Bridging the Gap

In the latest episode of his "Powerful Witness Preparation" podcast series, "Bridging the Gap," Holland & Knight litigation attorney Dan Small talks about the challenges of bridging the gap between communicating in a normal conversation and communicating in the witness environment. The former is easy and natural, but the latter is just the opposite, difficult and unnatural. The language, rhythm and goals of each are very different, as are the role of questions. In a normal conversation, questions serve as prompts, moving the conversation in a general direction and maintaining its flow; in the witness environment, questions really are questions, and answering them requires a level of focus and precision rarely used in normal conversation. Ensuring a witness understands this distinction is essential. To illustrate this point, Mr. Small describes an exercise he used to prepare a witness that showed why questions suited for a normal conversation were problematic in a witness environment.