Lawyers' experience questioning children in Canadian court

Abstract

BackgroundInternational research has explored lawyer-child interactions in court; however, little focus has been spent examining other aspects of lawyers' interactions with children (e.g., interview preparation; building rapport). ObjectiveThe present study investigated lawyer's self-reported interactions with child witnesses. Participants and settingParticipants included 96 lawyers (Mage = 40.34, SD = 11.07; 52 % female) practicing in Canada with experience questioning child witnesses (under 18 years old). MethodsA survey was used to gather self-reported data on how lawyers prepare for, question, and respond to children as witnesses in court. We then explored whether these strategies differed depending on the role of the Canadian lawyer (i.e., prosecution or defence), experience, or gender. ResultsResults indicate that lawyers report and demonstrate knowledge consistent with current best practices in questioning children. While gender and experience did not appear to play a strong role in lawyer-child interactions, prosecutors reported behavior more consistent with best practices compared to defence lawyers. ConclusionsThese findings provide important insight into strengths and weaknesses of lawyer-child interactions in court as well as highlight a strong need for future research to examine the link between self-reported behavior (i.e., perceived behavior) with observable behavior (i.e., actual behavior) in lawyer-child interactions.