Client Conferencing

After handing up my contract law thesis, another stuff that I need to deal with is the client conferencing assessment that happened this morning. It's a quite interesting component in our legal skills module. For the assessment, everyone will have to pair up and we would be given a court case to examine. We have to think about the questions to ask the client so as to gain the vital information that is required to represent the client in court. Of course, financial + family circumstances of the client, police statements and witnesses account all have to be considered. Basically, it's like a mini version of what happens when a lawyer meets his client for an interview. We also gotta ensure that the client doesn't drift off with unnecessary chatter and ensures that he understands on what is being advised. Some clients would be difficult and it would be up to the students to think of creative ways to get him in check. Then on the day of the client conferencing itself, somebody outside our class (usually the older semester students) will role play as the client.

The attire for CC is very formal, just like mooting. It's full dress professional office work attire for the guys (black pants, white formal shirt, black blazer and tie). It was quite nervy anticipating who our client would be coz some of the previous groups obtained seniors who purposely act as really badass clients. We tried to eliminate and guess who it could possibly be but we were hoping hard not to get the notorious ones..hahaha. At 10 am, it was moment of revelation and I felt relieved when I saw that it was Calvin (semester 6 senior and going off to UK soon?) accompanying my lecturer.

The whole conferencing stuff went well except for some minor hiccups. Half of my preparation was gone because Calvin put out a very different and unexpected situation for me to handle. Nevertheless, I kept my wits about and did some spontaneous questioning on the spot. Uggghhhh..the minor hiccup that I did was that I got the surname for one of the witnesses wrongly! Lol...I hope my lecturer won't penalise me that much because he asked me again about the surname and I STILL tell him the wrong one (because I didn't realise about it yet). Haha..the horror on my face was evident when I found out about it.. =p I'm still wondering how in the world I could end up writing the surname wrongly in my script! Anyways, overall I'm pretty pleased with the conferencing stuff and I felt glad that I handled the situation well. I hope I get a good grade for it! :)