Trial Preparation

Today I learned a little bit about trial preparation. Although trial is not very common as most cases settle before they reach trial, attorneys still have to prepare in advance.

So for a basic overview:

-The plaintiff sends exhibits/evidence to defense along with a general outline of their argument.
-There are usually hundreds of exhibits
-This outline is basically just witnesses/expert witnesses, evidence they plan on using, etc.
-All exhibits/evidence must provided to the defense and court beforehand and be approved
-The defense then goes through all the exhibits to make sure that they are correct -- mainly that nothing has been deleted or edited by the other side. In the case they were prepping for they found that something had been redacted(deleted) from one of the exhibits.
-They (the defense) then go through the strong and weak points of their case and make a general outline.

Some tips I learned about trial:
-You should try to schedule your witnesses  close to the weekends and/or the end of the case. This allows the jury to more easily remember those witnesses when making their decision or thinking about the case over the weekend break.
-Courtroom software is very useful. It makes it much easier and more organized when trying to show a piece of paper/exhibit. When I went to trial, I remember that in the closing statements I saw, the attorney did not use software and was kind of fumbling around with papers and pointing to things with his pen. So I think that software really makes all the difference.

Side note:
-I'm very interested in the Jury selection process of trials and am hoping that I can experience this in one of the upcoming trials.


Thanks for reading!