Christopher Harristhal is a business litigator with an employment focus at Larkin Hoffman in Bloomington, Minnesota. But he’s also been performing as a magician for decades. His obsession began when he was 6, watching his older brother do tricks with a silk handkerchief.

“It drove me nuts,” he says. With the aid of countless books and props, “for the next 15 years, I tortured him at every turn with, ‘Pick a card, any card,’” Harristhal says.

While Harristhal loves magic in its own right, it’s also “cross-training for trial work,” he says. The parallels are many—from the preparation and performance that must win over a captive audience to selecting both a good jury member and a good crowd participant. “A lot of magic is reading people, and I think the better lawyers are also really good at reading people,” he says.

Harristhal’s story was featured in the 2019 issue of Minnesota Super Lawyers Magazine.