Wills, Estates and Trusts Conference: Trusts


Course Date: November 3, 2005

7:45 – 8:45 am
OPTIONAL ETHICS SESSION: “CLE-TV: Identifying Conflicts and Managing Risks”

9:00 – 10:30 am

  • Examinations for discovery: an intellectually rigorous discipline
  • Battleships: the checklist of recurring discovery questions re recurring issues
  • Four nearly everybody-agrees examination for discovery rules
  • Grand Unified Theory of civil litigation
  • Rationale re saving attacks for surprise at trial
  • The cut-to-the-chase argument vs. the stupidest orthodoxy
  • Whack! defined and demonstrated
  • Seven advantages: cross-examination in discoveries vs. trial
  • A famous cross-examination analyzed
  • Introduction of The Magnificent Seven
  • When to ask leading questions in discoveries

10:30 - 10:40 Networking Break

10:40 - 11:45 am

  • Exceptions to the leading question rule
  • When the truth is not nearly enough
  • Bluffing witness into an admission
  • Witness’s escapes from answers to leading questions
  • Using rhetoric to intensify arguments
  • A 2nd famous cross-examination analyzed
  • Reasoning questions
  • Firewalling introduced
  • Interrogatory-like questions

11:45 – 12:40 pm

  • Universal questions
  • A 3rd famous cross-examination analyzed
  • Enumeration
  • Looping
  • Identifying a mediocre examination for discovery in only 60 seconds
  • Making the implied/hidden express: using lexicography

12:40 – 1:40 pm Lunch (on your own)

1:40 – 2:55 pm

  • Making the implied/hidden express: using logic
  • The transfer of information rule and the most common dumb question
  • Making the implied limits of witness’s “frail” memory express
  • A 4th famous cross-examination analyzed
  • Attacking “crap” with high school English skills
    • the narrow question
    • question-dodging

2:55 – 3:05 pm Networking Break

3:05 – 4:30 pm

  • Attacking “crap” with high school English skills (cont’d.)
    • 2 answers in 1 question
    • The needle in the haystack answer crap defined
  • More re “wisdom” of saving attacks for surprise at trial
  • Conducting interviews vs. conducting knockout examinations for discovery
  • Summary and coda