How to Truly Advocate for Victims of Crime | Renée Williams​ (Victim Advocate)

If working in Civil Law, and representing victims of crime, is something you do, or aspire to do, it is crucially important to recognize why this work is so important, yet also so specialized.

This is delicate work, and understanding the psychology of trauma will determine how you interact with, and represent, your client.

Renée Williams is the CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime, the nation’s leading resource and advocacy organization for victims of all types of crime, and for the people who serve them. 

Renée's organization ensures that their member attorneys focus not just on victims, but victims of crime. It's about the technical, legal version of what a crime is. And you have to be a plaintiff's attorney to do this work.

Civil Law is the mechanism to hold the powerful to account, because you can't put a church in jail. What people really want is accountability.

And yet, it is remarkable how hard the defense continues to fight, even after their client pled guilty. This work can often be a reflection on the values of our society, and what can be a long journey to simply hold someone accountable for their actions.

From massage providers to sex assaults and bouncer cases, there sometimes seems to be an endless parade of cases, and law offices & toll-free numbers to cater to them. 

Renée's advice: "If you are a victim, you're listening to this and you're considering moving forward, be very picky about your lawyer. Make sure that if they have on their law firm site, "We do sex abuse cases," dig into that. Look and see what cases they've actually done." 

You have to be deeply, personally committed to this type of work. Be that lawyer who is passionate about helping victims, and advocating for change.

In this episode, we discuss:

◼️ How Civil Law can hold powerful entities accountable when the criminal justice system fails.
◼️ The neurobiology of trauma: why trauma causes victims to have trouble remembering vivid experiences that happened to them. 
◼️ How the trauma of reliving an event can sometimes sadly cause a case to fall apart.
◼️ How to approach a case when the chances of compensation and recovery just aren't there. Your client doesn't want to relive their intense trauma all for just a piece of paper.
◼️ Why victims need to understand the limitations of civil lawsuits.

Chapters

00:00 The Impact of Civil Justice on Victims' Rights
11:54 The Role of Civil Law in Accountability and Change
18:04 Organizational and Employer Responsibility
24:16 The Explosion of Bouncer Cases
29:09 Understanding Trauma in Crime Victim Representation
35:52 The Challenges of Pursuing Civil Cases
39:00 The Role of Victims in the Justice System
45:17 Advice for New Lawyers: Integrity and Responsibility

Courtroom Stories & Tactics | RVA Trial Lawyers
Available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and at RVATrialLawyers.com 

Based out of Richmond, Virginia, Courtroom Stories & Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers exists for lawyers who try cases to juries on behalf of people. Through our podcast, we hope to learn from them, support them, connect them, inspire them, and preserve their work for future trial lawyers.

If you are willing, we would greatly appreciate it if you left us a 5-Star Google Review by clicking here. Your review will help people find us.

Thank you!

Sharif Gray and Nael Abouzaki

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

With the civil justice system, we've seen so much change solely because of the civil justice system. The Catholic Church was not changing until lawsuits were filed. And like you said, I've never had a victim come to me or reach out to our attorney referral service and say, What do you think this is worth? What they almost always say is, I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

This is Courtroom Stories and Tactics by RBA Trial Lawyers, hosted by Sharif Gray and Nial Abuzaki.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

All right, before we get into today's episode, I want to take a minute and thank Maximum Medical Improvement Partners, MMI, for supporting the podcast. As many of our listeners know, one of the biggest drivers of case value for our clients isn't just proving liability, but it's whether the client actually gets the right medical care and recovers from their injuries the right way. As we all know, when their treatment is delayed or incomplete, their cases lose value. And maximum medical improvement partners help solve that problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

You're right, Sheree. My name is Dr. Stavniki, and I'm with MMI Partners. Our mission is to connect injured clients with the right clinicians and quarterback the clients' medical care from day one, leading to stronger recovery, clearer documentation, and increased case value.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Thanks, Scott. For our listeners who are interested in getting in touch with you all, how can they find you?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

You can visit us at MMI.partners. Again, that's nmi.partners.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

All right, we're back. And today we've got Renee Williams, CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime. So Renee had the wild idea, slash, maybe even call it mistake of allowing myself and Nabuzaki, the honorable who's not with us today, still in court, to present at your last conference. We were down in Orlando, and I hope it was well received. We certainly had a great time, but hopefully we didn't traumatize the audience too much. But no, we had a really fun time chatting about Vois Dire with really just an exceptional group of lawyers who handle uh victim cases, represent survivors of sexual offenses and other types of criminal acts. So Renee leads that organization, is a lawyer herself and is very passionate about the work, takes it very seriously, and certainly wants to make sure that every survivor gets into the care of a good, passionate and zealous attorney, not just your regular run-of-the-mill attorney. So, Renee, really happy to have you on our podcast. Why don't you take a minute, introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, like you said, I'm the CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime. And I've been here for about five years. I tell people I have the best job in the world. It gets a little sad, it gets a little heavy quite a bit, but there's no greater work to be done out there. It's really tremendous being able to help people. And our team at NCBC is amazing. I am an attorney myself, although I think I'm an attorney light anymore. I've kept my license active, but I definitely don't practice. But I love hearing from attorneys who do and reliving my trial days a little bit myself through you all.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

