Immigration Law and Enforcement

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jim Reeder:

Hello everyone and welcome to Litigation Radio. I’m your host, Jim Reeder. I am a recently retired lawyer who practiced antitrust and commercial litigation in the Houston office of Jones Day. In addition to trying lawsuits, I’ve spent my entire career focused on helping young lawyers become great lawyers. On this show, we talk to the country’s top litigators, judges, in- house counsel and academics to discover best practices for developing careers, winning cases, getting more clients, and building a sustainable practice, all while staying well and happy. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcasting app to make sure you never miss an episode. Litigation Radio is brought to you by the litigation section of the American Bar Association. It’s where I make my home in the ABA, and I’m a huge proponent of the litigation section. This podcast is just one example of the dozens of resources the litigation section provides litigators of all practice areas to help become successful trial lawyers for our clients.

Learn more and become a member at ambar.org/litigation. That’s ambar.org/litigation. Today, we’re going to delve into developments in immigration litigation in light of changes occurring in immigration enforcement today. We’re fortunate to have as our guest, a great trial lawyer who specializes in immigration, William Menard. Additionally, you’re going to want to stay with us as we also bring you a quick tip from Lauren Williams, who’s going to talk to us about how to keep a poker face. But first, let’s get started on immigration. Our guest today is William Menard. William is the managing attorney at the Root Law Group in Los Angeles. William holds a BA in government from Claremont McKenna College and a JD from St. John’s University of Law. William’s practice involves a broad range of immigration cases, focused primarily on perm matters, employment-based non-immigrant visas and petitions, and individual employment-based immigrant petitions. Additionally, he represents clients with respect to family-based applications and some deportation removal defense.

William is also a frequent speaker and writer on those topics, as well as a former producer and host of a podcast called The American Immigrant. Welcome, William.

William Menard:

Thank you for having me on, Jim.

Jim Reeder:

First off, William, you and I don’t know each other that well. I think one of the things that helps contribute to our collective learning and as a reflection of, I think, our desire to be more curious about everyone. Also adds to civil discourse and understanding is just getting to know each other. So I think it provides incredible insight into why each of us thinks the way we do. So I’d like to start off by having our guests do two things. One, share a thumbnail of your career path. That’s always helpful to young lawyers. And two, let’s share something about yourself, your background, your childhood, and experience that has shaped who you are. So William Menard, who are you?

William Menard:

So I started out right out of law school. I went into a small firm of about three or four attorneys and was thrown right into the fire. I think right after I got my license, I started doing trials, briefs, motions, client interviews, visiting detention centers, basically everything. And that really helped shape me as an attorney because I had to do everything. And so I really learned on the job, on the fly. And then a few years after that, I joined about a mid-size firm, about 150 lawyers. And it seemed maybe easier now that I’d done all that work and got a different experience working with companies and who were sponsoring employees and things like that. So I got a broad range of both family deportation and employment-based immigration experience. And right now, I moved to LA and I went back to a smaller firm to kind of go back to my roots, so to speak.

And I’m doing a bunch of different areas. Same thing, family, some deportation, a lot of employment cases.

Jim Reeder:

But you’re doing it in paradise.

William Menard:

Yes. And I’m doing it in the sun rather than in the snowstorm. Now, one thing that shaped me as I grew up was my grandfather was a civil rights attorney. He worked for the Congress on racial equality or for the Congress on racial equality. In the 1950s and ’60s, he argued in front of the Supreme Court a couple times, including on a lunch counter case where there were a group of young black men who weren’t allowed to eat at a lunch counter in Louisiana. That certainly shaped me because my mom would always tell me about it and she was always quizzing me about who the Supreme Court justices were and all that. That started at about age seven or eight. It made me appreciate the importance of what lawyers can do. I also started to realize as I got older that immigration is a civil rights issue.

It’s a civil rights issue of this time. And I felt like it was an important thing to keep doing in my life.

