Title: 5 essential questioning techniques for legal professionals - One Legal
Headings: 5 essential questioning techniques for legal professionals
5 essential questioning techniques for legal professionals
#1 Open-ended versus closed-ended questioning
#2 Funnel questioning
#3 Asking probing questions
#4 Asking leading questions
#5 Asking rhetorical questions

Content: 5 essential questioning techniques for legal professionals - One Legal
5 essential questioning techniques for legal professionals
From questioning witnesses on the stand or taking depositions, to conducting preliminary client interviews, or simply interacting daily with other colleagues, effective communication is critical to your success as a legal professional. Among the most important communication skills to master is asking questions effectively. We wrote previously about how to improve the ways you conduct client interviews. Here, we’ll dive more deeply into other questioning techniques to use when interviewing witnesses, clients, or even co-workers. We’ll also cover when to use each one, and how they work. #1 Open-ended versus closed-ended questioning
Open-ended questions typically elicit more information, while closed-ended questions can be answered with one word or phrase. For instance, “Tell me what happened that night” is an open-ended question that might lead to your gathering plentiful information from the interviewee, whereas “where was the party” is a closed-ended question that can be answered directly with the address of the event, with no other detail. Use open-ended questions when you want to initiate a conversation, find out more information about a situation, or explore the interviewee’s opinions more deeply. Use closed-ended questions to find out or confirm very specific details (e.g. the location example above), or to validate your understanding of a situation (e.g. “based on our conversation, my understanding is that we want to move forward with the proposal. Is that right?”).