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Head into trial at full steam: make sure you're completely prepared for your client's day in court. Here's what you should do when you pass the 90-, 60-, and 30-day marks in your countdown to trial.

Article Excerpt
To obtain the best results for your clients, you must start preparing their case from the first moment you meet them, expecting to take the case to trial. A friend and colleague of mine likes to say that you can always settle the case you prepared to try, but you can't try the case you prepared to settle. If you proceed with a case believing it will settle, the defense will detect your attitude and exploit your weaknesses.

The key is preparation, preparation, and more preparation. Of course, what you need to do differs in every jurisdiction and according to the scheduling order. But if you place important tasks into specific time frames, starting at 90 days before trial, you'll have an overall timetable that will work well in most cases.

90 days to trial

Review the file to refocus your theme. Go through the entire file to obtain a renewed feel for the case, and decide in which direction it needs to go during the remaining three months. Determine what immediate tasks need to be accomplished and assign them. If you have a litigation team, decide who is responsible for which witnesses, remaining discovery issues, and other areas of the trial. Then schedule periodic meetings to check the stares of the work with everyone.

Three months before trial is not the time to come up with a theme for your case. It is, however, the time to refine your theme to fit all the evidence. Look for any testimony from a defendant or other fact witness that supports your theme or provides you with an opening to use another theme that may fit the case better.

Meet with your client. Meet to discuss his or her current medical condition and other damages-related issues. Identify "trigger testimony"--words or areas of testimony that elicit a powerful response from your client when you mention them. Meet again with the client's family members and friends to find out how his or her life has changed since the injury occurred, even during the course of the litigation.

Give the client copies of his or her own and other relevant deposition transcripts, as well as discovery answers and responses. Reassure the client that you have a firm grasp of the facts, that you are committed to trying the case, and that you will support him or her unconditionally through this intimidating process.

Review medical records and bills. Review the records that have been exchanged in the case to ensure yours are current. Start by asking your client whether he or she has seen any new health care providers. Contact these providers directly and order any new records and bills. Pay special attention to important records that may have been produced immediately before or during depositions and that may not have made it into your master file.

Give updated records to experts. As soon as you have organized and indexed any new records and expenses, provide them to the defense and the appropriate experts. Inform the defense in writing that the updated records have been provided to your experts and that their opinions remain unchanged.

If these new records change your experts' opinions in any way, inform the defense immediately so they have an opportunity to depose your experts on their new opinions. The worst thing you can do is fail to disclose these supplemental opinions and have the defense object and claim surprise at trial. The court may rule that because the new opinions were not disclosed, the jury cannot hear them.

Organize your medical expense binder. This hinder should include a summary listing each amount billed next to the name of each provider, with the total expenses at the bottom. Make sure that all expenses listed in...

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