Protégé Joseph Low carries forward Gerry Spence's trial legacy

When the legendary trial lawyer Gerry Spence died in Montecito last month, his longtime protégé, Joseph Low IV, was there holding his hand.

"I was in Idaho at our lake place for family vacation. I'd talked to him a couple days before. He was fine, doing OK for 96 and a half," Low explained. "Then I got a call from his son saying he didn't look good. I scrambled through airports, got on planes as quick as I could."

Recounting that scene was the only time in a 45-minute phone call Thursday when Low slowed down and grew reflective. The rest of the conversation raced forward, his words tumbling out as he extolled the trial lawyers' college Spence built and Low honed over three decades -- a torrent delivered in the Virginia drawl of his birth, edged with the crust of a Wyoming rancher and punctuated by the staccato of a Los Angeles trial lawyer. It's a lot to take in.

"I gotta million stories about the old man," Low said. "He was an amazing human being."

But in the long history of Gerry Spence and Joseph Low, one story stands above the rest: the day Low reduced a "witness" -- and an entire mock jury -- to tears with his cross-examination, prompting Spence to rush into the room and exclaim, "Jesus! That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

As Low remembers it, he was only six weeks into his career when he attended a condensed trial seminar led by Spence in 1998. In the final exercise of the three-day program, he was the last student to cross-examine a witness. After only a handful of questions, the witness broke down.

"I thought I'd done something wrong and was about to get thrown out," he recalled.

Later, Spence pulled him aside. "I want you to come to my college," he said, referring to his monthlong trial academy at Thunderhead Ranch in Wyoming. When Low protested that he had no experience, Spence growled, "It's my goddamn college. I can do what I want."

If the story sounds a bit fantastical, that too would have pleased the old man. Dressed in buckskin jackets and white Stetsons, Spence -- who died Aug. 13 -- cut a striking figure and delighted in telling larger-than-life stories, not least his oft-repeated claim that he never lost a trial. While the record shows a few exceptions, his success in the courtroom was so extraordinary that the boast became part of his enduring legend.

Spence's invitation to Low, which broke all the rules of the rigorous selection process for Spence's elite Gerry Spence Method trial lawyers' college, changed Low's life. He went, graduated at the top of his class, and was asked to stay on as an instructor -- a decision that rattled veterans but solidified Low as Spence's heir apparent.

"You don't understand," Spence told the skeptics. "There's something special about this knucklehead."

Low has been with the program ever since.

Spence's influence on Low wasn't just about courtroom performance. It was about the role of lawyers in society.

"Law school tells you to work for corporations or government -- that's what success looks like," Low said. "Spence flipped that. He said if you really want to be successful, you've got to be a warrior for people. You've got to stand up for the powerless against the almighty."

Spence preached that truth was not neat or convenient but messy and real. "People don't want polished lies," Low said. "They want the truth, even if it has warts. They'd rather see the defects than have someone pretend everything's perfect."

That philosophy reshaped Low's trajectory. Instead of pursuing corporate work, he dedicated himself to representing individuals -- criminal defendants and plaintiffs in civil cases -- and to teaching others how to connect with jurors, not through tricks but through honesty and storytelling.

At the heart of the Gerry Spence Method is the search for truth -- not just the factual truth, but what Spence called the "universal truth."

"Truth is buried, spun, manipulated," Low explained. "Our job is to strip it back, find the story that explains why things happened, and deliver that story so people can feel it."

Low employs psychodrama, a technique where lawyers literally act out the roles of everyone in the case. In preparing for a trial, Low said he will inhabit not just the plaintiff or defendant but the drivers, police officers, paramedics, even the stoplight at the intersection.

"You become each person to understand what they were feeling," he said. "Because behavior comes from feelings. If you don't know the feeling, you don't know why the fact happened."

That kind of immersion, he said, is what separates Spence's method from traditional trial preparation.

"Novelists and screenwriters know it -- you've got to be the master of the universe," Low said. "Until you know every detail, you're just repeating things you've heard."

