University of San Jose-Recoletos

School of Law

Practicum V

Prof: Atty. Christian Fernandez

Tauniño Jillandro G. September 1, 2020 Atty. Marie Angelee Ygnacio-Emboy

Insight Paper on: “ HOW TO INTERVIEW A CLIENT”

The first webinar we had in the past week was about “How to Interview a Client”
with Atty. Angelee Ygnacio. It was quite informative, precise and extensive in a sense
that, given the little amount of time to discuss the topic, Atty. Angelee somehow
capsulized it. She emphasized the importance of how to intelligently and properly extract
facts from the client that are pertinent to the issue so that it would be easy for a lawyer to
give his or her advice. It should always be necessary that a lawyer will only ask questions
related to the grievances of the client, this is so much so to save the cost of time and not
waste it on unrelated events.

With the lecture, I learned that in conducting an interview, a lawyer will be able to
assess the needs of the client and to collect enough information to help solve the client’s
problem. An interview will serve as an opportunity to develop a relationship of trust,
confidence and an open communication between the lawyer and the client. The purpose
of which is to get and give information and decide what a lawyer is going to do with the
information he got. It is also an opportunity to establish and maintain high standards
of client care.

As I recall it, in forcible entry cases, it is important to know the date and the manner
of the dispossession of the plaintiff for us to determine the correct date when will
prescription start to run. That is why, it is necessary to ask the right questions such as
“did the defendant used force?”, “does he have title or pertinent papers evidencing his
rightful claim over the property”?, “is he your tenant”?, “when did you file the case”. It
should then be necessary to extract information when did he had knowledge of the
dispossession or in some scenario, did he file a case after 1 year? for if it is beyond 1
year accion publiciana now would be the proper remedy.

Overall, the webinar is of great help for us students trying to learn the efficacies
of the practice of law. It may be theoretical at least for now, the techniques being taught
to us, but rest assured these newly learned ideas will be inculcated in us and will form an
indelible ink in our lives. This will always be remembered by heart and use it in the future
for our own betterment.