Elawvate: The Trial Lawyer Podcast

“It is not easy to get substantial damage awards from Montana jurors,” says John Heenan of Billings-based Heenan & Cook. Yet conservative Montana jurors awarded $27.7 million in his negligence case against a private prison company. As he tells host Ben Gideon: “I love being in front of Montana juries, but I have developed a way…” Tune in for John’s “magic formula” that turns good verdicts into great ones. In this case, he had e...

Medical records meticulously documented the routine endoscopy that went wrong, ending tragically in the patient’s death. But when Chris Nace and Samantha Peters took the case to trial, they were confronted with the defense’s slick, well-produced timeline of events – vastly different from what the record showed. With hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi, the team from Nace Law Group unpacks what happened at trial, including their cro...

The jiu-jitsu club had a $1 million insurance policy, but when an instructor accidentally rendered a new student an incomplete quadriplegic, the carrier put its interest above their own insured’s – and paid the price. Rahul Ravipudi, who represented the victim, updates co-host Ben Gideon on the groundbreaking case. After the defendants refused to pay the policy limit, the case went to trial, and a jury awarded Rahul’s client $46 mi...

Elawvate’s “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast devotes its third episode to EOS, or “entrepreneurial operating system.” Your guide is Megan Piper, a certified EOS implementer who coaches clients along their journey from “chaos to cohesion.” In this conversation with hosts Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright, she describes how law firms can leverage EOS to clarify their vision, drive accountability, and scale effectively.

Subscribe to El...

Ken Suggs recalls the time when he “chickened out” rather than go ahead with his experiment that involved dropping a box of typewriting paper on a steel box to show the crash worthiness of a car. He lost that case. “I've got a phrase that I like to repeat to myself when I'm trying to make one of those decisions,” he says, “which is, ‘Drop the box. Go ahead and do it.’” Ken and trial partner Tara Eberly at Janet, Janet & Suggs s...

Building a law firm and building a law firm designed for growth: Often mistaken. Very different. Tune in to the second episode of Elawvate’s “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast to understand the difference. Your guides are Ben Gideon, founder of Gideon Asen, and the firm’s COO, Jeff Wright. They share their insights about leveraging existing problem-solving skills, understanding established business models, and defining the ki...

Described by host Ben Gideon as “the Brazilian jujitsu of trial lawyers,” Dennis Donnelly shares his insights from 44 years in practice. “I don't know about all of you, but I try a lot of cases, and usually somewhere in the trial, I tell myself, ‘This is why this happened,’” Dennis says, adding, “But it takes a while to get there.” In this conversation with Ben and Rahul Ravipudi, Dennis describes how he “gets there”: by understand...

For four years, you’ve tuned in to Elawvate, the podcast where “personal growth meets the practice of trial law.” Now, host Ben Gideon invites you to a special preview of Elawvate’s new “Build & Grow Your Law Firm” podcast, where you’ll learn the business of practicing law. Ben and co-host Jeff Wright, the COO of Gideon Asen, reflect on building the firm from startup to profitable powerhouse in just four years. But, as Ben expl...

When police officers intentionally falsify evidence to arrest someone they believe is guilty, it’s usually "an ends-justify-the-means approach," says Doug Lieb. He and trial partners David Lebowitz and Alyssa Isidoridy challenge that approach in their civil rights practice, recently winning $7.6 million for a client who spent 30 years wrongfully imprisoned. With hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi, the guests reveal their collabora...

"It's not rocket science," says Brian McKeen about trial advocacy. His record-breaking verdicts may suggest otherwise. The Detroit med-mal virtuoso shares with hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi how he transformed from a sports-obsessed student into one of Michigan's powerhouse plaintiff attorneys. From a $130 million med mal judgment to a $96 million trucking verdict, Brian reveals how deep medical knowledge and relentless case d...

In a personal injury case, the plaintiff’s lawyer must rely on witnesses to perform. In a bad-faith case, their job is educating the jury about the rules that insurance companies must follow. That’s how Ricardo Echeverria describes the two areas of his practice at Shernoff Bidart Echeverria. With hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi, he explains that he started his career focusing on PI but that evolved over the years to litigating ...

When FDA guidelines failed their client, trial partners Austin Dana and Karen Zahka flipped the script by arguing for clinical judgment, typically a defense position. Hospitalized with an epileptic seizure at age 13, their client was old enough to receive an adult dosage of an anti-seizure medication, according to the FDA – but she weighed only 61 pounds, the weight of a child. That adult dosage led to their client getting Stevens-...

Spare Terry Garmey the old joke about ambulance chasers. “I'm defensive about being a plaintiff's lawyer. I like what I do,” says one of Maine's most respected plaintiff's lawyers. His daughter Alexis Garmey Chardon, who left a high-paying corporate law career to practice with her father, also describes the profession’s nobility: “It’s almost like a civic duty for us lawyers that we keep trying cases, including small cases.” Tune i...

"AI knows what absolute truth is," says Darryl Williams, whose military career solving "strategic surprise" led him to create algorithms that dive deeper than conventional AI. Speaking with host Ben Gideon, Darryl explains how his cognitive AI system, grounded in foundational sciences, achieves near-perfect accuracy where generative AI can falter. From identifying juror biases to uncovering hidden fraud, Darryl details how his plat...

"Attach yourself to the right people. Anything great that you ever accomplish is almost certainly accomplished by a team," says Kimball Jones, who's on an incredible winning streak with verdicts of $550 million, $105 million, and others in quick succession. Fresh off these victories, Kimball joins host Rahul Ravipudi to break down his teambuilding philosophy, inspired by the 1980s Detroit Pistons. He shares how his losses taught hi...

Trial lawyer and consultant Elizabeth Larrick brings her expertise on focus groups to hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi. With experience conducting over 1,000 focus groups, the founder of the Trial Lawyer Prep Podcast explains how she helps attorneys make critical decisions at various stages in a case. Sharing success stories, Elizabeth details how her streamlined Zoom focus groups identify blind spots, test liability theories, a...

When Brad Cosgrove got the case of a woman who died during elective cosmetic surgery, his first thought was, “Is this rare?” During his investigation, he discovered that the plastic surgeon had been linked to other deaths but never disciplined. Tune in as Brad recaps his $54 million verdict against the doctor with hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi. Brad also discusses how to eliminate the “worst” jurors for a med-mal plaintiffs’ ...

Big data doesn’t stymie a lawyer’s creativity in the courtroom; it actually informs smart decisions. So argues John Campbell, who co-authored “Jury Ball: The Big Data Revolution Is Here” with his wife, Alicia, and Sean Claggett.

Big data is no substitute for creativity; it can't capture the lawyer’s biggest weapon: authenticity and heart. So argues Josh Koskoff, a leading personal injury trial attorney. 

Tune in to this friendly...

“I say the theater is a safe place to be dangerous. I firmly believe that the courtroom is a dangerous place to be safe.”

That’s why Jesse Wilson teaches lawyers and witnesses how to be dangerous in the courtroom. A Juilliard-trained actor, he prepares witnesses and helps lawyers with trial strategy through his Tell the Winning Story consultant business. Following a workshop for host Ben Gideon’s team, Jesse joins “Elawvate” to shar...