What are the types of cases that qualify, I guess, under the umbrella of your organization? Because I think there is an argument there, right, that anyone who suffers some sort of an injury is a victim, be it your car wreck case. But this organization really does do a lot, has a lot of focus on your crime victim cases. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03 3:38

Correct. So that I think is the difference. It's not just victims, it's victims of crime. And so you don't have to do much to qualify for us. We do have an attorney referral service where folks will send in requests. We're going to try to connect people to an attorney if we can, whether or not we think a crime was committed for the Bar Association. We will try to help folks. But I think with the National Center for Victims of Crime, we really are bound by a lot of our grant money to look at what the technical legal version of a crime victim is. And each state has a different legal version, but basically a crime had to have been committed against that person for us to be able to help them as NCDC.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Understood. And the majority assumes the membership, at least my impression, has been a lot of plaintiff trial attorneys. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Yeah, for the Bar Association, you have to be a plaintiff's trial attorney. And we have a phenomenal advisory board. There are about 30 of some of the best lawyers I know, some of the best people I know, frankly, and they review every single person that becomes a member, and they are very protective of making sure that we are getting good people in. And frankly, that there are no spies trying to learn some of the secrets in our sauce. So you have to be a plaintiff's attorney to do this. And we do like to make sure that at least a large percentage of the practice is crime victims' work.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Understood. And what was it that got you into this work? What was your journey like to find this organization and ultimately to take it to where it is?

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Oh, it's been a long and winding road. I was actually a theater major in undergrad, which does not answer your question, but I do have a theater degree. And so I've been a little bit windy all over the place. I actually was running a legal aid group. And so for those not familiar on the podcast, the United States government has grants that provides legal services for extraordinarily poor people and victims of domestic violence, but it is in very limited circumstances. It's not for lawsuits, it's for life necessity things like helping with custody, helping with abuse. So I ran an organization that provided legal services to extremely indigent clients, and most of our work was in domestic violence. And so I saw the National Crime Victim Bar Post, and I was so excited to come down and initially to interview for that. And I was first the director just of the Bar Association and then became the CEO of NCBC.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

That's awesome. It's awesome. So I've been a member for a few years now. I think I first attended the spring event a couple years back. And it's funny enough, it was a small world, but I ran into Guy D'Andrea, who I know is very active.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

And we love Guy.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Guy's amazing. And let me tell you how small of a world it is. When I was in law school, I did an internship at the Philly DA's office, and lo and behold, one of the people that I shadowed was Guy D'Andrea. And so we're in DC for this conference, and I it's my first event, right, with your organization, and I see this guy get behind the podium and he does this presentation on AI. He's got the big pink knot and the tie, very Philadelphia, no question about it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that's Guy. And so it was really cool to reconnect with him. And I've been more and more involved with your organization. Again, as I mentioned, got to go down to Orlando with you all for that conference. And it's it's been very cool to be a part of this community. Peter Everett, who is in he's actually been on this podcast, he is up in Northern Virginia, and he is a massive, massive supporter of what you guys do and representing survivors. Um, he's actually the one. I remember I was sitting in the car, this was a few years ago, and I was talking about taking a negligent security case, horrendous, I mean, crime. Uh young man was killed. Ultimately, Peter advised that I we not move forward on the case. And then he was like, Sharif, you went to UVA. Like, you need to do do this stuff. You're not gonna be satisfied doing just car rate cases. And I mean, I I like car rate cases. I I certainly we have plenty here at our firm and we like to help who's ever in need, right? But he said, you gotta look into this thing because you're really going to enjoy it. And that's when I found out who you guys were. I joined, and I've really, really appreciated being a part of this group. And I am kind of surprised. It seems very tight-knit and small, despite it having membership nationwide.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

It's funny, when I first took over, I wasn't sure what to expect, to be honest. I'd never run a bar association before. This was really my first step out of the legal world. And I was here six months and I remember having a discussion with one of my friends who's a trial lawyer in Pittsburgh, and I said, it is the weirdest thing. It is a group of trial lawyers that honestly genuinely all like each other. And even if they don't like each other, they put it aside. Nobody knows who doesn't like who because they all recognize that they're there for the victims. I think every single one of our members, I can't think of an exception, has started doing this work because they wanted to help victims. I know a lot of people, there's a bad rap against victims who file lawsuits, especially with the Diddy trial. There were quite a few legal pundits who were talking about why are these women suing Diddy? I would go to the police instead. And I think that what the general public doesn't appreciate is how much civil work can help crime victims because we see so many cases. The Diddy case is a good example when the police can't help. These men are too powerful. Or in a lot of our cases, our Catholic Church cases, our Boy Scout cases, and it's yes, you want to hold the perpetrator responsible, but look at all these other parties that did something and should be held accountable. And the criminal justice system doesn't have a mechanism for that. And so civil law is really where you're able to do that. And I think all of our attorneys are so passionate about helping victims. It's just it's an amazing, amazing group.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

