#BookExcerpt The Work of a Legal Investigator

Today we’re offering an excerpt from A Lawyer’s Primer for Lawyers: From Crimes to Courtrooms on the work of a legal investigator (from the chapter “Private Investigators”).

A Legal Investigator’s Tasks

Some of you may be familiar with the PI character Kalinda Sharma on the TV series The Good Wife. This is an example of a legal investigator who works in-house at a private law firm. The investigator will have an office, or share an office with another investigator or legal professional. As attorneys need the services of an investigator, they’ll contact their in-house PI to schedule the task.

Other legal investigators might work exclusively for public defenders’ offices or district attorneys’ offices. As there is a lot of investigative work needed for these types of agencies, these investigators would likely have offices within these organizations.

Then there are legal investigators who work as independent contractors, typically under the umbrella of their own investigations agency. Some of these PIs might have their own offices, and some might work out of a home office. We never knew any PIs who had virtual offices, such as with a law firm, but that’s entirely possible, too.

Wherever a legal investigator works, below is a basic list of their common work tasks:

• Locating and interviewing witnesses
• Drafting witness interview reports for attorneys
• Reconstructing scenes of crimes
• Helping prepare civil and criminal arguments and defenses
• Serving legal documents (process service)
• Testifying in court
• Conducting legal research (for example, drafting pleadings incorporating investigative data, devising defense strategies and supporting subsequent legal proceedings)
• Preparing legal documents that provide factual support for pleadings, briefs and appeals
• Preparing affidavits
• Electronically filing pleadings.

An Example of a Legal Investigations Agency

Below is a list of services we listed on our legal investigations website. Next to each service are examples of the kind of law practices for which we did that type of investigative work.

Asset Search

Often divorce attorneys would ask us to check the assets of a client’s husband/wife, sometimes to see what money the soon-to-be ex-spouse might be hiding. At times we also conducted asset searches for probate lawyers to determine if a family member was suddenly buying high-ticket items they couldn’t afford, indicating they might have surreptitiously taken money from a family trust.

Background Research

Many different kinds of lawyers would request background research on an individual or a business, including criminal defense, personal injury, divorce and business litigation lawyers.

Court Records Search

Pitkin County District Courthouse (photo by Carol Highsmith)

Similar to background searches, many different types of lawyers requested court records searches, including divorce, personal injury, DUI, business litigation and personal injury law firms.

Expert Witness Location

Although different types of law practices use PIs to locate expert witnesses, we primarily received such requests from personal injury and defense lawyers.

Criminal Records

We would primarily look up criminal court records for divorce and defense attorneys.

Domestic Relations

Divorce attorneys would request us to conduct different investigative tasks for their clients who were in the process of a divorce. Such tasks included surveillances, trash hits (literally this means to check a person’s or business’s garbage for evidence), as well as retrieving criminal records and conducting background checks.

Drunk Driving Defense

We worked with several attorneys who specialized in drunk driving defense. For them we would retrieve Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) court and criminal records, as well as conduct surveillances and trash hits.

Financial Fraud

Primarily probate, business, divorce and defense attorneys hired us to investigate possible financial fraud.

Personal Injury

Obviously, this refers to personal injury lawyers who hired us for such tasks as witness interviews, scene documentation, surveillance and background checks.

Process Service

Primarily, divorce attorneys hired us to deliver, or serve, divorce papers on behalf of their clients. We also served legal papers for probate, personal injury, defense and business law firms.

Mitigation Packages

Criminal defense attorneys sometimes, but not often, hired us to research and prepare these reports. Chapter 16 has more information about mitigation packages.

Skip tracing

This term is industry jargon for finding people, also informally called locates — as in “I want to hire you to do some locates” — which we did for all kinds of law firms, but primarily for criminal defense attorneys.

Surveillance

We mainly conducted surveillances for divorce attorneys, but occasionally received surveillance requests from defense, business, personal injury and probate attorneys.

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Have a great week, Writing PIs

All rights reserved by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman. Any use of the content (including images owned by Colleen Collins and/or Shaun Kaufman) requires specific, written authority. Other images are licensed by Colleen Collins, and are not to be copied, pasted, distributed or otherwise used.

