The Expert Podcast

So this question comes up a lot from attorneys and even from clients how can a private investigator help an attorney maybe you're a law firm that may not have used a private investigator much in the past or you have but you want to know what else they can do maybe you're a client that's involved in some kind of legal case and you want to find out should you hire the investigator first hire an attorney and let them hire an investigator how does investigators and attorneys work together.

Well here are five ways that a private investigator can help a legal case either directly for the attorney or for the client and also is it better to have the client hire the investigator or have it go through the attorney there may be some advantages maybe some disadvantages make sure you put your comments below let us know what you think or questions or even reactions to what you hear in this video.

So the most common inquiry that we get from law firms and just to be clear most private investigative agencies do work directly for law firms they don't work for private civilian clients sometimes we do but most of the time it's for a law firm because when there is a need for a licensed private investigative agency most of the time it's because there's some legal case going on a lawsuit divorce small claims judgment litigation something going on that needs that investigation not always but usually there is when that happens the attorney normally is the one who says hey you need a private investigator and they hire the agency sometimes they'll tell the client to hire the agency but many times the attorney doesn't use the full resources of an investigator.

So the most common type of case is have an investigator do surveillance on a party to find out where they're going what they're doing where they're doing their business and their activity being monitored the other part of an investigation a lot of times is looking at assets what are their bank accounts what are their real estate holdings what are their business holdings so an attorney will want to know that for litigation sometimes it's pre-litigation to make sure that if you're suing somebody that they actually have assets to be able to pay off a lawsuit or also to make sure they don't have too many assets because if you're filing a lawsuit against somebody who has 10 million dollars in the bank they might be able to spend more than you can on legal fees so that's what an attorney will do.

Now there's a lot of things that sometimes an attorney overlooks that investigator might be able to do and that is depositions almost every court case is gonna have depositions where the party's gonna have to sit down and answer questions so if you're suing joe schmoe as part of that lawsuit joe schmo is gonna have to sit down and answer questions from your attorney just like you would in court with testimony or you know interrogation so to speak they do it outside of court so they don't waste the court's time they do it in a deposition setting.

An attorney can have an investigator sit in on that deposition and monitor the responses of that party a lot of times you can pick up on things that are not true statements you can provide the attorney with additional questions to ask you can provide the attorney with clues to deceitful activity or statements or behavior and sometimes the the sequence of the questions can be influenced by what an investigator can see in that deposition.

You could do the same thing with what's called discovery where discovery is a party to a case will have to provide documents in advance of going to court and the discovery could be you know real estate records bank records phone records things like that an investigator can look at them to make sure they're authentic to make sure they're not tampered with they're not modified and they're complete they're not missing pages many times an investiga an attorney will just take it at face value that those deposition documents are correct where an investigator looking at it for an hour or two can really uncover a lot of things.

We've yet to see a deposition package or a discovery package that has not had misrepresentations by the other party period end of story we've looked at hundreds and hundreds probably thousands over the years and we've yet to find one that was accurate and complete many times those inaccuracies can be brought to the court's attention to have the other party have to answer for that or have sanctions or pay legal fees so again we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice but these are things that an investigative agency can help your attorney or you with your case.

What's another way where an investigator can help an attorney a lot of times it's finding parties finding witnesses maybe you don't even know about witnesses if you have a lawsuit against somebody let's say with a business and you find people who have dealt with that business sometimes you'll find people that have information that might be helpful to you every business has clients vendors employees that let's say have a problem with that business maybe they got fired maybe their contract got cancelled maybe they didn't get good service they're going to have copies of all kind of records from doing business with that company and they're more than willing to give them to you because they have a axe to grind you may not know who those are but a good investigator can find parties with conflicts of your other counterparty or cross party whether it's an individual or business.

You can find let's say prior spouses divorce parties you can find people that sued them before an investigator can track these people down and obtain information from them and if it's done by a licensed investigator on a signed investigative report a lot of times that can be admitted as evidence and the investigator can testify as an expert witness.

Another service that investigators can offer is witness interviews sometimes it can be done covertly where an investigator can insert themselves into a social environment maybe at a restaurant or a bar someplace that we know that a witness will be spend some time maybe at a sports you know arena or a gym or something like that and just strike up a conversation with a potential witness to get information that might help the case information that they might not give with direct examination now you have to be careful you have to make sure your attorney's giving you good advice on not contacting parties that are represented and you're not doing anything that's illegal but there are hundreds of people in any case that has information that would help your case and unless you know who they are third parties we call them the the attorney will never know to subpoena them or to get their information.

Last thing in a private investigative agency can help an attorney is vetting their clients sometimes your client will withhold information or they'll tell you false information and it's not necessarily going to get rid of your client but you might deal with them differently if you know that they're not giving you the true story sometimes you can call them out on and say look you know you told me that you had you know this bank account we found two other ones you know if we don't know this and we get blindsided in court it's going to hurt us so we have ways to mitigate this damage so an attorney a lot of times will have their own client be vetted to make sure they're representing themselves properly and have good information.

So whether you're a law firm a client um a potential client these are ways where the attorney and the client can work together now what's better having the client hire the attorney or have the law firm hire the agency or the client hire the investigator i should say well here's the pros and cons and talk with your qualified attorney about details of this.

If you as a private party hires a private investigator directly in many instances that information is discoverable meaning that if the other side finds out you hired a private investigator they can subpoena the records of that investigator now it doesn't mean that the investigator has to give them automatically they can you know argue against the subpoena and say it's your private information and a lot of times that'll work but it leaves the door open.

If your attorney hires the private investigator it's considered a work product meaning that it's attorney-client privilege in most cases privilege in most cases so it can be kept out of discovery now that may not be a big a deal your attorney might not want to do it because if the investigator finds something that they don't want to know about or they don't want to be aware of now puts them in a bad spot.

Most of the time when we talk to um attorneys who are working with a client and they have the option of going either way they have the client hire the investigator directly part of it's because of billing you know if they hire the investigator and then get paid back they have to mark it up and there's labor involved in billable hours so sometimes they don't want to do that but a lot of times it's because they want to have a filter on the information for the law firm so ask your attorney who's representing you what's better is it you hire the investigative agency or should we do it directly.

And sometimes you might want to hire the agency before you even contact an attorney so you know what you're dealing with and when you go to the attorney if you already have some investigative results many times that'll help you get the attorney to take your case.

I don't know if you've faced this and you can put it in the comments many clients report to us that they have difficulty getting an attorney to take a case it's not an automatic thing it's not like going to buy a car and you say i want to buy your services and they say yes attorneys don't take every case that is brought to them in fact it's less than half of the cases they take on so by having an investigative report sometimes that helps you get the attorney to take your case because they can now see what you're talking about rather than just hearing your verbal story which sometimes they've heard it a million times you know your story inside and out but if you describe it to them they might not get the depth of it they also shows that you're serious about your case if you've already started some engagement with a private investigator.

Food for thought get good legal advice if you need it put the comments below let us know what you think and consider clicking the follow button so you get notifications of future videos.