There's also a level of, well, there's a few things, and it's funny that you bring up how sometimes the criminal system can be a little bit hollow for the survivor, for the victim. We actually we did a firm training this morning, and uh at our firm, we very much advocate and preach that like we approach our cases like criminal prosecutors because we've found that we have three goals, right? It's accountability to hold the individual or the corporate entity accountable. Two, it's to make the world a safer place, right? The deterrence piece to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. And three is compensation that recognizes the value of what was taken from that person's health, quality of life. And we've found that if you pursue the first two, the money, the compensation tends to just kind of come along with it. It's a collateral benefit in some respects. But what I have noticed, and what we actually talked about this morning, is that the people that we represent, the victims we represent, when they make that phone call to us, they don't really care about the compensation piece. They actually really care about the accountability piece. They want someone to say, what happened was wrong, it should not have happened, and we're sorry. And that's what they want more than anything else, right? And then the next piece is that deterrence piece. That's what people want. And I sometimes think, and I I mean, I was a prosecutor, I did a lot of criminal defense work. I sometimes think the criminal justice system, while it it just isn't designed to necessarily make victims the center of the story and give them the opportunity they need to maybe have the healing that they need. Because at the end of the day, a criminal case is the state, the government against the defendant.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

And I will say too, with the civil justice system, we've seen so much change solely because of the civil justice system. The Catholic Church was not changing until lawsuits were filed. And like you said, I've never had a victim come to me or reach out to our attorney referral service and say, what do you think this is worth? What they almost always say is, I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. And civil justice is solely responsible for forcing most of the change that we've seen in keeping our children safer in institutions that are supposed to keep them protected, because it's actually made those organizations look at how they were hiring, how they were managing people, how they were monitoring people, making sure that they were doing the work they're supposed to do to keep kids in that program safe. Actually, one of my favorite stories, Conrad Kircher, who I know you met probably, he is one of our Ohio attorneys and just one of the best people I know. He's just a wonderful soul, former Marine, and he tells everybody he's a girl dad. He has five daughters, and you can kind of tell when you talk to Conrad that he's a girl dad because he's just he's he's such a good soul. But he had a client who was raped by, I believe it was her track coach, when she was 13 to 16. And I might be getting some of this story wrong. I hope Conrad doesn't hear it and be like, Renee, you did this, this, and this incorrectly. Um, but she was raped. Conrad was representing her in, it was a Catholic high school in a case against the diocese. It was the diocese of Youngstown, and the Diocese of Youngstown came back with a pretty reasonable number, but Conrad thought he could get more in a settlement. And so he went to her and he said, This is the number, but I think I could get you a little bit more if you'd like. And she said, I don't care about the money. I'd rather not. She said, What I would like to be able to do is if they agree to settle this, I would like for them to pay for my transportation costs and allow me to come back and teach to all of the classes in the diocese one day a year, every year for the next 10 years, teach kids good and bad touch at an age-appropriate level, how to recognize danger signs, and like basically give a PSA to these kids so that what happened to me, they know how to spot and they can help not allow it to happen to them.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yeah, no, and that's incredible. Did you know if they ultimately agreed to it?

SPEAKER_03 13:45

They did.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

They did. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

I will say Conrad said, and it was a slight point of pride for me because I'm originally from Youngstown, Ohio, so I was like, yes, go Youngstown. Conrad actually did give that diocese credit for being good to work with to the extent that anybody could be good to work with. They were reasonable and they did try to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

They're not always that way. We're actually going to trial against a uh what's it?

SPEAKER_03 14:10

They're usually not that. No, no.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

It's funny and it's it's well, it's not funny. It's actually it's upsetting and it's but it's also, I guess, job security for us. But we're going to trial in Winchester in three and a half weeks against a facility that is supposed to take care of children with psychiatric conditions, and the way they have defended this case is horrifying. They've asked during depositions, they've asked our client who uh has suffered tremendously throughout his life why he doesn't have friends. They've asked him if he was ever normal. They've asked, I mean, so they're not always reasonable. And the negligence, the int the assault, it wasn't negligence, the assault is on video. So like there's no gray area, right? Despite our name. There it's it's it's on video, right? And so that's amazing to hear that one, the defendants ultimately like, let's make this right and let's implement these non-economic reforms to help ensure that one, the victim feels like they're making a difference through their case, and two, that this doesn't happen to other people. I think if you talk to a lot of lawyers, I'm sure I'm especially your organization, I think most of us will say that we're in a perfect world, we're working ourselves out of a job.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

But I think we would we would love to be. And we've got great organizations that we're working with. Like Child USA does wonderful work in protecting kids. I think we'd all love to be doing other areas of the law.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

