Best Practices for Kick-Ass Courtroom Preparation

Before walking into a courtroom to face the presiding judge, there’s no denying that you’re better off if you’ve done your homework first. Understanding small nuances about how judges runs their courtroom can play a major role and either makes or breaks your case. That said, with more resources than ever before now available at our fingertips, the Internet should serve as an integral part of your case preparation process. With that in mind, today we’re going to be walking through a few best practices that are sure to help you put your best foot forward in the courtroom:

Know Your Audience

Knowing more about all parties — judge, opposing counsel, or otherwise — allows you to tailor your case towards each party’s individual personality and preferences. As different judges react to different appeals and appreciate different courtesies, it’s important that you do your best to understand the wants and needs of the judge you'll be working with — you never know how these small details might help your case in the future! As an example, some judges may require (or at least highly appreciate) courtesy copies of all documents to be handed in in-person and some may prefer for you to send all court communication through the Clerk first. No matter the case, you don’t want to be caught off-guard, unknowingly irking the judge and setting yourself off on the wrong foot.

If you're unsure of where to start in doing your audience research, here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Logistically, how does the judge run his/her courtroom?
• Are there any special rules or customs?
• What's the judge's personality like? Does he/she take well to jokes or is he/she more serious?
• How much previous knowledge does the judge have on your case?
• How has the judge ruled on previous cases?
• What are some of the general tactics that the opposing counsel is known for?
• Does the judge or opposing counsel hold any controversial views that are related to your case?

Leverage Your Network

When doing research on specific people, your network is your best resource! That said, the best way to gain a holistic view of the judge's personality is to sit in on one of their cases and observe how their courtroom is run. If this isn't a viable option (given time or logistics), another place to start is with networking with legal professionals who have previously interacted with the judge, attorneys, court staff, and law clerks that you'll be working with.

Google It

If your network isn't of much help to you, it's time to turn to the Internet! For this, Advanced Google Searches are a lifesaver. Not only does Google allow you to perform exceptionally complicated searches, but it also allows you to match for exact phrases and even ignore specific terms that you know should definitely not appear in your results. This helps you drill down to more specific results, especially if you know exactly what you’re looking for.

As an example, let’s say that I’m trying to find court staff that have worked with Judge George Clooney in San Francisco, California. Given that I know there happens to be an actor named George Clooney, as well as a different Judge Clooney in Nantucket, I can easily set my search to ignore these specific terms. In this case, I would search ‘Judge George Clooney’ and ‘San Francisco’ in general terms before further filtering through the results and ignoring all references to ‘actor’ or ‘Nantucket’. 

Get Social

Nowadays, the better part of a person's public and private lives can be found on the web. For example, LinkedIn and ballotopedia.org (the judge's version of Wikipedia) display past experience and career information about users as well as contact information and mutual connections. These mutual connects are key because it means you might be able to probe someone that you know for first-hand knowledge on the person you're researching. Additionally, you can easily search through someone's connections, past companies that they've worked at, and even review recommendations that have been written about them. Finally, Facebook and Twitter will offer a more personal lens if you're looking to learn more about their interests or personality.

The most important thing to remember about doing your research? Don't be creepy about it. Just because you know the opposing counsel's 4-year-old dog Scruffy has a Florida-shaped birthmark on her left ear, doesn't mean you should let onto the fact that you spent the last 3 hours Google-ing her (in fact, it's probably better that you don't).

Do you have any positive or embarrassing anecdotes about an experience with a judge that could have been prevented by background research? Let us know in the comments below!

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This blog post was written by Michelle Zhang, member of the marketing team at MerusCase.