Preparing For Your Trial
Cassidy Barbour
Where do you stand how did you get there?
What exactly is a trial? A trial is a formal examination of evidence before a judge and a jury. When you are on trial you will either be the plaintiff or the defendant. If you are the plaintiff, you are the person who started the case and thus are suing or accusing the defendant in the court of law. Regardless of which side you stand on, a complaint will be filed. The complaint will serve as a formal notice of the lawsuit and will name the plaintiff and defendant as well as the nature of the lawsuit. The plaintiff and defendant will be subpoenaed or served a summons which is an order to appear in front of a judge or magistrate. Before your case ever reaches its trial, you must have a pretrial conference, this conference is a meeting for both sides of the case to discuss things pertaining to the trail.Once you are in court there will be pleadings. Pleadings are formal statements of the cause of an action or defense. Either way, your trial will go through mediation. Mediation is an intervention in a dispute to try and settle the dispute. Mediation also goes hand-in-hand with arbitration. Arbitration is the attempt to mediate a dispute. Once the judge assigned to your trial reaches a verdict, or a final decision on your case, the case will be over unless you decide to appeal the judge's verdict. If you choose to appeal the verdict, you will be applying to have your case heard at a higher court in an attempt to reverse the previous verdict.