It's not gonna happen though. And it's unfortunate. I remember actually I did an LLM program at Temple in Philly, and one of the adjuncts who came in for a couple sessions was one of the prosecutors on the Cosby cases. And this is a handful of years ago. I was still fairly new to the civil work, and I remember asking her kind of what type of work she did. And her name was Kristen. I forgot her laugh, name it was Federal.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Kristen. Kristen's a bar member. You'll you'll get to see her a lot. Kristen's Federal.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

That's where I met Kristen. And I remember asking her, I was like, Well, what do you do? And she's like, Well, I was a prosecutor and I I now I do plaintiff's work. And I was like, Well, what type of cases do you do? She goes, sexual assault. I'm like, Well, I like a lot of those types of cases and how naive I was then, right? And she's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, Well, how many cases do you guys have? She's like, Oh, yeah, probably 200. I'm like, what? Like, are you kidding? Like, like, and then I talked to you. I mean, so yep. The the a sad reality is that there are a lot of people, survivors out there, and this stuff happens. And coming back to something you mentioned earlier, it's not just about the individual perpetrator, it's also about the organization that allowed the opportunity for this perpetrator to take advantage of that victim. And uh Kevin Binyazen, who's a friend and I know is an is a is a member and someone you you look to greatly, has told me. He's like, listen, if a business is going to make money by opening its doors and promising care and having spaces where these adult interactions look can happen with children, well then that business has a duty, it has a responsibility to be proactive in its thinking, to make sure that the people that they bring on don't have histories of conduct that would suggest that they might be a danger to a child. But it doesn't just stop at the hiring. It's also how do you design your buildings? What safety measures do you have in place? What checks do you have, right? And that's how change happens. It's when you go after the organization and coming back to the criminal justice system conversation we were having, you can't put a church in jail, right? You can't put an organization in jail. So the only way you get accountability and force some level of change, and I recognize I'm preaching to the choir here, is the civil justice system.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

By making people have to face what they've done and and taking it even out of the sex abuse area of the law that a lot of us end up doing, but you had mentioned negligence security. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is the reason that we have cameras in parking lots that keep people safe, surveillance cameras, is because of lawsuits. There in most states, except Florida, it it is on the landlord of a place. If you are opening your place for business, you are holding yourself out as if it's safe. If you're a Walmart, you have a responsibility to make your parking lot safe. Now, that doesn't mean there's not going to be a crazy driver, but it does mean that you need to be monitoring what's going on. And it it's actually funny, one of our members, Mike Haggard, asked me to come down to Florida. Um, they were passing some pretty awful negligent security laws down there. And one of the things that they wanted to do was the business owner could be dismissed completely if it was a law, if the injury was based on a crime, and the victim would be held solely responsible to the perpetrator.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I mean, that seems like it's a fight everywhere. Like even in Virginia, we struggle greatly when it comes to making sure we can hold the third party responsible. I mean, negligent security cases, the traditional, sad to say the word, use the word traditional, but the case where someone, for example, is hurt in an apartment complex, right? And it's because the apartment complex cared less about security, right? Like the law is so difficult to be able to hold that third party accountable. And I'm but in I recognize like there is merit in the argument, well, they didn't pull the trigger. And I get it. But at the same time, I do believe that if our society wants it to be a safer world, we still need to have some level of accountability or the ability to have some level of accountability on these organizations.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

And you know what's funny is not the amount of like bouncer cases that I've handled, our firm has handled, I never thought it that I would like become a bouncer lawyer. And that's the funny thing about like our type of law. Like you become a bouncer lawyer or a sex assault lawyer after you do one case and you do the job, and then it's like, oh, they do that, and then you get more of them, right? And it's it's funny how it works.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

But oh, I know who the Uber lawyers. I call them the Uber lawyers in our bar. I know. And they're the lawyers that I know sue Uber and know how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

And yeah, because they did it once, they did a good job, and then they just get more, and they keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

They're the Uber lawyers. We had the massage lawyers for a while.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

All sorts of subspecialties in this area.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Well, we've got a massage envy case going on right now, and it's it's it's wild. They weren't taking us seriously, and and now they are, which is fantastic. So amazing client, and uh, I think she's gonna get a great result. So we're excited about it.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Massage Envy, those cases have been going on for six years, and the fact that they have not woken up and figured it out. I mean, it's literally just in a hiring practice. I still can't believe we have those going on because it shouldn't have been that hard of a lesson.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

It's truly insane. I'm actually surprised they're in business.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

And we talk about on this podcast all the time like if you had to really get a case to move, and that is if you can show other similar incidents, and I mean massage envy, just get on Google, right? Like hundreds, thousands of prior incidents, right? So, like I am blown away that massage envy frankly still exists. And I'm also like in the case that we're handling now, currently against massage envy, I'm also blown away at how hard they fight when if they just show up and say, Let's take some responsibility, let's come to some sort of reasonable resolution. Instead, they fight to the death until it I mean, in this case, there Insured has already exhausted their $100,000 deductible, and we haven't even gone past their motion to dismiss yet.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

