LEGCOUN101:
Clients lie. Maybe not outright lies but often withhold vital information that could influence the outcome of the situation you would eventually be handling for the client. Whether intentional or unintentional, such information, unknown to the counselor, should eventually be revealed or discovered lest the latter be surprised sometime in the course of trial.
One method I learned in order to minimize the amount of information not shared by the client is to ensure that the client is given the opportunity to throw everything at the table at the initial conference. Sounds simple but sometimes the counselor may forget to provide the client the necessary setting for the information spillover. The counselor must allow the client to speak freely and openly by not interrupting with legal mumbo jumbo that can just confuse the client at that point. Worse, the client could understand the implications of these legal points and decide that some information are better kept in order to stay within the course of the legalities proffered by the counselor. Either way, it would be best for the counselor to keep his/her mouth shut when the client is spilling information.
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