In this episode of In the Counsel's Chair, host Jack Needham sits down with Joshua Robbins, a partner in the Orange County office of Crowell & Moring, to talk about a different way of thinking about trial advocacy. A former federal prosecutor who began his career in international arbitration, Robbins explains how working in systems with limited discovery taught him to prepare for trial from day one, make more with less, and build cases around contemporaneous documents — witnesses that "don't forget and don't lie and don't have motives." The conversation ranges from the Tom Goldstein tax trial and what it reveals about juror skepticism toward polished performers, to the document-heavy Musk v. Altman verdict, to Robbins' experience teaching trial advocacy at UC Irvine School of Law. Along the way, he makes the case that the craft is less abo ...