You know, Massage Envy, and I need to be very careful and step very carefully here, and then we can talk off the record um later. But Massage Envy has done quite a bit to try to rehabilitate their image and to clean up what they say is going on. And so they have worked with a well-known nonprofit in the field, and they've kind of used their money and they give that organization a great deal of money to review their practices and policies to try to protect themselves. So they've spent a lot of money to try to create some kind of a shield. And unfortunately, some of my colleagues have accepted that money. And I think survivors have been hurt because of it. But I am creeping awfully close to a defamation lawsuit. So I'll tell you about it off the record.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

No, no, it's interesting. And also the way that their business is set up, they very much say they are the franchise or and then their locations are franchisee. So now that said, I mean, I don't understand why they take some of the positions they take in these litigations, but you know what? They probably get away with it a lot of the times, and which is why they continue to do it. And it's probably because there aren't lawyers on the other side who are willing to say no and push back. Because I mean, the defense is not going to pursue things that they think are fruitless, right? Or aren't going to amount to something. So it must be working to a large extent. But coming back to the bouncer cases, we have had so many, and they're horrendous, Renee. Like they are absolutely awful.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

I mean, there's so many ways. Are they following women into a restroom? And are we talking like dangerous?

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Just people getting clocked by bouncers. Like, not even your sexual stuff. Like just I had a client who we resolved his case was it last year? No, it was early this year. And it was on video. This 300-some pound bouncer, I mean, just I mean, out of nowhere. And it wasn't mutual combat. Our guy didn't have his glasses on. No, you just can't. And I mean, he pled guilty. But then you know the kicker was in Discovery, what did we find? Two and a half months prior, that exact same bouncer, same bar, same video camera, he does the exact same thing to somebody else and nearly kills the guy. And we just had another case out of Norfolk that's actually still going on right now. It's the worst crime video I've ever seen in my life. I mean, at one point the bouncer is stomping on the guy's head on the ground. And I've gotten multiple, our firm has multiple other bouncer cases. And it's something I never imagined would become a practice area, but it is.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Part of me is not surprised. You hire bouncers because they're very powerful. So you put very powerful men in situations that could be extremely stressful, and there's a power differential. So you're creating almost a hot pot. Now you have to have them for security reasons, but you're creating a bit of a hot pot. And back to your point, with the bar that knew, that's what I think people need to understand. There is some legal accountability if a bouncer does it one time. But if he does it one time and the bar knows every single other time he does it, the bar is putting its patrons or the club is putting its patrons at risk. And so accountability should double each time because you know you're watching this happen. It's not like, oh my God, we never saw this coming. No, you saw it coming because he did it 30 other times.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah. And that's where these cases, frankly, and from our perspective, that's where they really kind of grow their legs too, right? I mean, when you talk about a single incident, that's one thing. But when you talk about this company knew about this and didn't see anything wrong with it and decided to keep that person in that position, and then someone else gets hurt, I mean, that's when it becomes clear. Either you don't care at all or you care about saving money over the safety of your customers. And I mean, who knows? But these aren't lottery ticket cases. I mean, we didn't make this stuff up. The video footage showed this 300-pound guy do it two times, right? Like, literally give people permanent brain injuries, right? Who didn't deserve it. So it's incredible, it's upsetting, but at the same time, I also like it's also what puts food on the table, as sadistic as that sounds. I mean, there's a lot of work out there. And there, these are not easy cases, especially in Virginia. We've got pure contributory negligence, which is a threat in almost all of these cases, because they'll say that the client in some respects contributed to the injuries, but through their own negligence.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

So I think especially in bouncer cases. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is a rank, though, because if you can prove punitive damages, then contributory negligence goes out the window. I know that sounds nerdy, but that's one way we can get around that in Virginia, but it's still certainly a worrisome thing. It just uh because we don't have the traditional comparative like most states.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

Has the bouncer been arrested or have charges been filed?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

He pled guilty.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

He pledg okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

But you know what's crazy? And now we're coming back to how hard sometimes these defendants fight. They continue to fight the case after the guy pled guilty to a criminal offense. He pled guilty to assault and battery, and then the insurance company and the defense attorney spent probably eight to nine months arguing it was still self-defense. Oh my gosh. Doesn't make any sense. So, well, welcome to our world, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:38

