ITCC: Joshua Robbins on rethinking trial advocacy

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 about courtroom theatrics than about narrative discipline: distilling business disputes into moral concepts jurors intuitively grasp, and knowing which evidence to leave out.

Highlights:

• Why early exposure to international arbitration and criminal prosecution shaped an evidence-first approach to civil litigation

• The Tom Goldstein trial: how jurors' built-in skepticism punishes testimony that reads as a performance

• Building cases on documents and letting witnesses narrate them — not the other way around

• The Miles Davis quote he cites: five or six key documents matter more than hundreds of exhibits

• The hardest skill to teach young lawyers: listening and reacting in real time instead of clinging to the script