Law School—Evidence

An old legal adage is that if your case is weak on the law, argue the facts, and if it is weak on the facts, argue the law. In every legal dispute, those are the primary components, law, and facts. The law changes quite slowly and usually only through legislation or a change in court decided law. Applying the same law to different facts usually yields different results. So it makes sense that in any dispute getting to know your fact is quite important. Hence if you are mad about something or think you’ve been wronged, or find yourself yelling, “I’ll see you in court,” to some miscreant former business associate, do two things: (i) Collect all documents that have anything remotely to do with that dispute, and (ii) start writing long emails to your lawyers telling them what happened. You will have to produce the former in response to discovery from the other side, and the later will be attorney-client privileged communications that give your counsel the foundation to start applying the law correctly. The Buzz has told many a client that lawyers are like computers; garbage in, garbage out. Great lawyers, like great computers, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the facts in their case. Are you working with a mainframe, or a refurbished Commodore 64?
-- Paul Marotta