QUORA QUESTION: WHEN HAVE YOU BELIEVED A CLIENT'S STORY, BUT THEY WERE LYING?

QUORA QUESTION: When have you believed a client's story, but they were lying?

MY ANSWER:  Frequently. Less often I have thought my client a liar when he was telling the truth. Because of the possibility that my client’s unlikely story was true, if I could not shake the story I operated as though the client were telling the truth. This procedure often cooked my client’s goose, but it’s not malpractice to believe your client.

I recall one case where we spent two weeks turning a small county upside down looking for two alibi witnesses named “Root Man” and “Crime.” When we reported back to our client that we couldn’t find anyone who had ever heard of “Root Man” or “Crime,” he confessed that he had made them up because “I had to tell you something.”