Jon Katz, P.C.

09/20/2026

A recent message in my email spambox drew my interest by saying the sender had recorded a Vimeo video about my podcast. Absent that link, I would have deleted the message. The video showed the marketer talking, starting by mentioning my name. He did not say anything further about me nor my own online presence, but if his intro with my name was spliced with what he said for the next thirty seconds, that was masterfully unnoticeable splicing.

This is the first time I have seen a video URL link sent in a marketer's first message together with the rather lowkey approach that he took, including sending me no follow up emails now a few days later.

The foregoing approach is important for all persuasion approaches, whether arguing to a judge or jury, or selling products and services. Focus on the interests and needs of the audience rather than trying to shove anything down the listener's throat. Keep the message brief enough to keep it interesting or at least not annoying. Don't waste the listener's time. Respect the intelligence and sensibilities of the listener.

09/18/2026

My weekly Beat The Prosecution newsletter digs deep into topics of connecting with others, discovering and unleashing our internal magic, and perceiving of life in new ways. Full articles are available by subscribing at KatzJustice.com/Newsletter

Here's an excerpt-

Winning by dreaming, bonding, and persevering
.. Like Yoda's admonition, among the things we needed to do early on at the Trial Lawyers College was to unlearn many of the overly stiff, stuffy, suffocating, and wrongheaded teachings from our law professors and employers, come alive again, and reconnect with our powerful inner children. That was fostered by the beautiful Wyoming nature, mountains, sage and air.

A big focus at the college is to work on ourselves as people to become better lawyers, spoken of as working on the horse, rather than camouflaging it with an expensive saddle. At different paces, the attendees stripped away their protective armor, their marketing schtick, and any small talk, and threw themselves into coming face to face with their real selves, warts and all, pain and all, trauma and all, joy and all, and love and all. That is where the real work began, with psychodrama (working through challenges through scene setting, role playing and reverse role playing), fully revealing ourselves to each other in a trusting setting, and working together to make ourselves better people and better trial lawyers for our clients. That is a never-ending process.

Two of the college’s attendees that summer stood out in particular, those being my roommate Bob Hilliard and his later co-law firm attorney the late Dax Cowart. Both Texans, Bob several years earlier became his own boss starting with a Radio Shack phone, and Dax attended law school years after surviving a horrid ball of fire from a propane gas explosion that his father did not survive, and with Dax becoming very vocal about the right to die and to refuse medical treatment. They both deeply cared about their clients, as Bob continues doing in his ongoing law practice...

09/17/2026

Peter Max left his body three days ago, at 88 (double infinity when turned ninety degrees). What a life he had, and yes with numerous ups and downs as with all mortals. The one time I saw Max was when he visited the Wentworth Gallery in Northern Virginia a bit over ten years ago, but not getting a chance to meet him.

His family left Germany to Shanghai in 1938 when he was an infant, to escape Hi**er, which sounds like a big feat that deep into Hi**er's terror. They left China -- where an employee of his family taught him how to hold a brush -- in the late 1940's to escape Mao's impending takeover. He later lived in Israel (where his interest in the cosmos took hold), then briefly in France (influenced by the art there, of course), and ended up in Brooklyn. What a kaleidescope life. He said he saw everything through rainbow eyes. His art appealed to people across the sociopolitical spectrum, including large corporations.

In Shanghai, his family lived in a pagoda-style home, next to a Buddhist monastery where he would see calligraphy created and a Sikh temple where he would hear the devotional singing. Art and color was all around him.

He created psychedelic art without taking psychedelics, having been a teetotaler. In the 1960's, he met Swami Satchidananda, who later delivered the opening talk for Woodstock. Pictured is one of Max's artworks at the sprawling must-visit Yogaville established by Satchidananda in Buckingham, Virginia.

PETA's site talks of Max's becoming a vegetarian and then a vegan, and caring for all animals, including insects, as well as his practice of yoga and meditation. https://www.peta.org/news/peter-max

Max's artwork was uplifting, color-drenched, and transformative in vision. For me, he is inspirational to look within myself to find and express the sparks of joy, creativity and high vibrations.

Deeply thanking and bowing to Peter Max.

09/16/2026

Yesterday I posted a YouTube video -- which seems to be not any later than the 1980's -- in which my late great trial teacher Gerry Spence talks about the substantial time needed for preparing to win in court, to the point that it can unbalance one's personal life.

