4 Simple Tips for Successful Client Preparation
As a trial lawyer, you probably know what goes into client preparation like the back of your hand but there could still be things missing in your process that you wish to improve on.
In this episode, I’m going to discuss four simple advice tips for successful client prep. These are simple yet sometimes overlooked, tried and true tips for nearly every single client and every single case.
These are small things you don’t want to miss during client preparation so you can learn more about the client, have an easier time preparing the case, and have more success at your client depositions.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Why you should prepare the client alone
- The pitfalls of preparing people together
- Giving the client homework before the first client preparation session
- The importance of creating timelines together and making them interactive
- Breaking down the client preparation into two sessions
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Got a suggestion for an episode? Question to ponder? Email Elizabeth Elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hi there, Elizabeth, your host. I have a very short, sweet podcast episode for you today.
We are going to talk about four simple advice tips for successful client prep. And these are simple, but [00:01:00] they’re sometimes overlooked. And where these things came from is I teach. Uh, witness prep for many years with the Kenan Trial Institute. And these are common questions that I get asked, but also when I’m not teaching this, I work one on one with clients.
And so I’ve done that for many years and it’s a multi step process and found that these are tried and true tips for nearly every single client, every single case. So these are things when I say success. They’re really small things that are going to help you learn more about the client, have an easier time preparing them, have more success at your depositions with your clients.
And by success, I mean, they’re not going to get tripped up by things that the opposing counsel may ask. They’re going to be much more thoughtful and they’re going to have a lot better memory and recall based on some of these [00:02:00] things that we are going to talk about. So let me jump in very quickly. And again, like I said, Simple tips, quick episode, first tip, and there’s four of them total.
So first tip is prepare the client solo. Do not prepare clients together. And I’m talking about maybe we’ve got parents or we’ve got spouses or we’ve got maybe Two folks are in the same wreck or both in the same incident, don’t prepare them together. They’ve had an individual experience. And so their perception is going to be different.
And what happens is when you group people together, one person tends to speak more than the other. And they also can speak for the other person, right? So parents will speak for children. The spouse that’s not injured will talk more than the injured spouse. That’s a total normal human dynamic that can happen in those kinds of relationships.
What we really want to do is make sure we are [00:03:00] gathering what this particular client experienced and giving them that one on one information for preparation. And in my experience, people will share much more when they’re solo. Versus when they’re with their parent, their spouse, their friend, and a couple of reasons why one is you’re focusing your attention on them.
So they may feel more compelled to give more, but also they’re seeing that you’re giving like individual attention. And so they want to make sure that they also give you more of their attention. Some of the pitfalls of actually preparing people together is they’ll just feel like share the same story versus actually giving maybe their own individual perception, which none, it’s a lie, but it’s not necessarily individual.
Sometimes we have people who have different concerns. One concern may be that they [00:04:00] don’t want to share about the impact of their injuries or how important their job was to them. And. They won’t share that if the other person’s in the room, maybe they’re scared to share in front of that person. And sometimes people just don’t want to share what they’re concerned about or questions they may have because they don’t want to be embarrassed.
They don’t want to waste time. There’s all kinds of things that go through people’s minds. So this is why I say remove the barrier, just prepare to share. I’m going to get there pretty soon because I know some people think, I don’t have the time to prepare people individually. Sometimes just spending 15, 30 minutes solo with somebody will do wonders and make you say, Oh, I need to spend more time one on one with this person.
It can also sometimes correct behavior as well. Tip number two, which would be give homework, always give homework before that first client preparation session. And it can be even as [00:05:00] simple as before you come to our meeting, I want you to bring three questions with you. That’s it. Three questions. Look how simple that is.
And one, you want to get them thinking, right? You want them to be thinking about the preparation, then be thinking about the deposition. It takes a little bit of work off of you, right? Because the Nick Cummins is the first thing you talk about. But also you are setting up a frame for what they’re expected to do.
They’re expected to participate. This is not just a sit and listen to my lawyer. Tell me what to do. I’m gonna be Participating in this and it’s a quick, easy way to get them to start working on getting things together, thinking about it, getting their brain working towards it. Just give that really simple homework.
You can ask people to bring in their concerns. Ask them, that’s what I say, make it as simple as just, at our first meeting I want you to bring three questions for me. Three questions that you’re going to have for me about this deposition. Super simple. Third tip would be use a [00:06:00] timeline or create a timeline together.
Timelines are great tools to refresh the memory. Depositions generally take Or occur years and months after the events that are in the lawsuit. So we really need to be refreshing memory And it is a fantastic visual aid to do that’s why I say do it together Even if it’s as simple as taking out a dry erase marker and putting a line On your board and then just taking things off together.
