When you’re hurt, you might hire a personal injury lawyer. In a personal injury case, part of the discovery process is looking into what happened to best learn how to win your case. Your personal injury lawyer wants to know and understand the facts of the case.
Interrogatories, document production, and depositions are part of the discovery process. Your personal injury lawyer will use these tools to their advantage in your personal injury claim.
Here’s what you need to know about the discovery process in your personal injury case.
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The Discovery Process Begins With Interrogatories
The discovery process begins with interrogatories, which are questions sent to both parties to find out what happened in the personal injury case. All of the questions are in writing. Each side must provide a written response.
You can ask fact-based questions during interrogatories, but the legal parties can’t draw a legal conclusion. For example, lawyers can ask “did the accident happen on the job,” but they can’t ask “did your employer cause the accident because they didn’t give you the right equipment.”
Sometimes during the discovery process, the questions are challenging to answer. Your lawyer can help with this, as it’s one of the most essential steps in the discovery process.
Document Production
One of the steps in the discovery process is document production. Your lawyer will want to see any of the documents related to your personal injury claim.
What does this mean? Police reports, hospital records, insurance papers, photographs of the scene, and any statements recorded by the authorities. Depending on the size of the case, this could be a lot of paperwork, but it’s necessary.
It’s pretty simple. Your lawyer wants these documents in place so they can win your case.
Depositions
Lawyers use depositions in the legal discovery process to get sworn statements from people involved in the case. Lawyers want to get people to “stick to a story,” per se, and they also want to know what the other side will say should the case go to trial. A deposition can take a short or long amount of time.
Your lawyer will tell you to stick to the facts during a deposition. You don’t want to give the other side anything more than facts. While it’s in our nature to explain ourselves, you don’t want to give lawyers any ammunition.
The main goal of a deposition is to gather information. While there are some exceptions, you can’t use a deposition at trial.
What You Need to Know About the Discovery Process
Your lawyer uses the discovery process to determine what happened in your personal injury claim. The method includes interrogatories, document production, and depositions.
Understanding the steps in the discovery process and how it works is best to learn how your lawyer will tackle your personal injury claim. Your lawyer wants the best outcome!
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