> Were I the judge...
Your mental model of a typical American judges values is, unfortunately, unrepresentative in the extreme.
Your mental model of a typical American judges values is, unfortunately, unrepresentative in the extreme.
Judges tend to rule in favor of lawyers that do most of their work for them. It's a lot easier to get an order if the lawyer submits a draft order, and the judge can just sign it.
I get it. I also like to slack off and get paid. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably only double-check the evidence if a random number generator said to do it, based on the pre-established sampling rate setting in my judge-automation program.