignities of living a severely injured life and having a premature end to that life, potentially which is a whole other issue because they'll want to shorten your life expectancy to reduce the special damages. There's so much stuff.
Mo Hamoudi :There's so much stuff, but there is the pain and the suffering, of pushing forward, correct, like the process of trying to live another day live another day or find a new good life?
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, would you give them, would you tell them that there is a good life for him and here's a process, or do you just say it's over? Do you see what I'm saying? Because one is like the latter is like a sense of hopelessness and the other one is like empowering the jury to say, no, he's going to make it, but it's going to be totally different. And you see what I'm saying. Can?
Karen Koehler :you talk to me a little bit about that. So I don't believe in any hard and fast rule and everybody that's severely injured or how they die, and there's how their survivors act it's it's completely different as a generality, as a general thing that I strive for it is to not not paint a hopeless situation. Um, in fact, in the motorcycle injury case that I had, the young man who wanted to be a firefighter he's never going to be a firefighter who was injured, with all those orthopedic injuries. His whole body was crushed. Everything was focused towards being positive.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :Because his mindset was positive. He was going to overcome this as much as he could and he wanted to be a firefighter. Still, even though everyone said, no, you can't be one, he still wanted to be one and to show the human spirit. Is that remarkable? Then the juries will connect that way. There's the bottom line is how will a jury be able to truly understand, embrace your client? Okay and giving the jury some sense of hope is normally a good thing okay, another big bulb in my head the motorcycle client. Yeah.
Mo Hamoudi :You did not impose your mindset on him. It was his mindset. His mindset of like I am going to win.
Karen Koehler :That was his right, Worked out six to nine hours a day.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, okay, all right. Hours a day, okay, okay, all right. So a lot of what you talked about about how you present this really is driven by where the client's mindset is. How much does the lawyer have a role in helping shape mindset as the case moves forward and gets ready to go to trial, or how much should the lawyer not engage that and let the client walk their path? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Karen Koehler :So lawyers need to stay in their own lane.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :But what exactly is that lane?
Karen Koehler :Yes, in their own lane, okay, but what exactly is that lane? Yes and um, I believe that juries are very smart and for the lawyer or your client or any witness, there's two scenarios. One is they're authentic and you believe them, or two is they're the best actors in the world and you believe them. So I'm going to tell you right now. There are I've said this before, there are lawyers I know who are great lawyers, who are really not very nice people. They don't really mirror who they present, but they're such phenomenally, they're charismatically, amazing and they are very good actors. Actors they can put on a persona like a second skin, and people will believe it. Yeah, I think that that's. I mean, that is that happens. And then there's the authentic type that are just. This is who I am now.
Karen Koehler :I'm not going to say one is better than the other yeah I'm going to say there's times when authentic is better than the person that can put on the skin and there's many times when the person that can put on the skin is better than the authentic. Hapless lawyer For clients, unless they're a professional actor, and even then. But I think that you have to go with authentic. You have to find out how that's going to present. Now that doesn't mean you just let them go and just talk. You have to work with them. There's people that use coaching.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Karen Koehler :There's people that have and this is for defense and plaintiff. The defense bar does a whole thing. They have their witnesses go through rigorous coaching of how they're going to answer questions and be trained in front of a jury. Plaintiffs don't always have those resources, but it's up to you, the lawyer, to know who your client is so that you can present them. You can't have your client be something that they're not, and the story has to ring true. Ultimately. It has to ring true, otherwise you're going to be building your case around a proverbial house of cards. They're going to come down because it's not going to be able to be maintained.
Mo Hamoudi :That's my favorite part of the job is getting to know the client, and not just in the sense of what they have endured, but just their personality, and I agree with you that authentic is the way to go, way to go. And I think that lawyers have a role to inspire their clients. If you look at the ABA guidelines, they don't limit the role of an attorney as just a legal advisor. They talk about a counselor, about things that are not legal, that are totally unrelated to the legal world, because, I mean, you yourself have so much experience with people's pain, trauma and the hardships that they have suffered. You have a library that you can draw on and just sometimes come in and say, hey, I have a suggestion.
Karen Koehler :So I know we're going longer than normal, but I do want to put a little pin in this topic.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Karen Koehler :I used to be of the school of not having enough boundaries with clients. There's a lot of lawyers that will say you know, go to your client's homes and do this and that and eat with your clients and live with your clients. Strip Matter did that on one of his biggest cases. He went and stayed in the hospital bed of the rehab unit next to his young client for 24 hours and he lived that life. The older I've gotten, the less I've done that. I just I don't want to change my client. I don't want to invade their space. Who am I to go and live in their house? I don't want to invade their space. Who am I to go and live in their house? I don't want to do that, but I'm that's pretty radical.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, I don't know. I'll live in the house, but you know.
Karen Koehler :but but I, I and I and I have. You know, we have fantastic paralegals who interface a lot with the clients. I want to meet with them and know them enough to be able to tell their story, but I don't want to become their counselor. My mother was a family law attorney. Do not want to do that. I do not want to cross enough lines so that they overly rely on me to tell them everything what to do. They need to do what they need to do. I'm happy to be like a guidance counselor, but I don't want to be their marital counselor. I don't want to be their personal counselor. I've also seen transference when things go wrong. If you're too close to a client, they'll turn on you.
Mo Hamoudi :Something goes wrong. I have seen that.
Karen Koehler :So I'm probably I have more boundaries than you do, probably because I'm older, and I don't think it's impacted at all my ability to tell their story.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, Okay, well, let's-.
Karen Koehler :Because, remember, look at, we're looking at all their medical records, we're looking at all their photos. We're talking to all these witnesses, so we're not just talking to the client.
Mo Hamoudi :We're having to learn the entire life. Let's put a pin in that. And I will only close and say we should do an episode on client relationship a little bit. But you don't have to make radical moves. You can do what you just described to understand the client Read the records, Look at the photos. You can gain a lot and understand a human being.
Karen Koehler :But I do want to talk about that more, but it's more than understanding a human being. This is where I think that lawyers make the mistake. They think that we understand the client and therefore we can tell the story. It's that extra thing which I did when I put myself in, you know, told you your story is how do you where? What is the story?
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Karen Koehler :What is the and it's not just like. What are the facts of the story? What is the emotional arc of the story? Yes, what is the internal arc of the story? What is the moral arc of the story? It's a whole thing of. How do you that people see that this story is going here and that it's going to needs to go here?
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, you got your last word.
Karen Koehler :I always get my last word Always, always, always.
