How to Help Your Family Lawyer During Your Family Law Trial

 The Family Lawyer’s Responsibilities during Your Family Law Trial

1. Thinking, multi-tasking, focusing, strategizing, exhausting the brain on your case, making sure you win.
2. Connecting with the judge, figuring out what the judge likes or dislikes, getting the judge on your side.
3.  Making sure your evidence is heard properly
4.  That you do not jeopardize your case by providing inadvertent statements that could work against you;
5. Making sure that the opposing party admits to facts and statements that will help your case; 
6. Coming up and providing legal arguments that relate to the facts of your case; 
7. Making sure your direct examination if effective, complete and helpful; 
8. Making sure the cross examination of your spouse damages their case; 
9. Making objections and submissions during the trial based on the law; 
10. Making objections to inappropriate or irrelevant questions or evidence; 
11. Strategizing answers and questions for all witnesses at trial;
12. Informing you of all the steps that are required for a trial. 

 How to Help Your Family Lawyer During Your Family Law Case

1. Stay positive. The biggest help to your lawyer is you helping your lawyer in a positive way. This means keeping an optimistic attitude, trying not to stress yourself or your lawyer out and staying focused. Imagine that you will win your case and you will immediately raise your chances of winning. 
2. Please at all costs avoid asking your lawyer “what do you think will happen?”, “do you think we will lose?”, “do you think we will win?”. These questions should be asked prior to the trial, not during it. These questions stress out the lawyer who is trying to keep focused on the facts and arguments of your case. Therefore, if you require more clarity of your chances of success, please discuss those with your lawyer prior to trial, and preferably by way of email so that if you forget something or have questions, you can re-read the email as a refresher. Please do not ask the lawyer about theory, strategy and what he/she is going to do during the trial. Trust your lawyer and follow his/her instructions. 
3. Provide Evidence: during the trial and on many occasions, more documents are needed to prove your case. Therefore, if the lawyer asks you to provide further documentation, please do so as your first priority and in an urgent manner. 
4. Read and Prepare Your Evidence: Your lawyer will go through the evidence you need to provide at your direct examination and your cross-examination. Often the lawyer will type out the questions and the answers to those questions. It is your responsibility to read through such questions, read all your previous affidavits, all the examination for discovery transcripts and all the affidavits of other witnesses and opposing party. Failure to do so can be fatal to your case. If your answers to the same questions or facts are inconsistent, you may lose credibility at trial and therefore lose your case. 
5. Stay Focused and Give Direct Answers: if you are asked a question, only answer that question and do not depart from what is being asked from you. Do not elaborate too much and do not talk about things that are not relevant to the question. 
6. Do Not Attack Your Ex’s Character: No one including the judge cares about what type of a person your spouse is or what type of a person you are. The judge’s job is to resolve your case and figure out how much money needs to be distributed or who gets custody. Calling your spouse names, saying he/she betrayed you, attacking your spouse’s character will only damage your case and your character. So stay factual. Do not use adjectives. Do not give an opinion no matter how much you are provoked to give it. If characterization is needed, your lawyer will do that job during his/her oral and written arguments. 
7. Give Your Family Lawyer Space to Think and Concentrate: During court breaks, it is best to let the lawyer take a break and regroup. So unless something is absolutely urgent, let the lawyer rest his/her brain. However, if the lawyer asks you any questions, please provide precise answers. 
8. Take Notes: If you hear evidence that is untruthful or you have something to say about it, please write it down during trial and hand over your notes to the lawyer during breaks so the lawyer knows what questions to ask.

If you have a family law case coming up and are looking for representation or a second opinion, do not hesitate to call our award-winning Vancouver family lawyers at 604-974-9529 or get in touch.