evidence

Time. We have so little of it. We waste so much of it on direct. We do not have to. If you do any work in divorce courts, you are familiar with the excruciatingly dull business of live testimony of needs and expenses. In every support trial, you hear lawyers helping clients read their own affidavits out-loud into the record. Hours are wasted on this unnecessary exchange: Wife’s Lawyer: And turning to page three, line two, what is your monthly water bill? Wife: I am sorry, I do not remember. Wife’s Lawyer (tapping his finger on the page and…