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Taking Witness Statements Training

Hugh James is a top 100 UK law firm with offices in Cardiff and London. The firm has grown from humble beginnings in 1960 to become a leading law firm, servicing a vast range of clients across the UK and overseas.

Although the workforce has grown to more than 600, they have retained and nurtured a unique culture which is based on hard work, exceptional talent, ambition, empathy, innovation and good humour. It is those qualities that have helped them grow the business to where they stand today. They have ambitious plans to become a top 50 UK firm by 2021 and the culture will be key to this.

Background

taking wirness stameents accurately is a key skill for a numner of practice areas in the firm. It can make a huge impact to a case, as to whether a case goes to court and what happens in court.

Need

The need for the training was to help solicitors develop the skill of taking accurate witness statements that will hold up in court under scrutiny.

Activity

The course involves using a number of case studies and scnearios. We have written these and adapted them for each practice area. This gives the participants real life scenarios to deal with and practice with in the training.

The agenda for the training was structured as follows:

  • Introductions & Objectives.
  • What is a witness statement?
  • Purpose of witness statements.
  • Process of drafting.
  • Drafting a witness statement – personal development areas.
  • How to draft a witness statement.
  • The witness’s communication style.
  • Precision Model – 3 key frames; Outcomes, What if? Backtracking.
  • Language Patterns.
  • Modal operators of:
    Necessity.
    Impossibility.
    Universal Quantifiers.
    Comparative Deletion.
    Deletion.
  • Powerful Questions:
    Why? & What?
  • Defensiveness v Justification.
  • Listening skills.
  • Common Pitfalls.
  • Workshop Summary & Personal Actions.

Outcomes

Every participant leaves with a set of personal actions to implement.

Participant Feedback

“Excellent, informative, well delivered course.”

Client Comment

“We’ve been running this course with ITD for a number of years now and it always gets excellent feedback.”