Why Mean Lawyers Lose: Trial Tactics That Backfire

A trial can turn ugly fast when the other side decides “mean” is a strategy. We talk through what it feels like to face a hostile, snide defense team, how that negativity shows up in depositions and at counsel table, and why we refuse to let it control our courtroom presence. The surprising part is how often that kind of lawyering backfires, not because jurors are naïve, but because they’re looking for something simpler than legal combat: a clear story they can trust.

We dig into practical trial lawyer tactics for staying steady under pressure, including how we use optimism as a real plaintiff attorney skill, not a personality quirk. We also unpack the difference between performative energy and authentic credibility, and why internal team humor can be a healthy way to manage the grind of objections, motions in limine, and constant friction. Along the way, we reflect on how gender expectations still shape what juries “allow” from a lawyer, and how that reality changes smart courtroom strategy.

Then we switch perspectives and talk defense trial strategy. If you’re defending a case, being defensive is often the fastest way to lose the room. We explain why juries don’t think like lawyers, why attacking experts can read as insecurity, and how a defense team can miss its best chance by failing to humanize the client and frame responsibility with honesty. The big takeaway for trial practice and jury persuasion is simple: storytelling beats nastiness, and the velvet hammer is more dangerous than the blunt one.

If this helped you think differently about litigation tactics, courtroom storytelling, and closing argument choices, subscribe, share this with a trial lawyer friend, and leave a review with the most “mean lawyer” moment you’ve ever seen.

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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff's personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State.

Featuring Mike Todd, producer, audio engineer, and the Disembodied Voice of Wisdom & Reason.

Produced by Mike Todd and Kassie Slugić.

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The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast is where trial law meets real life. Trial stories, hard lessons, unexpected laughs, and honest conversations about life inside and outside the courtroom.

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Karen Koehler
https://karenkoehler.com
https://www.instagram.com/k3thevelvethammer/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-koehler-thevelvethammer/

Mo Hamoudi
https://www.instagram.com/mo.hamoudi/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mo-hamoudi-77a38733/

Stritmatter Law
https://www.stritmatter.com

Transcript

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The Mean Lawyer Returns

Karen Koehler 0:07

Okay, so this is the second uh episode of this trial series, and we'll hopefully we'll stay on topic.

Mike Todd 0:15

We'll try. Try.

Karen Koehler 0:16

All right. This is the same trailer again that I tried a case against four years ago. And he was really rotten four years ago. He was insulting, um, negative, mean. Um, we just hated him so much.

Mike Todd 0:33

And was this during everything, like during depositions?

Karen Koehler 0:36

Everything. No matter what. Just everything that he did, he just is a mean kind of a person. There's no fun in him, there's no niceness in him. His just overall aspect is mean. And we didn't even have AI four years ago, and still uh the team made a meme of him. Um that we like making memes of lawyers, just FYI. And uh his head was taken and put on Putin's body on top of a horse. So we called him his name is R. R. Putin. That was R. Putin. And still was before this trial started. And uh yeah, we schooled him, he peeled it, lost, and they had to pay that verdict, and uh I think it was like an $11 million of interest. It was a big verdict and a lot of interest, and they had to pay it, and it was a hundred thousand dollar policy. But the insurance company did not do a good job. They we, you know, we had them, we had them for bad faith. So they paid it in January of this year. So while this case is being litigated and going on, this appeal, they've they're losing the appeal, they're trying to appeal the appeal, and then finally the Supreme Court says, yeah, we're we're not touching this, and has to pay it. So the first trial was supposed to start in December, then it got pushed to January of this case, and it's been waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally, try the case here in August. He is so paranoid of everything I did in that trial. He's bringing motions. They brought a motion that I couldn't um play music to the jury, sing to the jury. Um, they wanted to see any day in the life, you know, everything that they thought that I would do, and they renewed it right before I did closing again because they just thought I was gonna do this stuff. Um so really wary of me. Totally different people, totally different injuries, totally different everything. Um, and I had tried the case um with more lawyers last time. This time it was just me and then John John uh did the motion, so he was not present before the jury because he was from, you know, he lives in Massachusetts. He did all the motions virtually. And Rory, oops, well, whatever. R is flanked by KR, his partner, and then AS, uh a young attorney. So there's three attorneys there every day. And I'm just telling you this because I have to tell you about the meme we created. So KR um just had a tick of I can't even do that.

