The Tanya Acker Show Host Shares Her Insights on Meaningful Dialogue, Legal Strategy, and Why Court Should Be a Last but Respected Resort
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Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Tanya Acker, host of The Tanya Acker Show and television judge on Tribunal Justice, during the Milken Global Conference. They discuss how society can shift away from conflict-driven discourse and toward deeper understanding and why Tanya believes in the power of the courts as a tool for leveling the playing field. Tanya also shares insights from her book Make Your Case: Finding Your Win in Civil Court.
About Tanya Acker
Tanya Acker is a civil litigator by trade and is deeply passionate about what the law can do for people. While a student at Yale Law School, Tanya represented low-income women in family law cases and served as a teaching assistant in both Constitutional Law and Civil Procedure courses.
Tanya’s legal experience includes work at the Office of White House Counsel, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, and several private law firms. Her legal career has offered unique opportunities to broaden her perspective, such as assisting President Clinton’s personal lawyers with press interviews, preparing Congressional testimony for pending product liability legislation, and conducting research on First Amendment issues—a particular area of passion.
About The Tanya Acker Show
Tanya Acker talks to newsmakers, trendsetters, and leaders of every stripe about the forces that drive their decisions and how their choices impact everyone else. How do they move forward in an environment where lies spread faster than truth? How do they see the glass as half full when someone is sucking the liquid out of it with a jumbo straw? When do they know it’s time to take on a battle and when is it time to redirect energy? And how does anyone have any fun in the middle of all this? Join Tanya and her guests as they dig into all.

Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today my guest is Tanya Acker and she’s host of the Tanya Acker Show, which is a podcast.
And this interview is part of our. Global conference series where we highlight and bring on guests who are either participants and or attendees to feature them and their experience over at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. And Tanya, first off, welcome to the show.
Hi Adam. I’m so happy to be here. Really excited about the conversation. Love to have fellow podcasters on here and love to promote and, talk about their shows as well. So I’m glad to have you on. And first thing though, I do wanna talk a little bit about the Milken Conference. So you did attend this year.
Is this your first time? Have you been in the past? Like, tell us about your experience. My goodness. It was my first time I was Congrats congrat. Congrats. That’s amazing. Yes. Oh, it was really, it was so amazing. And I have to give a special thanks to my friends Barbara Johnson and Anthony Elli, who arranged my invitation.
It was, the best way I can describe it is that it’s sort of like fun civics. It was sort of like a Disneyland of big ideas and. Engaging with people who are doing, did you just not say Disneyland of big ideas? Mic drop. I’ve been saying the Super Bowl of conferences. Hi, you, my, my girlfriend here while I’m recording and she’s in the background.
She just looked up when I repeated that and she’s, she’s a podcast host too. Of course, her. Starts with you. And she looked up like, what? Finally? And she don’t listen to my content. She thinks it is not her thing. Let’s just say she’s tired of my voice, but she’s like the Disneyland. Oh, it’s really, but that’s really what it feels like.
It’s just, you know, this place where all of these big thinkers and people who are really engaging in issues, important things that impact everybody. That interest everybody are kind of collaborating and sharing their minds. I had such a phenomenal time and I think that one of the things that really struck me is that it sort of aligns and a lot of the things that the different speakers we’re talking about really align with what we’re talking about, right?
Mm-hmm. Like, there’s so much. Conflict. There is so much disengagement from folks often because we don’t share ideas with one another. We’ve lost the art, not entirely, but we’ve lost the art of being able to communicate with one another. And Milken was just, I mean, it was so refreshing. it was a joy.
The day was a joy. I mean, why is everyone so angry when you talk about conflict? When you talk about these things? Like what are you seeing? Well, you know, it’s interesting, I think, Adam, that when you talk about big picture issues mm-hmm. We’ve sort of lost the plot. I think that when. when it’s easier to focus on the things that are making you angry or annoyed about an opponent.
Mm-hmm. It’s easier and almost reflexive to kind of lean into that as opposed to leaning into what you do next. I mean, for instance. When you are fighting in court, and I talk about this a lot in my book, if you lean into the anger, you are going to lose a lot of money. Even if you win, you are going to raise cortisol to levels that will be super unhealthy for you.
Mm-hmm. And I’m not saying it’s not natural. I mean, there’s a lot to make. I, you know, I don’t care who you’re voting for. There is a lot that happens in the world that is enough to really provoke people. But I think when it really comes down to it, it’s because people aren’t making more focused decisions about what they want for themselves.
And when you’re fighting in court, it’s easy to do that, right? Like you have to, yeah, you have to have an objective If you are thinking about sort of a larger way that you process. Your life and the world and things that you engage with sometimes making the decision about what you wanna have happen next isn’t as easy.
I mean, on my podcast, the Tanya Acker show, I. Really like to talk about why people make the decisions they do and you know, all sorts of decisions. I mean, if you think about how people make decisions in their lives for anything else, and I’m putting politics aside, but anything else. There’s an objective.
They, you know, whether or not it’s how they engage with a really painful situation. I interviewed a bit ago, Brandon Guffy. He’s a GOP Republican State senator who lost his son to suicide. I. After an online blackmailing scam. And, you know, these horrible things are happening to kids and he sort of made certain decisions about how he was moving forward.
You know, I talked to authors and writers and artists about how they decide to tell the stories that they wanna tell. I had, democratic Senate Congressman Ana on to talk about sort of how, what the decision making process is. And I think that we don’t often focus on. The how and the why of why we’re engaging and, you know, we don’t always really grapple with the how and the why.