Okay. Here’s the date of the crash. Okay. Here’s the date of that surgery. Here’s the date. You lost that job. Okay. Here’s the date and it’s just, you’re putting things together for them in a big picture way. And as I’ve talked a little bit about visuals before, and we’re going to spend more time in other episodes talking about visuals, because I think we really have a great opportunity to speed up the learning and also retaining.
What they’re learning in their memory refresh. And that’s really what we want to do is. [00:07:00] Let’s go through an exercise instead of, hey, let’s just look at all this stuff. It’s all these documents, right, in a timeline that’s, you got asking people to keep multiple things together in their brain at one time.
And I’m saying, Hey, use a timeline to make this work quicker. And also it’s interactive if you do it together. If you use a timeline with the client, again, if it’s already made, that’s totally fine. But just remember from a standpoint of simplicity, keep it all on one page, like an eight by 10, or keep it all on two or three slides of a PowerPoint.
Because again, we really want to get that overall big picture and we overall make sure we’re refreshing that memory. If we get things too large and disjointed, you’ve got a medical timeline that’s 50 pages long, that’s too long, right? That’s just way too complicated, right? We’re missing the big picture here.
We really want to keep it simple. And again, refreshing that memory in a way that it’s going to help them retain it for that deposition. Last simple advice tip, which would [00:08:00] be do two sessions. Two preparation sessions, even if we’re talking about two 30 minute phone calls, stay with me here. I know a lot of people are thinking, well, what if I spend more time?
That’s totally fine. Sometimes we put all of our time together in one session, like the day before, maybe the two days before the deposition. And what I’m encouraging you to do is whatever time you have allocated, split it into two sessions. Or maybe you do, you know. Um, 20 minutes on the front end, 20, 80 or however you want to split it up, but you always want to have a little bit of time in between the session.
That’s why I say due to, because that allows them to really absorb and start searching their brains for more information, more stories, more questions, right? They’re really able to now, Oh, they understand so much more about what it is they’re about to do. Whoa. What it is that their job is. Yikes. And they may be excited [00:09:00] about it.
It doesn’t really matter, but that time allows your brain to keep working on thinking about all of it. And it’s done on a subconscious level, but. That also allows them to really learn the information and that’s what I mean by absorbing it. So when they come back for that second session with you, they may have more questions.
Where, how does this fit in? Right? They’ve been thinking about it. Right. That’s what you want. You want some absorption. You want some questions or even better than they come and say, hey, we talked about this and this came to my mind. I totally forgot this story about how I tried to go volunteer and I couldn’t do it.
Great. So. You want to get those extra things and be able to be hands on when they come in the door. You don’t want that to be happening at the deposition because that’s It could be something that needs to be fine tuned, it could be something that needs to be organized, maybe something that doesn’t apply at all, or it could be a question that really needs to be answered instead [00:10:00] of being left lingering in the deposition.
So that’s why I encourage you to break up into two sessions to allow that time in there to absorb and search their brains more. It also allows them time to solidify their understanding. of what’s happening and that will give you a better opportunity to ask better questions, deeper questions, more challenging questions, get them to another level of being uncomfortable with what they’re going to be asked.
We don’t want to scare the pants off of them at the first meeting, right? We want to get them set, want to get them what to expect. And then maybe in our second session, then we’re getting them to that It’s going to get uncomfortable. Here’s how it’s going to get uncomfortable, right? Because we don’t want to scare them right off the bat and then just scare them.
They just, they don’t ever want to come back. Then they think there’s nothing I can do, right? I’m powerless over the situation. So we just want to divide and conquer here. That’s why I say two sessions. All right, now let’s go back [00:11:00] through very quickly. These are simple things. They’re simple not to do as well, but that’s why, again, I want to make sure number one, prepare the client solo.
Don’t pair people up together in preparation meetings. Number two, give homework. Even if it’s just a super simple, Hey, when you come into our first meeting for zoom, when you come into our first in person meeting, bring three questions that you have for me about deposition. Number three, use a timeline or create a timeline together, right?
Really awesome tool to refresh, to get that 30, 000 foot view. It could be as simple as drawing a line on a page. And lastly, do two sessions. Split your time up, split that preparation time that you have allocated to allow the client more absorption time and things to solidify so that you can work even better with them when they come back because they’re going to stand on much solid ground versus still feeling uncertain about what’s going to happen.
Okay. I hope that [00:12:00] this was helpful for you. It’s a short one here. And that’s what I always try to do short and sweet. If you have questions for me, or if you have a topic that you’d like covered on the podcast, or if you want to come on the podcast, I’d love having guests, please shoot me an email. It will be in the show notes.
All right. Thank you so much.