Alexis Bale

When Alexis Bale was eleven, her sister told her — not entirely as a compliment — that she was good at arguing and should become a lawyer. She took it as one. In Episode 60 of "Celebrating Justice," the "newer" (or young, how ever you'd like) trial attorney at Breit Biniazan traces a path that started early and kept accelerating: dual-enrollment college classes at sixteen, a bachelor's degree at nineteen, and law school at William & Mary before most of her peers had finished undergrad.Along a legal program advisor sat her down and said she was too young, that no law school would admit a nineteen-year-old, that she lacked life experience. For Bale, that became fuel.“Because you said I can't,” she recalls thinking, “that means it's absolutely gonna happen.” It's a posture that has shaped her career — the conviction that being underestimated is an advantage, not an insult. The episode moves through the turning points that gave her open-ended ambition its shape. During COVID, amid the social reckonings of 2020, she watched "Murder on a Sunday Morning" — the Academy Award-winning documentary about a fifteen-year-old wrongfully charged with murder — and felt a sense of justice consume her. She set out to be a public defender, interned in state and federal defender offices, then discovered plaintiff-side work through mock trial and the mentors who would become her bosses. Two sides of the same coin, she calls it: people who need representation and a voice, whether they sit as a defendant or a plaintiff.Today Bale handles sexual abuse cases at her firm, work she describes as critically important and genuinely exhausting — the vicarious trauma of carrying clients' stories, and the responsibility of telling them well. She is candid about the challenges of being a young woman in the profession, from elevator strangers assuming she's a paralegal to the quiet, persistent underestimation she has learned to laugh off and turn to her advantage. She would rather prove someone wrong, she says, ten times out of ten. “The perseverance you put in can really impact the outcome that you walk away with,” she says. That idea becomes the heart of her "Closing Argument," where she shares the story of a motorcyclist catapulted from his bike on a poorly marked construction road — a case the defense valued at four thousand dollars, right up until a prospective juror's offhand comment during jury selection changed everything, and a $1.3 million agreement materialized on the eve of trial.Key TakeawaysBeing underestimated can be a strategic advantage — it's better to walk into a courtroom and surprise people than to meet their expectations.Relentless follow-through, like repeated motions to compel, can pressure a defendant into a resolution that spares a client the trauma of trial.Criminal defense and plaintiff-side injury work are two sides of the same coin — both rooted in giving people a voice they might not otherwise have.Staying involved with the next generation of advocates, such as coaching mock trial, sharpens a lawyer's own creativity and courtroom storytelling.Trauma-heavy practice areas demand honest support systems and a safe place to process the vicarious weight of clients' stories.Knowing when to stop negotiating — and what it takes to reach the best outcome — matters as much as the willingness to keep fighting.The Trial Lawyer's Journal is Presented by CloudLex and Lexvia.ai.TLJ InstagramTLJ YouTubeTLJ LinkedIn