How to Brief a Litigation Support Attorney So You Get What You Need
A useful brief gives a litigation support attorney the information needed to achieve your client’s goals efficiently. The engagement is much smoother when the groundwork is laid as the first document changes hands.
Here’s what to gather before you reach out and how to review the draft that comes back.
Give Them a Clear Goal as You Give Them the Project
Delegating attorneys sometimes send the petition, the financial affidavits, and the discovery responses and leave the support attorney to reverse-engineer the argument from the record. That can work, but providing the support attorney with a quick sentence up front establishing your litigation and time-line goal results in timely work and drafts closer to what you had in mind.
What Should You Gather Before You Reach Out?
Always first – be sure to run a quick conflict check with the support attorney before sharing any confidential information with the litigation support attorney.
What is also helpful is confirming the Attorney’s availability for your desired timeline.
Send What’s Relevant, Not Everything You Have
Match the documents you send to the task. For example, a motion built on a parenting plan evaluation needs the evaluation, and may not necessarily need eight months of email or texting threads.
When a case is complex, a short call with the contract attorney before any documents change hands may move faster than a written summary and may surface details that are easy to lose in writing.
How Do You Review a Completed Draft?
Review it on substance, the way you’d review an associate’s work. Confirm the argument holds, the law is stated correctly, and the facts are accurate. Stylistic differences between how you write and how the support attorney writes are not revision items. When a substantive matter is wrong, name it precisely in your feedback to give the support attorney something to act on.
A careful review also protects you on the ethics side. Filing a support attorney’s draft under your name triggers specific obligations under Florida Bar rules governing litigation support ghostwriting, so the review step is doing more than just quality control.
Why Does the Second Engagement Move Faster Than the First?
The first round with any support attorney takes more upfront work. They’re learning your preferences, and you’re learning how much context they need to work efficiently. The delegation process gets shorter, and drafts land closer to final on the first pass.
Building that relationship before a big deadline or project gives both sides room to find their footing. For the signals that tell you it’s time to bring someone in, take a look at my piece on identifying when you need litigation support.
FAQs
What should be included in a brief to a litigation support attorney?
It is helpful for the litigation support attorney to understand your theory of the case and any major elements of the procedural posture. If you know of the presiding judge’s specific preferences, share them up front. Be clear on what type of document or research you are hoping for, if there is a specific format in which you prefer to receive it, and your desired deadline to receive the project back.
How much of the case file should you send a litigation support attorney?
Send only the documents tied directly to the task at hand, such as the evaluation a parenting plan motion turns on. For complex matters, a short phone call before anything is sent often clarifies details a written summary would miss.
How long does it take to onboard a new litigation support relationship?
Building a support relationship takes the most effort during the first engagement, before either side has a sense of how the other communicates. Once that groundwork is in place, later engagements tend to move faster, with shorter briefs and drafts that land closer to what you need.
Build the Relationship Before You Need It
Briefing well is a skill, and it pays off past the first draft. If you’re thinking about scope and working relationships at the practice level, my legal business coaching covers that territory. If you’re ready to try litigation support, learn more about my services available or reach out directly.