Mm-hmm. Of why we’re moving forward on certain things. You know, I, we may know it. But I don’t know. I think it’s easier to sort of, kind of fast forward to the end game, which a lot of people do. Mm-hmm. Which is, you are creating pain, you are doing a bad thing. You voted for somebody I don’t like, and then we, I.
Sort of make those, we make a lot of assumptions from there. And part of the reason we make those assumptions is that we don’t often take the time and there aren’t a whole lot of platforms where people can really engage in the y you know, everything becomes. A shouting match and one shouting match is just gonna breed another.
If you’re only showing up for the mic drop moment and not to really understand anything, then you are creating a stage for perpetual anger. And I’m not saying that, in some, I like holier than now way, like, we all do this. I think that, mm-hmm. Many, many people do it. I’ll just say that I’ve done it.
But I, do think that you really have to be mindful about why you’re deciding to do whatever it is. You know, that I’m not just talking about voting for people, but if you really think about, you know, the process of your decision making and, what you’re expecting to get, like what will you get beyond the satisfaction?
Of sticking it to somebody else. Yeah. and we, sometimes I think that when we’re not talking about these issues that people are yelling about on television, that process becomes a lot more clear when you’re talking about things that engage folks on social media and you’re seeing memes and you know, this one says this, so you gotta say that, then I think it becomes a really different game entirely.
Yeah, uh, I wanna talk about your book a little bit further. And I know there’s only so much we can cover in a, you know, 15 minute interview. But takeaway if there’s one thing that you hope the readers walk away with from your book what would that be? I. My book is really focused on court fights.
Mm-hmm. We are an increasingly litigious society. I do not think that’s a good thing. Yes, I, I also, I work on a court show. I’m a TV judge on tribunal justice that Judge Judy created. I have represented people in conflict. I resolved conflicts. I think that when people approach a legal conflict, they have to really keep a number of things in mind.
One, the law has so many rules, right? There are rules for how you must fight. And in some ways that’s a really great thing. And I mean, that’s why legal fights can not always and by the way, I don’t, I also don’t mean to suggest. People always follow the rules. I also talked about that in my book. But you really should have your objective in mind.
You should really assume that. It’s going to be very painful to get there. Costly and if not that, it takes a lot of emotional energy. I think litigation is a really draining process and I always told clients that I never advise anybody to go to court unless you are really, really ready for it, you know, with all of the costs.
Associated. So I think that people should really contemplate it very carefully. Now, I, I think that court and our, court system, you know, has really become an instrument of opportunity. I. And, you know, there are some folks for whom this advice means nothing because they like the opportunity that litigation brings.
And so this is really for the folks who, are not in that camp or might be mm-hmm. Forced to engage with someone in that camp. I, I think there are two things I say to them. One, assume that if somebody is employing court or, or weaponizing, litigation as some folks do, and I’m not making any broad statements about.
Any type of litigation. I think that court is really one of the last bastions of keeping us all civilized, frankly. But, you know, if you’re in a situation where you feel like litigation’s being weaponized against you think really carefully about what the options are. You also have to think about the fact that there are mechanisms, you know, there are mechanisms to hold people accountable for abusing and wasting your time in court.
They’re really costly and it takes a lot of time to get there. And even if somebody, for instance, sues you for no good faith with no good faith basis mm-hmm. And you’re able to get sanctions, the likelihood that you’re gonna get all of your time and money back is very slim. However. You should still think about doing that because I think that when you’re in an environment where things can be weaponized in that way, then you wanna make sure that you’re not an easy target.
But the flip side of that is. You asked for one takeaway, but I’m sorry I’m cheating. No, you’re podcast also. It’s good. This is great stuff. Go ahead. But I think that other side of that and the side that frankly is far more common I’m on the board of Public counsel. We’re the provider we’re the largest provider of free legal services in the country.
It is far more common that folks have to engage with the system or are perhaps engaged with an an opponent. Who may have more resources, who may be able to outgun them. You know, it’s not just folks who are looking for opportunity who can sometimes abuse the court system. It’s sometimes people who know that the person on the other side is gonna have a really hard time fighting them.
And so they may make a stink or not do something even when they’re supposed to do it. And so. I think what I would say is that you really can’t lose hope in. What court is and what it means and what it can do for people. I mean, Sojourner Truth went to court at a time when black people in this country were not considered human and every part of it.
And she won a court case that resulted in the emancipation of her son who’d been, strongly enslaved. Biddy Mason. I’m a Los Angeles native, was a major land owner. She was a major landowner in the city, and she went to court and she won her emancipation after her enslave brought her to California and then tried to get her back to Texas, and slavery was illegal in California.
So court spend this. Incredible bastion of power for people who might not otherwise have it. And that is, and I also think it’s something that really is a great leveler. So I, going back to your question, if my one bit of advice is to treat it with the respect it deserves, you know, it’s a process.
It’s a process. And and I, don’t think everybody respects it. I don’t think that everybody respects the process, but you will be better served for a number of reasons. If you do, and if you’re adverse to somebody who’s scandalous. There are ways of dealing with that. But to be sure it’s very hard.
Yeah. Well, Tanya, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today, getting to know more about your book and know more about your show and also your work. How do people follow you? How do they connect? Thanks Adam. Well, you can find both my YouTube channel and my podcast on my website, tanya acker show.com.
And you can find the podcast Tanya Acker show. It’s available on every podcast platform. iTunes, Spotify. Just go there. You’ll find me. You can follow me on Instagram at Tanya Acker. And that’s, my handle everywhere. I try to keep it simple. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put links in the show notes, so you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day, bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button.
And Tanya, thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks, Adam. This was great fun.