Courtroom to Comedy Club: A Canadian Lawyer Takes on Tough Cases and Tough Crowds

John Reed: [00:00:04] I think we can pretty much agree that when it comes to comedy, lawyers are fair game. Like... 

[00:00:10] What’s the difference between a dead skunk in the road and a dead lawyer in the road? There are skid marks in front of the skunk. Why don’t sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy. What do you throw to a drowning lawyer? His partners. And what do you call a smiling, courteous, friendly person at a bar association meeting? The caterer. 

[00:00:34] Whether we lawyers deserve to be the brunt of such jokes depends on who you ask, but it pretty much comes with the job. Hey, at least we’re not doctors! 

[00:00:42] Seriously though, much of lawyering is a performance, especially courtroom litigation. You have to thoroughly prepare your material, determine how to best present your evidence, be well-spoken, and elicit a favorable response from the judge or jury. And even if you know your cases cold, some things are out of your control, and you may not win them all. 

[00:01:03] Today’s guest is a litigator who, rather than be a lawyer at the center of others’ jokes, tells his own jokes on stage as a standup comedian. 

[00:01:13] Michael Currie is a partner with Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, LLP in Toronto. That’s right, our first Canadian sticky lawyer. By day, he focuses on commercial litigation and disputes. By night, he delivers punchlines rather than being one. We will hear about his unusual start in comedy and how he’s used his standup side hustle to give back to the community.

John Reed: [00:01:42] Hi, Michael. Welcome to the podcast.

Michael Currie: [00:01:44] Back home, we say a lot of the time, I’m right happy to be here. So, I don’t know if that’s a different saying for you, but I just thought I would change it up.

John Reed: [00:01:52] I’m willing to take whatever local flare you want to offer, but this brings up something important. First things first, I am in metro Detroit, and you are in Toronto. And there is nothing funny about how the US is treating our historically close neighbor of the north. It’s appalling. So, on behalf of Americans everywhere, the good and the decent ones, at least, allow me to apologize to you and your fellow countrymen and women for what’s going on now.

Michael Currie: [00:02:19] Thank you, John. And just on a serious note, it is very troubling, at least for Canadians. The language being used. “Never 51.” In my circle, I can say that we’ve changed our behavior to not buy American products and try to buy local, which probably we should have been doing a long time ago. But there has been a movement here to respond to the rhetoric and it’s taken seriously here.

John Reed: [00:02:46] Let’s make this conversation be a model to people on both sides of the border, that you can have discourse that’s respectful and engaging and off to the race as we go. 

Michael Currie: [00:02:58] Yeah,

John Reed: [00:02:59] With that, there are any number of places to start our conversation, which I’m really looking forward to. But let’s begin with Good Laughs, which is the comedy event you launched that’s having its third anniversary on May 21st. Tell us about that.

Michael Currie: [00:03:14] Good Laughs is a comedy show featuring lawyers doing standup, many of them for the first time. Some have experience doing standup, and they do the show, and it’s all in sport of a good cause. So, for the past few years, we’ve done it for a hospital, a local hospital, in Toronto. My firm, Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, has been fantastic in terms of being the sponsor of the event. It’s also very fitting because the shorthand for Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb is LOLG. So, I say it means “laugh out loud, guys.” They’ve been a tremendous support of the show. And then it’s great because we get some senior statesmen and women of the bar willing to perform for the first time to get out of their comfort zone. And then we have others who have done it many, many times before, and they just kill it at the show, too. And so, it’s just a fun event, and one thing unique for this year is, because we’ve had such demand over the last few years, we’re doing two shows. We sell out quickly, and it’s a fun event.

John Reed: [00:04:14] The lineup. Are these lawyers that come from any particular practice area? You’re a litigator, and we’re going to talk about that. Is it primarily litigators? Because one would think they have a little more guts to go up in front of an audience or a jury. What’s the composition of the performers?

Michael Currie: [00:04:31] So far, it’s been all barristers, litigators, attorneys who go to court. Corporate lawyers or transactional lawyers. We haven’t had somebody perform who’s a corporate lawyer.

John Reed: [00:04:40] Well, they’re not funny. They’re just not.