Jim Reeder:

It’s interesting that … And that’s fascinating. And it does get to the heart of who you are, I can tell. But I tell young lawyers all the time, you never can understand the worth and value of your license until you start doing something for somebody who can’t do it themselves and who only can do it with your help. And that’s obviously the lessons and the values that you learned as a kid.

William Menard:

Yeah. It’s an incredible responsibility. I think there’s lawyers and doctors kind of feel this situation where people are like, ” I don’t know what to do. What should I do? “It’s a very hard thing to kind of put on yourself every day, but it’s also an incredible kind of honor, I don’t know if that’s the right word, to have that burden. It’s a weird situation.

Jim Reeder:

Yeah, but it is an honor. All right. Well, let’s now turn to the topic. All right. Developments in the immigration practice across the country, anyone who’s even casually paying attention to current affairs is likely to be aware that immigration enforcement has been a very prominent component of the current White House, and it is a very contentious issue. I think observers seem both deeply and passionately divided over the policy. However, for most, it’s purely a theoretical issue, right? People are just, they’re observers. For others, it is very real and practical, particularly to the parties affected by it and the lawyers who represent them. You obviously are one such lawyer. So let’s start at the beginning for the casual observer. I think many think when we’re talking about immigration law, we’re just talking about asylum or deportation cases, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as I’ve learned.

So give us a little thumbnail if you, William, about the different types of immigration matters. Some are obviously being more affected than others, but these are cases that have been going on for decades and decades and decades, these types of cases. But give us a little thumbnail of what those are.

William Menard:

There’s a few different groups of kind of areas of what immigration kind of litigation looks like. And litigation has a somewhat different meaning, I think, in immigration law than it does in other areas. So there is the court litigation that is in front of an immigration judge and that involves applications … It does involve applications for asylum, but there are several different kinds of applications that you can make in front of a judge when the government is seeking to deport you. For instance, like if you can prove that there would be a hardship to your spouse or kids, if you had to leave, there’s an application for that. Or if you, under certain circumstances, if your spouse is sponsoring you, you can apply for a green card through the court and not be deported. But for me, much more of the kind of quote unquote litigation happens with USCIS, which is one of the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security.

That’s far more of the cases that I do. And that’s where people are applying for either status or permanent residence based on a variety of reasons. It could be family sponsorship, it could be employer based, it could be self-petitions for people who have exceptional abilities in certain fields. That’s the vast majority of cases. And that is a combination of applications that we file with USCIS and also attending interviews where we go in and represent the client where it’s not a judge, but there’s an immigration officer who is interviewing you. So there isn’t another lawyer. It’s not set up the way a court case is, but they’re interviewing you and questioning you. The interesting thing about that form of litigation is that you’re dealing with often highly specific legal issues and standards, but the interviewers are not lawyers. So part of the practice is showing that you meet legal requirements and explaining that to people who aren’t attorneys.

And so the letters and the explanations that you provide, they have to be able to do both is be clear to someone who’s not a lawyer while still, if it is litigated later on, if it is appealed, show that you’ve met the legal requirements.

Jim Reeder:

That actually would be a wonderful talent for all lawyers to develop actually for their writing, to write as if you were writing to somebody who was not a lawyer, because we all know that sometimes even the lawyers were writing too don’t always get it. So the USCIS officer, they make the decision?

William Menard:

Yes and no. I mean, they do. The way … I don’t fully understand or know exactly how their processing is done, but the officers, generally speaking, with more straightforward cases can make the decision on their own. If there is some complicating factor, they tend to submit the cases to USCIS attorney pool that reviews it and then gets back to them, or they have a supervisor review it. And I think that also depends on how long that officer has been working there, like the experience level. So you’re dealing with this officer, but then you know that the case may get reviewed by people you’ll never meet. So you have to kind of balance all those different factors.

Jim Reeder:

Right. So the decision is actually a USCIS decision. It’s not like it’s signed by the officer or somebody, just the USCIS by virtue of whoever has been involved in the process makes that decision.

William Menard:

Yeah. Generally, when there is a written decision, it’s always signed by the office director, even if they don’t really have any actual involvement with the case.

