If you or your loved ones need legal assistance, it’s important to remember one thing: being up front and forthcoming with your attorney about the facts of the case is a necessity. Without understanding the complete truth about a case, it’s much more difficult for your attorney to build a proper strategy or defence for you, which significantly diminishes the likelihood of achieving victory.
Withholding the truth from your attorney can result in an enormous amount of wasted time for both you and your attorney. As many legal professionals and their clients can attest to, maximizing time and efficiency is vital when it comes to winning court cases. Keeping secrets from your attorney can lead to unforeseen surprises or curveballs over the course of a case, many of which may have been avoidable had they known the details beforehand.
After spending days, months, or even years building your defence and strategy, it can be a tremendous disappointment for both attorney and client to have a preventable situation cost them an otherwise winnable case. As we know, in addition to reputational harm, losing cases can be accompanied by monetary penalties.
Whether you’re involved in court proceedings or in need of an attorney to negotiate a particular outcome, at some point you will need to sit down with your attorney and have a candid discussion regarding the nature of your problem and how you expect the attorney to resolve it. It is during this conversation that you may need to provide your attorney with sensitive information about the circumstances giving rise to your need for legal counsel. Some of this information may be extremely personal, and some may even be embarrassing, but eventually one must decide the extent of information he or she is willing to divulge, and whether to tell the attorney the entire truth.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you can get away with leaving out some of the important details about your case, or even whether you should lie to your attorney to get a better outcome, keep in mind that lying to your attorney hurts no one but yourself! That is because an attorney who lacks important information about your case is unprepared to handle your case. The last thing you need during a serious legal matter is for your attorney to be unexpectedly surprised with information he or she has not prepared to address or resolve. In an instance like this, your attorney can miss out on achieving your desired result, or even worse, he or she can completely lose your case.
Here at Benita Ardenbaum Attorneys we want what’s best for our clients. Being up front and honest with our attorneys, though at times intimidating, will inevitably lead to a stronger case and a higher likelihood of success.
For direct answers to your specific personal questions, please contact us directly.
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Author – Jessica Gooding
