How Does Your Past Experience Working On Criminal Defense Cases Impact How You Understand and Approach Personal Injury Cases? – R. Mathew Feller

So, when Thaddeus and I first started Feller & Wendt, LLC™, we scooped up, you know, what’s called the public defender contract. And so, we were public defenders. So, hearkening back to my Mark Anthony Ott story, you know, I was now defending the people that I was  like prosecuting to, you know, put these guys away. But that enabled Thaddeus and I to be in a courtroom literally every day of the week for, you know, two or three years. And there is nothing  better than experience in my industry. And when you’ve got the experience of picking juries weekly, standing in front of judges weekly, you know, arguing motions weekly, filling evidence objections, you know, daily, you can’t go to a CLE and get that kind of training right. It’s a, throw you into the fire, go do your thing, and so, you know,  it gave me a lot of confidence in the courtroom. I’ve always been good with talking with people, right. I mean I love picking juries. I love talking to people about, you know, their story, you know, the angles that we can take developing case theories, case themes. I mean, it’s how I’m built. But that experience as a criminal defense lawyer gave me that real world experience on, you know, judges aren’t always friendly, right. Judges aren’t always going to hear it your way. Juries aren’t always friendly. They’re not always going to take your side. And so, you know, the art of persuasion is both an art of science and you know it helped me develop and  hone those skills that now spill over into my litigation work in the personal injury arena.