What does he do that has nothing to do with law?
About forty feet down off Hawaii, at night, with his wife Robin, watching manta rays feed.
The rays are the part people ask about. The interesting part is everything that had to happen first. Certification. A plan. A boat and a schedule and a set of checks. Then getting into dark water on the night you said you would, when nothing about the moment is inviting and no one would blame you for staying on the boat.
A night dive is almost entirely preparation. What it looks like when the preparation was done properly is a calm forty minutes and a very good story.
Photograph to place here: Jesse and Robin in dive gear on the boat off the Kona coast, before the night dive.
Does he actually finish what he starts?
Two basements finished and two decks built, by hand, by him.
A person who has framed a wall can talk to an electrician without either of them performing for the other, and can talk to a general counsel an hour later without changing register. In a patent case that is not a metaphor. Machinists, chemists and engineers spend a lot of their working lives explaining things to lawyers, and most of them can tell within a few minutes whether the lawyer has ever built anything.
Finishing is the other half. A basement three quarters done is a room nobody uses. So is an argument three quarters prepared.
Photograph to place here: one of the two decks, finished, photographed from the yard.
What is his family like?
Married to Robin for twenty-eight years, four children.
Three sons who each earned Eagle Scout, which is their achievement and belongs to them. What belongs to him is the walking. In 2018 he spent eleven days and about 110 miles on foot at Philmont with his oldest son, carrying his own pack.
Eleven days on a trail with a teenager is not a vacation. It is a long stretch of doing an unglamorous thing that you agreed to do, in weather, with someone whose company you have to earn again every morning. There are worse preparations for a long case.
Photograph to place here: Jesse and his oldest son on the trail at Philmont, 2018.
When does he find time for anything else?
A Master of Divinity in Christian Education, finished in 2015, while practicing full time.
Alongside it: leading a middle school ministry, teaching a church small group, substitute teaching at his children's school, and five years on the board of Northland Christian School.
The common thread through all of it is teaching, which is also the job in a courtroom. A middle school class and a jury have a fair amount in common. Neither chose to be there, neither owes you their attention, and both can tell instantly when the person at the front does not actually understand the thing being explained.
Photograph to place here: Jesse teaching a small group, taken from the back of the room.