Michael Currie: That’s right. They don’t have as much material as we do dealing with the clients we do. We have a full range, though in terms of the practice area. Some do personal injury; some do criminal law. In fact, last year, I performed at an event. I was the only, or one of two civil litigators who performed at an all-criminal bar law event that was in front of judges and the law bar in another town, which was a lot of fun. But I realized that criminal law lawyers also have a lot of good material.

John Reed: [00:05:11] Oh, they’re a hoot by comparison. They’re great. 

[00:05:15] Are you the headliner? Have you been the headliner all three years? Are you the main ticket?

Michael Currie: [00:05:20] I am not. I’ve not been the headliner, and I won’t be the headliner this year. I find for me, it’s a great motivator because I’ve loved doing standup for a long time, to force me to come up with five or seven minutes of new material. For anybody who hasn’t done standup, when you talk with five or seven minutes of material, they may think that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but if you want to do it well, and if you want to do the circuit, it takes a while to come up with what’s called a tight five or a tight seven. That’s what I enjoy doing. Maybe one day, as I build up five minutes of new material each year, I’ll have headlining material one day, but that’s me; I’m fine with the five to seven.

John Reed: [00:05:57] Suffice it to say that you are not a [00:06:00] professional, that this is not your main vocation here. Are there more professional comedians in the lineup, people who are doing this on a more regular basis?

Michael Currie: [00:06:10] Yes, so we actually have somebody who’s coming in from Manitoba, our province, our neighbor, in Canada, who’s coming in, and she’s performed at comedy festivals before. Two years ago, we had somebody who’s now a civil litigator, but he did improv and standup for, I think it was upwards of 15 years before he went to the bar.

[00:06:30] We find every once in a while somebody who has either had a former career doing standup or finds the time to be able to do both regularly and is hitting the road, as much as they’re practicing law more frequently than some of us.

John Reed: [00:06:44] And the audience is friends, family, coworkers, the general bar, or is this also people off the street who just want to see lawyers suffer?

Michael Currie: [00:06:54] It’s a bit of a mixed bag in part because it’s for a hospital that’s called Michael Garrin Hospital, which is in Toronto. We get a lot of support from community members there and around that area. So that’s fantastic. I estimate that about two-thirds of the audience are either lawyers or family members of lawyers supporting or looking forward to seeing them bomb on stage. And then another third who are general public who are coming to see the show and may not know what to expect. 

[00:07:24] I will say, though, even though they’re all lawyers performing, we have a pro emcee who is not a lawyer. We find that’s a good mix. So, they poke fun of us more, and they bring the audience’s energy up and at ease throughout the show, which is great. This year, the emcee is Gavin Crawford, who is known for a comedy show here called This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Most of the content or the material that the lawyers perform is not law-based. So, when I have people ask me, Hey, should I buy a ticket or am I, is it going to be all over my head because it’s law jokes, I say no. Like sometimes, people will do a law joke. Most of the time, it’s accessible to everybody. And people know that going in, that they should craft material that is accessible to everybody, not just the lawyers in the room.

John Reed: [00:08:08] Yeah, I think, “Hey, two lawyers walk into a motion for summary disposition” probably is not the best entrée to a joke. 

Michael Currie: [00:08:15] That’s right. 

John Reed: [00:08:16] So listeners, if you’ll be in Toronto on May 21st, Good Laughs will take place at Comedy Bar Danforth, benefiting the Michael Garrin Hospital Foundation.

[00:08:25] So well done. We’ve given a shameless but heartfelt plug to Good Laughs and let’s go on with our conversation.

Michael Currie: [00:08:32] Sounds good.

John Reed: [00:08:33] Origin story number one, comedian. You were raised in a small town on Prince Edward Island, famous for Anne of Green Gables. Did you grow up in a funny house? Did you have parents or siblings who made you spew milk out your nose at the dinner table?

Michael Currie: [00:08:49] I have an older sister, and both my parents, I’d say my parents are funny people. They have a quirky sense of humor. Neither of them are public speakers. Neither of them has ever done standup, but we share a similar sense of humor. Fortunately, coming from a small town, I still have some friends who I went to kindergarten or grade one with, and we are remain friends today and all of us have a very unique sense of humor where, I don’t know if it originates from my time growing up on Prince Edward Island, or if it just our group of people having a unique sense of humor. But it helps, I guess, having that viewpoint coming from a small town now, being in a big city, some of the material I use originates back to growing up on PEI.

