Rich Mackie on Launching a Bicostal Firm While His Mother Was Diagnosed with Severe Dementia After

What happens when a trial lawyer loses his first jury trial, stands outside that courthouse going through every moment of what just happened, and realizes the problem is not that he lacks knowledge of the law but that nowhere in the entire plaintiff's bar is there a place to actually practice trial mechanics on your feet before the biggest case of your client's life — that every seminar is just someone presenting their greatest wins to a room full of people who take notes and go home still unable to introduce evidence without freezing, that defense attorneys are in court every single week doing the reps while plaintiff lawyers may go six months or a year between trials, that practicing skills exclusively during the Super Bowl is not preparation it is gambling with someone else's life — decides to build the thing that should have already existed, calls it Practice Trial San Diego with an acronym he chose deliberately, In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Rich Mackie of Mackie Injury Lawyers in San Diego and Virginia Beach, about what a lost first trial can teach you if you are willing to build from it, and what the personal injury system does to injured people who try to navigate it without someone running point for them. Rich explains why plaintiff attorneys face a structural disadvantage that almost nobody talks about — defense lawyers try cases every week and stay sharp while plaintiff lawyers may go a year between trials and only practice the mechanics of cross-examination and evidence introduction during the actual Super Bowl, and why the free monthly practice group he built exists specifically to let attorneys mess up safely in front of their colleagues so they do not do it in front of their jury. He also walks through why a clear rear-end collision where the other driver was one hundred percent at fault does not mean the case is over — it means the defense is simply going to spend the entire fight on causation and damages instead — and why the property damage trap, the gap-in-treatment trap, and the too-many-doctor-visits trap are actually opposite ends of the same weapon the defense deploys no matter what the injured person does, and why the only strategy that survives both of them is the same one every time: tell the truth and make sure the person telling it is prepared to be consistent. They also discuss why the recorded statement your own insurance company wants within days of your crash is not the routine administrative call it sounds like — it is a time-stamped document under oath that will be used to challenge every injury you report later that was not named on that call, why a quick settlement offer while you are still actively treating is the insurance company trying to close your file before they find out what they actually owe you, how that two thousand dollar check that feels reasonable in the moment can leave you sitting with tens of thousands in medical bills and no recourse, what happens when a naive injured person is deliberately preyed upon in that window and whether it can rise to the level of bad faith, and how to identify a settlement mill with two simple questions you can ask before you ever sign anything. Rich Mackie is the founder of Mackie Injury Lawyers in San Diego and Virginia Beach, licensed to practice in California, New York, Washington D.C., and Virginia, recognized by Best Lawyers in 2026 for Personal Injury Litigation — Plaintiffs, a graduate of the Jerry Spence Trial Lawyers College, and the creator of Practice Trial San Diego — now Working Group Wednesday — a free monthly trial mechanics training group for plaintiff attorneys held on the last Wednesday of every month in San Diego. Connect with Rich Mackie: mackieinjurylawyers.com Phone: 838-GET-RICH (838-438-7424) San Diego: 1245 Island Ave., San Diego, CA 92101 Virginia Beach: Virginia Beach, VA 23454 Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Rich Mackie 00:20 Losing the first jury trial and what it left behind 00:38 Standing up in front of a jury and going deer in the headlights despite reading every book and going to every seminar 01:37 You cannot learn to ride a bike at a seminar — creating Practice Trial San Diego with the acronym PTSD 02:40 Working Group Wednesday — how it runs today in partnership with Consumer Attorneys of San Diego 03:22 The structural disadvantage nobody talks about — defense attorneys do the reps every week while plaintiff attorneys practice during the Super Bowl 05:00 The group is always free and always will be — why that matters 06:13 Jerry Spence, the Trial Lawyers College, and a three-week intensive in West Virginia that was unexplainable and life-changing #RichMackie #MackieInjuryLawyers #TrustcastShow #SanDiegoPersonalInjuryLawyer #VirginiaBeachPersonalInjuryLawyer #WorkingGroupWednesday #PracticeTrialSanDiego #TrialLawyerTraining #SettlementMill #PersonalInjuryMyths