When I pointed out in my posting that trials take more time than settling, that is only to a point. When a lawyer prepares a case well and fully ready to go to trial, the case is more likely to settle, because the opponent knows the risk and price of going to trial. By that time, the lawyer often has already put in substantial time preparing for trial. When a lawyer prepares a case to settle, the case is more likely to go to trial, because the threat to the opponent is thereby reduced. The time saving of settling versus going to trial is at least the time in the trial itself.

I love going to trial. I love battle. My love of taijiquan is part of that love of battle, not a brute force battle, but a battle that pursues harmonizing my client's imbalanced situation of being prosecuted, and doing even better than that. When my client opts to go to trial, they are doing me a favor of giving me an opportunity of going to trial once again, after having tried hundreds of cases.

My love of trial reminds me of the lawyers (there have been at least a few) who have looked at me funny when my client won't simply take what the colleague think is a favorable settlement offer. I have sometimes obtained acquittals after those colleagues have looked at me funny. At the very least, there is little if any incentive to plead guilty or no contest when the risk of going to trial and being convicted is no different nor marginally different than pleading guilty or no contest for the best negotiation situation that has been achieved.

For me, the courthouse is my playground. I am energized there not because the work there is going to be easy, but because this is the place where I can obtain justice for my clients, when I come alive fighting for them, and simply because I love the combat, the persuasion, and the courthouse taijiquan.

09/16/2026

My late teacher Gerry Spence clearly had amazingly natural ability. Nonetheless, I did not know until seeing this video how unbalanced his life often was for working to win at trial, which he repeatedly achieved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFgUeL5vwzI Gerry here says he does not play golf and does not take long vacations. At the same time, he devoted plenty of time to the Trial Lawyers College he co-founded and that I attended in 1995 for an entire month on his ranch, write books, provide legal commentary on TV, and give talks to lawyers groups around the nation.

Certainly, going to trial takes more lawyer time than settling. Nonetheless, my daily taijiquan practice helps me balance my daily life while still obtaining plenty of great court results. My taijiquan practice makes me ready for the actual and potential bows and arrows each day. Practicing taijiquan at night helps me get a restful sleep. Going to trial for me is like doing taijiquan push hands/sensing hands/sparring process. I eat up the fight in court and with taijiquan. For me, my legal work is like nuclear fission, energizing me all the more as I work more and spend time with my clients, my colleagues, and witnesses for my side.

A time management adviser at a CLE recommended paring down our obligations to manage our time, including not to simply take every single potential client who wants to hire us.

None of this is to besmirch Gerry's approach. He repeatedly obtained amazing trial results. I learned tremendously from him.

Gerry Spence speaks with aspiring trial lawyers on the "sickness" o...

09/15/2026

The entrance to the Stafford County, Virginia, courthouse has a sign along the lines of being kind to people because we don't know what they are going through. Well said, on top of simply being kind even if the other person is having a great day. (As an aside, a few months ago I visited the next-door county government building, to get a sense of place of the peacewalking monks and their now-famous dog Aloka from Ft. Worth whom I think stayed overnight there soon before reaching the capital, which shows the generosity showed them by the county government.)

In some jurisdictions, not Stafford, I have seen police live or on video being unnecessarily harsh and nasty with their words.

That courthouse has a rather conservative prosecutor's office when it comes to negotiating settlements of criminal cases. I certainly prefer dealing with a prosecutor who agrees to favorable settlements but is not someone I'd want to break bread with, than the opposite. I prefer a judge who growls and repeatedly gives favorable dispositions than the opposite. It's kind of like the old Winston cigarette ad: "What do you want? Good grammar, or good taste?" In court, I of course prefer both.

09/13/2026

Conversing with prosecutors and police as just folks can be essential to obtaining great negotiated results. We defense attorneys need to get past seeing police and prosecutors as “the other” who want to convict our clients, and instead to recognize the value of effectively talking with them about the case, as that will yield getting a better sense of their personas, rhythm and attitudes to help us with negotiations and to achieve against them for motions and trials before the judge. Lawyers, Virginia assistant commonwealth attorneys (prosecutors) and law enforcement officers (LEO’s) were simply human beings before taking on the foregoing roles, and effective communications with them will acknowledge that. This article tracks how my talking as just folks with the prosecutor converted a 0.21 BAC Virginia DUI prosecution (over 2.5 times the legal limit) under Virginia Code § 18.2-266 Code into a wet reckless plea.

