Steven Rensch
5 min readJul 22, 2024

--

Family Lawyer Magazine

STAY OUT OF THE COURTS

This is what will happen to you.

I was a civil trial lawyer for over 40 years (so I won’t talk about the criminal system). I worked with big firms on the defense side, with medium-sized firms, in my own firm and alone, mostly with plaintiffs. I’ve stopped practicing, and this article may give you an idea as to why.

If you are an individual or a small business, there are three venues you should stay out of, and one that might serve you.

Civil Court Litigation

If you are suing a medium to large corporation, and especially if your resources are small or moderate, you will lose regardless of the merits of your case.

Why? First of all, the vast majority of judges come from either the criminal prosecutor’s office or large firms. Because of their backgrounds, these judges are either mildly predisposed against plaintiffs (there are some good ones) or strongly predisposed against them. Their prejudice is often that plaintiffs are either crying wolf or trying to squeeze the big, rich corporations. And they have a hard time disciplining big firm lawyers for their dirty tricks. (see below)

Second, most of the time you won’t even get to trial. There are two reasons for this. First, the Rules of Procedure, which dominate the litigation until you get to trial, were drafted by big firm lawyers for the most…

--

--