Mike Todd 3:22

Pursing their lips.

Karen Koehler 3:24

Pursing their lips, but they always went really down. Like I don't even know how to do it dot down. And I'm an old person that has joles, like I can't even do it.

Mike Todd 3:34

Yeah, I can't do it.

Karen Koehler 3:36

And I have grandkids, and you know, the big thing is pow pow fish. So I said, Oh my god, it's pow pow fish. I said, Kristen, we gotta use KR as pow pow fish. Well, Kristen took it farther, and so pow pow fish, she made the pow pow fish.

Mike Todd 3:54

Dude, the pow pow.

Karen Koehler 3:55

And so she's got the big blue fish face, blue head, but then she put R, and he's looking like kind of like PeeBee Herman, is his expression, and he's a little yellow. What is that? It's some kind of a crustacean that's right next to pow pow fish. So that was our meme, the whole trial. And all I'm telling you, this is because you have to have strategies to deal with all of that negative energy.

Humor And Optimism As Armor

Karen Koehler 4:21

So, tip number one, or rule number one. As a plaintiff lawyer, we have to be optimistic. We have to be positive. We are, we have this big burden and all this stuff has happened, but we have to bring our positive energy to the courtroom. You agree, right? Yeah. There's something about, and and that's where I'm good at doing that. It's like, okay, and is it performative? Only performative in the sense of like if you're going to a cocktail party, which even though I don't drink, going to some kind of social gathering, you kind of just like take a big dip, big breath and you get ready to go meet about a hundred people. So you're lively and you're bigger, and you're just like, hi, because you have to, you're not talking one-on-one, you're talking to a group. So that, I guess you would say is more performative. But it for me, for Mo is very innate to our personalities. Like we're positive people. So it just radiates off of us, and you really notice the difference when the defense is a poopy face like our.

Mike Todd 5:26

Well, and I'll interject, you guys are good storytellers.

Karen Koehler 5:30

Oh, thank you.

Mike Todd 5:31

Yeah, yeah. So I think that's a big part of it, is people who have delivery and uh can show emotion but not get too crazy.

unknown 5:41

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 5:42

Yeah. But then you get this big, like I said, the poopy face. So they've been poopy faced the whole trial. They've been poopy faced for every single thing that happens. They make these comments, they're snide, they're mean, they're low blows, they're completely unnecessary. As I told this jury, there's no need to be mean like that. That was my whole rebuttal. It was like, that was mean and that was brutal. You don't have to do that. But I don't know, you know, just even the little specifics of what happened. There's so many of them. It's like a death by a thousand cuts of being mean and rude. He he attacked one of our experts, Chloe Johnson. And his closing argument was she's not a surgeon, she's not a doctor, she's nothing. He created this board, like he wrote on the board, like his demonstrative aid was not a certain, you know, the big zero with the circle, not a surgeon, not an MD, they're not licensed. She's a board certified in her professional, no license, but has a driver's license to belittle her to the jury. Well, she's got a driver's license. So there's just this level of nasty that is not the norm, I would say. Even most most defense lawyers are negative, don't get me wrong. They come in there, they got the cloud over their head, and they are negative and then or is negative. Like 80% of them, they can't help themselves. Doesn't help them. They can't help themselves. Maybe 10% are the kind that I'm most worried about. They are they're friendly. They have a positive my friend Shelly, she's pretty, pretty friendly.

Mike Todd 7:32

They seem like plaintiff's attorneys, or they seem to be.

