On October 30, 2025, Robins Kaplan hosted its annual CLE, “The Trial Advocacy Seminar.” This year, attorney Raoul Shah reflected on his main takeaways.
This year’s Trial Advocacy Seminar, titled “Protecting the Pillars: Foundation to the Future,” felt especially important and weighty, as we live in a time when the institutions that are so central to our justice system face unique, ongoing challenges. But I left this seminar feeling a new sense of hope, inspired both by the impressive presenters who shared the work they are doing to uphold these institutional pillars and by the attentive and engaged audience, who joined together with a shared commitment to supporting these pillars to build a better future.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon reminded us that it is important to bring long-term optimism even when your work brings short-term challenges. He discussed the importance of creating and maintaining both good law and good culture related to elections and voting. These rights have been recognized as a part of the “critical infrastructure” of our country, right alongside the water supply and power grids. As members of the legal profession, we must ensure that these crucial rights remain intact by encouraging others; instilling the importance of voting and democracy in our families, communities, and businesses; and making sure that when people or institutions try to bend these systems to their own interests, we stand up and take them to task. Secretary Simon has done great work to protect these rights for Minnesotans, and we should all commit to sharing his long-term optimism despite the short-term challenges.
Leita Walker, a partner at Ballard Spahr; Jane Kirtley, the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication; and Carolyn Cole, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist and former Robins Kaplan civil rights client, also discussed the importance of defending and protecting the freedom of the press. There have been many recent defamation and other lawsuits designed to chill free speech and other improper purposes, but it was encouraging to hear about all of the work that the media and media lawyers are doing to enforce the First Amendment. As we know, the First Amendment is not self-executing, and thanks to the journalists and other members of media teams who are on the front line, that wrongdoing continues to be examined, explained, and exposed, simply because the story needs to be told. We hear the term “fake news” thrown about, and while we find ourselves more polarized than ever and trying to divine what is real and what is not, we must all do our part to support this institutional pillar in its goal of reporting the facts and serving as an important check.
Finally, Jon Tynjala, the Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, emphasized the importance of protecting another critical pillar: the people. Two concepts really resonated with me. First, well-being is an individual responsibility that we all owe to ourselves, but it is also an organizational responsibility that we owe to our friends and colleagues. There is no doubt that everyone in the legal field is busy, but we can – and must – take time for each other and foster connection and support. We all do better when we’re all doing better. Second, to quote Jon, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” We can say we prioritize well-being, but unless and until we create cultures that not only support but actively promote and advance well-being, we fall short. We all have a role to play in creating these cultures around us, to protect a crucial pillar: the individual people whose collective efforts contribute to everything else.
These are just a few of my main “lessons learned” – and I’d love to hear from each of you about what resonated with you, too. Feel free to reach out to me at RShah@RobinsKaplan.com. I look forward to seeing many of you at the 2026 Seminar!
If you are interested in submitting a topic for our 2026 Trial Advocacy Seminar, click here.
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