John Reed: [00:09:31] And I would imagine communicating your experience growing up to people that didn’t grow up on PEI is almost the same as communicating your law experience to laymen. You know, you’ve got to do some big translation there.

Michael Currie: [00:09:42] That’s right. Yes. And just because it’s such a small province and not many people venture to the East Coast. Sometimes, when I’m telling jokes about it, people are like, is that actually even true? Like, does that actually happen there? So, it’s good fodder because a lot of the jokes I tell about growing up there are true, but people just find it hard to believe because it’s a small, smaller, rural town than Toronto.

John Reed: [00:10:05] Then you went to college in the New Brunswick metropolis of Sackville, where you graduated with top honors in psychology. Was law school in the mix? Were you kind of pre-law psychology?

Michael Currie: [00:10:17] Loved my time at Mount Allison. Loved Sackville. It’s a small university town, so the population goes from, give or take, 2,000, 2,500 people to, give or take, 4,500 people when the students come. There’s a community on its own, but a lot of it is linked to the university. So no, I didn’t have necessarily going to law school in my sites. But one of my psychology professors told me that doing psychology, especially – I did a science degree in psychology – she had said that there’s some at least from that program who go on to law school. So, it was something I had thought about, but I wasn’t pursuing it at the time or knew that I wanted to do.

John Reed: [00:10:57] You’re in college, and at some point, you say to yourself, “Hey, I’ll give this standup thing a try.” 

Michael Currie: [00:11:02] When I was in undergrad, we started doing more presentations in class to 50, 100 people, and I realized I hadn’t had much public speaking experience, and it was something that I really wanted to improve and just get more comfortable doing. I had read that people see standup comedy as one of the most nerve-wracking or scary things to do. And so, I maybe foolishly said, well, okay, if I can do standup and do that regularly, probably that will translate into me being able to do public speaking more easily. Because you’re not seeking people’s laughs. You’re just doing a presentation.

John Reed: [00:11:42] You threw me a curve ball there. A lot of people would say, “I’ll join a Toastmasters group or whatever.” That’s one thing. Other people would say, “Yeah, I’ll do a standup performance to get over my fear.” But you just said, “Oh, if I start doing standup performances - plural - I’ll get better at public speaking.” So, from out of the gate, were you thinking this is going to be a continuing thing?

Michael Currie: [00:12:06] Generally, my personality is if I want to try something, I want to do it at least more than once because you never know when you’re doing something for the first time, if it goes really poorly, if it goes really well, is it based on your skill and abilities and preparation, or is it something that you just either lucked out or it didn’t luck out because it didn’t go well your first time. And so, yes, when I started, I said, “I want to do standup, but I’m not just going to check it off the list.” 

[00:12:36] I respect people who say, “I want to do it once, and I want to do, I only want to do it once, check the box. And I’m happy with that.” I get that for a lot of people. But for me, when I started, I said, “No, this is going to be something I want to keep doing because I can only get better at it if I keep doing it.

John Reed: [00:12:50] That first gig, was it open mic night? Was it on campus? Was it amongst the multiple comedy clubs I’m sure they had in Sackville at the time?

Michael Currie: [00:13:00] Being in a small university town, your observation was astute. Yes. There were no comedy clubs, and there wasn’t anybody else really who. At least I was aware of doing standup. There was an improv group, but there was nobody who I knew that was doing standup. And I formed a group, a writing group for standups where I got a few people to come in and just for us to exchange and banter ideas of material.

[00:13:25] Much like what Good Laughs is today where I organize a show, it’s in support of a good cause, and then I ask the comics to try to recruit people to come out and support the show, that’s what I was doing in undergrad. So, I would just organize a show, ask my friends to come. They would pay $5, or whatever they could; it would all go to the food bank or to the hospital or something in the community. And we just started doing the shows there. Yes, the audience was very kind. We all got applause breaks, we all got laughter, which was great. Not representative of everybody’s first time doing standup, and I knew that. And so that’s why I kept doing that in undergrad, organizing these shows, but also knew if you wanted to get the actual experience of doing standup, you got to do it in front of strangers. You can’t just do it amongst your friends.

