In practice, many parties in criminal cases are detained, and it is the guardians or close relatives of the parties who negotiate and sign the entrustment cont
In practice, many parties in criminal cases are detained, and it is the guardians or close relatives of the parties who negotiate and sign the entrustment contract with lawyers. Therefore, after accepting the entrustment, the first thing a lawyer needs to do is to go to the detention center to meet the client. Doing a good job of meeting, especially the first meeting, is of great significance for establishing a trust relationship with the client and the parties, initially forming defense strategies and ideas, and laying a good start for the subsequent defense work. The following is what I collected for you. Welcome to learn from it.
First, make clear the purpose of the meeting.
The lawyer meets the client for the first time after accepting the entrustment for three purposes:
1 Confirm the entrustment relationship and establish a trust relationship with the parties;
Get a preliminary understanding of the basic situation of the case through interviews, predict and evaluate the expected trend of the case, and form preliminary defense strategies and ideas;
Provide legal advice and help to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the parties, and at the same time enable the parties to better protect themselves.
This is because the right of defense belongs to the parties, and their legal representatives or close relatives only entrust it on their behalf, and the entrustment relationship needs the approval and consent of the parties. Although the lawyer will know something about the case through the introduction of the client, the client is the person who can understand the case best. He should understand the basic situation of the case more comprehensively through interviews, form preliminary defense strategies and ideas, and carry out defense work in a targeted manner. The purpose of lawyers' legal consultation and legal aid to clients is to let clients know and understand the law, know how to use legal weapons to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, avoid infringing their legitimate rights and interests because they don't know the law, and enhance their self-protection ability.
Second, prepare in advance.
Lawyers should make good preparations before the meeting to improve work efficiency and meeting quality.
1. Inform the case-handling organ of the entrustment relationship according to law. In the case of "endangering national security, terrorist activities, especially serious bribery crimes", it should be asked whether to restrict the meeting. If the meeting is restricted, an application for meeting should be submitted to the investigation organ in time.
2. Be prepared for knowledge. According to the client's introduction to the case, the lawyer should make good preparations for legal knowledge in advance, and specifically understand the composition of the suspected crime, conviction and sentencing standards, the boundary between crime and non-crime, possible disputes in practice, and the handling of similar cases. And be well informed before the meeting.
3. Make time arrangements and legal procedures. Inquire about the address of the detention center in advance, the time needed on the road, and understand the specific arrangement of the detention center about the meeting time, so as to arrange the time reasonably and improve efficiency. Check whether the relevant legal procedures are complete before departure to avoid a trip in vain. Here, we should pay special attention to two points:
1 some lawyers in local detention centers require proof of kinship between the parties. When signing a contract, a lawyer should ask the client to submit proof of kinship with the client as far as possible;
Many detention centers will refuse to meet with lawyers if the client has entrusted two lawyers and has already met with the client. Before signing the entrustment formalities, the client should ask whether he has entrusted a lawyer before and whether he will meet with him. If this happens, he should ask the client to issue the procedures for canceling the entrustment of his former lawyer.
4. Grasp and understand some useful information. The most effective way to gain the trust of the client is to let the client tell some information that only the client and the principal know, so as to establish a trust relationship with the client quickly. At the same time, the parties are generally eager to know something about the outside world. Lawyers' necessary understanding from the perspective of human nature can not only increase their trust with the parties, but also comfort them.
Third, make opening remarks.
When a lawyer meets a client for the first time, the opening remarks are very important. It is necessary to eliminate customers' nervousness and doubts through good opening remarks and establish a preliminary trust relationship with customers.
Generally, you should introduce yourself first, tell the client who entrusted you, how to entrust you as a lawyer, what the client has to tell the client, what is the purpose of meeting today, what the lawyer does, and so on. In the process of communication, it is best to adopt a "casual" way, with a kind attitude and friendly tone, and choose the way and language that the parties can understand and accept according to their personal qualities and understanding ability.
Fourth, understand the case in a targeted manner.
In addition to listening to the statements of the parties to the case, you should also ask the parties about the basic situation of the case, the time when compulsory measures were announced, the charges charged, the situation of being interrogated, how to confess and defend, and whether there were illegal evidence such as extorting a confession by torture during interrogation.
In the process of understanding the case, lawyers should not only listen to the statements of the parties, but also ask questions about the statements of the case. This is because many parties lack legal knowledge and may miss or even ignore important issues in their statements. At this time, lawyers should ask questions to the parties according to their professional experience and the need to fully understand the case. After meeting with the client, many defense lawyers only know how the client states the basic situation of the case, fail to judge according to their own professional experience, and ask targeted questions about the key issues and core details of the case, which will greatly reduce the effect of the meeting.
