7.5 Client Interviewing and Evaluating Responses

Section 7.4 surveyed the whole Communication area. This section does the blueprint's own line item — Interviewing, including evaluating responses — as its own skill, because the interview is where nearly every fact in the file originates and where a paralegal is most exposed to an ethics violation.

Before anyone talks: three gates

1. Disclose that you are a paralegal. Say it at the beginning, in plain words, and put it in the confirming email: "I'm Dana Okafor, a paralegal with Reyes & Hall. I'll be gathering the facts today, and Ms. Reyes will review everything and advise you." The NFPA Model Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility requires disclosure of paralegal status, and every unauthorized-practice item on this exam starts with a client who believed the non-lawyer was the lawyer.

2. Run the conflict check first. You need enough identifying information — the client's legal name, adverse parties, related entities, insurers — to search the conflicts database before you take substantive facts. If the firm must decline because it represents the other side, the office is far better off having heard names than having heard the client's version of the accident.

3. Know what you may not do in the room. You may not:

• give legal advice, including "you have a strong case" or "the deadline probably hasn't run"
• quote or negotiate a fee, or set the retainer
• accept the representation on the firm's behalf
• predict an outcome

You may explain process ("the attorney will review this and call you Thursday"), collect documents, and answer administrative questions. "Do I have a case?" gets one honest answer: that is the attorney's call, and I'll make sure she has everything she needs to make it.

Structuring the interview

Question types

Open-ended questions ("What happened next?", "Tell me about the meeting") produce narrative and surprises. Start here. Interrupting a client's first narrative to nail down a date is how offices lose facts nobody thought to ask about.

Narrowing questions follow the narrative and target a gap ("You mentioned a second call — who placed it?").

Closed questions ("Was that a Tuesday?", "Is her surname spelled H-A-L-E?") come last and confirm details.

Leading questions supply the answer inside the question ("The light was red, wasn't it?"). In fact gathering they are a defect, not a technique. A leading question can implant a detail the client then repeats at deposition, and opposing counsel will ask exactly how the client came to remember it. Cross-examination is where leading questions belong — not intake.

The funnel is the shape to remember: broad open question, then narrowing follow-ups, then closed confirmation, one topic at a time.

Evaluating responses

The blueprint says "including evaluating responses," and this is where candidates over-read the task. You are not deciding whether the client is lying. You are producing a record the attorney can rely on, with the soft spots marked. Test four things:

• Internal consistency. Does the timeline hold? A client who says the store closed at six and that the fall happened at seven has a gap that needs a neutral follow-up, not an accusation: "Help me with the timing — I have the fall at seven and closing at six."
• Corroboration. Which parts can be checked against a document, a photograph, a text message, or a third party? Note what is corroborated and what rests only on memory.
• Observation versus inference. "He was speeding" is usually a conclusion. "He passed me and I was doing forty-five" is an observation. Record both, labeled. This distinction survives into deposition testimony and expert work.
• Gaps and qualifiers. "I don't remember" is different from "no," and "I think so" is different from "yes." Write down the qualifier the client actually used. Cleaning up hedges into confident sentences is how a memo to file becomes an impeachment exhibit.

Also record demeanor-neutral observations that matter to the case: the client needed an interpreter, the client was medicated, the client had documents at hand. Do not editorialize about credibility in a file memo.

Practical constraints

Interpreters. Use a neutral professional, not the client's relative. A family member filters, summarizes, and sometimes has an interest in the outcome.

Recording. Get consent, and know that some states require all-party consent. A recorded intake is discoverable in ways a memo may not be. Follow the attorney's instruction.

Sensitive facts. Explain confidentiality before asking about prior claims, immigration status, criminal history, or medical conditions, and ask plainly rather than obliquely.

Organizational clients. When the client is a company and you are interviewing an employee, the employee is not your client. Counsel gives the corporate warning — the lawyer represents the entity, not the individual, and the entity controls the privilege. A paralegal does not improvise that warning.

Third-party witnesses. A witness is not a client. Confidentiality does not protect that conversation the same way, and you must not suggest a witness avoid the other side.

Confidentiality and privilege

Everything the client tells you in the interview is protected by the duty of confidentiality, which is broader than privilege and covers information from any source. When the interview is conducted at the attorney's direction for the purpose of providing legal advice, the attorney-client privilege reaches the paralegal's participation as well; the privilege is not broken by having a non-lawyer agent in the room. Chapter 4 has the mechanics. In the interview room the operational rules are: no third parties who destroy privilege, no discussing the matter in a hallway, and a memo to file that is clearly marked as prepared for the attorney.

Worked path

Dana schedules an hour. She emails the client a document list and a note identifying herself as a paralegal. She opens by disclosing her role and confirming the conflicts search cleared. She asks one open question and takes eight minutes of notes without interrupting. She then closes the timeline gaps, confirms three spellings, and lists five documents the client will send by Friday. The client asks whether the two-year deadline has passed. Dana says that is a legal question for Ms. Reyes, flags it at the top of her memo as urgent, and walks it to the attorney the same afternoon. Her memo separates what the client saw from what the client concluded, and quotes the client's own hedge — "I think it was the assistant manager" — instead of smoothing it out.