Karen Koehler 7:35

They're more positive. They're not so negative. They can laugh, they can joke, they can, and then you have less than 10%, honestly 3%, maybe 5%, that are just awful. And that's what this guy is. He's just awful. The only thing that he didn't do in this case was hire a PI to tail a client, probably because he lived in New York. And so another lawyer wrote me, because I write these trial diaries, and he was following it, and he said, he told me the story. He got a verdict against this guy, the same attorney. And here's what happened in their trial 13-year-old client was uh suffered uh serious injuries. They had her tailed, had her tailed, and then um during trial, played it for the jury.

Mike Todd 8:34

The video?

Karen Koehler 8:35

The video to show like this. However, the plaintiff lawyer was laying in wait and didn't say anything about this. They tailed the sister. The video is not of the child.

Mike Todd 8:53

I thought the one that we talked about for one of our cases back was an idiot, but this one's even worse.

Karen Koehler 9:00

So they sang victim, they sang Vagtim at trial, and and so you know, it's bad enough. Can you imagine tailing a 13-year-old kid?

Mike Todd 9:10

And doing the wrong for the PI to get the wrong person.

Karen Koehler 9:13

The wrong kid. And so the plaintiff lawyer just didn't say anything.

Mike Todd 9:16

Yeah, of course. He was waiting for them to hang themselves.

Karen Koehler 9:19

Anyway. So when you are a positive person and you are confronted with that much poopy, right? There's several things you want to do. One, you want to just like slap them. You can't do that in front of a jury.

Mike Todd 9:36

Um, you have to maintain Unless you're like that guy that's handbagged him, that's pretty much slap them.

Karen Koehler 9:43

Um and you don't want to be mean in front of the jury, like saying petty stuff towards that attorney. Um but you also can't just let it happen. So there is a fine line there.

Why Defense Lost The Jury

Mo Hamoudi 10:01

I I don't have visibility into the internal back and forth because I've not worked a case with R and D other lawyer. But I can tell you, have you had other ones like this? Well, yeah, but I can tell you that I was in court for this case and they came and interacted. They were very professional. Like every time they ran into me, they would said hello, asked me how I was doing. Very polite, okay. But what I can tell you is I did observe their lawyering, and I think that their lawyering, I saw two major problems. One was this happens with Karen, is that lawyers get too focused on Karen and lose sight of what they're supposed to do. So I think what ended up happening- Why did they do that? I it's because the nature of your lawyering and personality style draws somebody into a personal battle. It's just who you are. It's that you don't maintain appearances, you're just authentic and you're you. I'll do an analogy. Yeah.

Mike Todd 11:01

I know you don't like football, and I don't know if Moe does or not. He loves football. I do, I love football. But anytime a team wins the Super Bowl, usually they lose some of their coaching staff right away. Like almost immediately after the game, they're probably getting calls. Um, and you'll lose some of the players and stuff. But the big thing that happens is they watch and watch and watch what that coach did because they want to emulate what the winning coach did. Yeah. That's what they do to you.

Mo Hamoudi 11:32

And and that's a that's a good analogy. The the add to that is is that they get they get distracted from what they're supposed to be doing and focused on responding to you. And defense lawyers do this all the time because defense, being defensive is defensive in nature, yes, reactive in nature. What they failed to do, they had the pieces in this case available to them to do, they failed to tell a compelling story. They brought their client and who sat in the courtroom with his spouse, sometimes even the kids, in the courtroom, they failed to tell a compelling story about their client humanizing them. And that is why they lost. And the reason they were getting frustrated, and I was observing this, was that their reaction to her made them not the judge was picking up to on it, and this judge is a very smart trial judge. Judge Loranaga. He is an exceptional trial judge.

Karen Koehler 12:38

Wait, let's just take take a moment. We love Judge Loranaga. He didn't even, but he heard all I could do is sing his praises. My whole staff loved him. Yeah. The jury loved him, staff loved him. Every he is so good, um, one of the better judges I've ever tried a case in front of. So pleasant, the courtroom so welcoming. Let us try the case, but so intelligent and um never, never mean, always firm.

