TrialPrep - another PRACDL Blog

Recently I found myself assisting a fellow criminal defense lawyer who is going to trial in his first case before the U.S. District Court in San Juan. Not that I am the ideal person to seek help from as far as trial preparation, for there are many attorneys who are more experienced than yours truly.  But there is one thing that is ideal about asking me for help, and that is that I will always say yes to any fellow attorney who requests my assistance.

In helping this fellow attorney I soon realized that some of the biggest problems had little to do with actual knowledge of the law, but with uncertainties about the way to do things. Even how to organize all his case materials for trial so that he would not be looking for them like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Each attorney has different ways of doing things, and what works for some may not work for others.  To the extent we share these different ways, fellow attorneys get ideas and adapt to what they feel more comfortable doing.  As a simple example, as he was talking to me and showing me an FBI FD 302 of a debriefing of the government's star witness, I made some comments and he was going to write them on the 302. I stopped him and asked him if he had made clean copies of that and other documents he intended to use during trial. I also reminded him he should make a copy for the Court, for the witness (if necessary) as well as for opposing counsel (in this case the government had the original 302).  He then started thinking of the trial itself, including the mechanics of marking and presenting evidence. I explained to him how, for example, he would not want that particular 302 marked as an exhibit or presented as evidence, but only for identification, etc.  I could see him smiling, and then he told me, "I don't know how to thank you."  "You just have," I told him. This fellow attorney was very clear on the substantive law, knew the facts of the case well. We met for another 3 hours that day.

I sat through more than one trial before ever trying a criminal case. I also played second chair more than once to outstanding defense attorneys in San Juan. There are so many things that more experienced attorneys just do by second nature that do not even occur to less experienced attorneys.

At PRACDL's last annual assembly, there was a general agreement that PRACDL would become involved in mentoring and assisting the less experienced PRACDL members.  Seminars can be given, but there is nothing like a one on one experience with a fellow attorney.  I can assure you I got more out of my session with this attorney than he did from me. It also showed to me that he was eager to learn and that is one of the most important things any good lawyer has: a hunger for knowledge.

As a result, I had the idea of creating another PRACDL blog dealing with matters of trial preparation. We are today announcing TrialPrep - a PRACDL blog dedicated to all that criminal defense lawyers do from initial interviews through the end of a case at the trial court level. There's not much there yet, but I hope to start posting much more soon. For any readers of this blog who have any suggestions, I would appreciate your sending them to PRACDL at the email link on the top left sidebar. Let me know whether you want to be acknowledged or not.