Professional wrestling, like trial work, comes down to storytelling. For a decade, plaintiff's attorney Max Petrunya also wrestled as the Gavel David Lawless, Esq., a villain character built on the lawyers people love to hate. Host Brendan Lupetin traces Max's path from early-career struggles and drinking to therapy, sobriety, and enrolling in wrestling school at 30. Max also shares the Denny's test, a lesson from a friend who helped train him to wrestle, which gives trial lawyers a simple but surprisingly useful way to gauge what jurors will actually remember about a case. Tune in for Max's take on why a trial lawyer's life doesn't have to fit in one box.

☑️ Max Petrunya | LinkedIn | Facebook

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☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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• Max wrestled as the Gavel David Lawless, Esq., from February 2015 until December 2025 in five states, while practicing plaintiff's personal injury law and eventually running his own firm.
• After trials, Max couldn't work himself out of a depressive funk. He explains why he signed up for therapy, and why it takes the same commitment as going to the gym.
• Max modeled his wrestling character on arrogant, egotistical defense lawyers he had faced, and explains why love and hate sell tickets more than like and dislike.
• The tools Max used in his 90-second promos, including repetition and digestible points, are the same ones trial lawyer colleges teach.
• Although wrestling started as a creative outlet for Max, it grew into an unexpected referral source, leading to trademark cases and contract review for WWE and AEW wrestlers.
• A parody T-shirt sent Max to federal court, where he cross-examined wrestling manager Jim Cornette over Zoom and defeated a temporary restraining order.
• After a cervical spine diagnosis, Max chose to plan his own exit from wrestling, bookending his career against the same opponent from his very first match.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

What separates a pile of good facts from a winning case? Drawing on Trials and Triumphs: Lessons from Legal Giants by Chris Placitella and Lisa Blue, host Brendan Lupetin explores a shared lesson from trial lawyers Pat Malone, Keith Mitnik, and Mark Mandell: winning cases need a clear moral core that actually motivates jurors, not just strong facts. He walks through Greg Cusimano’s seven-step, bottom-up approach to building a trial story and explains why he sees the opening statement as the most important part of trial. Brendan closes with the preparation step he swears by before every trial — a move he credits with sending his win rate soaring.

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☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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• Throwing every fact at the jury and hoping they sort it out is a recipe for losing, and Brendan explains what to do instead.
• Pat Malone warns that trying a medical malpractice case "just on the medicine" is a losing bet, so Brendan digs into what actually flips it.
• Drawing from Keith Mitnik, Brendan explores the real work of trial: shaping what happens in the space “between the fact and the conclusion” a juror reaches.
• Brendan explains how he won a snowstorm slip-and-fall by reframing which door actually mattered to the case.
• Greg Cusimano's seven-step, bottom-up method, as Brendan lays it out, runs from gathering the facts to testing the story against jurors' beliefs.
• Brendan stresses one focus group you must run before trial, and he explains why it can change the outcome.
• Could AI help you win over a jury? Brendan makes the case for using it to crack the metaphors and analogies that make a complex issue click.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

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Most cases are decided before they're filed. Working from that premise, host Brendan Lupetin builds a case-selection method around Berkshire Hathaway partner Charlie Munger's principle of inversion: "invert, always invert." Before falling in love with a promising file, Brendan argues, you should first figure out how you would lose it. He walks through the four questions he asks of every case, and confesses his rookie failure of not knowing what jury instructions even were — a mistake that taught him to review and write out those instructions before he ever drafts a complaint, then build the entire case around them. Figure out how you lose, Brendan says, and you will know how to win.

• Brendan opens with attorney David S. Casey's lesson from Trials and Triumphs: Lessons from Legal Giants: the most important part of any case is the detailed preparation done before you file it.
• Brendan borrows Charlie Munger's two-word mantra — "invert, always invert" — and applies it to case selection.
• Your first instinct on a promising case is to picture the verdict. Brendan explains why that rush of excitement is the trap itself, and how falling in love with a case subtly bends every fact toward the answer you already want.
• Every case hides landmines. Brendan reveals the four-question test he runs on each one before he'll commit years of his life and his firm's money to a single file.
• Brendan shares his rookie failure coming fresh out of law school, where he had to ask opposing counsel to explain what jury instructions were in his first-ever jury trial.

☑️ Brendan Lupetin | LinkedIn

☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

☑️ Connect: Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube

☑️ Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.