Mo Hamoudi 13:03

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 13:04

I loved him.

Mo Hamoudi 13:05

So you they had a really great trial judge who's gonna let them try their case. Great trial judge. He was gonna let you try your case. He was gonna let them put their evidence on. Very fair judge, you would say, right? I mean, he was gonna let them put their evidence on. Both sides. But they would they did not like tell a story. So the closing, where he is taking pot shots at an expert or, you know, whatever he's doing. What it's telling the jury, remember, juries don't think like this. People always think like juries think like lawyers. Hell no, they don't. They're like, what's your story?

Karen Koehler 13:38

Well, he had a refrain. They didn't want you to know this. They, they, they hide, they try to hide this from you. They they are trying to pull something over you. They mean either.

Mo Hamoudi 13:49

Well, what is the they trying to pull? Give me an example.

Karen Koehler 13:52

That's uh that that's exactly what's going on. Okay, so like I would they didn't show you the medical bills. We're their friends. They didn't bring them up, they didn't, they, they, they didn't do this, they didn't do that. They're trying to tell you, they didn't give all the documents to the doctors. I had object to that. It was emotional limiting. They, they, they.

Mo Hamoudi 14:10

But you know, like Mike, like they had a client who was in a car with his child, um and sympathetic person. A sympathetic person, and I would have said, like, I would have said, this is a story about a family man who made a terrible mistake. See, but they don't want to say that. You know, and who made a terrible mistake. No, liability, the liability of his liability had been resolved before trial. Well, just not percentage. Just not percentage-wise, that he was at fault, not the percentage of fault. And you just say, but you know, and you say, this is a story of a family man who made a mistake. And what we're here to do is understand what are the consequences of those mistakes and what it means. And both sides are going to tell their side of the story, but what we need you to do is really understand that I would have focused on the guy. And I bet you he did.

Karen Koehler 15:00

He said this wasn't intentional. This was not, he didn't. That's he wasn't drinking, he wasn't high.

Mo Hamoudi 15:05

But that's but that's the obvious stuff. I mean, that's the that's the obvious stuff. I I don't disagree with you. You know, and I would have put on the wife, I would have put on his kids. No, he couldn't. I accept it too.

Karen Koehler 15:14

Well, I would have tried. Yeah, because you would have been overruled on that. They already tried and I got that one kept. You know, but I would have, you know, well, his kid was in the car. Well, he listed him as a witness and decided not to call him. Well, I would have called the kidn't, because I took the deposition reluctantly, and he was completely wrong on almost everything of what happened. I would have had to impeach him the whole time. That would have been brutal.

Mo Hamoudi 15:36

Well, you would have had to impeach the kid the whole time, and I would have given you the opportunity to impeach a child. Yeah, that's where I'd say.

Karen Koehler 15:43

But no, I'm a grandma. I would have no problem with that. You know, but but kind even in deposition.

Mo Hamoudi 15:50

So that's where they screwed up, man. I mean, they screwed up because they made the, they weren't, they didn't put on a case.

Karen Koehler 15:57

I would say that very similar, this is a very similar dynamic to to John Henry Brown, where he was so distracted by me by focusing on attacking me personally that it really shifted him off of his story. And he can tell a story.

Mike Todd 16:15

I mean, I I feel that that was just because he was out of his element. He's a criminal lawyer and he tried to be a plaintiff's lawyer and was not prepared to do it against somebody as good as you. Uh that doesn't mean that he's not. He was he he did a lot of big cases. He was a person who did some work.

Karen Koehler 16:32

Yeah.

Mike Todd 16:32

But he was also a mean person.

Mo Hamoudi 16:35

I didn't see some I didn't see them attack you personally in a courtroom, the these lawyers.

Karen Koehler 16:40

I d I don't know if I Oh no, I never had a problem with OutPap or the other thing or the other one. And if you pass R in the hall, always like you said, you know, how are you doing? I can send look at him, but yes. In fact, I'm being very mean by even doing this podcast because he's a human being. I don't know, you know, maybe he's really nice behind the scenes. I don't know. I find that hard to believe. To be that mean to human beings means that you have a lot of mean bones in your body.

