Mikal Watts is a San Antonio personal injury lawyer with a nationwide varied practice. He is considered one of the best of his generation and his jury verdicts speak for themselves. He has been involved in product liability cases, personal injury, mass torts, and commercial litigation. It was great to sit down with my old boss and mentor.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill law firm cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] I'm here with Mikal Watts. He was my original boss. This is Hill Law Firm cases podcast and I'm going to talk with Mikal, who was the whole reason I came to San Antonio. He was really an inspiration for me wanting to get into, not just plaintiffs work, but products work, which I missed at the back end of it, but I got to do incredible things at his firm and I got to see incredible things and I got to be part of things that nobody my age got to do.

Mikal: You did incredible things.

Justin Hill: Thank you. I did my best, but to be fair, I'm now on my own and I was only able to do that with the set of skills and the quiver that I left your firm with, so I thank you so much for that. I wanted to do these small podcasts for my law firm to talk about how we do things, why we do things, what we are. One of the things I sit down with every client that I learned from you early on, is I say, "We're going to file your lawsuit, we're going to push it fast, we're going to get to trial as quickly as we can." That's something I learned from you. What was your philosophy, because so many people in our industry, they wait 'til this and they send a letter, and then if that doesn't happen-- What was your philosophy to file and push?

Mikal: You can follow as a gentleman and not be a jackass, right? You can just get the process started, apply pressure as a gentleman. To be honest with you, I tried a case last fall that I lost in San Antonio, tough case, but you were in there kicking ass on some guy. They were trying to continue the case and you were pushing, and I said, "I taught him that. That's awesome."

Justin Hill: It's true.

Mikal: I was proud of you. The good news is that probably settled because you applied pressure. You can apply pressure without being rude, and it's not dishonorable to tell a defendant, "No, we're going to move, we're going to get a trial setting. You've got the time between now and the trial setting to settle the case." That's what you've done and that's what I saw last fall, which is awesome.

Justin Hill: Everything I've learned in my process has really been from your firm.

Mikal: Litigation is all about applying pressure. It's either applied to you or you apply it to somebody else. A good plaintiff's lawyer is going to apply it to the defendant and then get paid earlier.

Justin Hill: We have a burden to carry and I always explain that to clients, too. It's tougher on our end. We have to carry a burden. What is your philosophy going into a trial knowing that you have the harder road to hoe? Look, you are always good friends with defense lawyers. It was one of those things that I've never met in anybody else. You have good relationships with them, they respect you, you treat them well, but you push your cases. How do you approach a case knowing you have the burden to carry and how do you...