Jim Reeder:

Obviously, I mean, even the casual observer could see that this is an area of law where a new administration can have a profound impact on the practice. But why is that? Isn’t the law in this area well settled? Why is there so much change, if you will, or possibility of change from one administration to another?

William Menard:

Well, it’s not particularly well settled. I think that’s the issue. There is the Immigration and Nationality Act as a federal statute that is pretty detailed and it’s quite complicated, but there are provisions in there as well as in the federal regulations, which give pretty wide latitude to either the Department of Homeland Security or the Attorney General to … So essentially the Justice Department to make discretionary decisions. That is why it can change so significantly from administration to administration. So just to give you an example, the immigration courts, there are hundreds of immigration courts across the country, and then there is one Board of Immigration Appeals. So all appeals of immigration court cases are appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. That’s about a … I think there’s 15 judges maybe that are on rotation with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Maybe it’s more now, but they rotate, right?

The issue is that ultimately the Attorney General has the ability to overrule all of them. So they kind of funnel all the way up to the Attorney General, but the Attorney General can overrule anything. The only check on that is the circuit courts. So if a case that is decided by the Board of Immigration Appeals and/or the Attorney General is the only appeal that you can make from that is to the Court of Appeals wherever you’re located. And those courts are not bound by the Attorney General’s decision. The problem is, of course, is practicality. For many of these clients, I mean, how many of them have the resources and the time to fight the case for the years that it takes to do that? So ultimately, in the vast majority of cases, that’s how it’s working. So from administration to administration, when the Attorney General changes, the interpretation changes.

And so there were cases that have gone back and forth on issues from Obama to Trump, to Biden, to Trump that have flipped back and forth, making it very difficult to kind of keep consistency.

Jim Reeder:

Yeah. And as I understand it, the immigration court judges are appointed by the AG or the Department of Justice, is that right?

William Menard:

Yeah. They’re executive judges, yes. Executive branch judges.

Jim Reeder:

And the attorneys that are representing the government in those actions are likewise appointed?

William Menard:

Well, yeah, they’re under the Department of Homeland Security. So it’s still an executive branch, they’re executive branch employees. So they’re hired or fired under the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. So again, the people that are involved in these cases are highly controlled by the executive branch.

Jim Reeder:

And they can swing like a pendulum just like the

William Menard:

Policy

Jim Reeder:

Interpretations can.

William Menard:

Yeah. I mean, the immigration judges have … There is a union for the immigration judges, which provides some protection, but it still doesn’t guarantee consistency. I can tell you that.

Jim Reeder:

All right. So what have been the changes we’ve seen in, if you will, I’m going to call it interpretation or policy as a result of the current Department of Justice, AG Homeland Security Administration?

William Menard:

There’s the obvious things that we see, right? There’s higher enforcement actions that is definitely-

Jim Reeder:

Although it may be actually, yes, I’m sure there are higher, but certainly more public as well, right? I mean, they’re more prominent. It’s like it’s front page news as opposed to the stuff that was done on other administrations. Maybe they were just as active, but we just didn’t know about it, right?

William Menard:

Yeah. And I think that the point is to be public. The administration has been very upfront in saying our goal is to deport as many people as possible. And one way of doing that is having people self-deport. So if the idea is that there’s this very large force out there that’s willing to arrest people at a much higher frequency, then some people will just choose to leave. And I’ve had clients call and say like, “Yeah, we’re leaving.” And so it can have that effect. That’s happening in many different areas. I can tell you recently in November of 2025, I was representing a client at an interview in a USCIS interview in San Diego. It was a woman who was married to a US citizen, a Navy veteran. We went to this green card interview and it was in the past, this is like the most straightforward thing you could possibly think of.

She had overstayed her visa for a couple months before doing the divorce submitting the green card application, but under the law, she is allowed to obtain a green card. And these types of interviews are very routine, especially when you’re dealing with a veteran, it’s like a no-brainer. But it just happened to be that during these three to four weeks, USCIS or iCE, as a way of showing force, whatever it was, was essentially arresting everyone at these interviews. So if the person had ever been out of status, even if they were seeking a green card at that point lawfully, they were arrested. So there were … And my client was arrested right in front of me. And I asked for a warrant and I got this very generic document that really had nothing to do with her. I think many litigation attorneys like yourself would look at that and just say, “What is this?

