Treaty Oak Employers’ Law Blog

What do you do when somebody keeps repeating themselves? This can be hard because people do this when they’re nervous. And so if somebody keeps repeating themselves and it’s irrelevant, make sure you ask them what the relevance of their comments is. And that might be a hard question for

What do you do if you, as the investigator, get really embarrassed? Pull yourself together. You are there to be a neutral, unbiased, third party. And as such, you can’t be judgmental. And a lot of embarrassment comes from judgment. And so, your work is about appropriateness and inappropriateness in

What do you do if the person you’re interviewing is represented by an attorney? The answer is probably whatever your client wants you to do. So, if the client allows its employees to have legal representation in their interview that is up to that client and you need to handle

What do you do if the interviewee asks for a witness? As attorneys always say, it depends. If the interviewee is a member of a union, they have a right, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, to have a witness. And so they need to get a

What do you do if your interviewee does not participate in the investigation, or does not know what you are asking them? That’s kind of two different issues. So, if the person does not participate in the investigation, you need to, again, remind them that their employer expects them to

What do you do if an interviewee asks you about privilege for your investigation?A lot of investigations are done under privilege. I am not a litigator, I’m an investigator. So, I don’t pretend to be an expert in privilege and I know, across the country, perspectives on the way privilege

What do you do if intuition is the only reason you want to take some investigative steps? I think if you’re a young investigator, you need to check in with somebody else and check that intuition. This is because every move you make is expensive for your client. And so

What do you do when someone hands you hundreds of hours of recordings from the workplace? First of all, you can’t ignore that information. If somebody provided you that evidence of their claim, you’ve got to absorb it and analyze it. But the way that we handle that most frequently