Hugh Totten, by Hugh Totten

Hugh Totten is a business trial lawyer with Valorem Law Group, a Chicago litigation firm.

During my 18 years at an AmLaw 10 firm and then another four at an AmLaw 100 firm, I led the recruiting effort for many years. I reviewed thousands of resumes and they tended to all look the same. And my firm’s web sites and marketing materials all contained resumes prepared and approved by the Better Resume Bureau. I have such a resume, [here if you must], but I always felt that I wanted to know something about a candidate’s character. If you think the same, then let me focus on the lessons I’ve learned and the things that have shaped me as a person and as a lawyer. This admittedly is an unusual approach to a resume, one that walks a fine line between TMI – too much information – and visions of David Carradine listening to the Shaolin monk who called him “Grasshopper,” but my hope is that it gives you some insight into me.

In college I worked as a reporter, city editor and ultimately as a member of the publishing board of a newspaper that had 30,000 daily readers. The editorial staff met every day to decide the order of stories and how they were to be covered. Five hours later we put the paper to bed and onto the presses, five days a week. These meetings taught me the value of collaboration and the power of a group to create more than the sum of its parts. I also learned the sanctity of a deadline. The members of that editorial staff are still my best friends.

I grew up in a small town in Indiana and I didn’t know any lawyers. My only understanding was that they went to court a lot, so that’s what I decided to do when I went to law school. I’ve since become familiar with all of the various legal disciplines and specialties, and while some seem interesting and even more intellectually challenging, none require the skill mix of a litigator. I love litigation, but I don’t love what it does to litigators over time. They frequently are the most cynical, disagreeable and dislikable people in the room. Most need to take a teaspoon of humility and two tablespoons of humor.

Early in my legal career I represented a very large firm in a lawsuit in the deep south. That case ultimately settled, very favorably, in part because of the work we did in discovery but also because my local counsel always kept the lines of communication and the olive branch extended to even the most disagreeable lawyer I learned that being civilized doesn’t mean being weak and talking the loudest doesn’t necessarily carry the point. My local counsel died several years later, and I’ve often thought of what he warned me about: this job is important, but it’s not your life or your family.

As I was striving to become a partner at my law firm and trying to balance life and work, I learned from my 30-month old daughter that we have an inner strength far beyond common assumptions and understanding. She had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia and for the next 36 months of treatment she never once complained. Never once. She will turn 20 this year and she inspires me every day. Her illness led me many years later to volunteer with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I am now the President of the Chicago chapter, probably the worst leader in its history, but it’s fulfilling to make even the slightest contribution and to know that I’m helping people I’ve never met in the same way that countless others helped me and my family years ago.

Beyond these major influences, I have developed a number of observations on my profession that I think are revealing:

• I have never understood why people are afraid of being argumentative in a brief. Isn’t that what briefs are for?
• And why do litigants cite cases that have some good language but end up holding against them?
• Also, when you see ellipses in a quote, as in “blah blah blah … yada yada yada,” it’s almost always a red flag that the quote is being taken out of context.

Do Lucite cubes benefit lawyers or clients more? Or just the Lucite cube manufacturers? Do the same people who make little ships for the inside of bottles print tiny briefs for the Lucite cubes?

Employ the Ronald Reagan rule: trust but verify, always. I had a client hire me to do a TRO for theft of trade secrets. It turned out that the computer reports containing the secrets, which had been printed on the old “green bar” paper, had been used as packing materials in various shipments to customers. The secrets were customer names.

Ninety-percent of what is discussed in the average deposition never again sees the light of day. Why do they take so long? The same goes for document discovery. Indeed, the percentage is probably higher. Shouldn’t parties be required to identify their ten worst and their ten best documents since those are the ones that occupy most trial time anyway?

I have learned that my personal limit on zealous representation is when one’s personal integrity and reputation is about to be put in play. I’m not sure if that’s the same line drawn by the ABA Code of Ethics but I do know where my level of discomfort causes me to draw it.

When someone says, “If anyone was offended” right before they say “then I’m sorry, but …,” it’s a phony apology.

I was one of several lawyers who worked on the Denver International Airport baggage system, one of the most spectacular project failures of the1990s. My client was a seasoned owner’s representative who had been involved in countless construction projects across the world. He also was a law school graduate. When I was tasked with buying the system from the City after it had already failed, I learned from him the ability to simplify performance standards and to understand the underlying science before doing anything else. He also taught me, again, that solutions are borne of creativity. I also learned, from the other side, that location, location, location is not just a real estate mantra. They beat me to the courthouse to file a lawsuit by a matter of minutes when the system still couldn’t be fixed. They filed in Dallas. The lawsuit settled quite favorably after I wrote the brief that resulted in it being transferred back to Denver.

When someone says, “With all due respect…,” it means they wish you’d go to Hell.

I caught an opposing expert lying once in the middle of a proceeding. It was during his rehabilitation and directly contradicted something he said on direct, but I wasn’t sure we’d ever find the earlier testimony in time to make the point. Fortunately, the court reporter was using a program that was easily searched and she found the reference in less than a minute. Technology sometimes is everything it’s cracked up to be.

I have a client who received a classic Jesuit education. He inspires me with his humility, kindness and charity in a profession that has a profound lack of each. Besides these virtues, he taught me the value of understanding the human element of each story and each litigant.

When you watch the big, famous lawyers on television, or even in person at a non-televised trial, don’t they always strike you as more human and more like you and me and our level of abilities? I sometimes think that what separates ordinary lawyers from most great ones is simply opportunity and the willingness to take a chance and embarrass yourself.

In the 2005 baseball season, I went to over 40 White Sox games with my family. That year, and that championship, is something we will always cherish as ours. Eat your heart out Cubs fans.

I am inspired by the basic virtues of all three major religions – faith, hope and love. But I think Ben Franklin’s list is more comprehensive and practical. My favorite of his thirteen virtues, published at various times in Poor Richard’s Almanac, are order (let all your things have their places and let each part of your business have its time);resolution (resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve);humility; and sincerity. I’ve never really understood how someone with his reputation for amorous adventure became reconciled to Virtue No. 12, chastity (rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation). And it strikes me that his virtue of tranquility (be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable) would virtually gut today’s legal system.

We are all guilty of missing the big picture. What does it mean, for instance, that the AmLaw 200’s revenues several years ago were bigger than the bottom 50 countries’ gross domestic product as tracked by the World Bank? Are all 100,500 lawyers working for those firms providing value equivalent to what they are being paid -- $72.5 billion? Perhaps, perhaps not. What I do know is that Americans several years ago spent $30 billion on pizza products and $10 billion on pornography. So, the real question is whether each lawyer is worth two pizzas and a porno movie.

Valorem really is a different firm. As an example, it is the only one where I could put a bio like this on the firm web site.