Celebrated lawyer David Boies of United States v. Microsoft and Bush v. Gore fame delivered the 2001 Irving R. Segal Lecture in Trial Advocacy entitled “The Limits of Law” in November.

In his introductory remarks to a University-wide audience gathered in the Zellerbach Theater of the Annenberg Center, Dean Michael A. Fitts noted the selection of Boies as continuing in the tradition of renowned oral advocates speaking as the Segal Lecturer at the Law School soon after the litigation of national controversies – Ted Olsen, F. Lee Bailey, Arthur Liman, and Martin Lipton among the most memorable.

Paul Verkuil, Visiting Professor at Penn Law School, and former dean of Cardozo Law School and Tulane Law School, introduced Boies, recalling their days in the 1960s as colleagues at the “legal sweatshop” of Cravath Swaine & Moore. Verkuil extolled Boies for his seminal performance as a trial lawyer in the 1982 CBS v. Westmoreland case, calling him a classic risk-taker. “David Boies is now among a small handful of lawyers in America about whom when people are really in trouble they say ‘Get David Boies!’ He’s that kind of lawyer.”

In his lecture, delivered extemporaneously front and center of the stage, Boies stated that trials are “inherently unpredict-able,” but that the ruling tendencies of judges have more impact on the ruling than does the appellate law. Noting that “lawyers practice facts more than [they] practice law,” he said creative lawyering – analyzing, molding, and presenting the law – is at the heart of trial advocacy. The ability to effectively diagnose a case as one more suitable to pursue settlement or litigation, and the ability to identify and define themes during a trial are of utmost importance. In trial advocacy, Boies noted, the crux is finding themes that you can sustain. These themes enable a trial lawyer to decipher the facts that support his case and the facts that do not. A lawyer must be flexible with those themes and reevaluate them if they become unsustainable, because, especially in long trials, waiting too long to reevaluate themes that have become insupportable could cost a lawyer credibility with the judge and jury.