Attorneys need to be armed with all the information possible in order to give their clients the best chance of winning a civil or legal action. Review of relevant documents and the use of deposition reporters to take statements provides the attorney with the tools needed to best handle the case. The process of gathering this information before trial is called "discovery."
The Basics Of Discovery
Attorneys don't expect to be surprised in courtrooms. They conduct a formal investigation under court rules to acquire as much information as they can, even information discovered by the other side.
Interrogatories are one of the most common types of discovery. An interrogatory is a questionnaire that a party of interest is asked to fill out. The party is expected to answer truthfully or be faced with charges of perjury. This allows lawyers to discover key facts about a case without having to personally interview every person involved.
Requests for documents or physical evidence are another common method of information acquisition. It allows both parties full access to relevant material so neither one has an unfair advantage.
Deposition Services
It often surprises people to realize that when attorneys question witnesses in court, this is rarely the first time that witness has been interviewed. Attorneys interview witnesses before trial so they know what the person is going to say before it is said in court. Typically the deposition is attended by both attorneys and resembles the questioning the witness will receive in court.
The use of deposition reporters in this way allows attorneys to investigate a witness's testimony before it is given in court. With the written transcript, attorneys can challenge witnesses who change their story, whether through deliberate malice or simple forgetfulness.
Deposition reporters are also used to take the testimony of a witness who cannot be present at the trial. This might be a witness who lives far away or has health problems that might preclude appearance in court.
Electronic Discovery
The realm of interrogatories and deposition reporters has seen a new tool in recent years, that of electronic discovery or ediscovery.
As more information is stored digitally, new methods of discovery have been created. Emails, word processor documents, accounting software records and more have become central to many modern civil and criminal cases. The sheer volume of the information is challenging since electronic documents are easy to create and duplicate.
An important aspect of ediscovery is the concept of metadata, which is data about the data such as the date the file was last changed. Something as simple as a file date can be more revealing than the document itself, indicating the document was created on a different day than a witness says it was.
From using deposition reporters to document testimony before the trial to using the latest electronic forensic methods to explore digital files, discovery is a key part of any courtroom proceeding.
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