Tag Archive for: interviews

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The Advantage of Small Talk in Big Cases

Listen to me explain why putting people at ease is the best way to elicit information from them. I don't have a badge or a subpoena, so the key is to be nice to them and be interested in what they do, think, and feel. Get the podcast chat on…
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Five Questions to Ask an Investigator Before Hiring

Where do you start in deciding which investigator to hire for a sensitive job? It should be a business of trust, just as it is when choosing someone to come up with an estate plan, to sue a former business partner, or to handle a complex…
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Angel Investor Due Diligence: The Key Trait You Want

I’ve done a lot of interviews about people over the years, but you can always get better. A fascinating conversation last week with an angel investor about what he looks for in a candidate to run a new company gave me a question I will always…
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Can Your Investigator Interview Your Opponent’s Ex-Employees? A Good Test for Your Investigator Before You Hire

Any litigator tasking interviews of potential witnesses needs to know about the no-contact rule (ABA Model Rule 4.2)[1], which forbids talking to represented people on the other side of a case. This also goes for most current employees of the…
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President’s Day Thoughts on Interviewing

In honor of President's Day (still officially known as Washington's Birthday) a few thoughts about interviewing. There are so many more facts about ourselves that are in our heads (or the heads of people we know) than there are in databases…
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College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?

Get ready for college admissions scandals phase II, and maybe III, IV and V. The reason I think so? Because of the way it was discovered. Prosecutors didn’t break up the ring of bribing college coaches and exam proctors by using vast computing…
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Lessons from the Kardashian Stickup

This blog may be one of the few publications in the Western world that has never written the word “Kardashian,” but that has now changed. In the stories about the robbery in Paris of Kim Kardashian we found numerous issues that touch on…
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Sealed Court Documents During Due Diligence

Over the past few days we’ve dealt with two cases where our clients were deeply invested in the question of whether or not the contents of sealed court documents could be made public. And our answer to both of them was the same: If someone…
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The Key to a Good Interview is Silence

We wrote in our pieces "What Greg Smith and Goldman Sachs Tell Us About Investigations" and "Hiring Due Diligence Should Include an Attitude Check" about how indispensable it is to talk to people during an investigation. No matter how thorough…
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The Investigation Starts With the Client Interview

We have written extensively about the importance of good interview skills, in our blog entries "What Greg Smith and  Goldman Sachs Tell Us About Investigations" and "Hiring Due Diligence Should Include an Attitude Check."  Professionals…