” And that’s what I said to them, but when you have three armed officers in a room, there isn’t too much you can do and they’re saying that they’re going to arrest her. So it’s that.

Jim Reeder:

So there you have both an example of a new interpretation, if you will. I mean, although nobody’s really interpreting in that instance, they just are acting without really doing any type of scrutiny, a situation that would have usually been ordinary and stamped. So you’ve got, okay, that’s not going to happen. And then you’ve got this sort of new approach to enforcement as well. And I gather all of that’s a reflection of obviously the sort of new ideology about immigration, if you will. Maybe it’s not a new ideology, but certainly a more prominent ideology.

William Menard:

Right. And you know what I think the ultimate kind of outcome here is a real hesitancy to deal with the government or feel that you trust the process because another issue is like before now, even a few years ago, like in immigration court cases, you could go to the trial attorneys who are essentially the prosecutors in these cases in deportation matters and talk to them, say, “All right, we have this case, here’s our position.” And then they would come back and say, “Well, all right, we think this is a good case and we’re not going to fight you on this and we’ll let this go. ” Or they’ll say, “Look, this person’s conviction is too serious. We’re not going to deal with you on this. So we’re not going to concede anything, anything like that. ” But we have the conversation and it would be an honest conversation.

Now, the government doesn’t deal or concede on anything. They fight everything, they don’t have pretrial discussions, there’s no facilitation or negotiation or anything. So the government’s position is we’re fighting and opposing every single thing in court. That just makes everything more acrimonious and the process more difficult.

Jim Reeder:

My observation over time has been, frankly, that the criminal bar, the lawyers who practice in the criminal environment, whether they be prosecutors or defendants actually are more civil than the civil bar oftentimes historically. And it can vary depending upon who the DA is in a particular jurisdiction or whatever, but my friends who practice criminal law actually have a wonderful relationship with the lawyers on the other side of the cases because many of them have been on the other side. They started on prosecutors and then they become defense attorneys, but they’re very civil because they’re used to doing that. They’re used to talking behind the scenes. They’re used to negotiating, cooperating, trying to figure out what they can do, et cetera.That seems to be a hallmark, frankly. This seems to be different, and maybe it used to be that way, but now as you’re describing it to me, obviously that difference in approach can have a huge impact on your practice and on your clients.

William Menard:

Yeah, it really does. I remember a case several years ago where it was a very good asylum case and I called, I had the direct number for one of the trial attorneys who frequently handled cases and I called him and I was like, “What do you think of this? ” He’s like, “Yeah, this is a good case.” And then on the day of the hearing, he just told the judge, “Look, we talked about this. I don’t have any problem with an approval in this case.” And then that was it. That does not happen anymore. I’ve tried repeatedly to reach out to attorneys before hearings and get nothing and it just makes the whole … Nobody trusts anybody anymore, and that’s a problem.

Jim Reeder:

And there’s also a huge backlog, right?

William Menard:

And there’s an enormous backlog. I just got a hearing … This is something that I want to talk about and get gauge people’s interest or your understanding and the audience because we deal with such long processing times that it’s just the norm now. But I think if you heard this, most people in most areas of law would be shocked. I had a hearing yesterday where the trial was set at the early state, which was May of 2029.

Jim Reeder:

Good night.

William Menard:

Yep. So that’s, what is that, 38 months?

Jim Reeder:

Gracious.

William Menard:

Yes. And that is … And the other attorneys that get these are like, okay, because now we’re just so used to how long these backlogs are. There are cases that go on for over a decade- Going back and forth.

Jim Reeder:

What happens to your client over those 38 months?

