What a Utah Criminal Defense Lawyer Learned from Losing Sleep and Winning Trials
- Joe Douglass, 3x Emmy-Nominated Legal Storyteller
- Jun 3
- 1 min read
Updated: Jun 4

Josh Baron left prosecution to defend the accused—and discovered that the real challenge wasn’t guilt or innocence, but how you tell the story.
▶️ Watch the full conversation below:
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When Josh Baron stepped into his first criminal trial, he admits, “I did every single thing wrong.” Still, he won. That moment—messy and exhausting as it was—lit a spark. “I want to do this,” he told himself.
Baron had recently left a job as a prosecutor in Salt Lake County. While he respected the work, he realized his “sympathy was on the other side of the room.” Since then, he’s spent more than 15 years building a career as a criminal defense lawyer, running his own firm in Lehi, Utah.
In this episode of Make Your Case, Baron breaks down:
Why 95% of criminal cases never go to trial
How storytelling shapes jury decisions
What he learned from a cocaine trafficking case with a twist
And why he says with new clients, the "worst thing I can do is try to persuade them"