I'm sorry which of us went to law school We don't have to work with any lawyer we don't want and that means you're fired.

Why is it only the witnesses must swear to tell the whole truth?

Why isn't the same oath administered to the attorneys?

And there he is, he's nothing.

It's the Emperor without clothes.

Welcome to opening Arguments.

The podcast where a comedian takes lawyers to court.

Don't take ethics advice from Alan Dershowitz.

Hello and welcome to opening arguments. I'm your host Thomas Smith and boy does that feel good to say.

Says this is episode 861 that can't be right. Seems high. Anyway, this is weird, to put it mildly. I have to imagine, given my year of being locked out of the show unlawfully, this may come as a shock to some folks. It's

impossible to know, but I imagine there could be members of the audience who don't

even know who I am. Although I think many people upon this latest

disruption went and sought that information out.

I still have to remember that many people just listen to a podcast to listen to a podcast and

they don't Google or go deep or go to the subreddit or go to the Facebook group and do all that stuff.

So that makes this a bit odd to start out.

This is also really difficult because I've gone through the worst year of my life,

to put it mildly, and I have incredibly intense feelings of

resentment and anger over it but I also know that for those listening who don't have

that personal stake because it's a podcast once again I have to

resist the urge to fully lean into that as much as I feel like I'm pretty justified in

doing so I will do my best on that but just know that there's a year of just

...