William Menard:

It depends on what the case is. I mean, there are certain cases where that type of backlog isn’t a huge deal because of the facts of the case, the client will get an employment card relatively quickly. They can work, get a driver’s license, do normal stuff in their lives, and it’s not a huge deal. It is a big deal in asylum cases because the cases changes. So right now, there are people who are … And it’s taking a decade to get an asylum interview. So they’ll file an asylum application and they won’t get an interview for 10 years. And then what happens is the government says, “Well, the circumstances have changed.”

Jim Reeder:

Right. Surely there’s no longer a threat back in now it’s 10 years

William Menard:

Later. Then they always try to use this length of time to justify that there’s no longer a threat. So basically you just pushed it off so that you could then say this and it just becomes like a recurring thing. So these massive delays cause significant issues with certain types of cases and asylum is one of them.

Jim Reeder:

Is there a sensitivity to that by the judge or the prosecutor that, “Oh yeah, we recognize that this is a long time. Sorry.” Ordinarily sort of in the civil courts, there’s an administrative judge or even the court of appeals who looks at how many cases you’ve got and the lower judges, how many cases they’ve got, what their docket looks like, how fast they’re moving them, et cetera, et cetera. And you can get your wrist slapped if you are not moving your docket along or you have too many cases that there’s too big a backlog. Obviously that’s not happening.

William Menard:

No. I mean, what would they do? I mean, the only way to solve the issue is to add judges, which that isn’t happening. Honestly, it’s kind of a weird situation because if the goal is to process meet more deportation cases, the Trump administration is kind of hurting itself by reducing the number of judges. They’re firing judges. So if you’re trying to process the cases, I’m not sure why you’re not adding judges, but they’re not. So we’re dealing with multi-year backlogs.

Jim Reeder:

All right, that’s a great place to take a break. We’ll be back shortly with our guest, William Minard, as we get into what the future holds for immigration litigators in the current environment. And remember to stay tuned for our quick tip from Lauren Williams. Lawren will be talking to us about keeping a poker face and now a quick word from our sponsors. We’re back with William Menard, a successful immigration litigator at the Root Law Group in Los Angeles. All right, William, you’ve described the changed immigration law landscape, and those changes clearly present substantial challenges to lawyers representing immigration litigants. What do you do? How are immigration litigators approaching these cases now and being as effective as they can for their clients?

William Menard:

Yeah. I mean, it’s a combination of two things. So I’m going to take some of our employment applications as an example. I think there are cases where we have a lot of clients that are applying for self-petitions based on their extraordinary ability. We’re in Los Angeles, so we have a lot of people that work in … It’s either in entertainment and business and things like that. They want to establish that they’ve risen to a particular level in their field and therefore are entitled to certain types of visas or even a green card in the US. The standards that USCIS are putting on these cases has become incredibly high. They’re just interpreting the regulations much more strictly than they used to. And so there’s two things that we’re doing. The first is we now have to just work doubly hard. The evidence that’s required is just more and we have to provide-

Jim Reeder:

Stuff that you didn’t need to actually delve into and get as far as background, et cetera, and support, you’re now having to get more and more of.

William Menard:

Right, exactly. We’ve gotten a couple cases where we’ll get a request for evidence from the government asking for X, Y, and Z. And for a while, we were confused because we’d look at a case from a year ago and say, “It was very similar. We just did this and there were no issues. Now they’re asking for all this. So what happened?” But we’ve kind of accepted that that’s the situation right now. So we have to get that evidence. And I think the second thing is, unfortunately, we have to just tell clients, “You got to be prepared that this is a different world.” And I think most know that when I tell them, “Look at what’s going on in the world and the politics of the situation, and it’s just much more difficult,” they know that, but it’s about being explicit about these things. You have to temper certain expectations in the current landscape and know that we’re going to do everything that we can, but the standards are higher.

Well,

Jim Reeder:

There’s a lot at stake. I Obviously for your clients, in many cases, it’s families, people are incarcerated as a result of it and things are taking longer. I know it wears you down, but I also get from you a sense that there’s a sort of renewed vigor and the sense that we’ve got to work harder. We’ve got to sort of wear the other side down too. And maybe ultimately you’ll find that there is some fatigue on the other side that might hopefully work to your advantage.

