Perhaps you are familiar with the best-selling book "Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff" by Richard Carlson. The premise of the book is that the little things aren’t worth worrying about; they will take care of themselves.
This may be very good advice for everyday life, but it is very bad advice for lawyers arguing their cases in court. With all due deference to Carlson, my book title for advocates would be something like this: "Do Sweat the Small Stuff And That Means Everything." The premise of the book would be that little things can cause large problems, as a microbe can cause a disease. I try to be a person who takes the big view of things, but in this column I will concern myself with trifles the smaller and more obvious the better. I dedicate this column to a catalog of seemingly minuscule things that can have large consequences in written, and oral, advocacy.
