Meeting with Your Lawyer

What Your Lawyer Should Know About You

Sharing information about your history, struggles and things that help you, will support your ability to self advocate. This information is important to educate your support circle or legal counsel. While it may feel embarrassing, overwhelming or scary to share information, it will help ensure you get fair and equal access to justice and legal support. Talk to your lawyer about what kind of information will be helpful in your legal process.

The link below are some questions to help you think about what you need. Make notes and bring it to your lawyer’s appointment so they can better understand how to share information with you.

 

- Easy to use, printable/emailable questionnaire HERE -

Challenges and Strategies Specific to You 

1. To help others understand your specific challenges and needs, circle, highlight or check off what challenges affect you.
2. Next, circle, highlight or check off the strategies that are helpful to you.

You are the expert of your own situation  - add strategies and tools we haven’t listed that you find helpful. Use this printable .pdf image as a reminder of how to cope with difficult challenges and share with your lawyer or any persons in your support network.

-Print .pdf image HERE-

Brain Injury can result in challenges with aspects of communication such as;

Listening, Understanding and Remembering

What does this mean? You might have difficulty;

Following and understand conversations, and what another person is saying. This can happen in person, on the phone, or watching screens.

You may have difficulty following and understanding what you’re reading.

Remembering the details of the conversation, and sometimes, difficulty remembering the conversation even took place!

Why? This is because;

People with brain injuries often have problems with processing information.

• Processing is slower
• Processing too much information is hard
• Processing of complex information is hard
• It’s harder to keep the information in your working memory (i.e. remembering the goal or what is being said)

What is also important is that difficulty processing does NOT mean less intelligent! It just means slower.

Listening and Hearing

Some people may have hearing challenges after a brain injury. They may have difficulty hearing sounds, or speech. They may have difficulty following conversations in noisy places.

Thinking

We use words and language to think (most of the time). People with brain injuries sometimes have difficulties solving problems, organizing things, figuring out the best way to do something, or making sense of things.

Why? This is because;

People with brain injuries often have difficulties with large amounts of information. People with brain injuries may also have difficulty figuring out what is important and what is not. Challenges with attention and memory can make this even more difficult.

How does this affect communication?

If our thinking isn’t clear, and we have difficulty organizing our thoughts, this can affect what we understand, what we say and how we communicate.

Speaking and Communicating

Often a person’s speech is fine after a brain injury. Speech may be a bit slower or a bit slurred especially when tired. But most often, speech is fine.

What is challenging is expressing oneself clearly. People with brain injuries often have trouble finding the right word to say, organizing their thoughts and sentences and, remembering the details. Sometimes it is hard to get the point across or tell a clear story.

Challenges with attention, memory, fatigue and stress can make this even harder.

Social Communication

Often, people with brain injuries have some difficulty reading other people’s thoughts and emotions.

Sometimes, they have difficulty knowing the right thing to say in different situations.

Sometimes, people with brain injuries can experience strong emotions and find them difficult to control.

This can lead to being misunderstood, or, to misunderstanding the intent of the other person. For example, is the person joking, teasing or are they being serious?

Why are these Communication Challenges Important in the Justice System?

Having to interact and speak to people in the justice system is most often stressful. Many conversations are fast and use big legal terms that you may not understand. They may take place in busy places with lots of noise.

Research shows that people with brain injuries have more difficulty understanding some legal language than people without brain injuries.

This is important as decisions are made about you and your future and you need to know what is going on and how to advocate for yourself.

Your story and how you come across and communicate are very important. (e.g. being polite, saying you’re sorry, seeming like you are honest). Here are some tips and strategies to help you.

What Can You Do?

First, believe in yourself! Brain injury does NOT mean less intelligent. Brain injury means you likely have some challenges. Many people even without a brain injury have challenges. Some people wear glasses, some people need hearing aids, some people have anxiety some people get headaches; most everyone is dealing with something. You are not alone.

Second and just as important!

Make sure you tell your lawyer and your probation or parole officer about your brain injury. Tell them about this website and where they can get some information.

Let them know it means that you are not unintelligent (meaning, you ARE intelligent!), it just means you think and communicate more slowly.

Tell them what you need to make communication successful. You have the legal right to accessible communication.

For example:

Ask them to speak more slowly and pause in between ideas or before they change the topic.

Ask them to write down important information

If you don’t understand, don’t be afraid to ask them to tell you again using different words. You need to know!

Ask to have conversations in a quiet room with no distractions if possible.

Let them know if you have difficulty with attention, concentration and memory. It’s okay! They need to know this.