John Reed: [00:14:13] Again, many people would’ve kind of just snuck out to an obscure open mic night to give it a shot. No, no. You invite all your friends, have them pay money. I appreciate the charitable tie-in. That’s a wonderful thing. As you said, there’s no comedy club. So where was this first gig and were you it, or did you also have colleagues from this writing group that were up there with you?

Michael Currie: [00:14:36] The first show I did, it was actually a part of a talent show in my residence. And so, there was about, give or take, 50 people, and that was actually put on by somebody else. So, the very first show I did was put on by somebody else. It still was in support of a good cause, but there were multiple different performers, so people were playing guitar, somebody was juggling. And then I decided to do standup at that show. Very supportive audience. I can tell you, if you’re doing standup in a talent show where they don’t expect you to do standup normally, it wouldn’t go well. The audience was very generous, and it allowed me to have the confidence to keep going because I have seen people who go up the first time. It’s brutal. And then many of them don’t come back.

John Reed: [00:15:23] Off campus, what was next?

Michael Currie: [00:15:25] The first show I did off campus was I went to Montreal. I had friends, and we did a road trip, and we went there for just... none of them do standup, but I bothered them a lot in our drive to Montreal to prepare for my multiple shows that I did when I was there. 

[00:15:41] And when I talk about shows, I’m talking about like the open mics on the Tuesdays and the Wednesdays. So, there’s like ten people in the audience. They are kinder to people who come from out of province or out of the country. They prioritize you because you’re new, and they want to have some different people on the show. So, I was able to get on a couple of shows and perform at a few clubs. Those were much rougher. The audience were complete strangers. Some of the jokes I was telling was about being in Sackville, and people didn’t know what Sackville was, and it was a good lesson for me in terms of doing material; you either have to bring the audience to where you are in terms of the joke. You can’t assume people know what you’re talking about, and two, to build material that is accessible or write material that is accessible for a broader audience instead of just the niche group that you’re doing it for.

John Reed: [00:16:32] This first time going up there, you had your tight five to seven on campus. How did you prepare? We live in the age of YouTube, and there’s comedy all over the television anyway. So, were you a student of comedy, and you just emulated your influences and who were those influences? Where did it come from? How did you prep?

Michael Currie: [00:16:53] Big fan of Seinfeld. I love his standup. I love his show in the nineties. Even probably now, some people will comment that, in terms of crafting a joke and my observations, tying closely to more his style than like a Jim Carrey or something. I knew I was not a physical comic in terms of being able to do a physical comedy, so I tailored to what I saw as my potential strengths or what I enjoyed in terms of the material I wanted to write. But the only way to prepare or to get better at something is to do it. Similar to being a lawyer, on-your-feet experience in the courtroom is the way to do it. And similar to stand-up, the only way to get better is to get on stage. 

[00:17:33] And so that first time was really just let me figure out what does it feel like to hold the mic? What does it feel like to be standing in front of a crowd? And the material was effectively secondary. It was just like, I want to see how I feel up there and how I can deliver. And then I’ll take stock of that and then figure out what I do from there.

John Reed: [00:17:54] Was anybody giving you guidance along the way? Did you know any comedians who were giving you tips or was this just you fresh up on that stage? Not winging it, but first time?

Michael Currie: [00:18:07] Yes, it was me doing it on my own. Again, coming from a small town on Prince Edward Island, there was no comedy clubs there. And then being in Sackville, no comedy clubs. So, I didn’t have a lot of standup comedians in my immediate circle of friends. I had some friends who did improv, so I chatted with them about some of the best practices to do based on the improv experience. When I was in Montreal and doing those shows, people knew I was very new some of them gave me some feedback. And then once I was in Ottawa and then Toronto and doing it more regularly, and again, when I say regularly, I’m not doing it all the time, but I found when I was in front of more seasoned people, they were able to give some very practical tips on how to perform. But at some point, too, you can take the feedback, but you got to do what is authentic to you and what works for you. What you don’t like and figure out how to change it.

