One of the conversations I have with clients most often has very little to do with liability or trial strategy. It is about patience.
Most people assume lawsuits are won because one side has better facts or stronger legal arguments. That is certainly how the civil justice system is designed to work. The law applies the same legal standards regardless of who walks into the courtroom. Every litigant is entitled to due process. Every party bears the burden the law assigns. Every judge takes the same oath to apply the law impartially.
But after years of trying personal injury cases, I’ve learned that one of the biggest misconceptions about civil litigation is believing the trial itself determines the outcome. Personal injury trial lawyers know better.
By the time a jury is sworn, countless decisions have already shaped the case. Discovery has closed. Depositions have been taken. Experts have survived or failed admissibility challenges. Motions have determined what evidence the jury will ultimately hear. Settlement negotiations have come and gone. Long before opening statements begin, much of the framework surrounding the case has already been built.
Jurors rarely see those battles. The public rarely hears about them. And yet they often determine whether a case reaches trial on equal footing.
That does not mean our legal system is broken. Far from it. The American civil justice system remains one of the strongest in the world because it is built on principles that matter: fairness, due process and equal application of the law.
The challenge is more nuanced than that. The law may treat parties equally, though the experience of navigating litigation often does not. That distinction deserves more attention because it shapes public confidence in the justice system.
The Law Was Never the Problem:
One of the most common misconceptions I encounter is that when litigation feels unfair, the answer must be to create new laws.
From where I stand, that usually is not the issue.
California’s civil justice system already contains the tools necessary to ensure fairness. Judges oversee discovery, resolve disputes, exclude unreliable evidence, sanction abusive conduct when necessary, and ensure both sides receive a fair opportunity to present their case. Those powers exist because fairness depends not only on the law itself, but also on how litigation is managed.
The substantive law is equally consistent. Whether the defendant is an individual, a local business, an insurance carrier, or a multinational corporation, the legal standards governing negligence, liability, causation, and damages do not change. The same principle applies in insurance litigation, where California courts have long recognized that insurers owe policyholders a duty of good faith and fair dealing. Decisions such as Gruenberg v. Aetna Insurance Co. and Egan v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. make clear that insurers may be held accountable when they unreasonably withhold benefits owed under a policy.
Those obligations do not become less demanding because an insurer is large or financially powerful. Likewise, plaintiffs are not entitled to recover simply because they have suffered devastating injuries. The law remains neutral, and as personal injury trial lawyers, we depend on that neutrality. The integrity of our profession depends on it.
What Trial Lawyers Actually See:
Where litigation becomes more complicated is not in the written law. It is in everything that happens between filing a complaint and reaching a verdict.
The public sees verdicts. Trial lawyers see the process that produces them.
Ask ten experienced trial lawyers when a case was truly won, and very few will point to the closing argument. They’ll remember the deposition where a witness unexpectedly changed testimony, the discovery dispute that uncovered a document no one expected to find, or the evidentiary ruling that determined what the jury would ultimately hear. Every experienced litigator has handled a deposition that changed the value of a case before anyone left the conference room.
Those moments rarely become headlines, but they often shape the outcome long before anyone delivers an opening statement.
One of the first lessons every litigator learns is that lawsuits rarely move in a straight line. Discovery disputes delay schedules, depositions are rescheduled, expert opinions generate additional motion practice, and medical treatment often continues while the factual record is still being developed. None of those steps is improper. They exist to ensure courts decide cases based on complete facts, reliable evidence, and testimony tested under oath rather than surprise or speculation. That process is essential to justice.
It is also where trial lawyers begin to see something the public rarely does: resources influence litigation in ways that never appear on a verdict form.
Resources Shape Litigation Long Before Trial:
I’ve never had a corporate defendant openly argue that greater financial resources should determine the outcome of a lawsuit. The reality is more subtle than that.
Resources rarely change the law. They do, however, influence how litigation unfolds. They affect how many experts are retained, how aggressively discovery disputes are litigated, how much time can be devoted to motion practice, and how long mounting legal expenses can be absorbed as another cost of doing business. None of those realities changes the legal standards a court must apply. They shape the process through which those standards are tested.
One of the conversations I have with clients most often has very little to do with liability or trial strategy. It is about patience.
Many people believe the hardest part of a lawsuit will be testifying in court. More often, it is everything that happens before anyone ever enters a courtroom.
Months can pass while medical treatment continues, records are gathered, depositions are completed, and experts prepare the opinions that will eventually be presented to a jury. To someone living through a lawsuit, those stretches can feel like nothing is happening. In reality, they are often when the most important work is being done. Helping clients understand that difference is one of the most important responsibilities of a trial lawyer.
That difference in perspective also explains why delay is rarely experienced equally. For a corporation or insurance carrier, litigation is often a planned business expense. For an injured plaintiff, it can mean recovering from serious injuries while facing medical bills, lost income, and prolonged uncertainty. Every continuance or additional motion carries consequences that extend well beyond the courtroom.
Every party has the right to present its case fully, and due process protects plaintiffs and defendants alike. But litigation can become a test of endurance as well as a search for the truth. The responsibility of trial lawyers is to ensure that those realities never become the reason a case is won or lost.
The Responsibility We Share
No legal system can promise every litigant the same financial resources or the same ability to withstand years of litigation. That has never been the promise of our civil justice system.
Its promise is that every case will ultimately be decided by the facts, the evidence and the law. Preserving that promise requires lawyers, judges and courts to ensure that the litigation process remains focused on the merits of the case rather than the resources of the parties.
Equal justice is not measured by whether every litigant begins with the same resources. It is measured by whether every case ends with the law applied fairly to the facts.
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