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"We need to pick up as many different tips and practice pointers as we can. The more we do it, the better any trial lawyers will get."
“I never want to stop learning,” he says. “We need to pick up as many di erent tips and practice pointers as we can. e more we do it, the better any trial lawyer will get.”
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Kramer got his chance to get back in the courtroom on his next case in which a widow in her 50s was injured slipping on spilled co ee on the tile in the restroom at LAX. e injury le her permanently unable to work. LAX claimed it lost all of its construction work orders and that it had no cameras in the terminal to see who was carrying the co ee. With person a er person o ering no answers and LAX o ering $0, the case was forced to go to trial, and Kramer was ready.
“A er all the years of having done all this defense work and all of this studying, I nally had my crack at the plate,” says Kramer. e results: A $2.2 million judgment for the plainti and new code-compliant non-slip tile in the LAX restrooms to make all travelers safer.
More winning jury trials came along, including those for catastrophic injuries, wrongful death and even em- ployment cases. en one day a friend from law school called Kramer up about a case against a high-end jean manufacturer on behalf of a non-English-speaking work- er who was red because he got injured and couldn’t do his job. Kramer had to go up against a large Ivy-league law rm.
“ at was one of our toughest ones. We just worked and worked and worked around the clock,” says Kramer, drawing on a lesson from his grandfather. “ ere’s no half way—you have to go all in or nothing.”
He won for him a nearly $2 million judgment with punitive damages plus attorneys fees, and the employer learned a valuable lesson: “You can’t re people just be- cause they’re hurt.”
LIFE STORIES
e art of storytelling played an important part in Kramer’s career choice, and it is a key factor in represent- ing clients now.
“You have to know your client’s story,” says Kramer. “Know them as people. Understand what they’ve had to go through. How it a ects them. Why it a ects them. We are their mouthpiece. We have to go in front of the jury
and convey their story.”
is was especially true in a recent $2.8 million ver-
dict for an electrician who was injured when he fell into a trench on a construction site, su ered 3 rib fractures and lacerations on his spleen. e man couldn’t work for six months, and nine months a er the fall he looked normal and went back to work full time but was still in pain.
“He was su ering from the injury and he deserves a lifetime of compensation for it,” he says. “I needed to tell his story—that it was too painful for him to sit, to play with his kids, and that he was working through the pain.”
Kramer spent nearly 200 hours with his client and his family, including sharing many dinners together with his family, to understand the loss they were all experiencing. It’s a practice that works on all levels, he says.
“You get to know them, love them like family and treat them like family,” says Kramer. “ ere’s no trick. It’s just us caring for their story, and the jury sees it if we care.”
PEACETIME
Kramer is not all about going to war. In 2017 he reached his goal to become one of the youngest attorneys to join the American Board of Trial Advocates, a presti- gious national organization that aims to raise not only attorneys’ skill and expertise but also their levels of ethics and civility.
“It was a huge honor to be invited to join,” Kramer says. “I loved hearing all the stories about it from the trial at- torneys at my old rm.”
ABOTA, he says, stresses the importance of being able to sit down with the opposing counsel to work things out. “ ere’s so much we can achieve if we just pick up the phone,” Kramer says. “It doesn’t mean we don’t advocate. If you can give an extension give it, if you can do a favor, do it. Cut them a break. And if it’s not harming your case
or client, by all means you should be doing it.
“You ght as hard as you can and advocate as hard as you can, but there’s a lot of wasted time that doesn’t need to be wasted. It’s better for the client when you can work things out with the other side. You have better settle- ments and better deals if you have a good working rela- tionship with the opposing counsel. Some of my closest
friends are on the other side.”
When it comes to activities outside the courtroom,
Kramer has friends there, too. In 2021 he will take the post of president of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyer Chari-
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