7623 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

testimony is to put on paper everything you want to say. It is far easier for your lawyer to cut you back if you said too much than it is for him to inter- polate in a difficult scientific area. Collins (1976:397-400) gives this advice to the expert witness: A great many people are interested and have evidence to give. The job of the trial lawyer is to quickly marshal these facts and present them in their most pursuasive form. At the outset there should be a survey of the basic relevant factual material easily assimilated by lay persons and visually displayed to the Court and jury, if possible. Photographs are almost a necessity. A picture is still worth a thousand words. There must be identification of any particular stream input or withdrawal, its nature, source and amount. Lay witnesses may be sufficient to establish these facts, but most trial lawyers insist upon a qualified person with appropriate scientific training who tested and identified or otherwise measured the amount of any particular matter, including water, entering a stream or being withdrawn from it. Give some thought to reviewing with your lawyers the testing and measuring procedures and the data upon which your experts rely. If possible, walk your lawyers through your laboratories. Let them watch some similar testing being performed. Let them ask lots of ... questions. Point out to them the shortcomings of your work as well as its strengths. This will not only help prepare them for examination of your experts, but also will anticipate cross-examination. If you have employed mathematical or computer or physical stream simulation models, you should walk your lawyers through them from beginning to end. Most lawyers cannot handle at the outset the distinctions in these techniques. You may wish to consider having certain members of your organizations answer the increasingly frequent calls for expert testimony. Such a procedure may not only be more economical, it may also take advantage of particular talents and experience which exist in most large organiza- tions. It also has the advantage that personnel will become acquainted with lawyers who frequently deal with them. In the course of such acquaintances, enormous amounts of information are passed informally back and forth. All of this makes for better courtroom presentations.