Low's background as a biochemist and cancer researcher also shaped his teaching.

"In science, once you master what's known, you're expected to invent something new," he said. "I brought that to the trial college. I didn't just mimic Gerry. I advanced the method, tested it, created new exercises."

Over decades of teaching five to 15 times a year, Low refined techniques with constant student feedback. One principle he emphasizes is the link between emotion and thought.

"If you want to know what someone's thinking, you've got to know what they're feeling," he said. "And if you want to change how they think, you've got to change how they feel."

He pointed to the infamous McDonald's hot coffee case as proof of how jurors' feelings -- once informed of the hidden truth -- shift dramatically. The case was mocked as frivolous until jurors learned that McDonald's had repeatedly ignored safety warnings and served coffee at scalding temperatures, causing third-degree burns. "When you reveal the truth, people's feelings change, and so does their judgment," Low said.

The program at Thunderhead Ranch remains intentionally exclusive. Only lawyers who represent people -- plaintiffs' attorneys and criminal defense lawyers -- are admitted. No corporate or government attorneys are allowed.

"We don't have time to teach everyone," Low said. "We limit it to the hardest kind of trial -- jury trials for people."

"If I want to hear corporate lawyers, I can go to any other seminar. But they don't understand story the way we do," he said.

Instructors, too, must meet stringent requirements. All must be practicing trial lawyers who completed the program, pursued advanced psychodrama training, and proved themselves through years of trial work.

"Nobody teaches until they've tried at least two cases a year and demonstrated they can live this," Low said. "That's why this is the greatest trial academy in the world."

Importantly, the program remains nonprofit. Students pay only for room, board and upkeep of the ranch.

"Not a single instructor, including me, has ever been paid a penny," Low said. "That was Gerry's promise. The knowledge is a gift, and the only way to repay it is to pass it on."

Thunderhead Ranch itself is part of the curriculum. Once a cattle operation and before that a wintering ground for the Shoshone, the land carries what Low calls "positive and healing energy." At 7,000 feet with no cell service or Wi-Fi, it forces students to disconnect from modern distractions.

"It strips away the trinkets -- the plaques, the awards, the titles," he said. "We believe in working on the horse, not the saddle."

He recalled one of Spence's favorite parables, told by his "Uncle Slim," a cowboy unimpressed by a city slicker with an ornate saddle on a worn-out horse. "Anyone knows you can't get nowhere with a thousand-dollar saddle on a 10-dollar horse," Slim said.

To Spence and Low, lawyers too often polish the saddle -- résumés, accolades -- instead of strengthening themselves as advocates.

The program has occasionally gone "On the Road," with shorter sessions outside Wyoming. In January, the method will debut in Nashville, where Low will try to create the vibe of a Wyoming ranch in a hotel conference room.It won't be the ranch," Low acknowledged, "but we know how to recreate the process of connection anywhere."

Though he devotes summers to teaching, Low remains an active trial lawyer, with an office in Long Beach and typically trying at least two cases a year. He acknowledged the challenge of balancing teaching, practice and family life.

"You'd have to ask my wife if I'm getting the balance right," he joked.

He also carries the memory of Spence closely. "Every conversation with him was life-changing," Low said. "He forced you to ask yourself how you felt, and in that process, you told the truth."

For Low, the responsibility is clear: to preserve and evolve the teachings of Gerry Spence for future generations of trial lawyers. "I was raised in the finest trial system in the world by the greatest trial lawyer ever," he said. "The only way I can repay the debt is to honor the gift by passing it on."

And so, each summer at Thunderhead Ranch, another group of lawyers arrives, stripped of their titles and trinkets, ready to confront not just cases but themselves. They leave not only better trial lawyers, Low insists, but better people.

"Every single student tells me this place changed their life," Low said. "That's the point. When you learn to see and feel the truth -- about yourself and others -- you can't help but do better in every part of your life."