John Reed: [00:19:01] What were some of those early things that you learned that have kind of become inherent to your act?

Michael Currie: [00:19:06] This is one of just the basic things when you’re performing on stage, many first timers. It seems so simple, but taking the mic stand away. Like if you have a mic and then the mic stand, and you take the mic out of the mic stand, many first-timers will just leave the stand in front of them. So, then there’s a wall or a barrier between you as the performer and the audience.

[00:19:31] When it’s your first time or your second time, you may be so nervous you don’t even realize that the mic stand is there. But what I tell people, and what somebody told me is, if you can even just move that mic stand to the back behind you and set it down authoritatively, that just sits the tone right away. You know what you’re doing. Even if you don’t know the rest of it, and you don’t know how the rest of your act is going to go, that just sets the audience a bit at ease. Because they’re like, okay, now I don’t have this dividing line between you and us. And it’s not distracting because sometimes people sitting on the other side of where you’re performing may not even be able to see you, or the set is a bit obstructed. And, of course, you may not know that until you do it and, and somebody asks you to or tells you that that’s the best practice to do. Those things can make a lot of difference in the long run when you accumulate all of them.

John Reed: [00:20:21] I understand that for Good Laughs, you’ve cruelly or kindly asked friends and colleagues of yours who’ve never done standup before to come and participate. Do you give them that guiding hand, that advice as well?

Michael Currie: [00:20:36] I do and, and some I’ve taken out. So, a colleague last year he wanted to go out and do some open mics with me. I told him ahead of time, listen, this isn’t glamorous stuff. When you’re going to an open mic, sometimes you got to wait an hour, an hour and a half, just to get on. Sometimes, there’s bucket show. So you go, and you put your name in a bucket, and you just wait to see if you get drawn. You’re not given the red carpet, where you just show up five minutes before you act. You go perform, and then you’re done. 

[00:21:02] I took him out. He did a few shows, some went very well, some not so great. But I told him you can’t replace stage time or on-your-feet experience. And so, you’re going to have the jitters, but the more you do it before the quote-unquote big show of Good Laughs or whatever show you’re doing, the better. Because then, at least you’re getting some of the little things out of the way, so that’s not interfering with your show. 

John Reed: [00:21:28] Talk about the high. Whether it’s adrenaline, I don’t know if it’s endorphins, whatever that juice is that hopefully you get from the audience, and that makes you want to go back and do it again and again and again.

Michael Currie: [00:21:41] It’s one of those irreplaceable things. You get it in law, either courtroom work or depositions. You sometimes get it. I remember many times where you just kill it and that feeling. I love that. And wanting to pursue it. And it doesn’t happen very often, particularly if you’re not doing it all the time. But every time I go out, that’s what I think about is, what can I do to either kill it this time or what can I do to at least feel that excellent feeling of just the killing it, the applause, either the applause break or a standing ovation, which I’ve only gotten once, and I remember that vividly.

[00:22:20] But the standing ovation of you killed it, and the audience was with you. And some shows you can’t do that. Like if you’re performing in front of people, they may have a very different vibe. They may love you, or they may just not be in the mood for comedy, but they just happen to be there. And so, you got to it work for whatever crowd you’re in.

John Reed: [00:22:38] I’m kind of breathless just listening. I’ve got this kind of visceral cringe for you on behalf of that first time you went up. 

Michael Currie: [00:22:45] Would you like me to tell the story about a Pizza Hut on a Saturday afternoon? Where you know you can perform in front of people just to kind of get that experience.

John Reed: [00:22:54] Oh no, you’ve got to tell a Pizza Hut story. It’s required.

Michael Currie: [00:22:58] So, I was in Ottawa and there was a group of us who were performing standup together there. It was an informal group where we kind of, over one summer we, ended up doing some shows together. They decided that at a Pizza Hut at noon on a Saturday was the time to have standup comedy. So, we’re in this pizza - It’s a buffet too - so like people are getting up to get their pizza and their salad. All the TVs are on playing a sporting event, playing the news. People are there with their three-year-olds and four-year-olds running around.

