How To Select a Litigator

The first factor I’d recommend is reading the lawyer’s work. Is it easy to read? Does it sound logical? Does the lawyer even have work product for you to read? These are important questions, since a big part of a litigator’s job is to write clearly and intelligently. Even if you are a lay person, a good lawyer’s writing should be understandable. A bad lawyer’s writing may either be unintelligible or, as is often the case, bizarre, sloppy, or ranting.

Litigation Writing Style

I find that people take lawyers more seriously when they stick to the facts. If a defendant failed to pay $1 million, just say that. I understand how serious that is and I can work with you to address the underlying issues. But by comparing the defendant to a monster or a criminal, the defendant is more likely to want to clear their name and thus not settle. And the defendant may view the plaintiff as unserious and thus view their claims with skepticism.

Fiduciary Duty Claims

Once someone is a fiduciary and they breach a duty, that does not automatically mean that the plaintiff has a winning case. Fiduciaries owe duties to specific people and, if the plaintiff is not one of the people owed the duty, she may not be able to sue for the breach.

How Litigators Dress

Every office is different. Some workplaces are stuffier by nature, priding themselves in being elite institutions. Others are more relaxed, taking pride in being a place that people can do their best work in by being comfortable. As a result, different law firms take different approaches to dress.

Keeping Litigation Fees Lower

While it is nice to know that a lawyer is available to take the burden of a lawsuit off of a client’s shoulders, a client should also remember that lawyers often bill by the hour. And so it may make sense to delegate the work that a non-lawyer can perform to less expensive workers or for the client to perform the work themselves.

Impeaching a Witness

Setting traps works when the lawyer is confident that she knows how a witness will answer a question and that the answer will be demonstrably false. So, for example, if the lawyer is confident that the witness will testify that a light was red, the lawyer may ask what color the light was, and then show a picture of a green light to reveal that the witness was wrong.

Legal Vendors

Some lawyers before a jury trial use jury consultants or focus groups to get insight into how a real jury may consider the facts and what themes may be more persuasive than others. This is especially helpful for lawyers who may come from different social backgrounds from members of the jury. This is also helpful because some things that may seem irrelevant to a lawyer (such as where a witness works or lives) may have significant impact on their credibility to some jurors.

Initial Phone Calls

Most of my calls do not end with me getting a new client. I don’t want to take people’s money for a case they cannot win. But I want people to remember me when future issues arise. So I try to be a sympathetic ear for their problems and a source for an honest view of how I see their case. My hope is that people appreciate that.

Cross-Border Issues in Judgment Enforcement

Litigants frequently seek to domesticate foreign judgments in the United States because defendants often have accounts at American banks. The United States may also seem like an attractive place to domesticate a judgment because nearly every major bank in the world has an office or does business in the United States. But just because a bank is subject to jurisdiction in the United States does not mean that courts will definitely enforce foreign judgments against the assets they hold.

Sanctions Motions

Many sanctions motions arise in the context of discovery. This is because the court system generally relies on the parties to trust each other in the conduct of discovery. There is no judge present for depositions and the parties usually supervise their own document gathering and production. Because of this freedom from direct oversight, there is a lot of opportunity for abuse. Accordingly, parties frequently allege other people violate the rules.

Litigation Software Update

Beyond collaborating on documents, online storage is important to make sure important documents can be easily found in one place and are not vulnerable to destruction if a computer or disk is lost or destroyed. And I understand that online storage is very inexpensive right now.

Employment Separation Agreements

Every negotiation is different and some employers may offer very different terms than others. Some big companies have a lot of money and are generous to outgoing employees. Some employers are less generous and offer very little. There are usually no requirements for the amount of a severance.