“Winning” litigator
Every case you try is brand new, and that’s the fun of what we do. You learn a new discipline, you learn a new subject area, you learn new ways of presenting. It’s great.”
Michael Dockterman ’78, a partner at Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon in Chicago, exudes enthusiasm for his specialty — litigation — during a telephone interview. In naming Dockterman one of the “winning” top-10 trial lawyers in the country in its June 5 issue, the National Law Journal cited his “long list of big wins,” many of them in complex commercial cases. In particular, the Journal lauded Dockterman for his innovative use of the Internet — and effective use of a large stuffed giraffe — when Toys “R” Us successfully sued Amazon.com to void a 10-year contract for online sales of its toys and baby products.
Retained by friend and classmate Chris Kay ’78, then the retailer’s general counsel (see profile, page 41), Dockterman explains that the case hinged on proving to the court that Amazon was offering merchandise from vendors that were directly competitive with Toys “R” Us, in violation of the companies’ exclusive contract, and to the detriment of the Toys “R” Us brand. To make the case, Dockterman and his team went live to the Internet throughout the three month trial in the Superior Court of New Jersey.
With Amazon witnesses on the stand, they searched and placed orders for identical toys and baby products from their courtroom terminals — from his client and other vendors whose products showed up directly on Amazon.com or in the toysrus.com and babysrus.com stores in the online Amazon “mall.” They showed the court how the items appeared on the screen — the other vendors’ products often appearing on pages branded with the Toys “R” Us logo — and introduced “screen grabs” as evidence. Dockterman says that in every case, the toys that were delivered to the courtroom a few days later were identical. His client, Chris Kay, calls Dockterman’s courtroom performance “flawless.”
Always seeking to present evidence in a way that will have maximum impact with the judge, jury, “or court of public opinion,” Dockterman admits a fondness for props in the courtroom. He perched “Geoffrey,” the Toys “R” Us giraffe mascot on the counsel table during closing arguments in the e-commerce case; the judge cited Geoffrey’s question, “Where will my home be on the Internet?” in her decision. Defending a county against a civil rights claim by an offender shot by a police officer during a confrontation, Dockterman had a witness load the cylinder of a revolver, then click it into place to help jurors experience the fear officers often do when faced by armed criminals. “You’ve never seen people scatter out of jury box like that,” he says with a laugh — but notes that it got his message across as planned.
Having joined Wildman Harrold straight out of law school, Dockterman recalls second-chairing a trial even before he was admitted to the bar, and taking a deposition the afternoon he was sworn in. “Our philosophy has always been to get young people into the courtroom and doing important things as quickly as we can. Responsibility builds confidence and character in lawyers,” he says. He is also a strong believer in mentoring, and is expert at it, according to Natalie Hirt ’08 who interned at his firm this summer.
“Michael invested an incredible amount of time and energy in making sure that I was growing as an attorney and that I felt at home at the firm and in Chicago,” says Hirt. “He gave me my most difficult assignment, allowing me to develop my independence and resourcefulness as a lawyer. He also taught me how to research most effectively using paper resources in the library, despite the fact that he had several demanding and high profile cases competing for the time on his agenda. He was genuinely interested in me as a future attorney and a person.”
During his tenure as president of Duke’s Law Alumni Association from 2000 to 2002, Dockterman initiated a mentoring program to link law alumni with students; this effort was recognized in 2002 when he received the University’s Charles A. Dukes Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service. “If students are interested in a particular area of practice or in coming to Chicago, even if it’s not for my area of practice, they could call me without feeling like they are asking me for a job, and I’d talk to them about what it’s like to practice in Chicago, what it’s like to do what I do, what the other firms are like, what difference a culture makes — big vs. small, Chicago vs. New York or Atlanta. That was the idea behind the program.”
Now chair-elect of the Board of Visitors, Dockterman returns to the Law School several times a year for on-campus interviewing, ESQ., the Business Law Society’s annual career symposium, and occasionally for the Law School’s intensive trial practice weekend.
“I love those weekends,” says Dockterman. “I learn more from talking to students about what you do in a courtroom as we go through model examinations, directs, and crosses, and why we do what we do than I ever do sitting around and thinking about what I’m going to do.”
Married to Laura Di Giantonio ’79 and with a 15-year old daughter, Eliana, Dockterman traces his commitment as an alumnus to the potential he saw in his classmates and in the Law School when he was a student. It was an era, he says, when some aspects of the Duke Law experience mirrored that of the hapless law students in “The Paper Chase.” “But law school was very good to me. Professors were accessible to me partly because I always felt comfortable walking through their doors. I felt terrible that there were students who felt they couldn’t. And I asked myself, ‘what can I do to make that door more transparent for others to walk through?’”
Since then, Duke Law has come a long way, Dockterman says. “We attract great students, we have wonderful professors, people’s hearts are in the right places. And when I see stumbling blocks along the road that everybody agrees should be traveled, I try to find ways to remove them and smooth the road.”