[00:23:29] There’s not even a stage. We’re just like off in the corner with a mic doing five minutes of material each. And the first person, the emcee, goes up and he lasts like 30 seconds because nobody’s engaging with him, understandably because they’re all there just to have lunch. And so, by the end of it, all of us were just performing. And we said the goal is if we can get one family to even acknowledge, not even a laugh, just if they can acknowledge that we’re doing standup. That’s all. That’s all we’re asking for.

John Reed: [00:23:56] That is a tough, tough crowd.

Michael Currie: [00:23:58] But those are also the experiences that at least I remember, and I know people who have done this much more than me, talk about the war stories. And they talk about, similar to lawyers, where they talk about the tough examinations they did or the tough clients they had. Those are some of the experiences that I look back fondly on as well because they teach you something about yourself and how you can perform even in very, very challenging circumstances.

John Reed: [00:24:25] Origin story number two, litigator. From New Brunswick, you went on to the University of Ottawa. What did you have in mind for your practice in law school? 

Michael Currie: [00:24:35] I have to admit, I didn’t know there was another path other than being courtroom lawyer or a litigator. From the very beginning, that’s what I wanted to do was be a courtroom lawyer. And most of my classes were all tailored towards doing courtroom work, courtroom procedure, advocacy courses. And I only realized when I got called to the bar, so when you go and you become a licensed lawyer – in Canada, you gown to be in court, and you have to have a gown to appear in court and to be a litigator. And I realized that 50% of the people who are getting called will never wear their gown again because they’re going to be a corporate lawyer or a real estate lawyer. And only then I was like, oh, not everybody wants to be a litigator.

John Reed: [00:25:24] Rather than graduate law school and immediately enter the practice in Canada, you had an opportunity to go to London. What was that?

Michael Currie: [00:25:31] So, there’s a scholarship called the Fox Scholarship that ties Ontario and London, England, together. There’s two people who for, every year, are selected from Ontario to be able to go over to practice in barristers chamber.

[00:25:45] In the UK, it’s a split profession. So, there’s solicitors who deal with clients. They may do corporate work, but they don’t go to court. Then there’s the barristers who are the advocates who specialize in only going to court, and they receive instructions from a solicitor. And so, I was in barristers chambers working with barristers who wear the wigs, who wear the gowns to go to court. And it was just a very good first experience seeing the best argue cases in a different country and see how they do it there.

John Reed: [00:26:16] Were you doing standup while you were in London as well?

Michael Currie: [00:26:19] I went to a lot of standup shows and I, again, I find it, it’s a great way to bring people together. I did a few shows where I organized, again, a standup night. I invited people from where I was living. It was called Goodenough College, where there’s about 700 people from 80 different countries who live in this residence in downtown London. And that is probably the most diverse show I’ve ever organized because there were people from, I think, give or take 10 different countries. It was all in support for a food bank in downtown London. And it was a lot of fun just to see how people approached it, many of them for the first time, but also how they brought their backgrounds from different countries to their performance one way or the other.

John Reed: [00:27:07] Do all your friends know that whenever you invite them over, they have to bring money and support a charity? Even like the backyard barbecues they got to bring – 

Michael Currie: [00:27:14] Or bring their own material because I’ll just tell them, you got to do standup.

John Reed: [00:27:17] Come over for a barbecue and have your tight five ready?

Michael Currie: [00:27:20] That’s right. Yeah. 

John Reed: [00:27:21] Tell us about your litigation practice. What kinds of cases do you handle, and for what kinds of clients?

Michael Currie: [00:27:27] Now I’m at Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, a litigation boutique. So, my firm only does courtroom work, and I’m a business disputes courtroom lawyer. So, if there’s a dispute about a contract or a, we do all forms of disputes that will go to court. One example is I just finished a ten-week trial in our superior court dealing with governance issues related to an indigenous government and the national council for that indigenous government.

[00:28:02] We take on any cases that are business-oriented or relates to governance issues or something that will go to court.

John Reed: [00:28:10] Shout out to Canada for the use of the term First Nations. I think that is such a wonderful, respectful term for indigenous peoples. Again, in an effort to bridge the gap between the US and Canada, this is what I’m doing here. 

