I meant that more literally than Wendy knew, and it is, I think, the single most important thing my profession ever taught me, worth more than all the forensic technique combined.

The instinct, when you have been wronged, is to make yourself the instrument of the punishment — to confront, to accuse, to be the one who brings the reckoning down with your own two hands, because there is a deep and human hunger to be present at the moment your enemy pays.

And that instinct, satisfying as it is, is almost always the thing that lets the guilty escape.

The moment you make yourself the instrument, you make yourself the story.

You become the angry husband, the vengeful son, the man with the grudge, and every fact you present is now suspect because it comes from you, and a clever defense will spend the whole trial talking about your rage instead of their crime.

The discipline — the hard, cold, counterintuitive discipline — is to do the opposite.