Mastering Courtroom Etiquette: Do’s and Don’ts
Are you going to court, either for a procedural matter or for a trial, and you’re not sure how to behave? My name is Carl Birkhead. I’m an attorney with Wirth Law Office. I’ve been practicing for about seven years. I want to help you make law easy by giving you some tricks for some do’s and don’ts for when you’re in the courtroom.
Today I want to talk about your behavior in court because that is crucial. Not just what you say, but your non-verbals are just as important as your verbals. Lawyers and judges, we’ve been doing this for years, day in and day out. We see the same thing over and over again, which means that if there’s something that breaks routine, we’re going to notice it.
Importance of Proper Behavior
Something that breaks routine a lot is if someone is not behaving properly or respectfully in court. As an example, a few years ago, I had a case – oh man, this is back when I was an intern. We had a case where our clients were going up – they were grandparents going up against parents for a guardianship situation. It was obviously very heated.
Any time you’ve got parents against children, going after grandchildren – obviously, you can imagine, emotions run high. This is understandable, but you still have to keep it in check when you’re in front of the judge. Our clients didn’t do it in that situation. To the point that one of our clients was instructed to leave the courtroom and not return because she couldn’t keep from just making faces at the other side.
Tips for Proper Courtroom Behavior
We’re not an elementary school. We’re adults, and we’re expected to behave accordingly. Regardless of how emotional these cases can get – and they get very emotional – the best thing that you can do to help yourself is to just keep it inside.
Something I like to do with my clients a lot of times is I’ll give them a notepad and pen to where if there’s something that’s really just aggravating them or something that they don’t agree with, or there’s something where they’re just like, that’s not right, you need to be aware of that. They can write it down and they can tell me that.
Low-Cost Initial Strategy Session
Once again, my name is Carl Birkhead with Wirth Law Office. If you have questions about how to handle yourself in court, or you have court coming up and you’re not sure what to do, please contact 918-879-1681. I’m here to help you make law easy.