Bibi Fell

Sponsored by RebuttalPR

What initially inspired you to specialize in plaintiff personal injury law, and how has your motivation evolved over the years?

I'm a fourth-generation lawyer. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all trial lawyers, so I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I did well in law school and got a job at one of the big firms where I did a lot of business litigation. But I wasn't getting into the courtroom. I was looking around for positions that might allow me to get into the courtroom and try cases, and it looked to me like plaintiff's lawyers were doing a lot more of that than other types of lawyers.

How did that background inform your approach as a plaintiff-side attorney now, particularly your experience working at a bigger firm on the business side?

I think it was a huge benefit to me to be able to work in Big Law. There are certain techniques and disciplines that I learned in my time there that give me an edge over a lot of plaintiff's lawyers. The partner I worked under was probably the best legal writer you'll ever come across, and she really helped me refine my craft in terms of my written work product and research. The reality is, so many of these cases are won or lost not in trial but in discovery and motion work leading up to trial. I think having really strong research and writing skills has been a huge advantage for me.

Did you get any tips or tricks from your family, or have they been involved in your practice as you've evolved as an attorney?

I grew up listening to my dad talk about his trials. It was so fun to hear about the stories of his cases and see how much he loved what he did. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I was four years old because of my experience with my dad. I always figured that it was just going to be the same kind of joy for me as it was for him. I've always approached trials and my work more as a passion than a job. I think that's really helped my longevity in the career and helped me put in the long hours.

Also, when I graduated from law school, the first thing my dad told me was, "Don't forget to fight for the little guy." That always stuck with me. I wasn't really doing that when I was working in Big Law, but now that's what I do every single day.

Having your dad be an attorney—and the generations before him—did you feel like you were trying to be an attorney just like him? How did you figure out what it actually looked like for you?

Personality-wise and style-wise, I'm actually very similar to my father. I identify a lot with him. We have very similar senses of humor, a very similar passion, respect, and care for other people, and a similar softness when we speak. For me, emulating my dad in the courtroom was a natural transition. It felt right for me and fit well with who I am. I couldn't emulate him exactly because he actually never let me watch him in trial. As far as his style, his personality, the way he tells stories—it's the water I swam in my entire life, so it just felt very natural to me.

Why didn't he let you watch him in trial?

He said it would make him too nervous for me to be there watching him in trial, and that I was allowed to watch him once I was licensed to practice law. Unfortunately, right after I got licensed, he got sick and wasn't able to try any cases after that, so I never did get to see him in trial. But he recovered very well and actually came and worked with me on a couple of cases, so that was a lot of fun.

Can you share a case or two that have had a significant impact on you, professionally or personally, and what lessons you took away from those experiences?

The case that had the largest professional impact on me was Kali v. pH Miracle. That was a case about a woman who got lured into alternative medicine by a guy who claimed to be a doctor and wasn't and claimed to be a scientist and wasn't. She went from having very curable stage 1 breast cancer to incurable stage 4 breast cancer because she followed his quack theories.

That case had a huge impact on me professionally because it was the case that got me some more national attention and propelled my legal career. But on a personal level, it was also very impactful. She came and lived with me for a little bit before trial and during the couple of weeks we were in trial. I got very close to her through the course of the case, and she also got to know my family and my kids. I really watched her struggle coming up to trial and through trial, and for many years after that, we stayed in close touch. Unfortunately, she passed away about a year ago, which became a personal loss for me because our relationship had grown so much.

That's such an interesting type of case. Was that a novel case, or did you have case law to look at?

No, it was fairly novel. This was back in 2018, seven years ago when I tried this case, and it was sort of the rise of these alternative theories of medicine. This particular not-a-doctor, Dr. Young, actually wrote books called The pH Miracle, and his launch in that field came after he appeared on Oprah. So there was a lot of support for his theories, which were the alkaline diet theories, the alkaline water. He's sort of the father of the alkaline theories. They're total BS, and there's nothing to them. He was actually injecting his patients with baking soda into their veins, claiming that he could cure cancer. It was really wild.