[00:28:24] Apart from good laughs annually. How often are you doing standup now?

Michael Currie: [00:28:29] This year has been a bit more of a challenge because I had this long trial, and I had a newborn born the week before the trial started. So, I admit that my standup experience is limited for this year in terms of going out to the clubs. But in a given year, I would be out, leading up to a show, I would try to get out a couple times a week. I’ve been fortunate now to start getting invited to other shows that are going on, mainly lawyer events in different cities. Doing lawyer jokes is very hard in a general audience, and so when I have a lawyer joke that I want to try out, I can only really do it in front of lawyers because, to your point, if you’re talking about an injunction, people are like, what is that?

John Reed: [00:29:13] Yeah, Limited appeal. 

Michael Currie: [00:29:14] Limited appeal. That’s right.

John Reed: [00:29:16] What are the similarities between litigation and standup, and how does one inform the other? 

Michael Currie: [00:29:24] The fundamental one is you can’t replace on your feet experience. So, you can think about a joke as much as you want. You can write it and craft it as much as you want, but until you do it in front of an audience, the audience is the barometer, and you’ll find out very shortly, or very quickly, whether that joke works or not. And you may have to do it ten times. You may have to do it 20 times to make sure you’re comfortable with it, and you find out does that work or not. You can’t do it in a vacuum. 

[00:29:55] And similar with being a courtroom lawyer or doing a deposition, you can watch somebody do it, or you can watch videos on it and read about it. But until you actually do it, it’s very, very different. And you can only learn your own style on how to approach both of them by doing it. 

[00:30:16] One of the other characteristics for both is you need to have a thick skin. The feedback on doing a standup routine is immediate and it’s very public. And so, you need to be comfortable in your own skin to know sometimes you’re just not going to have the jokes land, it’s not going to go well, but you got to still give it a hundred percent. If you don’t, the audience will know. And the same for lawyers. Most of the time, the feedback is sometimes instantaneous from the judge, but it’s a few months out if they reserve and you get a decision. But both outcomes are very public, and you got to have thick skin when it doesn’t go well. And even when it goes well, you have to stay grounded in knowing that the next time, you still have to be prepared that it may not go well. 

[00:31:06] And then the last one is preparation. The amount of times I’ve gone to a show where I’ve seen somebody perform standup where I thought, man, they have a good joke there, but they just totally butchered the punchline, or they totally butchered the setup. You got to write down and prepare your jokes as much as possible, but you got to perform them and the two of them are linked. And the same with being a courtroom lawyer. You got to know the documents; you’ve got to know the evidence. You’ve got to be prepared when your witness or another witness says something that is not accurate, to know where to find those documents to impeach them or to contradict them in the record. If you don’t have that familiarity, it’s just not going to go as well as if when you spend the time to prepare.

John Reed: [00:31:49] And I would imagine being conscient, being conscious of your words, your delivery is equally important in both arenas as well. Is that fair?

Michael Currie: [00:32:00] Being conscious is important just generally.

John Reed: [00:32:04] Being conscient. Yeah, All right. Okay, boy, I didn’t know I was going to get heckled on my own podcast. 

[00:32:09] Is bombing on stage a question of when and not if, that you’re not going to slay or kill every time you go up? 

Michael Currie: [00:32:20] Yes, and going back to the needing a thick skin, you have to accept that there’s going to be bombing or just not the reaction that you’re expecting, particularly when you’re trying out new material. And some people will rely on jokes that they know do well and just keep using those jokes. But I also think it’s important to try new stuff. And when you try new stuff, a lot of it won’t work, at least the first time. You can, and I’ve had this happen where I think a joke is brilliant, and it’s going to land, and it’s either just how I delivered it or the audience, or a combination of both. It just doesn’t work out that first time. My philosophy is you got to do it multiple times to see if you can work at it.

[00:33:01] And last year, I had this joke about being married on Prince Edward Island. 

John Reed: [00:33:07] Here’s your chance. Here’s your platform. Take it away.

