How to Determine If Your Client Is a Fit for Witness Preparation Coaching?
Are all clients a good fit for witness preparation? Join me as I share a recent experience of a client resisting deposition preparation. I will also discuss ways to identify if a client is open to learning – or if they’re just acting like a know-it-all. Discover the signs to look out for, and I’m also giving out some questions to consider to evaluate your client’s readiness and willingness to engage in the process.
This episode takes a closer look at how to handle clients and determine their level of investment in a case. I can’t stress enough the importance of having an in-depth conversation with the client before the deposition to ensure everyone is on the same page. I also offer tips on dealing with clients who may not be a good fit for witness preparation. Be ready to navigate the complexities of client management in the courtroom.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Questions to assess client readiness
- Tips for productive conversations with clients to ensure they’re invested in the process
- How to determine if a client is a good fit for witness preparation
- Questions to ask yourself to consider if a client is open to learning
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Supporting Resources:
Have a question or idea for an episode? Email Elizabeth (she reads all her emails) Elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello, and welcome back to the trial lawyer podcast with your host me, Elizabeth Larrick. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I want to have a short episode, but talk about something that happened recently that I think happens quite a lot to us. And that is clients [00:01:00] who resist getting prepared for deposition or trial.
And what it brought me to was thinking about having an episode talking with y’all about how not every client is a good fit for a client. Um, and so I’m going to talk about, um, how to do a witness preparation. And generally it comes down to three different things that I have seen and encountered. And trust me, I have definitely encountered this over the years of working with people in depositions who are not open to learn.
They are not open to the help. Or they just don’t think they need the help. Right? They think they know everything already. And You could have a person who has all those things wrapped all in one. And generally you’re going to have pretty easy signs to know this person would not be a good fit. But sometimes you have people who it’s hard to determine whether they’re a good fit or not because sometimes they have [00:02:00] behavior that tells you that they’re not really open to learning.
And sometimes they are. So sometimes it can be difficult to ascertain that. And I want to talk about this because I recently had this exact situation and I thought, was this totally preventable?
So let’s talk about it with our folks on the podcast, because I know you guys are running up against this kind of situation all the time. And I see people basically just let it happen. I let it happen. Let’s try to prevent that. So let me talk a little about the example that I have. So recently I had an attorney that asked me to come help with deposition prep and they had the deposition set two or three months out.
And so we start planning and the client all of a sudden plans a [00:03:00] vacation. And the vacation is the two weeks before the deposition arriving home one day before the deposition and kind of questioning. Okay. That seems like we’re cutting it really close. Hey, that’s all right. Let’s just use virtual, right?
We can use virtual. I’ve done it many times. I encourage folks here to use zoom on Witness preparation all the time. We start looking at, let’s make some Zoom appointments. And that becomes very difficult. It’s very hard to pin down. Sometimes they just don’t show up. That’s okay. All right. Lots going on over there.
So I just always want to be differential. Could be something else. I don’t know what’s going on. And then we have our in person meeting, show up late and then left early. Okay. All right. So there was really no preparation for this person at the end of the day, just hoping that they [00:04:00] did well, which I assumed that they did all right, their deposition.
But what it came down to is I think this was somebody who was not really open to the help, despite saying so. So I think this is a situation where there was a little bit of vetting and always was told whenever we had Zooms and calls together, Oh, of course, yes, absolutely. Oh, yes. I’m very much looking forward to this.
But then Roadblock, which is people always want to look at what are people saying, but really what are they doing? And what they’re doing is probably the truth, not necessarily what they’re saying. So what I want to do is talk about how we can look at cases. We can look at clients and really try to prevent a situation like this, because what happened was a lot of people put a lot of time and investment, not just me, into preparing this person and setting aside time.
And it was truly very much an energy suck. And It ended up being a total gamble because [00:05:00] we had invested so much time, but yet the client had not. So this is where maybe they’re not a good fit, right? Level of investment. So put together some questions that you could sit and ask yourself first. I always think it’s really helpful to walk through what You may be thinking in your mind asking some questions before you talk to your client that way one, you know planned out You have examples thoughtful when you have this conversation with the client, but what I would be asking Me, but this is what I asked myself now having gone through a situation where I was like wow That feels like there’s a lot of writing on the wall that we all ignored So what I want to ask myself is this person open to learning?
You And that, are they asking questions? And I think when we have a case and we, especially when we get into litigation, right, that’s really foreign for people. Some people they’ve had a [00:06:00] claim or someone’s had a claim before they’ve had, they’ve seen situations, but when it comes to litigation, most people are pretty foreign.
So I always want to be looking at, have they been asking questions? Are they open to learning the process? Are they curious about how this all works? Or are they just there when they need to be and otherwise? Now, I know there’s a lot of people who just don’t know what questions to ask, but you’re going to see that they have a level of engagement in what’s happening with the file.
They call, they’re curious, at least to know updates on what’s going on. The other question I ask, is this person ever acted like a know it all, right? And we all know what a know it all is, even as kids we know what know it alls are. Guess what? Those kids grow up to be adult know it alls. You could have a client that’s a know it all and that’s okay.
Hey, we gotta, we just gotta know what we’re working with here. Because sometimes know it alls are a resistance. Sometimes there’s ways to work through that resistance. And [00:07:00] I’ve seen a lot of lawyers do really good jobs working in relationships with know it alls, but they have boundaries and rules and expectations from the very beginning.
Now, sometimes we don’t know this about a person and we learn that about them, and then you still need to set up those boundaries, rules, and expectations. The other thing I always ask myself is, okay, is this person late all the time? Are they chronically returning things to my office or getting things back to me late?
