The Trial Practice Tips Weblog

Researching Medical Experts Online

At the James Publishing weblog, Dorothy Clay Sims has a book excerpt titled "Checklist for Researching Defense Doctors," which includes a number of tips that will work for researching doctors hired by either side in a case.

Sims lists these sites, among others--

• ALMexperts.com
• Florida Med-Mal Claims Information
• Florida Office of Insurance Regulation
• AMA Links to State Medical Boards
• National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology
• PubMed
• Google Scholar
• Amazon.com

To get the specifics as to the best way to use these sites (as well as some other sites I omitted from the list), you should read the full post.

Sims' post also also includes detailed instructions for using eight different databases within Lexis for researching medical experts. Sims' book is titled Exposing Deceptive Doctors.

Tips for Locating Missing Witnesses

Although you can always hire someone to do your "skip tracing" for you, online resources often make it easy to find missing witnesses yourself. Some tips and ideas:

• Ask family, friends, and neighbors. If you have an address for your missing witness, neighbors will be easy to find. To find family, use a Google search beginning with the word "phonebook:" This search term will help you find people with the same last name living in the same city, zip code, or state.
• Make inquiries with licensing agencies. This tip will work for people who work in professions in which licensing is required.
• Try public resources such as property and voter records.
• Make use of the Internet. An article at About.com, "Find People on the Web," lists ten free web resources for finding people, including reverse look-up and military search tools. You'll find hundreds of other resources at the "Skip Trace Portal" at the PI Mall.

Finally, as the authors note in "Locating Elusive Witnesses," cited below, always make sure that you have the correct, full name of the missing witness, including suffixes like Jr. and Sr.

Partial source for this post: "Locating Elusive Witnesses: An Introduction," by Peggy Shapiro and Perry Myers, Illinois Bar Journal, July 2003.

Deposition Podcasts: Advanced Techniques

For free deposition advice, why not try my three podcasts on advanced deposition techniques? Originally posted Legal Underground, I'm reprising them here (again). Just follow the links--

Advanced Deposition Techniques #1: Five Tips for Asserting Control at Depositions

Advanced Deposition Techniques #2: Four Ways to Use Psychology at Your Next Deposition

Advanced Deposition Techniques #3: Miscellaneous Tips for Expert Depositions

Combined, these three podcasts have now had nearly 3,000 downloads. You can listen on a computer with speakers or even better, on any iPod or mp3 player.

If you like what you hear, don't forget my book: Deposition Checklists & Strategies (James Publishing, 2d Ed. 2007).

Defense Lawyers: How to Prepare Witnesses for Depositions

Here's a good article by Matt Keenan of Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City: "Preparing a Witness for a Successful Deposition"--

In my 20-some years of working with company witnesses as part of the discovery process, I’ve learned that the prospects of a deposition can stress even the most accomplished corporate executive.

One way of lowering their level of anxiety is to give them mileposts to follow as they prepare. Something that’s easy to remember but useful. This article shares with counsel my system for witness preparation, with tips and tricks for a successful undertaking.

My approach is based on a simple acronym – PLEASE.
It goes like this.

P is for prepare; L is for listen; E is for exercise control; A is for accept the obvious; S is for stay in your area; and E is for emotion is acceptable.

To get the details, read the entire article. As I can attest from my years of working against Keenan in mass-tort cases, he knows what he's talking about.

A Worthwhile Podcast About Intellectual Property

Doug Lichtman is a tenured law professor at UCLA who started a podcast six months ago called Intellectual Property Colloquium. Each month, Lichtman posts an hour-long conversation about a patent, copyright, or technology topic. The line-up of guests is fantastic. Here, for example, is a summary of the January show--

The Honorable Paul Michel currently serves as Chief Circuit Judge for the Federal District and, in that role, has overseen a period of enormous growth and change in the patent system. In this audio presentation, Chief Judge Michel joins moderator Doug Lichtman to talk patent reform, thinking not only about what has been accomplished in recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit decisions, but also about what work is left ahead for Congress, the Supreme Court, the Patent Office, and the Federal Circuit itself.

Some of the other topics since the show began: "Privacy in a Networked World," "Everyone Hates DRM," and "In Re Bilski."

There's also CLE credit. As Lichtman wrote in an email, "One charm of the site is that we offer completely free CLE credit to lawyers who listen. All of our previous shows qualify in New York, California, Texas, Illinois, and Washington, and we plan to add more states later this year."

Each show also contains suggested reading material. It's a pretty slick operation--and all for free.

A Free Excerpt from My Deposition Book from James Publishing

At the James Publishing website, there is an excerpt from the first chapter of my deposition book, Deposition Checklists and Strategies. Some of the material is very basic, but the excerpt also includes these sections, which are more advanced:

B. Situations You Might Encounter

§1:140 The Uncooperative Witness
§1:142 The Forgetful Witness
§1:143 The Witness Who Talks Too Much
§1:145 The Witness Who Talks Too Little
§1:146 The Difficult Opposing Counsel

If you're interested in deposition tactics and strategy, you're welcome to check it out the excerpt. After all, you can hardly go wrong--it's free!

Impeachment During Cross: What Really Matters

Here's a tip from a recent article in Trial magazine:

Impeachment is not about convincing a witness to change testimony; it is about showing the jury that a witness has changed his or her story.

The author expounds on this point later in the article:

Highlighting prior inconsistent statements. Show that the witness has lied, changed his or her story, or testified differently in the past. Impeachment is about discrediting a witness. It is not about showing that someone is pond scum; it is not about histrionics or convincing a witness to change testimony. Impeachment is showing the jury that a witness has changed his or her story. Save everything else for closing arguments.

Source: "The impressive cross-examination," by Mark R. Kosieradzki, Trial, March 2009. Kosieradzki's article has a number of other good tips (for both plaintiff and defense lawyers) and is recommended if you have access to a copy of Trial.