One day, I asked a lawyer about his mis-statement of reality during a talk about civil settlement negotiations with an opposing lawyer. He responded that this was “puffing”, which means exaggerating. Even assuming for arguments sake that puffing is ever acceptable or permissible, it is not full truth-telling. I know as a Fairfax criminal defense lawyer that the great thing about truth-telling is that the speaker does not need to keep track of — nor cover — their non-existent exaggerations or untruths. Silence is ordinarily not an untruth, and silence is, therefore, preferable to puffing. This all leads into my conversing with the prosecutor that converted my 0.21 BAC Fairfax DUI prosecution into a wet reckless deal...

Conversing to great settlements deals addressed by highly rated Fairfax criminal defense lawyer relentlessly fighting for your best defense

09/11/2026

The latest Beat the Prosecution newsletter has been posted today. The full version is at KatzJustice.com/Newsletter-

Paperless at what price?

An iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop computer can access thousands of books at once, and enough data to fill multiple buildings. At first blush, one might think they are saving trees by relying heavily on online data access and dissemination. What about voracious energy consumption by the huge online data centers being planned and built hither and yon, with nuclear energy likely to be fueling a huge percentage of this virtually infinite data activity?

All of this makes reading from an offline book all the more appealing. Unplugging is divine. Unplugging regularly is sublime.

___

Winning by humanizing criminal defendants- Joe Margulies
.. Joe Margulies begins his new book Cast Out with an exploration of a January 6, 2021, defendant who pleaded guilty and later got pardoned along with the vast majority of the other January 6 defendants. In this interview, I tell Joe how one of my excellent taijiquan teachers was one of those pardoned defendants. After I sent this teacher a brief message about my concerns about that soon after the incident, I put that by the wayside, recognizing he was not the other, and that January 6 did not detract at all from his greatness and generosity as a martial arts teacher, with whom I continue to sense hands / spar and learn...

Newsletter Sign Up Your essential criminal defense, persuasion, and life-boosting newsletter Call Us: 703-383-1100 Beat the Prosecution

09/11/2026

L'shana tova!

09/11/2026

My latest Beat the Prosecution podcast interviewee is the always insightful and entertaining Joe Margulies, returning to discuss his great book Cast Out, which is essential for criminal defense lawyers and eye opening for all . https://podcast.beattheprosecution.com/2293867/episodes/19788590 Links to the following liner notes are at the foregoing URL-

Life's twists and turns bring us to a plethora of destinations, byways, and discoveries by surprise, out of order, and at dizzyingly varying speeds. Who would have thought that my first law firm job would lead me to meet true believer criminal defense and civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies, via his conservative father (and my essential mentor) Irv Margulies (see his eye opening unglossed interview on his WWII combat experience in Germany) congratulating my transition to public defender work and happily telling me of his son Joe's working in the same field.

When Joe and I first spoke in late 2025, he told us about his metamorphosis from his clients being a means to fighting the opponent, to his clients being the raison d'être for his work, together with his gift for being a great writer (with several published books).

Now Joe is back, talking about his essential book available September 15, 2026, by Beacon Press, entitled Cast Out: A cure for a forgiving society in an age of incarceration. Having rivetedly read the Cast Out galley proof, I know my fellow criminal defense lawyers will find it a great read for humanizing our clients in the settlement negotiation, trial, and any sentencing stages. Remaining readers will find themselves on Joe's journey with several people who committed monstrous acts, but who still had or later developed essential elements of humanity, with some of them emerging into caring and thoughtful humans who seem to be the positive twins of their former scary selves.

Joe aptly says "the other" does not exist, rather than just us. Monster humans are not reality, versus people doing monstrous things. He does not even except Hi**er from this concept. Listen why.

Joe begins Cast Out with an exploration of a January 6, 2021, defendant who pleaded guilty and later got pardoned along with the vast majority of the other January 6 defendants. In this interview, I tell Joe how one of my excellent taijiquan teachers was one of those pardoned defendants. After I sent this teacher a brief message about my concerns about that soon after the incident, I put that by the wayside, recognizing he was not the other, and that January 6 did not detract at all from his greatness and generosity as a martial arts teacher, with whom I continue to sense hands / spar and learn.

Joe's book tour will for Cast Out is expected to include Busboys & Poets (I await learning the location) on October 11, 2026, at 5:00 p.m.

The YouTube version of this interview is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Ta6LwHSL8

Life's twists and turns bring us to a plethora of destinations, byw...