It was actually a medical fraud case, which was pretty novel at the time I did it. I'm not aware of any others, and so there was no real great script for me to follow. We were just sort of creating a path as we went through it.

Have you had any other similar cases since then, or has that been a one-off in terms of your practice areas?

I have had some similar ones because of that case. I got calls from other people. It is a difficult area of the law because the science has to be far enough along that you can disprove these novel theories. A lot of alternative medicine has some root in truth, some kernel of truth. You really have to be able to prove that the person who's peddling these falsehoods knows that they're false and knows that they're harming their patients, which is a unique situation. But we were able to do that with pH Miracle.

You think of a classic medical malpractice case where they have a big hospital and insurance companies behind them. How is that different in a case like this?

He didn't have the credibility of a big hospital institution behind him, but I'll tell you, he had more charisma than I have ever seen from a doctor on the stand. That's why these fraudsters are so successful—because they have a lot of charisma. They take their crazy theories, but they're able to put them into terms where you listen to these theories come out of their mouth, and you think, "Huh, that kind of makes sense."

I was very concerned, actually more concerned with him than I have been with a lot of other defendants, that he was going to be able to use his charm to pull the jury along with him. I wasn't just trying a case about these crazy theories. I was trying a credibility case. It was, “are they going to like me more, or are they going to like him more?”

Do you feel that way with other cases? Is that a question that's running through your head with a lot of your trials?

Not really. I don't care if my jury likes me. I do care that they trust me. They can think that I'm abrasive, or not like my style, or not like the way I dress—that's fine. I am there as a facilitator and a mouthpiece for my client to get justice. But it is so important that they trust what I'm saying, that they don't think that I am stretching anything. So I spend a lot of time in the beginning of a case really building that credibility and trying to use the defense to prove my case, rather than having to rely on myself or the credibility of my clients until later on as the case progresses.

How do you build trust with clients, especially in emotionally charged cases? How do you build that trust at the beginning of a case and maintain it?

I think there are two really important things that go hand-in-hand when it comes to earning the trust of your client. First is to listen. So many people have the experience with lawyers where they feel like they're getting cut off or they're not being listened to. The lawyer wants to tell them what to do or just say, "Trust me, this is the legal field, I got this." I think my clients feel uniquely heard when they come to me because I do spend a lot more time listening to them than telling them what to do.

I am not a lawyer that tells my clients how to testify. I am a lawyer that listens to them and tries to figure out who they are, what their story is, and how their story naturally and best comes out in their own words. Then, after listening to them and understanding them, it's easy for me to ask questions that bring that story out and bring the story to life. Number one, it's just so important to listen more than we speak to our clients.

Number two, I don't sugarcoat with them. A lot of lawyers will talk to clients and try to pump them up—"I'm going to win this case for you, I'm going to get you so much money"—and I don't do that because we can't credibly say that. Every trial has its risk. We can't promise things that we don't know we're going to deliver on. I am very candid about the great things about the case and the risks of the case. I'm candid about what jurors will like and what jurors will not like. My clients trust me that I'm not going to try to oversell them on what the results are going to be.

What are some of the most significant challenges you face as a female attorney in this field, and what strategies have you employed to overcome them?

This field is still a man's game. We've been graduating more than 50% female lawyers from law schools for over a decade. Those numbers do not translate into women in practice. It certainly doesn't translate into women in litigation, and then you take that next step and say women trial lawyers, and we're talking about a precious few. That number 0 to 5 years out of law school is exponentially higher than when you look at 15 to 20 years out of law school. I hope this changes. I hope the face of trial lawyers is becoming more female, but I don't see that currently.