Mo Hamoudi 17:06

Yeah.

unknown 17:07

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 17:07

Yes. I had I I I took the deposition, I mean, I I went up there and I cross-examined his client. I wasn't mean to him. Maybe incredulous.

Mike Todd 17:16

You mean his ex his client?

Karen Koehler 17:18

His client?

Mike Todd 17:18

Not his ex- Did he have any experts?

Karen Koehler 17:21

Yeah.

Mike Todd 17:22

Were you mean to them?

Karen Koehler 17:24

Well, maybe one of them.

Mike Todd 17:25

Okay.

Karen Koehler 17:25

But not really. Like my meanness.

Mike Todd 17:28

You didn't say that the best thing they had was a driver's license.

Karen Koehler 17:32

No, and I never do the the thing the difference between me and him is that I learned early on that as a female, I could not just go back out there and be mean to people. The jury would hate me.

Mike Todd 17:42

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 17:43

It's still prejudiced. A guy get even now, I bet you if I went and talked to that jury, they would not have been really upset with him. Even as bad as I think he was, because that's what they think that lawyers do.

Mo Hamoudi 17:58

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 17:59

And especially male lawyer prototype. That's what they that's just what they think that they do.

Mo Hamoudi 18:04

Yeah, yeah.

Motions, Meanness, And Gender Bias

Mo Hamoudi 18:05

Well, I don't understand what I don't understand is that do you think that how much of this case were you driven by your personal personal feelings about the defense lawyer?

Karen Koehler 18:24

How much none. None. It it went into our preparation and knowing how they were what they were gonna do, that that they were gonna throw everything at the wall in terms of legal pleadings, that they were often gonna be baseless. Um, we knew that the last time they didn't object enough and probably got in trouble with appellate counsel because there was there they really had they had not object uh to to many things that they could have, and they didn't preserve um their positions well. And I and that showed in what happened here. They had those three attorneys at all times, they would bring a motion and then they would move for reconsideration, and then they would bring it again uh as a uh a new trial kind of motion. Then they app they were appealing things. We had like, I don't even know how many motions they appealed to the Court of Appeals. They asked for stays, they lost, it would come back, then they would, then the court would enter a ruling, and even then they renewed it with this new judge, because this judge was the second judge on the case, he's the one that tried it. They renewed all those motions with this judge. So some of these motions we'd argued have been presented four times, five times.

Mo Hamoudi 19:45

Well, that's a $40 million verdict that led them to change their behavior.

Karen Koehler 19:51

They that they just they were so uh we were just I mean, we were mildly amused at it, but then it was also very irritating. Yeah. Because it was constant.

Mo Hamoudi 20:01

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 20:01

So yes, they objected more, they they were trying to preserve, they were bringing emotions over and over again, all the way through trial, even of ones that they'd lost, because you can apparently do that, you know.

Mo Hamoudi 20:11

Yeah, you can always renew emotion.

Karen Koehler 20:13

You can always renew emotion, guys, unfortunately. Uh that that part they they fixed. The rest of it, he couldn't help me. He and he even started off. Initially, I thought, wow, he might have learned something. Because he started off saying, Why are we here? We agree on so much. We agree that my client was at fault, we agree that she was injured, we agree that she's, you know, she, yeah. But then, and I thought, well, that's how you would win a case like this, would be to take that approach and just kind of say, Well, you know, we accepted responsibility and this. Yes. Now that's the lawyer I'm scared of, right?

Mike Todd 20:53

Well, that's what I was gonna say. That's if they can convince a jury, yeah, hey, accidents happen, then you're gonna lose.

Karen Koehler 21:00

The problem is he cannot keep that up because that's not who he is.