So talk about I mean, some cases are just so appalling, and it's almost always people in power. Uh one of our um South Carolina attorneys, and I shouldn't steal his thunder, you should definitely interview him about this case. But just so everybody kind of has a flavor of some of the unique perspectives, it's Tyler Bailey. Have you met Tyler? I don't believe I have. Oh, Tyler's fantastic. He did not get to come to conference this year, but he is one of our most active members usually, and we just absolutely love him. He's a phenomenal lawyer. But he has a case where there was a probation officer, a male probation officer who had about 13 women. The women were coming to his office and they would close the door, which is a massive rule violation, but he was currying sexual favors from them for easier probation terms. Um he was threatening to turn them in. So there are about 13 women that this man was sexually abusing. And the interesting thing about that case is most of those women would have flown under the radar because, so this isn't to get on a high horse or get preachy, but society wouldn't necessarily care about them. And we see that with women who are released from incarceration often they become victims of a lot of sexual violence because they don't want to re-engage with the justice process or they think they won't be believed. But so Tyler's taken on a bunch of these cases, and I think he's still working through them. You should absolutely reach out to him and get him to talk to you about it because it's just fascinating, some of the work he's been doing.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Yeah, that sounds incredibly interesting and also very challenging.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Which I mean, yeah, that's why I think we talked about before we got on the episode, like how attorneys, if they're going to get into this type of work, they really need to be committed to it. Because it is so different from your traditional personal injury type case. Let me ask you this. If so, we have an awesome audience of young law students all the way up to seasoned practitioners and then some people who just are interested in the topics who aren't lawyers at all. For those who aren't intimately familiar with crime victim representation on the civil side, what do they need to know? And I recognize that's such an open-ended question, but like if you were to share a few words with those people to explain like why this work is so important yet also specialized, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_03 29:59

So, from what we know now, and I'm gonna get a little dorky and maybe a little too deep, but I promise I'm gonna try to get out of it quickly. So it's not too painful for everybody. But what we know about trauma and how the brain works after traumatic experiences for crime victims, and I'm talking specifically about sexual assault victims right now, and there's a whole field of study called the neurobiology of trauma. And so for victims, specifically sexual assault victims, but all of the victims we help, interviewing them, representing them is much more challenging than a car case. They will have trouble remembering things sometimes. Certain things will trigger them, and so they can be some of the most frustrating clients you can have. They might not want to discuss certain things, and so you might watch an entire case go to pieces because the client just can't discuss certain things. And so I think appreciating that, even though we're seeing so many, and and every time I see a news article, I cringe where they're saying $360 billion verdict, and these big verdicts scare me a little bit because a lot of lawyers who I'm sure have the best of intentions, who think they want to represent these victims because they want to do good, come in and a lot of times they end up doing more harm than good because they re-traumatize the victim just because they don't know how to work with them as sexual assault victims. But I will put a plug in. The great news is I do think most attorneys can learn how to do this, and not meant to be a plug for NCBBA, because there are lots of organizations that will provide trauma-in-informed work. But if you want to do this type of work, spend six months learning about what trauma-informed lawyering means, what trauma-informed advocacy means, and learn about the cases and watch them, the cases, and make sure you're talking to attorneys who've done this for a long time. Because even the technical nitpicky parts of the law that aren't kind of that soft, like feel-good part, there are ways you could screw up a Jane Doe anonymous filing. There are ways you can revive a statute of limitations if you think it's been blown. And we've seen a lot of attorneys who don't do these cases lose motions because they don't know how to work around that area of the law.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Especially when it comes to like how you plead cases too. It's it's very complicated and it requires a lot of foresight before you actually put pen to paper because you can plead yourself out of coverage. There's so many different nuances. But the cool thing is we've got groups like yours who get on the listserv and people are more than happy to help. So which is just such an incredible, incredible resource.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And and I would say to victims, if you are a victim and you're listening to this and you're considering moving forward, be very picky about your lawyer. Make sure that if they have on their law firm site, we do sex abuse cases, dig into that. Look and see what cases they've actually done. And I've noticed this with a lot of attorneys who are not actually in the field, but they're just trying to grab the money. It's a firm in Texas and a firm in New York specifically that I'm thinking of. They will post these results, but if you look, they weren't the lead attorney on it. So they were probably the attorney that had brought the victim in and then they firmed them out to another firm. Yeah. So just make sure that you're talking to your attorney and that you're not calling some hotline, a victim services hotline, because those have been popping up quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

The marketing of personal injury and and these types of cases is is kind of wild, right? And I I can understand how frustrating it can be to find a lawyer. Because ultimately, I mean, if you look at the Google reviews, and everyone's got five-star Google reviews. You see the billboards, they all say we have millions and millions of dollars, right? Like I tell people, I mean, if you can find somebody who you think will genuinely care about your case and you, then chances are you've got somebody who's gonna get you the result that you deserve, or and treat you with the respect that you deserve throughout the process.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