A lot of what we still see on TV are male lawyers trying cases in very male ways, which doesn't fit for a lot of women. One challenge that I have as a female trial lawyer is breaking the mold. I get out there and meet a jury for the first time, and I'm not what they're expecting to see. I'm not who they're expecting to hear, and my style and my personality is not that desk-banging, fist-thumping male lawyer you see on TV. For a lot of my jurors, it's a little bit of, "Oh, okay, well, this is different. I don't know how to feel about this."

I actually think it's a superpower to bring that feminine energy into the courtroom, both because it is unexpected and because for most people, when they think about their favorite teacher or their most credible teacher growing up, most of them think about their most trusted, most liked teacher as being a woman. Because my style is a little bit softer when I argue to a jury, when I display the facts to them, I feel like I'm really just teaching them about why my client deserves to be compensated.

Are there any mentors or role models who have been pivotal in your career, and how have they influenced your professional path?

Every single one of my partners in Athea Trial Lawyers has been very influential and has mentored me in a major way. Athea Trial Lawyers is six prominent female trial lawyers around the country. We've come together to try big cases of national importance and cases that are really important to women. I am kind of the baby of the group, so the women that I would see at conferences talking about how to try cases, the women that I looked at when I was only a handful of years out and thought, "Oh my gosh, I don't know that I'll ever be that good"—now they're my partners, which is kind of wild. I have to pinch myself. Those women are my biggest mentors and influences.

How did you meet them, and how did you decide to form this group?

I met them through the speaking circuit. We would get invited to the same conferences, then we would all get up there and give our talks. Often, Debbie Chang or Randi McGinn, Zoe Littlepage, Charla Aldous, Lisa Blue—they'd get up there and give a talk that would blow the audience away. And I'm sitting there having to go right after them, which was a lot of pressure. I just had a huge amount of respect for them, and when Debbie Chang came to me and said, "Hey, I want to put this thing together, and here are the people who want to be involved," I was like, "Absolutely. I absolutely want to be part of that."

Are you able to talk about any of the cases you're currently working on together?

One of the cases that we recently finished up is a case out of San Diego, Davis v. City of Encinitas. Tragically, in that case, three women who were out with their families—they were all related to each other, sisters and a daughter—were hanging out at the beach, and tons of rock from the bluff fell off the bluff and crushed these three women to death.

That was a huge case for a lot of reasons. It was a huge tragedy and a huge damages case. But it was also a very difficult case because of the immunities that come along with suing a governmental entity. Also, from a big-picture view, a lot of people's impression is, "Wait a minute, a bluff collapse? That's like an act of God. Nobody's responsible for that." So we had to spend a lot of time strategizing, talking to experts, and figuring out how it was the hand of man, and not an act of God, that caused these tragic deaths.

It can be tough to balance work with your personal life in a field like this. How do you personally manage that balance, and what advice would you give to others who are still trying to navigate that balance?

For people who are trying to chase work-life balance, I will say that it is elusive. It's not a thing, it's not real. What you have to do in our field is find your perfect imbalance. Because with trial work, we are very deadline-driven. There are periods of time where we are going to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week. There are times that we're in trial, and my husband will say when I'm in trial, it's not just that I'm in trial when I'm in the courtroom. Even when I'm home, I'm not really there because it completely takes over every facet of your brain and your thinking when you're in trial and strategizing.

My life is wildly out of balance almost all the time. But when you step back and you look at it over a period of time, you can say, "Wait a minute, that does look balanced." I had a period of time where I was immersed in a case, immersed in trial. And then I had a period of time where we went on a two-and-a-half-week vacation to Kenya as a family, or I had a three-month period of time where I worked from home, and I worked six hours a day, and I dropped my kids off at school every day, and I picked them up every afternoon, and I was the one who took them to all their events.

If you make the standard work-life balance, you set yourself up for failure. But if you understand that you can have periodic imbalance when over a longer period of time you find that balance, then it helps put it into perspective and get rid of that guilt. It is okay that I am working really hard for my client right now. It is okay that I am gone for two months to try a case in another city, because I am going to spend a lot of time with my family when that's over.