Mike Todd 21:04

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 21:04

He is a mean fighting machine. And so the pots, the pot shots started coming, and by the time he got to closing, it was full-on attack mode. It was, we're hiding, I mean, we're literally hiding stuff from the jury. We are bad people. She is a bad person. I mean, it w and and her husband is a bad person. I mean, it was really mean. He just couldn't keep it up. So for me, if I was a defense lawyer listening to this, which probably you are, and you're gonna bring this as a motion to the court of whatever case we are on next to say that we can't be biased enough to be lawyers. The tip for defense lawyers, yeah, and I was one for nine years it's better not to be that mean. It's better to be more reasonable, it's better to show that it is not just good versus bad because good is always hopefully gonna win over. Bad. You don't want to be bad. You want to be something that has some good in it. And when you go to that level of extreme and you let your dark ways take over who you are, then the person that is harnessing the good energy has so much better of a chance to do way more.

Mo Hamoudi 22:24

And there are a lot of defense lawyers that are like that, by the way.

Karen Koehler 22:27

Not a lot.

Mo Hamoudi 22:28

Well, I mean, there's some. I mean, I can I can they deserve credit. I've already said there's some. You know, and I can name them. Less than 10%. Well, I'm just saying to you that I can name them. They're defense lawyers. My advice to defense lawyer is that don't think that you need to don't be defensive. Don't be so damn defensive because that's where you lose. Tell a story. Tell a story and forget about the fact that you are responsible and loyal to an insurance company that has contracted you for you to work on a case and you're thinking, oh my God, I gotta defend, I gotta defend, I gotta maintain the business. You have a client that has a really compelling story to tell. I think they lost an opportunity to tell a story, and

The Velvet Hammer Defense Playbook

Mo Hamoudi 23:15

that's why.

Karen Koehler 23:16

Well, I I will always remember my first mentor from a big firm, insurance defense, his words were me to to me were you're not here to make friends, you're here to do a job. That's right. And all he wanted to teach me was how to be ruthless, which he did. I am ruthless even though I'm friendly. Duh. But ruthless was his motto. So if you are coming into a defense firm that has a hierarchy, you're gonna be taught to be ruthless. And it's hard to undo that. It's hard to undo that when you are a defense attorney.

Mike Todd 23:58

But don't you think how we've often said about plaintiff's attorneys that you want to some of the best ones are working outside of the box. The box for defense is ruthless. But if you can be the velvet hammer, you know, hide that ruthlessness behind a story of redemption, yeah, then you're dangerous.

Mo Hamoudi 24:21

Well, this is this is why sometimes I think about I could do the defense job really well.

Karen Koehler 24:30

There's several that that I think are really, really good. You know, some of them are retired. Steve Fogg is still really, he's one of those guys, you know, he's gonna, by the way, as much as he wants to pretend he's a nice guy, and he's the one that he said, he said, Mo was only here for a year, and he goes, Well, what do you think about Mo? I said, What do you think about Mo?

Mo Hamoudi 24:48

And he goes, Well, Steve, did he break my heart?

Karen Koehler 24:53

He said, I hear he's not very collegial.

Mo Hamoudi 24:56

And I'm like I was like, What do you mean? Like I didn't go to college? No, you're not nice. Remember, my ESL.

Karen Koehler 25:05

That's the one That's the one where you told his associate, we're gonna bury you. And made him practically crap his pants.

Mike Todd 25:17

That's that's what it meant.

Karen Koehler 25:19

Oh. Wait, Mo, you gotta show, you gotta show, you gotta show you gotta show, you gotta show Mike. I can't do it. I'm in like a line. You gotta show Mike what you showed me yesterday about wanting to um, not not our face, but another attorney that um was uh somebody that you wanted to slap them in the face to say. No, no. You gotta show them what that was. No, I'm not gonna do that. This is what he does. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it before you end. He goes, and I just wanted to go and take my hand and throw it back and slap her one across the face. That's what he said.

Mo Hamoudi 25:51

Of course, you think these things. They were being incredibly rude to the phone. I would have remembered. I'm sure I'm thinking it right now. Oh my goodness. Just show me his picture. There you go.

Mike Todd 26:03

Oh yeah.