And it's sad because there are those lawyers out there and we need them, but I feel quite badly that there are a lot of victims out there that are victims of crime, but there are reasons that their case just isn't a good case. And so I try to explain to victim advocates when I work with them and victims themselves, sometimes and if an attorney turns down your case, that's still being the kindest possible way to you, because first of all, civil lawsuits are expensive. You're going to possibly go through a lot of trauma. And if they're not pursuing the right person, and if they haven't done their research, at the end of the day, you're just gonna have a piece of paper that says you're owed however much money. It's frustrating, but sometimes I think the kindest thing attorneys can do is do a turn down and explaining that to victims is really devastating to them sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Absolutely. I mean, we that happens a lot when we get calls where there's no third party to go after. And what I mean by that for those who aren't familiar is that there's no organization where there's potential assets to recover from. I mean, because if you think about it, every criminal case where in which there is a victim, I mean, that's a potential civil lawsuit. But why don't you see every murder, for example, being pursued on the civil side, it's because insurance policies don't cover intentional conduct for individuals, right? And so the only way you're actually able to make these cases make sense and to pursue, because most of us do this work on a contingency basis, meaning the law firm assumes the risk of the advancing the expenses and also doesn't get paid unless there's a recovery. There's got to be a realistic shot of their being asses at the end of the day. And so those are always really hard because it happened and what happened was wrong. And sometimes the victims do not feel that they got full justice through the criminal system and that they still have that kind of hollow feeling and they're hoping for a little bit more. But oftentimes I end up finding myself saying, like, I wish we could help you, but I it would be a disservice to you and frankly also to our firm to pursue a case where there's just nothing that you can recover. The best we could would be able to get you is a fancy piece of paper that says you're entitled to a lot of money that you never ultimately get.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

That you'll never see. And a lot of people don't understand that. They don't understand that just because you get a piece of paper where it says you're entitled to a million dollars, where's that million going to come from? And I think actually one of the most interesting examples of this is um Kim Goldman sits on our board of directors, and Kim was Ron Goldman's sister, and she and her dad Fred famously sued OJ and won a $10 million verdict. They still have not seen a dime. OJ had his money tucked away hidden. So you have somebody like O.J. Simpson, who you know could afford that, managed to completely hide it. And a couple of weeks ago, there was an article that made the rounds that said OJ Simpson's executor agrees to give Fred Goldman all the money or agrees to not cut him out of the estate. That was actually an incorrect headline. And what really just happened was they renewed the lawsuit again. They still have barely seen any money from that, but they have a piece of paper.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Yeah. Yeah. And there's arguments that go back and forth as to pursuing those. I mean, there are cases which I've seen where people get hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts, but they can't be collected, right? They're against an individual who just doesn't have the assets, and sometimes those cases aren't even defended. And then the question is, well, what's the point? And I don't necessarily think that there isn't one. I think it's debatable, right? I think as we talked about earlier on, right? I mean, of the three goals, at least that we talk about in our firm, the accountability, the deterrence, and the compensation piece, I think you still can get some level of accountability and and maybe some deterrence by getting that, but the compensation piece just isn't there. So one of the things that I think the civil justice system allows for, maybe a little bit more than the criminal justice system, which I think is helpful for the victims we represent, is they have a more uh central role to the case. But I probably use the wrong language there because I actually I'm a firm believer that when we pursue these cases, they're not about our clients. They are, but they're not. From a litigation standpoint, from an advocacy standpoint, I think that the most effective way to approach these things is to prosecute the defendant, meaning we tell we explain what the defendant did wrong, what they should have done, and then we introduce them to our client. But our clients at least have more of a role than what they otherwise would likely have had in the criminal setting. I think that can be sometimes, while frightening, can also contribute to the healing because they'd have more of a say, right? At the end of the day, they are the decision maker.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Right. That's what we tell folks. You're in the driver's seat. You can fire your lawyer, because I think what a lot of people don't understand, and it's what you said earlier about the criminal justice system, is that the victim is really not a player in the criminal justice system at all. We have Crime Victims Bill of Rights in every single state. Crime victims' rights are not always enforced. Um, a lot of folks don't know about them, and there's very little teeth sometimes to getting them enforced. But so victims are really relegated to being a witness for the most part. And unfortunately, even if you're a witness and going to be a witness, a lot of times you can't even necessarily always be in the courtroom as the victim. So it's really completely not only out of your control, but the criminal justice system, I think, almost goes out of its way to exclude victims.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah. You know, so I did my time in the army as a JAG, and they actually, and I'm sure you're aware of this, they have victim counsel. And I mean, it's so much so that there's been talk of having a third table in the courtroom because sometimes the victims' interests are divergent from the prosecution's interests, right? And so there are lawyers in the military who do nothing but represent victims.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Oh, that's amazing. I actually did not know that. That is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Oh wow, really? Well, then I don't know. It's it's been going on for years now. It's special victims counsel. I mean, it is it's a big deal. I think it's a huge asset for victims. I think there are certainly pros and cons, and I think there's confusion at times as to, well, like how is this supposed to work, right? Because it's definitely different. But no, the military, without question, has a very serious victims counsel program.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

You know, the number of issues that that would address in civilian life, if we would do that, would it would be groundbreaking. We're looking at a an ABA rule right now that they're looking to change a rule of criminal procedure regarding what evidence defense attorneys can get and whether or not they can subpoena third parties and how do they subpoena third parties. But a lot of victims' issues are at play because a lot of what we're talking about is the psych records of a rape victim. And so the defense attorney being able to subpoena those. And one of my biggest points was because they were like, well, we give the victim notice an opportunity to object. I'm like, that's great. You send it in the most legal ease that even I wouldn't understand. So you send this to a victim. We get so many calls from victims that say, we got this notice. We have no idea what it means. We don't even know how to act on it. So uh the number of ways it would change if we gave victims, lawyers, and civilian life, even just to review things, because that's not the prosecutor's job. And we've got great prosecutors out there. But at the end of the day, that's not their job either. And sometimes they can't help the victim. Not even because their interests run separately, but because ethically they can't have certain conversations with them.