How Being Keynote Speakers at a Coroners’ Conference Led to Writing a Book

We were invited to speak to coroners about giving testimony

Twice we were invited to speak at our state coroners’ conference. The first time we spoke on a relatively serious topic – how to provide testimony at a trial. It seemed that during the previous year some coroners had contradicted their own reports while on the witness stand, as well as testified to using unaccepted procedures during autopsies. Because one of us (Shaun) had spent several decades as a trial attorney, and we co-owned a legal investigations agency, we were invited to give tips for how to testify during legal proceedings.

The Power Went Out During Our Talk

We were minutes into our presentation when the entire room went dark. No lights, no projection equipment, not even the microphones worked.

Fortunately, Shaun is a natural ham. He met the challenge with humor, telling the crowd that this was exactly what it’s like being grilled on the witness stand–anything can happen, and you better be able to roll with it.

Someone opened the blinds on some far windows, so there was enough light for Shaun to find his way off the stage and into the crowd. He walked among the seated coroners, grilling them as if they were on the stand at a trial. Someone handed him a flashlight, and he would shine it on people as he pummeled them with questions. Afterward, the coroners gave him a standing ovation.

And we were honored to be invited back to be their keynote speakers the following year.

Writing The Ungrateful Dead

We’ve since recommended to PIs that they consider attending a coroners’ conference to learn everything from how to aid clients who might be seeking private autopsy options for a loved one, to networking with medical examiners’ and coroners’ offices.

One of the Writing PIs, Colleen, has also used our experiences at the coroners

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conferences to write a mystery series featuring a 21st-century Nick and Nora private eye couple whose first case occurs at a coroners’ conference…where they also happen to be guest speakers. Life inspired this fiction story, which became The Ungrateful Dead.

Amazon Links

The Ungrateful Dead: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ungrateful-Dead-Humorous-Colorado-ebook/dp/B00ITWW9GO/

The Zen Man: http://www.amazon.com/The-Humorous-Colorado-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B006NPP9XY

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All rights reserved by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman. Any use of the content (including images owned by Colleen Collins and/or Shaun Kaufman) requires specific, written authority.

Answering Writers’ Questions: When Does a PI’s Surveillance Become Stalking?

Here’s a question that used to come up a lot in our workshops with writers.

WRITER’S QUESTION: At what point does a surveillance tail become stalking?

GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES’ ANSWER: Let’s start with checking the ethics in one’s motive for conducting surveillance.  If the surveillance performed serves a purpose of obtaining information that PIs usually obtain, then courts will uphold rigorous surveillance. A few years ago, an individual in Michigan sued Henderson Investigations for a violation of the Michigan stalking law for actions the investigators took during an insurance surveillance. The PI firm fought the case all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court, which agreed with the PIs that “surveillance by private investigators contributes to the goal of obtaining information and amounts to conduct that serves a legitimate purpose.  Even though plaintiff observed the investigators following him more than once, this is not a violation of the stalking law.” In summary, the Michigan Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit outright and never allowed it to the stage where a trial was held.

Contrast this with a situation where a PI is hired to simply “put the muscle” on a witness or opponent in a lawsuit.  Repeated contact in the absence of an information-gathering purpose is a road sign indicating the on-ramp to stalking and illegal harassment. As an example of a licensed PI crossing the line into illegal conduct, take the example of the “PI to the stars” Anthony Pellicano, who was charged in Los Angeles County in 2005 with intimidating a Los Angeles Times reporter.  In that case, the Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley announced the charges against Pellicano, in a complaint that alleged the private detective’s co-conspirator had threatened the reporter “by placing a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on the windshield of her car. He made a hole in the windshield with the intent to make it appear like a bullet hole.  He also placed a sign with the word ‘stop’ on the windshield.”

We’d call this not only stalking, but menacing, damage to property, harassment, battery, and abuse of a fish.

Other Articles of Interest on This Topic

Anthony Pellicano Back in Court, Agrees to Deposition in Michael Ovitz Case (Hollywood Reporter, July 2014)

L.A. Judge Nixes Mike Ovitz’s Latest Bid in Pellicano Case; Anita Busch Case Heading for Trial (Deadline, April 2014)

Anita Busch Deposed As Lawsuits Against Michael Ovitz, Anthony Pellicano Revived (Wrap, August 2011)

All rights reserved by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman. Any use of the content (including images owned by Colleen Collins and/or Shaun Kaufman) requires specific, written authority. Any violations of this reservation will result in legal action.