A paralegal must have good investigative skills that include interviewing, legal research, and discovery management. These three skills are necessary for a paralegal to be successful in their career. When a paralegal uses these three skills, they will prove invaluable to their employer and the clients they are helping to represent. “Interviews and investigations involve the application of critical thinking, organizational, communication, research, writing, and computer skills” ( Education, Paralegal Core Cometencies, 2002). A paralegal must know the right questions to ask and the right way to ask the questions when interviewing a client, witness or victim in the case they are working on. A paralegal must also have a good understanding of the case you are working on before conducting the interview. Knowing the case will help the paralegal know what questions to ask. Paralegals need to know the different types of witnesses, victims, and clients they are interviewing. Each interviewee has different personalities. The interviewee may be defensive, passive, manipulative, honest, or dishonest. To get the truth, a paralegal must ask certain types of questions. As mentioned in (Conducting Effective Interviews, AICPA, 2013) there are five important types of questions to ask in an interview. Informational questions (unbiased, non-confrontational in nature), open questions (what, when, where, why, how), closed questions (yes or no answers), leading questions (contains part of the answer in the question to confirm facts already known) and applications seeking admission (questions oriented towards obtaining admission). All these types of questions can get the right information from the interviewee in ...... middle of paper ...... expert witnesses. Interviews and statements can be used in court if they are properly documented. The expert is used to support the evidence obtained. These three things can preserve discovery and support your case in court. To properly protect evidence, a paralegal will need to put documents together correctly and securely. Place important documents, photographs and other evidence in plastic. This protects the evidence but can still be seen through the plastic. A paralegal should place all case files and evidence in a clearly marked box and make backups and copies of all evidence collected. “Learning basic investigative techniques will make you better at your job and increase your marketability to other companies. It's also a lot of fun. Your next photo of the accident or interview of a witness could be the factor that wins the case.” (Bevan, 2004).