Michael Currie: [00:33:10] I won’t go into the substance of the punchline, but I, when I started that joke, it had a very different setup and a very different punchline when I started out. And it took me a while to figure out how to reform the joke and change the wording to have it work, in front of an audience. And that’s just the hard work. Same with when you’re doing a cross-examination in court. If somebody comes off the street and just sits in the back, they may be like, oh, you know what you’re doing. That’s super easy. It didn’t take you any time to prepare. But the hours that it takes to prepare is fundamental. 

John Reed: [00:33:46] What about a loss in the courtroom? We would hope not, but are losses inevitable, too, as a barrister or litigator?

Michael Currie: [00:33:55] A senior statesman said this to me when I was starting out about you could have a hundred percent of the facts and a hundred percent of the law on your side, and you may only win 70% of the time. And I think that’s just an important thing to take away that you can have these cases that you think are real winners, or you can have these cases that you think are real losers, but the system is still a human process, and so the outcome is not guaranteed.

John Reed: [00:34:20] You raised an interesting point, and I wasn’t artful in my question. There are many opportunities to lose a case or not prevail in the procedure, regardless of the ultimate outcome. You can lose motions along the way. You can be denied access to evidence, or you could have the ultimate loss, which is you don’t get the decision you wanted to get for your client. In a way, standup’s easier. You’re done after your five to seven, right?

Michael Currie: [00:34:46] I guess other than mainly yourself, you don’t have somebody else to answer to. You only have yourself to be self-critical to and learn to refine. Whereas, in law, there’s many more people to account to and especially when there’s a loss.

John Reed: [00:35:02] This has been such a great conversation. I have weighty conversations with a lot of guests about some serious things, and I know what you do in your day job is very serious. But I’ve really enjoyed this.

[00:35:13] What do we say now? We say, uh, safe drive home. Uh, be sure to tip your wait staff. Um, I’m here all week.

Michael Currie: [00:35:19] I’m here all week. That’s right.

John Reed: [00:35:21] I appreciate you sharing the details of this dual existence that you have. 

[00:35:26] Once again, Good Laughs. May 21st, Comedy Bar Danforth. Good cause. We’ll put up links to the event in our show notes, and we’ll include some media about Good Laughs, as well as your bio and some other info about you so our listeners can learn more.

[00:35:41] But good luck with the show. Raise a lot of money for the Michael Garren Hospital Foundation, and thanks for being here today. I really enjoyed it.

Michael Currie: [00:35:48] Thanks, John. And again, I’ll just thank my law firm, Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, for sponsoring the event. The lead sponsor is Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, and then we have another sponsor, Thomson Rogers, as well, who has generously supported the event, too. And so, it’s great to have law firms supporting the event and then also having other law firms support it by having their lawyers come out and perform. So, it’s a lot of fun.

John Reed: [00:36:10] It sounds like it. I appreciate all those brave first-time lawyers that are getting up on stage. I’m trying not to cringe for them.

Michael Currie: [00:36:18] I should say two last things. John, I would love to have you come up and perform if you’re ever up for doing something different. I don’t know if you’re a standup guy.

John Reed: [00:36:27] I’m a standup guy, but not a standup guy.

Michael Currie: [00:36:30] Yeah. And if there’s any US attorneys who would be interested in either doing standup or do standup regularly and would be interested in performing, I’d be happy to hear from them.

John Reed: [00:36:41] I think they’d be concerned that if they crossed the border, they might not be let back in again.

Michael Currie: [00:36:45] I was going to say, let’s wait a few years at a minimum. Yes.

John Reed: [00:36:49] Exactly. Michael, thanks again.

Michael Currie: [00:36:51] Thanks, John.

John Reed: [00:36:55] Hey, listeners, I need to confess something. This podcast hosting gig can get kind of lonely. I mean, we put on these episodes, and we know you tune in, but we don’t often hear what you think. So, whether you’re a first-time listener or a devoted Sticky Lawyers fan - a Stickler - let me know how we’re doing.

[00:37:15] Leave a comment on our website or on whatever podcast platform you use. Give us a rating or just hit the like or subscribe button. Your feedback and ongoing support would be greatly appreciated. 

[00:37:29] Until next time, I’m John Reed, and you’ve been listening to Sticky Lawyers.