Over the last few months, my colleague Doreen So and I have been attending a series of programs by The Advocates Society, “Examinations for Discovery: Building Block Series”.
On Tuesday of this week, we attended the third part of the series, which consisted of a skills workshop. Participants were given the opportunity to try out three different examination techniques: (1) funnelling; (2) exhaustion; and (3) boxing-in.
The funnelling technique is used for information gathering. The idea is to start with very broad questions, and gradually narrow and clarify until you have covered an entire topic.
The exhaustion technique will typically come into play after you have used the funnelling technique. This method is used to close off a topic and ensure that the witness has provided all of the information they have on a given topic. If a witness does not recall certain aspects of a subject, exhaustion can also involve having the witness confirm on the record that they do not remember.
The third technique, boxing-in, is another way of closing off a topic. It can be used to summarize a witness’s evidence where it may have been meandering, to ensure that you have correctly understood the evidence given by the witness, and to ask the witness to confirm that he or she does not have anything else to add.
The instructors that Doreen and I had the pleasure of learning from on Tuesday were all superb. Maureen Whelton and Sheldon Hamilton gave excellent constructive feedback to me, and Risa Kirshblum and Ronald Caza were Doreen’s exceptional teachers.
We are looking forward to the final session of the series, which will deal with using discovery transcripts at trial. You can check out my and Doreen’s thoughts on the first two sessions here and here.
Thanks for reading,
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