To obtain an individual to corroborate a part of your client’s case to bear witness is a true feat of aligning your client’s narrative with "the truth." Any lawyer who has investigated a client’s matter knows that there are plenty of cases where it is problematic, if not impossible, to find such substantiation. Yet the acquisition of a witness is not sufficient. In order for the witness to be effective, and not damaging, that individual needs to be prepared.
Preparation of witnesses can evoke worry in new lawyers concerned with the ethics of practice. This concern is not without foundation. After all, there are many countries and international tribunals that disallow full preparation of witnesses, as they believe the lack of spontaneity in terms of content and presentation affects courts’ truth-finding capacities. Yet in the United States, witness preparation is a customary standard of lawyering practice. While the California Rules of Professional Conduct 5-310 precludes payment of witnesses predicated on specific testimony or a case’s outcome and prohibits the lawyer’s involvement in making a witness unavailable, no other rules specifically mention witnesses. That said, lawyers do have an overall duty to utilize "those means only as are consistent with the truth and never to seek to mislead the judge or any judicial officer by an artifice or false statement of facts." Bus. & Prof. Code §6068(d)
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