Conflicts, checked first.
Before anything substantive.

The check is the first step, not a formality attached to the engagement letter. When an inquiry arrives, the names in it are run against the matters currently open and against prior engagements before opinions, case theory or the contents of the record are discussed. If the matter presents a conflict, counsel hears it immediately, and the conversation ends there.

The sequence is the point. An expert who listens to counsel’s theory of a case and then discovers a conflict has already received something that cannot be returned. Running the check first keeps that from happening to either side, and it keeps counsel from spending a call describing a matter to a witness who was never available for it.

What the check runs against

• Named parties on all sides: officers, agencies, municipalities, estates, and any corporate or institutional defendants.
• Counsel and firms appearing in the matter, on both sides of the caption.
• The underlying incident itself, which can surface in more than one case under more than one caption.
• Prior engagements, including preliminary case-merit evaluations that never proceeded to a retention.
• Related matters arising from the same event, the same agency practice, or the same set of involved officers.

A conflict is reported as a conflict. It is not an occasion to describe the other matter, name its parties or explain what is known. Counsel hears that the engagement is unavailable, and confidences from the earlier retention stay where they belong.

Most delay in a conflict check comes from an inquiry that names one party. A caption plus the plaintiff is rarely enough to screen a police practices matter, because the parties that generate conflicts are usually the individual officers and the employing agency, and those names may appear nowhere in the case name.

Send with the first inquiry

• Full party names on all sides, including individual officers, the employing agency and any co-defendants.
• Counsel and firms of record for every party.
• Jurisdiction, court and case number, so a related filing can be recognized.
• Case type and posture, and the next deadlines that matter.
• A neutral description of what the record holds so far, with no case theory attached.

Nothing privileged goes with a first inquiry, and privileged material is never exchanged by email. The check needs identities and a caption, not work product, and a first message that stays at that level is both faster to clear and safer to send. What to send with a first inquiry sets out the full list, and talking to an expert before retention covers how far a pre-retention conversation can go.

Once the check clears, the engagement is scoped in writing, the retainer is confirmed, and the full record follows on physical media, a flash drive or an external hard drive by mail or courier. From that point the analysis addresses police practices measured against national standards on the totality of the facts and circumstances. Legal conclusions, including any conclusion about disqualification of a witness, remain counsel’s.