Although our goal is not to take every case to trial, the fact of the matter is, is that occasionally that’s the most expeditious, sometimes the only way to resolve the dispute. But before you get there, there are certain pretrial general considerations, which you need to take into consideration and there’s no one better to discuss that than Los Angeles celebrity divorce lawyer, Christopher C. Melcher.
Chris is a partner of top family law firm of Walzer Melcher in California. He specializes in complex high asset cases, and is a well-known expert on premarital agreements (prenups). Chris is also an outstanding appellate lawyer, a certified family law specialist, a fellow former chair of the California State Bar Section, and a member of FlexCom.
We’re going to talk eight hours about trial prep and how to conduct a trial. And it would really take you eight weeks to implement all this stuff. It’s a tremendous amount of information that we’re going to be giving, and that we’re responsible for knowing when we’re putting on a trial.
And so, first of all, what is a trial? …It’s more of a real story that we’re telling, but we’re writing the script. We’re deciding the presentation, the order of the story.
And so, I would invite you to start looking at great storytellers. And there’s so much stuff on YouTube and the internet about how to tell a story from screenwriters, from people who are doing this for movies. So, I would take a look at that. When you’re coming up with themes in your case, and how to present your case, look at how the best of the best do it. And then, come up with a strategy about how you’re going to put all that this together.
Now, what we have to know is the facts. And when I get done writing that statement of facts, the reader, the appellate justice should know already how to rule. And the law is just a detail. They, hopefully, already know that, but they don’t know the facts. Only you can tell those. And so, we need to master those.
We also have to know the law really, really well. And because the judge may not know the law too good, may have come from a different assignment and looking at you, as the family lawyer, to provide that education on what the law is. And if we don’t know no, what we’re talking about, we have no credibility. And if we have no credibility, our client is not served. So, master the facts, know the law inside and out, and then be truthful about these things because we are spokespeople.
What we want to do with opposing counsel is meet and confer with them about numbering in particular. And I’ve seen so many times people show up at a trial, the convention is the petitioner uses numbers, and the respondent uses letters.
It’s going to make our trial prep a lot easier if we don’t have to bring in custodian records for bank statements, or maybe we have to do that. There’s going to be a question, do you group these exhibits or mark them individually? Now, I like the grouping because that allows me to get my exhibit list out quickly, and then figure out exactly what that exhibit looks like when I actually have to produce it.
Also, we have these rule of completeness.
Do we mark depo transcripts? Well, you don’t have to, you can lodge those. But I mark them as exhibits because, now, it’s in my exhibit binder, which I keep electronically, which we’re going to talk about, but I want them all in one place.
Impeachment exhibits-before when we were all in-person, we’d have the folder and they would have it there and ready to go. Now if we’re doing video depos, we’re doing video court appearances & it’s hard to use an impeachment exhibit.
Have the client review the exhibit list.
Have your cheat sheet. Your exhibit list is not going to just say the number and the identification, or description of it. You’re going to say was this identified? Was this admitted? Mark the exhibits.
I do everything electronically,
And, in my experience, the better-prepared lawyer is going to win.
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