Resources for Litigators: Negotiation & Mediation

The purpose of an interview is to uncover the truth; the method of uncovering the truth is the art of the interview. Getting the Whole Truth teaches lawyers--from novices meeting their first clients to experienced trial lawyers--effective methods of obtaining information by human interaction.

Required text for Civil Justice Clinic (Prof. Haldar)

This book takes a collaborative approach to legal interviewing and counseling. It suggests that clients will be best served when lawyers and clients work together to resolve problems. Under a collaborative decision-making model, the client controls most decisions, but the lawyer structures the process and provides advice in a manner that is likely to yield wise decisions. The Counselor-at-Law explores the major approaches to legal interviewing and counseling and outlines the available research on the psychology and the sociology of clients and lawyers. This book explores communication and decision-making theory, memory and recall, power and submission, personality types, and ethics. From this base, the authors construct a model of interviewing and counseling based on the techniques that are effective in real-life encounters.

Three other features of this book are worthy of mention: The book is deliberately designed to be short -- to ""get to the point,"" without unnecessary palaver.
The book provides an extensive discussion of the most pertinent provisions of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct relating to client interviewing, counseling, and decision-making.
The book discusses interviewing witnesses and counseling in certain special contexts, including counseling about settlement, counseling through the writing of opinion letters, counseling the client as a deponent, and counseling the criminal defendant.