Sep 28, 2026 · 50 min · 9 segments
Host Chad McLain interviews longtime friend and mentor Ted Sherwood about the psychological weight of plaintiff personal injury work and how lawyers manage repeated exposure to loss. Sherwood…
Ted SherwoodGuest
Chad McLainHost
so i i clerked for ed for two years and then i practiced with him for seven okay uh so and we got to try during that time period we probably tried three or four or five cases together and like you say um And education like that is invaluable because if you just go out there and hang your shingle as a young lawyer, then you're going to have to take a lot of stuff that is probably not that interesting, not that lucrative, perhaps very important.
But like you say, when you go to work at a large plaintiff's firm, and there aren't very many large plaintiff's firms in the state of Oklahoma.
At that time, there were probably three or four, you know, that had more than a handful of lawyers.
Ed had a, we probably had at our peak, we probably had 10 lawyers and another 20 staff.
And we got to see some really fantastic, interesting stuff that we, you know, and we started to see really challenging, fun cases.
And, uh, but eventually, uh, I left to form a firm with a couple of guys, my own age, Mike Brown and Robert Nelson.
Ed had a statewide referral practice where other lawyers would get a case, sign the people up, and then they'd bring them to Ed.
Do you think, you mentioned starting, you left and started with a couple of guys your age.
It seems to me that what we've always talked about in our practice is you want wolves and you want sheep because it's hard to get a wolf to do a lot of work because the wolf is usually going to want to leave and go on their own and start their own business.
And so you want sheep with a little bit of wolf in them, but you don't want them to be a wolf.
As that sounds like to me, you might not use those words to describe it, but you were you practice there long enough to understand how to do it, how to practice and work the cases up and probably saw the benefit in not sharing the fee with somebody.
It's a little more nuanced than that because plaintiff's law firms also do poorly in sharing responsibility.
And Ed had come out of a pretty great firm, but a very contentious practice when they were partners.
He wanted to be the sole decider of whatever was going to happen, even though he was, I mean, I rarely disagree with his decisions.
so i i clerked for ed for two years and then i practiced with him for seven okay uh so and we got to try during that time period we probably tried three or four or five cases together and like you say um And education like that is invaluable because if you just go out there and hang your shingle as a young lawyer, then you're going to have to take a lot of stuff that is probably not that interesting, not that lucrative, perhaps very important.
But like you say, when you go to work at a large plaintiff's firm, and there aren't very many large plaintiff's firms in the state of Oklahoma.
At that time, there were probably three or four, you know, that had more than a handful of lawyers.
Ed had a, we probably had at our peak, we probably had 10 lawyers and another 20 staff.
And we got to see some really fantastic, interesting stuff that we, you know, and we started to see really challenging, fun cases.
And, uh, but eventually, uh, I left to form a firm with a couple of guys, my own age, Mike Brown and Robert Nelson.
Ed had a statewide referral practice where other lawyers would get a case, sign the people up, and then they'd bring them to Ed.
Do you think, you mentioned starting, you left and started with a couple of guys your age.
It seems to me that what we've always talked about in our practice is you want wolves and you want sheep because it's hard to get a wolf to do a lot of work because the wolf is usually going to want to leave and go on their own and start their own business.
And so you want sheep with a little bit of wolf in them, but you don't want them to be a wolf.
As that sounds like to me, you might not use those words to describe it, but you were you practice there long enough to understand how to do it, how to practice and work the cases up and probably saw the benefit in not sharing the fee with somebody.
It's a little more nuanced than that because plaintiff's law firms also do poorly in sharing responsibility.
And Ed had come out of a pretty great firm, but a very contentious practice when they were partners.
He wanted to be the sole decider of whatever was going to happen, even though he was, I mean, I rarely disagree with his decisions.
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