Explain that you may have trouble finding the right word or explaining things clearly. It doesn’t mean your story is wrong or that you’re lying. If you need more time to explain, let them know. It’s more important that you get it right.

If you have difficulty hearing or seeing let them know.

Remember to take deep breaths and pause or take a break when you need it! Your lawyer and your probation or parole officer are there to help you.

If you need additional help, ask your brain injury association if they have a support person you can talk to or bring to appointments?

You can also request that a Communication Intermediary be brought into court to help you. In Canada this means a qualified speech and language therapist/speech pathologist with additional training to help people in the legal system with their communication. 

Why use a Communication Intermediary?

In Canada, the term Communication Intermediary © is a qualified Speech-Language Pathologist who is trained by CDAC to support people communicating in justice situations. Click here for further details and explanation.

Complete these questions when you are with your lawyer. You can either print them (.pdf), or fill them out online/save and email form here. If you are recording your answers on paper, be sure to take a picture and save it to your phone, or upload it to a cloud system. An example of how to do upload your work to Google Drive, can be found here.

Remember:

• To give your lawyer a copy of your Brain Injury Identification Card
• Review What Your Lawyer Should Know about You

Fillable/Save-able/Email Questionnaire Form here

How to Participate in a Virtual Meeting

*Always ask permission of participants before recording a meeting.

1. Ensure you have access to technology, internet and the meeting link ahead of time.
2. If you need support with any of these items, ask your lawyer or contact BIST/OBIA or your local Brain Injury Association.
3. Set up reminders and alerts on your calendar and/or phone as soon as you receive notice of the meeting. If needed, ask a support person to help you remember.
4. Ask for an agenda ahead of time or a list of information/documents that may be required of you.
5. Ask a support person to attend if possible to help record information.*Note virtual meetings do not require you to be in the same building as your support person, you just both need access to technology.
6. Conduct the meeting in a quiet location. Use headphones to block out any distractions
7. Test platform ahead of time to ensure you can use/access the platform
8. If you find it difficult to understand the platform they are asking you to use, see if you can use a virtual platform you already know (Examples of virtual platforms include Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, What’s App).
9. Ask if you can record the meeting, or if it's already being recorded, ask to have a copy. Always ask permission of participants before recording a meeting.
10. Remind your lawyer that to help you understand what is being communicated in the meeting participants should:
    ○ speak slow,
    ○ summarize main points
    ○ only one person speak at a time
11. If you are unable to look at a screen for an extended time, ask your lawyer if you need to have your screen on the entire time. If not, keep the volume on and block your screen so you can lie down, put a cold compress on your eyes if it helps.
12. When scheduling the meeting think about what is the best time of day for you? Morning or afternoon? Ask your lawyer if it’s possible to arrange the meeting at a time of day that you are at your best.
13. Ask questions if you do not understand. You can raise your hand when you want to ask a question or say something
14. Ask for a break if needed
15. Ask for the meeting to be as brief as possible
16. Keep yourself muted to reduce background noise and distractions unless talking. Ask others to mute their backgrounds if you are finding it distracting.
17. Ask for information to be repeated.
18. Ask for a written summary of the meeting outcomes to be emailed to you

How to have a Zoom meeting without an account

Support and Soothe Tools

Get this in a printable format, HERE

These dollar store items can help with stress in situations which may cause you anxiety

-  Have these items nearby to help reduce anxiety and improve focus -

Breath mint & Hand lotion

Breath mints can be grounding tools, once you put it in your mouth try to focus on the taste and coolness.

This also works with hand lotion - as you put it on focus on how it feels on your skin.  This works with both scented and unscented cream. 

Stress Balls

Stress balls can help alleviate nervous energy. Try rolling the ball across your leg or arm, or squish it between your hands. 

Try a variety of squish balls, such as balls that are heavier in weight, different textures, and ones that make noise to see what works best for you. 

Coil bracelets and Rubber Bands

If you are distracted easily try wearing elastic bands or coil bracelets on your wrists. The snapping of the rubber bands can help decrease unwanted thoughts, alleviate anxiety and help you focus. 

Cold Water & Ice Pack

If you become overwhelmed, overheated, or if you feel dizzy, light headed, irritated, or anxious, try an ice pack or drink a cold glass of water. The reason for the cold water and/or the cold ice pack is that the temperature change can bring down your emotional stress level. 

The following video explains how to setup a free Gmail account that can be accessed anywhere online:

 

How to set up your Google Account on Cellphone:

How to Use Google Drive to Save Information

 

How to use Google Drive on a Laptop:

How to Use FaceTime on Your Phone:

---To see ongoing tech tips for Brain Injury Survivors, please visit Brain Injury Society of Toronto on YouTube