unknown 41:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

And I mean it this conversation we have frequently, right? Like comes down to resources. I mean, you you get what you pay for in some respects, is uh unfortunate and but real that that is. I mean, I don't know. I wish we paid police officers more, I wish we paid teachers more, I wish we pay our firefighters more, I wish we funded our criminal justice system more, right? And instead, as a society, we in some respects rely on altruism to do some of the most important things that serve as kind of the bedrock of how we operate, right? I mean, we don't pay teachers well, yet education of our children is like the most important thing there is, right?

SPEAKER_03 42:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

It doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, or you're gonna go be a public defender or or a prosecutor, right? I mean, I mean, you'll make a salary, you'll make uh you you can hopefully you can live on it, but it's not even 25% of what your peers are doing in the corporate firms.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

So that's exactly it. And it's it is frustrating because it's a lot of things get swept aside. And I could go on a political tangent about what we do spend money on, but I'm not gonna do that today.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Okay, there we go. Yeah, it's well, join the military, and if you want to see inefficiency on when it comes to spending, it's rampant.

SPEAKER_03 43:18

But uh, I wanted to join the military. I uh signed up, I showed up at the um local JAG recruiter's office. I wanted to be a Marine in the worst way. Not Navy, not Air Force, not Army. I wanted to be a Marine. Period, hard stop. And I was very sadly rejected, and it was devastating. I didn't get over that one for a while.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

You know what? I once wanted to be a Marine too, and then I saw a Marine gunnery sergeant at VMI jump in a puddle and crawl through it and get up and yell, and then I saw all the other Marines follow his lead and do the exact same thing, and a few days later. The wimp that I am went over and switched to the army. So um, but no, I I still am very envious though of their uniforms. And one of our lawyers, one of my colleagues, Zach, is a Marine. I make sure to remind him often about how the army is superior, even though I'm secretly envious of him and everyone in the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

But um, I I'm not gonna lie, I wanted to do this because of a few good men. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Why am I a lawyer because of a few good men? My five-year-old's name is Maverick. Well, that's Top Gun, but still there's some rec there's Sam.

SPEAKER_03 44:34

I love it. I love it. But no, I I mean I wouldn't have made, let's be clear, I would not have made it in the Marines, I would have been kicked out. It would have been awful. But also, shamefully, and this is not why I was rejected, and I did not say this to the recruiting officer, but I told my mom I wanted to be a Marine because of their outfits. And she was like, So we don't call them outfits.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

What we do is call them uniforms. Um they do have the best uniforms, without question. I know, and they still do to this day. So Marine Corps. Well, Renee, this has been a lot of fun. I'd like to end with one question. Is that all right? Yeah, absolutely. If you could go back in time to when you finished law school and give yourself some advice with all the experience that you have now, what would you tell yourself?

SPEAKER_03 45:16

I'm gonna steal it, and I'm gonna steal it from one of my favorite professors of all time. He was my favorite professor of all time. He was a law school professor and he passed away from pancreatic cancer. And he had earned this reputation in our class. We loved him. He was a partner in a downtown firm. He still taught adjunct four classes a semester. How he had time to do any of this was beyond me. But he had a reputation of kind of being a jerk, but like a likable jerk. Like we all thought he was funny, but he was this big corporate lawyer. And our last day of class, he sat down with us and this stuck with me. And he said, I need you guys to understand we joke in this class. I tell lots of jokes about being a lawyer and being powerful and you know what jerks lawyers are. He said, When somebody hands you a law degree for right or for wrong, earned or not earned, you are being handed respect and expectation from people for the rest of your life. And reputation, honesty, and integrity take forever to build, and they can be destroyed by one moment. So always be kind. Keep in mind you are in a position that is a highly valued position. So make sure you are doing the right thing with it. And he he did. He gave more than anybody knew. He was one of the most respected attorneys, and he's always been in the back of my mind saying that. You know, I've been given a position of trust. I've been given this law degree that people seem to think makes me smart, even though I don't necessarily think that's true. Um, but when we get a law degree, a lot of people start to have false assumptions about maybe who we are, and we should be trusted, and we know a lot of things. That's almost sacred. It's certainly terrifying, but it's something to definitely keep in mind as you kind of walk through your behavior and how you treat people and how you use your law degree.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Well, Renee, it's been a pleasure having you. Thank you again for that invitation to come speak at in Orlando. And I'm very grateful to be a member of your organization and look forward to continuing to work with you and all the other amazing attorneys in the NCVBA. So thank you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Thanks for listening to Courtroom Stories and Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers, hosted by Sharif Gray and Nial Abuzaki. Please subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or any major podcast platform. Together, we're building a tribe of trial lawyers to remind the world what human life is truly worth. One verdict at a time.