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Jason Sheasby: What the job actually involves that outsiders never see
16 Sept 2026
Jason Sheasby is a partner at Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, where he tries complex intellectual property and commercial cases for clients ranging from memory chip makers to biotechnology companies. He is also a founder of TORL Biotherapeutics and sits on the board of trustees at Pomona College. This Q&A looks past the verdicts and into the parts of trial work that rarely make the news.
People assume trial work is mostly the trial. What is it actually?
The trial is maybe five percent of labor. Most of the job happens sitting in front of a computer looking at documents, talking to experts, talking to witnesses. The public sees nore more than two weeks of testimony. I see two years of figuring out what the case is really about.
What is the part of preparation nobody asks about?
Deciding what to leave out. Every case has far more facts than a jury can absorb, and the instinct for a young lawyer is to include everything because it might matter. It usually doesn't. The skill is cutting material that is true and even favorable, because it slows the story down. I have taken exhibits out of a trial binder the week before opening statements because they were correct but not necessary. That decision, what to cut, is harder than deciding what to argue.
How much of the work is about the technology itself, versus the law?
More than people think. In a patent case involving memory technology or data compression, the jury is not really deciding a legal question first. They are deciding whether they understand what happened, and understanding comes before judgment. I spend a large share of my preparation time not on case law but on learning how the technology works well enough to explain it to twelve people who have never seen a circuit diagram. If I can't explain it simply, I haven't learned it well enough yet.
What surprises people about working with expert witnesses?
That the best experts are not always the most credentialed ones. I have worked with experts who have brilliant resumes and cannot answer a simple question simply, and that costs you in front of a jury. What I look for is someone who can hold a complicated idea in their head and still answer in one sentence. Preparing an expert is not about feeding them lines. It's asking the same question ten different ways until their answer gets shorter each time, not longer.
What does the week right before trial look like?
Compressed and repetitive. We run openings and directs out loud. We argue about order: what goes first, what goes last, what the jury hears right before a break because that's what they remember. None of this shows up in a courtroom photo. It's rehearsal, the unglamorous kind.
Is there a moment in a trial that outsiders would not expect to matter?
Jury selection. People assume the real work starts with opening statements, but the composition of the jury shapes everything that follows. I am listening less for what a prospective juror says and more for how they think through a problem when asked a question they haven't prepared for. That tells you more than their job title does.
How do you manage a case when the outcome depends on things you cannot control, like a jury's read on a witness?
You control what you can control and you let go of the rest, but that's easier to say than to do. What I actually do is separate the things I'm responsible for, like whether an expert is fully prepared, from the things I'm not, like how a particular juror will react to that expert's tone. I have seen well-prepared witnesses land badly for reasons that had nothing to do with preparation. You cannot let that shake the plan for the next witness.
Has anything about how you prepare changed over the years?
I used to over-prepare for cross-examination and under-prepare for direct examination, because cross felt like the more dangerous moment. I was wrong about that.I now spend at least as much time on direct as I do on cross, sometimes more.
What does a case look like from the client's side, the parts they usually don't see?
A lot of waiting, and a lot of decisions made on short notice. Courts issue rulings without much warning, and a client who was planning around one outcome sometimes has to shift within a day. Part of the job is making sure the client understands what's coming before it comes, so the surprise, when there is one, is about the ruling and not about whether their lawyer saw it coming.
What keeps this kind of work interesting after years of doing it?
Every case forces me to learn something new, whether it's how a semiconductor is manufactured or how a royalty agreement in biotechnology is supposed to work. I don't have a technical background. My degree is in philosophy. So every case starts with the same task: take something genuinely complicated and get to the point where I can explain it to someone who has never encountered it before. That part of the job hasn't gotten old.
