Attorneys at Law Since 1892
Michael O'Donnel
Michael O'Donnell specializes in civil litigation now, but many attorneys say he's also one of the best criminal lawyers around. State senator Barry Keene says that, though O'Donnell exudes quiet humility in the courtroom, "the power of his logic hits like a sledgehammer."
One day when Michael O'Donnell was a Sonoma County public defender, his loud, difficult, and belligerent client announced he was firing O'Donnell and would defend himself. The judge peered over the bench, fixed his gaze on the defendant and said, "Don't you know, young man, that anyone who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer?" "Maybe so," the defendant shot back, "but that's a hell of a lot better than what I have now." The courtroom resounded with laughter, O'Donnell recalls now.
Since that case, O'Donnell, 48, has managed to find other clients who appreciate his more subtle approach, enough clients to net him an average annual income of $150,000 or more. Colleague's say he's the best in the county, but not because he's a tough guy. No, his most powerful weapon is deceptively simple - credibility. In court or out, the guts of O'Donnell's job is to convince a third party to believe his clients. Imagine a lawyer who oozes credibility, one who has a knack for making other people believe him. That's O'Donnell. "He convinces people by showing that he knows what he's talking about," says attorney Larry Bernheim, "not by showing that the other side is full of baloney."
On top of credibility, Bernheim says, O'Donnell has a talent for assessing the amount of any award a case may bring and telling it to the client straight. And, he says, O'Donnell has many friends. "He never burns bridges behind him," says Bernheim. "A lot of lawyers use a 'take no prisoners' approach. When Mike is done with a case, even the other side likes him."
Attorney Thomas Kenney worked as a deputy prosecutor opposing O'Donnell back when he was a public defender. "He's very well prepared," Kenney says of O'Donnell. "He's congenial with the jury. He knows how to meet people from all walks of life and talk their language. He's tough in an academic way - he does his homework so he doesn't have to use histrionics in the courtroom."
Senator Barry Keene also worked in the district attorney's office, frequently matching wits with O'Donnell in court. "He had a certain style that evolved into psychological warfare," Keene recalls. "One of my strongest attributes was my closing argument, so he always found a sound legal reason to object during my argument. It completely threw me off track and took the jury's attention. It was distressing." Keene employed various strategies to knock O'Donnell off balance. "I tried desperately to get him to lose his cool," says Keene. "He never did." Keene also added, "He is so good at probing witnesses in a gently way, leading them down a path, then suddenly jumping and turning on them, finding an inconsistency in their testimony. He would set a gentle trap."
Thirteen years ago, O'Donnell worked a case he sees as his most exciting ever, when he won acquittal for a client accused of arson the burning of the Guerneville Inn. His client was seen fleeing after the building erupted in flames, then was found with his face singed and with cans of gasoline in his car. "The facts were striking and dramatic," O'Donnell says. "On the surface, it looked difficult to defend. I persuaded the jury that he had no economic motive to do it." Bernheim describes O'Donnell's trial tactics in the case: "He convinced the jury that everybody in the courtroom was either a screwball or unreliable - except Mike."
When O'Donnell talks about trials, he sounds excited, as if his mind thrives on courtroom clashes. But his body contradicts his words, exhibiting torpor instead. "It's a rough and tumble arena when you go in there," O'Donnell admits. "In a sense, I relish it, but a trial is
a physical and mental ordeal. It takes it out of me. You don't dread it, exactly, but you realize it's going to hurt. I've got my share of scars." O'Donnell says he had no grand boyhood dream of becoming a lawyer; he drifted into the profession after flirting with math and history in college. His career has twisted and turned several times, from working on financial cases for a Wall Street firm, to lawyering for the Air Force on criminal cases out of a tent in Vietnam, to his present swanky perch in a fourth floor office on Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa. For the last five years, O'Donnell has primarily taken civil litigation cases. Most of them are personal injury lawsuits, and he defends insurance companies and the county government.
Though O'Donnell says it's the drama of litigation he enjoys, these days he doesn't often get to go to court. He settles more than 95 percent of his cases. A good strategy to prompt a quick settlement, he reveals, is to appear ready and willing to take a case to trial.
O'Donnell attributes much of his success to his willingness to prepare extensively. "I actually enjoy legal research. It's getting back to the roots, using the mind. I like the musty smell of law libraries," he says.
Much of his day-to-day life, O'Donnell says, is humdrum, with endless depositions, waves of tedious interrogatories, stacks of paperwork, shuttles from courtroom to courtroom for fleeting appearances that carry about as much drama as a snoozing law professor. He lives with his wife and one of his three children in Santa Rosa's Proctor Terrace neighborhood. Sometime he zips home for lunch or drives to Annadel Park for a midday jog.
On a day in November he appears for a few minutes at a Santa Rosa superior court on a car accident case. He wears a navy tie adorned with tiny red circles and dark maroon wingtip shoes that set off his ruddy complexion. Over six feet tall, he towers above the other two attorneys as they stand before the judge. He also takes up more space than they do on the table. O'Donnell opens his briefcase, which is so clean and orderly it belies the 100 cases he has open (though not all are active) at any given time. The hearing lasts a minute. Then he darts to a hearing at the county center about consolidating before one judge a complex case involving a leaky condominium roof. In the corridors, O'Donnell is constantly nodding to friends and acquaintances. He seems to know everybody.
At midday, he takes sworn testimony from a police officer who administered sobriety tests in a drunken-driving case. O'Donnell represents the driver. He pores over the police report while the opposing attorney finishes his questions. Then O'Donnell tugs his reading glasses down onto his nose, fixes the officer with a series of looks that might give a police chief jitters, and peppers him with questions himself. How much experience does the officer have? How many sobriety tests has he administered? Did the officer know if the driver had an eye condition that might cause bloodshot eyes? Could recency of ingestion have more to do with the smell of liquor on a person than amount ingested? All the while O'Donnell wears a disarming half smile.
Clients are also subjected to intense scrutiny. When someone comes in seeking representation, O'Donnell says, he sizes up not only the case, but the potential client, especially personal injury plaintiffs and parties to marital dissolutions. "You have to look at the client and make a judgement whether the person is up to seeing this thing through a jury trial," O'Donnell says. "If not, you build that into your strategy."
More than anything else in the work of lawyering, O'Donnell enjoys the glimpses of people. "People do incredibly generous and wonderful things," he says, "and really horrible things. You see the noble and ignoble sides of people. There isn't a day when I don't see some new wrinkle."
--by James Dunn, February 1989
Reprinted courtesy of North Bay Biz Magazine.