William Menard:

Yeah. I mean, I certainly think that that’s the case with deportation cases. While the ICE attorneys, the trial attorneys, while the relationship has become more acrimonious, they are, as you’d say, overwhelmed. They just have so many cases. And that’s often to our advantage. I mean, it is rare that the trial attorneys submit any evidence in a case, or if they do, it’s extremely minimal. So we, as the defense attorneys, can control the narrative in a much better way. So you’re dealing with two things. Both the judges are more conservative and the judges are often doing the work of the trial attorneys. We get to these hearings and the judges will start arguing with me on the legal issues. And we’re having this conversation and I’m just thinking, well, why isn’t the attorney making this? It shouldn’t be the judge making this argument. It should be the other lawyer doing this.

So we have that, but at the same time, we can essentially control the evidence. And that gives us some advantage. With USCIS, it’s a different story because we don’t really interact with them in any particular way except at the interview. But most of these cases, you’re not interacting with the person that’s making the decision on applications. That’s really just about increasing the evidence. They can take as long as they want, so we just have to do a better job on

Jim Reeder:

That. Well, that’s where we’ll sort of cut ourselves off because there’s a lot more to talk to, but I wanted to sort of end on kind of a high note. But the notion that you can control the narrative more, that your role as an attorney can actually have maybe even a greater impact, if you will. Not that it’s going to change the ultimate decision making, but you do have the ability to sort of control how it’s going to go forward and the story you’re going to tell and how you’re going to support that story, et cetera, may prove ultimately to be a benefit here to both the lawyers and the parties.

William Menard:

Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll give the kind of USCIS interview as an example of how important this is. So when, let’s say a couple gets married, one’s a US citizen, one isn’t, and they sponsor the non-citizen to become a permanent resident. There’s two big things that the lawyer does before and at the interview. The first is preparing the client, the two clients for what’s going to happen. So we’re giving them a rundown of all the likely questions that they’re going to get. So here’s the questions, and then we run through their answers, they say, and I’m like, “No, that doesn’t make any sense. You can’t phrase it like that. ” And we rehearse it, right?

Jim Reeder:

Not unlike what all of us do.

William Menard:

Right. That’s in every area.

Jim Reeder:

Yeah, preparing for a

William Menard:

Deposition or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. And it’s similar to a deposition because the answers are not, they’re not recorded word for word, but the officer’s taking notes. So it is that important because we know that during the interview, if it’s a factual question, like a question about the relationship or anything, the lawyers can’t answer the question. The officers don’t like that. It looks like they’re lying and that you’re answering for them. It’s not a good situation. But what we can do, and the second part that’s done at the interview is answer the legal questions. So like if the officers have questions about the procedural history or if potentially if the client has been arrested in the past and it’s not that serious, but you still need to address it, any immigration issues in the past, things like that,

We facilitate that going very quickly. The officer doesn’t get hung up on it. They don’t have a bunch of questions that the client can’t really answer. They don’t know how to answer because if they don’t, then it just causes delays and the person’s like, “Well, we have to stop the interview and I need to do some research.” And then it makes the case take really long and you never know when it’s going to end. So this is the reason that cases with attorneys do so much better is because we’re preparing them to quickly move through the interview in their questions and we’re facilitating getting through the legal issues very quickly. So we can shorten the interviews and make the process a lot more smooth. So that’s a big thing.

Jim Reeder:

Yeah, it is. And that’s worth thanking you for and all of your colleagues. Extremely worthwhile. Fantastic insight. Thank you to William Minar. Clearly this is an ongoing saga, but William, feel free to come back anytime to share your further thoughts.

William Menard:

Absolutely. This has been really fun. Thank you for inviting me.

Jim Reeder:

Now I want to welcome back Lauren Williams with another quick tip. Lauren practices corporate law at Morgan Stanley in Columbia, South Carolina. Welcome, Lauren. What’s your quick tip?