Having your own firm obviously allows for a little bit more flexibility in that regard. Is that part of the reason you decided to start your own firm?

I started my own firm because I was tired of working for men. I wanted to be my own boss. I didn't want to have to answer to someone who didn't understand what it was like to be a woman in this field and to understand the challenges for women in this field. A side benefit has been that it is more flexible. Another side benefit has been that I make a lot more money. I'm not making somebody else money, I'm making that money for myself, which is great. I sort of feel like I was forced to do a great thing for myself.

Do you have any advice for folks considering going out on their own and what the benefits look like on the financial side?

Yes, I will say this about money and about talking about money. We are sort of taught that it is a bad thing to talk about money. Well, I'll tell you, men talk about money all the time, and so we are doing ourselves a disservice if we don't have money conversations. When I have conversations about money with my partners, with other women who I respect and who are successful in the field, I better understand how to achieve that success myself. Making money is only the first step to wealth. You have to know what to do with that money when it comes in as well. I think women need to talk about money more.

What aspect of your work are you most passionate about, and what part of your job excites you the most?

That's such a good question. I think it varies. There are times that the most exciting thing about my job is going to trial. It is a total adrenaline rush. There are times that the most exciting thing about my work is getting to know my clients and just going over to their home, spending time with them, understanding their story, looking through pictures of the loved ones they lost.

What advice would you give to women attorneys who are just starting out in this area of the law?

For women who are just starting out in personal injury law, I would say put in the time. There's a time to work hard, and then there is a time to reap the reward from your hard work. I think a lot of people see me where I am with my firm right now and want to emulate that life. But the reality is that the flexibility I've built for myself, the trial ability I've built for myself, my ability to speak to people, to understand the case law, to write a motion, to argue to a judge—that is all the product of really hard work and really long hours. To look at somebody who's successful and say, "I want that life," but ignore the decades that led up to that flexibility and courtroom ability, would be doing oneself a disservice because it's not achievable without putting in the time.

Why are organizations like the Society of Women Trial Lawyers important to you, and how have they impacted your work?

When I started practicing law and for probably over the first decade of my career, there were not women's organizations. We had to be in a room that was 95% male, listening to 100% male speakers, and it was a very different experience. The learning was different, the networking was different. There was not the same sense of camaraderie, and it felt like it was not achievable to get a seat at the table. Now, this is 15 to 20 years ago.

Now that there are organizations like the Society of Women Trial Lawyers, it is a much more comfortable environment for women to learn how to use their craft without losing their femininity. It is hugely inspiring to see women up on the stage talking about their strategies and their great results. It is profoundly personally and professionally helpful to be able to watch how women advocate and how women try cases and persuade, because it is different for us. I think the Society of Women Trial Lawyers is doing a phenomenal job opening doors, creating opportunities, and enriching the lives of these young female lawyers.

With the rise of social media and digital communication, how has your approach to client acquisition and advocacy evolved?

I'm kind of a dinosaur. My approach to client acquisition and advocacy has not changed, given the rise of social media. Now, that is not a good thing, because I know some people who are out there killing it on social media, getting great cases on social media, and being very active. I have not figured out how to do that. I also don't need to do that, so there's not as much motivation, and I spend my time more working on the great cases that I get through my referral network and not so much worrying about what my social media presence looks like.

Looking back on your career, what accomplishments are you most proud of, and what future goals are you working towards?

I'm really proud that I was able to create a space and a firm where I'm able to do something that I care about. I'm able to help people. I'm able to do it at a high level. I'm able to really make a difference in people's lives, and I'm able to inspire the next generation. I can't think of anything more that I could ask for in my career, and so I feel a lot of pride that I've achieved all the things that I set out to achieve. And I just get to enjoy where it is and wherever it takes me for the next 15 to 20 years.