And again, what we’re trying to figure out is what is the investment level of this person? You may have clients who are 100 percent invested, maybe they’re 90 percent invested and you don’t even lose one hour of worry on this person because you know that they give you their time and their attention with the case and that they’re going to do that when it comes time to prepare for deposition.
So, we’re [00:08:00] talking about people who maybe they’re not going to be a fit, maybe they’re going to be a little bit of an issue and that’s what they’re This is really addressing is those people who you have a hunch that they might not be a good fit, or you just know, big red flag, like totally no, they’re not going to be a good fit because we don’t want to waste your time and your energy.
You have only so many cases. You have so many things. You have to make a decision and a choice about how to use your energy and your time wisely. And if you have a client who’s not investing in Or invested in their case, then you really need to be upfront about, again, the repercussions of their lack of investment.
And I think when clients are not invested in their case, we’re seeing them not return things on time. We’re seeing them not give you things to support the file. Those examples like photographs, videos, [00:09:00] tax returns. Emails, text messages, are they not getting that because that’s evidence, people. We got to have that stuff.
Maybe they’re not returning that stuff. So they’re not best. Maybe they’re not returning your calls. Maybe they’re putting off having calls with you. Maybe they won’t schedule things to get things done. That’s somebody who’s just not really invested. And you know what happens when the client is not invested.
When you can’t get those key pieces of evidence to support their damages, to support liability, there is a large loss of value. You know it’s going to take a longer time to get to settlement and you have to start making decisions. So I think it’s really important to know that you as the lawyer have to tell your client about the repercussions, right?
You have to tell them there’s going to be a loss in value here. It’s going to take longer time to get to [00:10:00] settlement. And I have to make decisions about files, and guess what, this is probably not a file that we’re going to try, okay? Because you are not providing the evidence and the investment that we need to be able to take the case to a trial.
So, if that’s something that you’re hard set on, client, we might need to find you somebody different to work with, okay? But let’s talk about how to have that conversation. Once we decide, okay, this is somebody who’s going to put up a fight for preparation or they’re going to let you go through the motions and they’re just not going to show up or they’re not going to be present or they’re going to leave early.
They’re going to come up with an excuse. We want to prevent all that for you for sure. So I always have just a quick conversation with the client to talk about it. And again, I think in other episodes I’ve mentioned this, if not, I’ve wouldn’t, I’ve been doing CLEs. We’re talking people in podcasts and really emphasizing having a 30 minute [00:11:00] conversation.
It can even be 20 minutes y’all before you are scheduling a deposition and not sending an email, not, Hey, can we get dates for deposition? No, you are calling as a lawyer to talk about what it is and the dedication that you need from them for preparation, setting that scene. And that’s really what this little conversation is about, which is basically, Hey, we’re about to schedule deposition.
This is something you have not done before, right? That’s a fact right there. Can’t argue with the fact. Depositions significantly impact a case because decisions are made based on what is said or not said. Okay, so now we’re saying, hey, this is an important thing. You haven’t done it before. And then the next part of it is my process.
Part of what I do to prepare you is by having one on one time together over several meetings. So you can feel prepared and then walk into that deposition and show them that you were prepared. [00:12:00] How does that sound? So what have we done here? We’ve done several different things with this really easy setup and then we turn it over and open it in question.
How does that sound? And they’ll just tell you what they’re going to tell you. But, you’re stating a fact, they haven’t done it before. You’re stating another fact, it’s significant. And, what you want, what your expectation is that they are going to prepare with you one on one over several meetings. Because we always have everything has a reason built in here, right?
And what happens is you’ll get deflection. What are they going to ask me? We’ll get to that. That’s why I want to spend one on one time with you preparing. But how does that sound? I would like to know. See, we’re going back to that question, right? You guys are great at depositions. Okay, just rephrase that question.
Get it back to them. Right? Make sure that they’re answering that because we want to make sure people are a good fit. We want to use your energy and your time wisely. And likewise for the [00:13:00] client, it goes the same way. Hey, if this is something that you don’t want to invest in, that you don’t want to spend time and energy, then I’m not going to do that either.
But that means that we’re making decisions about this case and the value. And are you okay with that? because you’ve told me before I need X, Y, Z, or whatever the value is before. Because again, if you have had the case for a while, you’re going to know what the client thinks or feels, whether they trust you about the value or they don’t, they have an expectation in their mind of what they have to have.
We always have people like that. So you guys can think of an example in your mind. But I wanted to put together this short episode to talk about this because Even as somebody, myself, who has been doing this particular type of preparation for almost 10 years now. Easily, yes, it’s over 10 years I’ve been doing this.
I still run into people like this. I still get caught in this trap. And I don’t want you to get caught in this trap because we know it’s [00:14:00] preventable. We know it’s something that we can have a quick conversation about to understand. And hey, if that’s their decision, that’s fine. That’s their case. But you want to know so that you can be prepared for the same thing and then not be caught off guard.
All right. I hope that this episode was helpful. Again, short and sweet to the point, how do we figure out if people are a good fit for witness preparation, right? Ask yourself those questions. Is this person open to learning? Are they asking questions? Has this person acted like a no at all? Has this person been late?
Are they chronically returning things to the office slate or just not returning things at all? What’s their level of investment in this case so far? Then turn around and have a conversation with the client before the deposition gets scheduled so that you can both be on the same page. And then also so they can set aside time.
You’re, it’s a [00:15:00] very considerate thing to do. So I hope that this helps you. If you have a suggestion or if you have a question or if you want to come on the podcast, please email me. My email is always going to be in the show notes as a way to get ahold of me, but till next time. Thank you so much.