Lauren Williams:

Hey, thank you. I’m so glad to be here. Today’s tip is relevant to a lot of us litigators and something every lawyer thinks they’ve mastered until they get blindsided in court, and that is the poker face. And trust me, I thought I had a good one too until the judge I clerked for pulled me aside one day early in my career and said, “Lauren, to succeed in this profession, you are going to have to work on your poker face because people are going to say some outlandish things in court and sometimes our faces react before our brains do. ” But this is the thing that nobody really teaches you in law school. Your face is an important part of your advocacy because everyone is watching it. The judge, the jury, opposing counsel, your client, court staff, and even the bailiff clocks your reactions. We tell our clients all day long, stay composed, don’t react, keep a neutral expression.

Meanwhile, we are standing there cycling through the emotional Olympics of nervousness, confidence, irritation, disbelief, annoyance, and sometimes rage. We would love to believe that we’re stoic, but honestly, sometimes our faces just give your honor, “You can’t be serious.” And while the jury may not always follow like your legal theory, they will absolutely follow your eyebrows and your facial expressions. Now, this matters because humans read faces faster than they read arguments. A raised eyebrow can look dismissive. A smirk can be disrespectful. It can be sarcastic. A, did they really say that? Expression can look unprofessional and your facial expressions can encourage a witness. It could sabotage a client or it can accidentally tell the jury, “I don’t believe what I’m saying right now.” And when your client is already nervous, they are already starting to look at your face in an even worse manner. So if you continue to make different facial expressions, it’s not going to help.

Now, I know everyone remembers the phrase that our parents would say growing up, “Fix your face before I fix it for you. ” And honestly, it’s never been more relevant than in a courtroom. So how do you actually fix your face in a courtroom and have that poker face? All right. First, just take two second breaths. Something extreme or wild happens, don’t react. Inhale for four, hold for six, exhale for four, then respond. Okay? Your brain does tend to come back online fast when you do give it air. All right? Practice soft, neutral faces. Don’t look stoic or robotic, but look pleasant and look like you’re trying to process what is happening without giving away your internal thoughts. Send the reaction through your hands instead of your face. Maybe you need to just click your pen or flip through a page or just jot a note.

I know a quick tip that I have learned over the years is sometimes I’ll just draw circles on a pad if it’s something that you know I’m trying not to make a facial expression. And if you won’t say it out loud, don’t let your eyebrows say it for you because eyebrows are always going to give you a way. They’re going to expose you every time. It’s also important to know your triggers. You know what attorneys test you, you know with witnesses that are kind of difficult, you know the type of rulings that sting, and you have to prepare your face before those moments happen. Your facial discipline basically means that you’re in control of your courtroom presence because although we’re human and we feel things in litigation, the person that can control their expressions usually can control the room. And trust me, the jury may not remember every word you said, but they’re definitely going to remember the faces you made.

And that’s my tip.

Jim Reeder:

Thanks, Lauren, for another quick tip. And our special thanks to our guest, William Menard, a partner at the Root Law Group in Los Angeles for providing important insight into the current world of the immigration litigator. Thanks to the litigation section premier sponsor Roundtable Group for sponsoring this podcast. Roundtable Group is an expert witness search and referral service with decades of experience and a comprehensive array of academic and industry relationships, as well as access to proprietary tools that further enhance the expert search capabilities of attorneys with no upfront fees. You only pay if you retain an expert referred by Roundtable Group. Learn more at www.roundtablegroup.com. A reminder to be sure and subscribe to Litigation Radio on your favorite podcasting app so you don’t miss our next episode and spread the word. If you like the show, please help spread the word by sharing a link to this episode with a friend or through a post on social media and invite others to join the show and community.

If you want to leave a review over at Apple Podcasts, it’s incredibly helpful. Even a quick rating over at Spotify podcasts. Super helpful as well. Finally, I want to quickly thank some folks who make this show possible. Thanks to Michelle Oberts, who is the producer on staff with the litigation section. Thanks. Also go out to the co-chairs of the litigation section’s audio content committee, Haley Maple and Mike Stager. And thank you to the audio professionals from Legal Talk Network. And last but not least, thanks to you for listening. I’m Jim Rieder and I’ll talk to you later.

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