Five, pay attention to self-protection
When lawyers explain the relevant legal provisions and the consequences that the parties may face, the parties will make their own choices and judgments, and sometimes they will change their previous confessions or even make false statements. If lawyers don't pay attention to language, it is easy to expose themselves to legal risks, which is considered as helping the parties collude. Although according to the law, lawyers are not monitored when they meet their clients, it is not uncommon for the case-handling organs to illegally monitor lawyers' meetings, and they should not trust their clients too much. Therefore, when providing legal advice to the parties, we should pay attention to grasping the scale, and at the same time have a sense of self-protection to avoid legal risks caused by improper words.
Especially when the parties ask how to deal with the interrogation of investigators, don't give them advice, just give them legal answers and tell them to seek truth from facts. If the parties clearly indicate that the previous confession to the investigators is not real-time, they should listen carefully to the false statements of the parties and inform them that they should seek truth from facts when the investigators interrogate again. When the parties ask about the possible punishment, they should answer according to law, but they should also avoid the serious consequences that may lead to the imbalance of the parties' mentality. For the illusion that the parties obviously do not conform to the law, they should be euphemistically informed to avoid the situation that the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. In short, the language should be standardized and the attitude should be clear when conducting legal consultation.
Sixth, the right to know should be really useful.
When informing the parties of their litigation rights, they can't follow the book, only talk about the legal provisions, and don't combine the practice of handling cases. For some cases where investigators may infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of litigants, we should give key tips to increase the self-protection ability of litigants.
For example, it is necessary to remind the parties to carefully check the interrogation record under any circumstances and resolutely correct the untrue parts in the interrogation record; Don't easily listen to the promise, deception or even threat of investigators and make false statements, which will put yourself in an extremely unfavorable position; When investigators use torture to extort confessions, they should remember the time, place and interrogator of interrogation, and report to the discipline and resident prosecutor in time; If synchronous audio and video recording is required by law, the investigator may refuse to answer the inquiry before the synchronous audio and video recording equipment is turned on, and ask the investigator to turn it on before the interrogation; Before the end of the investigation, when the prosecutor checks the legality of the interrogation, if there is illegal interrogation, he must clearly tell the prosecutor and so on.
Seven, humanistic care and psychological counseling
Understand the basic situation of the parties in the detention center and their required living materials, and inform the client in time; Transmission has nothing to do with the case, but the parties want to know something outside. At the same time, psychological counseling and comfort are given to the parties to stabilize their emotions. Lawyers' services should not be limited to legal aspects. Humanistic care and psychological counseling can greatly improve the trust of clients and parties in lawyers and their satisfaction with lawyers' work.
Eight, completes the interview record, confirm the entrustment relationship.
Meeting minutes can not only fix and preserve the process and content of lawyers' meetings, but also reflect the achievements of lawyers' work. No matter whether the contents involved in the meeting are important or not, records should be made for the parties to sign. If the client agrees to entrust a lawyer, it shall require the client to sign a power of attorney to prove that it recognizes the lawyer entrusted by the client.
Nine. Meeting in compliance with laws and regulations
In the process of meeting the parties, lawyers shall abide by the relevant laws and regulations and the prohibitive provisions of the detention center on lawyers' meeting, and shall not engage in the following acts:
1 illegally delivering articles, letters or other graphic information to the parties without the consent of the detention center; Provide cigarettes, food, etc. All parties concerned;
2. Providing communication tools for criminal suspects;
3. Guide criminal suspects to make false statements and collusion; Passing the "code words" that the criminal suspect and his family want to bring to each other;
Inform the criminal suspect of the confidential information of the case;
5. Non-lawyers accompanying the meeting, including family members, relatives and friends of the criminal suspect or defendant or other personnel;
Recording, videotaping or photographing without the consent of the detention center and the parties concerned;
Other activities in violation of laws, regulations and rules.
X. Correctly handle the meeting requirements before signing the contract.
Some clients will ask the lawyer to meet the client first to understand the basic situation of the case, and then further negotiate the entrustment matters and sign the entrustment contract. In order to win the lawsuit, many lawyers go to the detention center to see their clients after their clients only sign the power of attorney. Personally, I think this is inappropriate.
First, according to the relevant provisions of the Lawyers Law, when a lawyer undertakes business, the law firm shall uniformly accept the entrustment and sign a written entrustment contract. This practice of signing only the power of attorney and not the entrustment contract is illegal, which will directly lead to the failure to protect the relevant rights and interests of lawyers.
Second, many clients actually take advantage of the lawyer's psychology of wanting to accept the case and just want to know the basic situation of the case through the lawyer. They have no sincerity to entrust lawyers to engage in defense work, and lawyers will get something for nothing, which does not reflect the labor value of lawyers.
For the requirements of the client, we should also sign an entrustment contract and collect legal fees according to the regulations. Both parties only need to make it clear in the entrustment matters that the lawyer will only meet the client once according to law, and the two parties will negotiate separately on the subsequent defense matters. If negotiation fails, the entrustment contract will be terminated naturally. This not only protects oneself, but also embodies the value of lawyer's work, and can also avoid missing the source of the case by insisting on forming a formal entrustment.