The top 3 legal concepts criminal lawyers new to civil practice must understand

By Albert Stoll | | Comments Off on The top 3 legal concepts criminal lawyers new to civil practice must understand

Here are the top three legal concepts criminal lawyers new to civil practice must understand. Criminal defense lawyers make excellent personal injury lawyers.  Jerry Spence started practicing law as a prosecutor, and later became a criminal defense lawyer.  The main reason is that criminal lawyers are already great litigators.  You already know how to question an adverse witness and try a case in front of a jury.  However, the transition between the two areas of law can seem daunting. The three issues that criminal defense lawyers new to personal injury law must know are:

1. The relevance standard for discovery in a civil case is reasonably calculated, to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.  This standard allows for the search of evidence which may be relevant at trial.  See Norton v. Superior Court (1994), 24 Cal.App.4th 1750.

2. The burden of proof is different in a civil case, especially with injury causation.  Espinosa v. Little Co. of Mary Hospital (1995) is an excellent case that quickly gets criminal lawyers up to speed on the new standards of proof they will be working with.  Espinosa explains that it is only necessary for a plaintiff to demonstrate that the negligence of the defendant was a substantial factor in causing the claimed injury.

3. Criminal lawyers already work with expert witnesses, however, on the civil side, the expert disclosure requirements are different.  Schreiber v. Estate of Kiser (1999) explains the differences between a retained and non-retained expert witness and how that impacts the requirements of the expert witness disclosure statute, C.C.P. section 2034.210 et seq.

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Sign Up To Settlement: A Personal Injury Boot Camp allows criminal defense lawyers and prosecutors to quickly ramp up the additional knowledge they need to begin taking civil cases.  We have broken down the entire civil personal injury practice into its ten essential segments of must-know information.  Each segment is explained in an easy to understand screencast that allows criminal lawyers to quickly digest the must-know information, needed to accept a personal injury case.

For more information on how to sign up and settle your first personal injury case, check us out at http://signuptosettlement.com/bootcamp.

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About Albert Stoll

In his 20 years of law practice, Al has handled more than 40 jury trials. This experience, combined with a commitment to ethics and integrity, has earned Al an excellent reputation throughout the San Francisco Bay Area legal community. He is the recipient of Martindale-Hubbell‘s “AV” peer rating, which signifies preeminent legal ability and ethical standards, and has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer every year since 2006. In 2009, Al was awarded the prestigious 2009 Civil Justice Award by the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, given to attorneys who show integrity, grit, tenacity, ethics, and great advocacy skills, and who contribute to the betterment of consumers and/or injured victims and their families.