Take The Extra Step To Help Your Clients

Coming in prepared for the multiple scenarios that may arise can help substantially to reach your client’s goals.

While knowledge, experience, and general ability are crucial tools in litigation, it is often sheer effort and hard work that make the difference in a given case.

From the beginning of my career, some of my mentor’s most frequent advice has been to “be the hardest working lawyer in the room.” If there are extra steps to be taken to ensure you are better prepared, take them. Over the years, I have tried to apply this advice to any given task, large or small, and it has proved to be invaluable.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this that I have experienced was when my colleagues and I represented the plaintiff in a RICO trial in federal court. By the time the case proceeded to trial, there were over a decade of documents related to the underlying misconduct as well as many related litigations in various courts. The amount of information that could have been at issue was enormous (indeed, the defendants’ exhibits were so numerous they went up to “Exhibit MMMMMMMMMMMMMM,” that is, nearly 14 rounds of 26 letters for the defense, not to mention what we had to present as plaintiff).

Thus, before the trial began, we had to prepare a system to handle this enormous amount of information. Preparing and organizing the documents, took a huge amount of effort by the case team. But what ultimately made the difference was when my colleague took the next step and contacted the court to arrange a time to actually come into the courtroom, test out the court’s electronic systems, and do a trial run of our exhibits. While there is not always the opportunity to do this, taking this additional step here proved critical once the trial began.

Because of this extra effort, we were able to smoothly present our case to the jury, and became the authority on the evidence presented. Even counsel for defendants, who had not taken the same steps to seek access to the courtroom pre-trial, began to rely on our team when it came down to the evidence presented.  Because it was a RICO case, the legal issues raised were highly complex and absolutely required extensive knowledge and skillful analysis. But the fact that our team was able and willing to spend the time and effort to precisely present the facts helped enormously in our eventual win for our client at trial.

This same theory applies to even more limited tasks than a full-blown trial. For example, when conducting even relatively simple research, there is always an additional step after finding what seems to be the answer to the issue presented. Taking the time and making the effort to conduct one more search will almost always clarify and provide insight into the issue you had seemingly resolved. Or, when proceeding in mediation or in another alternative dispute resolution process, coming in prepared for the multiple scenarios that may arise can help substantially to reach your client’s goals.

As lawyers, it is absolutely necessary that we have the knowledge and ability to analyze the law and argue skillfully for our clients. But these abilities and skill shine best when we put in the effort to take those extra steps.

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Jillian L McNeilJillian L. McNeil was an attorney at Balestriere Fariello, a trial and investigations law firm which represents clients in all aspects of complex commercial litigation and arbitration from pre-filing investigations to trial and appeals. You can reach firm partner John Balestriere at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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